- axelblaze
- Oct 18, 2006
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Congratulations The One Concern!!!
You're addicted to Ivory!!
and...oh my...could you please...
oh my...
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Grimey Drawer
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Hello. I've been going to Sundance since I think 2010 and this year is no different. I also make a thread every year so I have a place to put my thought or in case anyone else is going and wants to post their thoughts. Sometimes I make this thread and then I write up every movie and short I see, sometimes I get lazy and the very sight of this thread depresses me. Which will happen this year? You'll just have to wait and see!
Much has changed since I first started going. The festival has gotten more mainstream, more expensive and harder to do anything in if you don't have a ton of money, but I've also gotten way better at getting tickets. The first year I went I had no tickets going in, had to get up extremely early to wait to get a chance to buy the tickets they release each day and wait in long lines to hopefully get to fill empty seats when that first part failed. This year going in I have tickets to 21 movies and 6 shorts programs. I might overpacked my schedule a bit with it being likely I won't be able to make one shorts program and one movie I have tickets for. Still, it's going to be a busy week.
This is what I have tickets to (I'm not going to bother listing the shorts programs)
quote:Pity
A man is distraught, sorrowful. With his wife lying in a coma, each day begins in tears. But despite this sadness, he is happy. Showered with pity—from his secretary, his dry cleaner, and a neighbor who brings homemade Bundt cakes—the man realizes how much better his life is. He’s grown accustomed to pity—addicted even. What a vexing dilemma he’d face were his wife ever to recover.
A pitch-dark comedy that would be deeply disturbing if it weren’t so funny, Pity marks the second collaboration of director Babis Makridis (L) and co-writer Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, The Lobster). Its heavily stylized humor and restrained aesthetic enable a revelatory deadpan performance from comedian Yannis Drakopoulos, his nameless Everyman narcissistically obsessing over the depths of his sorrow (shouldn’t his son play less cheerful piano melodies?) and how it compares to others’ (is it deeper than the woman wailing in the hospital waiting room?). Pity meets these questions with a wry smirk, and an intertitle helpfully reminds us, “It’s your own fault if people stop pitying you.” quote:Lizzie
1892: Headstrong Lizzie Borden lives with her wealthy father, stepmother, and sister in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie lovingly tends to her pet pigeons and is occasionally allowed out of her dimly lit, foreboding house, but otherwise lives under strict rules set by her domineering father. When her family hires live-in maid Bridget, an uneducated Irish immigrant, the two find kindred spirits in one another. Their friendship begins with covert communication and companionship that blossoms into an intimate relationship. Meanwhile, tension builds in the Borden household, and Lizzie’s claustrophobic existence becomes increasingly more oppressive and abusive, leading to its inevitable breaking point.
Director Craig William Macneill (whose short film Henley played at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival) and writer Bryce Kass champion feminism and sexuality as they craft a compelling psychological thriller based on the unsolved, much-speculated-about murders of the Borden parents. As Lizzie Borden, Chloë Sevigny delivers a performance defined by interiority, brimming with intelligence and simmering rage, and capturing more humanity than the notoriety that surrounds her would suggest. quote:Mandy
Bubbling up from somewhere in the realm of madness and chaos comes the eagerly awaited latest from grandiose filmmaker Panos Cosmatos. Somewhere in the primal wilderness near the Shadow Mountains in the year 1983, Red Miller (Nicolas Cage, in an adrenaline-inducing performance) has fallen deeply for the beguiling Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough). But the life he has made for himself comes suddenly and horrifyingly crashing down when a vile band of ravaging idolaters and supernatural creatures penetrate his idyllic paradise with vicious fury. A broken man, Red now lives for one thing only—to hunt down these maniacal villains and exact swift vengeance.
In his delicious follow-up to cult hit Beyond the Black Rainbow, Cosmatos gleefully demonstrates an audacious command of tone and atmosphere, conjuring an ethereal treat for the senses that begs to be seen on a big screen. Awash in a salacious sea of gloriously unhinged performances, carnage, colors, and sounds, Cosmatos grinds up beloved genre tropes into a fine pulp and sculpts them into something altogether otherworldly. quote:Sorry To Bother You
Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), a 30-something black telemarketer with self-esteem issues, discovers a magical selling power living inside of him. Suddenly he’s rising up the ranks to the elite team of his company, which sells heinous products and services. The upswing in Cassius’s career raises serious red flags with his brilliant girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), a sign-twirling gallery artist who is secretly a part of a Banksy-style collective called Left Eye. But the unimaginable hits the fan when Cassius meets the company’s cocaine-snorting, orgy-hosting, obnoxious, and relentlessly optimistic CEO, Steve Lift (Armie Hammer).
Bursting with wit and originality, writer/director Boots Riley pulls no punches in this immensely intelligent comedy about overcoming your perception of your own powers of persuasion. With pitch-perfect performances by a stellar cast, a super funky soundtrack (which Riley contributes to), plus a score by Tune-Yards, Sorry to Bother You is a sparkling debut feature that surfs a macabre universe with a disturbing likeness to our own quote:Dead Pigs
A mysterious stream of pig carcasses floats silently toward China’s populous economic hub, Shanghai. As authorities struggle to explain the phenomenon, a down-and-out pig farmer with a youthful heart struggles to make ends meet, while an upwardly mobile landowner fights gentrification against an American expat seeking a piece of the Chinese dream. Meanwhile, a romantic busboy hides his job from his father, while a rich young woman struggles to find her independence. Like a mosaic, their stories intersect and converge in a showdown between human and machine, past and future, brother and sister.
Observing modern China through a humanist lens, Cathy Yan’s feature debut revels in watching its characters discover their place within the fissures that arise when a status-obsessed society is forced to reckon with the meaning of success. Cleverly connecting China’s social stratum with intergenerational narratives, Dead Pigs searches for connection in a constantly changing landscape, delving into how to find fulfilment when the distance between us and our loved ones grows greater every day. quote:The Guilty
When police officer Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) is demoted to desk work, he expects a sleepy beat as an emergency dispatcher. That all changes when he answers a panicked phone call from a kidnapped woman who then disconnects abruptly. Asger, confined to the police station, is forced to use others as his eyes and ears as the severity of the crime slowly becomes more clear. The search to find the missing woman and her assailant will take every bit of his intuition and skill, as a ticking clock and his own personal demons conspire against him.
This innovative and unrelenting Danish thriller uses a single location to great effect, ratcheting up the tension as twists pile up and secrets are revealed. Director Gustav Möller expertly frames the increasingly messy proceedings against the clean Scandinavian sterility of the police department, while Cedergren’s strong performance anchors the film and places the audience squarely in Holm’s tragically flawed yet well-intentioned mindspace. quote:TYREL
Tyler joins his friend on a trip to the Catskills for a weekend birthday party with several people he doesn’t know. As soon as they get there, it’s clear that (1) he’s the only black guy, and (2) it’s going to be a weekend of heavy drinking. Although Tyler is welcomed, he can’t help but feel uneasy in “Whitesville.” The combination of all the testosterone and alcohol starts to get out of hand, and Tyler’s precarious situation starts to feel like a nightmare.
Writer/director Sebastián Silva casually conjures an undeniable underlying tension: he puts the viewer on edge and makes them fear an almost imperceptible threat. With Silva’s signature handheld style probing subtext and body language, TYREL is a lot to unpack. Silva has had five films previously shown at the Sundance Film Festival, but this is his first time in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, and it marks his most radical character exploration yet—a timely, provocative, and brilliant observation of the idea of otherness in today’s American climate. quote:An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn
After getting fired by her scheming husband Shane Danger (Emile Hirsch) from his cappuccino shop, dissatisfied Lulu Danger (Aubrey Plaza) is stunned when a TV commercial for “An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn For One Magical Night Only” reveals a mysterious man from her past (Craig Robinson). When Shane and his bumbling cohorts steal the cashbox from Lulu’s adopted vegan brother Adjay, specialist Colin (Jemaine Clement) enters the fray to retrieve the stolen funds. But Lulu seizes the opportunity to run off in search of her mystery man—and events only become stranger from there.
Filmmaker Jim Hosking (The Greasy Strangler) makes his triumphant return to the Festival, bringing his innate gifts for outrageous absurdity to the romantic comedy genre while pushing the boundaries of storytelling into the wild unknown of outsider art. Cultivating a fine cast of comedic favorites thrown into places of great daring, and with a spirited sense of timing and unexpected emotion, Hosking and the contents of his fevered brain produce a kind of cinema like no other. quote:Search
After a five-minute sequence of the Kim family’s online activity that beautifully relays a decade of their shared lives, Search drops us into the current online existence of family patriarch David and daughter Margot, a high school freshman. Parenting mainly through iMessages and quick FaceTime chats, David is initially more annoyed than concerned when a series of his texts go unreturned, but he soon realizes Margot has gone missing. While a helpful detective searches for Margot out in the real world, David grasps at rediscovering his daughter in an unfamiliar online landscape as he searches through the traces she left behind on her laptop.
In his inventive and entertaining feature debut, writer/director Aneesh Chaganty whips through narrative twists while constantly ratcheting up the tension, creating a compulsively watchable modern spin on the mystery thriller. John Cho’s genuine performance as an increasingly desperate and determined father imbues Search with depth and relatability, while the film zealously and playfully embraces the challenges and opportunities of its contemporary storytelling format and turns a computer screen into a cinematic canvas. quote:Foxtrot
It begins with the anguish of an Israeli couple, Michael and Dafna, informed that their son has been killed in the line of duty, but then veers sharply to arrive at the remote desert checkpoint where he was deployed. The tiny contingent of soldiers stationed there check IDs, lift the gate for passersby, and sleep in a shipping container that lists heavily to one side. The tedium is broken only by the occasional passing camel—until a dramatic turn of events.
With bold, imaginative storytelling, Foxtrot employs a triptych structure that returns poignantly to Michael and Dafna and also includes a dance number, an animated sequence, and an uneasy blend of drama, emotion, irony, and wry humor. Where Maoz’s Lebanon contemplates confinement to a tank, Foxtrot examines humans confined to a fatalistic universe that—like the soldiers’ listing barracks—is ontologically off-balance, necessitating these absurd mechanisms of coping. quote:Damsel
It’s a classic tale of the Old West: Samuel Alabaster is a man searching for his true love. Parson Henry is another, much drunker man, searching for a new start. Penelope is a woman who has found her own path. And Rufus Cornell is just a mean bastard with a taste for buckskin. There’s rotgut, rawhide, rootin’, tootin’, and hootin’. Plus, a little tiny horse.
Damsel finds Sundance Film Festival stalwarts David and Nathan Zellner (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter) reinventing a dusty genre and wearing many hats, several of which are quite silly. The brothers write, produce, and direct the film, while also starring alongside Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, and Robert Forster. The Zellners’ off-kilter enthusiasm must be infectious, as the whole cast joyfully embraces the loopy rhythms and bonkers logic of this unfamiliar frontier.
So saddle up and prepare to git along—just don’t be surprised if you end up somewheres you never expected. quote:Monster and Men
One night, in front of a bodega in Brooklyn’s Bed–Stuy neighborhood, Manny Ortega witnesses a white police officer wrongfully gun down a neighborhood street hustler, and Manny films the incident on his phone. Now he’s faced with a dilemma: release the video and bring unwanted exposure to himself and his family, or keep the video private and be complicit in the injustice?
With a deep sense of humanity and a deft directorial hand, Reinaldo Marcus Green smartly reformulates the traditional construction of “protagonist” to magnify the power of perspective. Green tells the story of how the footage affects the lives of three upstanding men in Bed–Stuy—a young father striving to support his new family, an African American cop dealing with the fallout of his colleague’s mistake, and a star high school athlete who becomes politicized by the incident. Each man is very different, but they equally feel the urgency of the question they must all face: should I take moral action or remain safely on the sidelines? Green provokes viewers to ask themselves the same question. quote:Nancy
Nancy is a 35-year-old temp living with her mom and cat in a modest home in a modest town. She is also an aspiring writer whose submissions are consistently rejected by the likes of the Atlantic and the Paris Review. To make up for these failures and the invisibility she feels, Nancy spins elaborate lies and hoaxes under pseudonyms on the internet. When she encounters a couple whose 5-year-old daughter went missing 30 years ago, fact and fiction begin to blur in Nancy’s mind, and she becomes increasingly convinced these strangers are her real parents.
Nothing is extraneous or emotionally gratuitous in this riveting drama of characters seeking to restore lost intimacy. Authentic performances by an extraordinary cast and exacting, restrained direction by first-time feature filmmaker Christina Choe create a chilling, aching tension as we attempt to anticipate Nancy’s next move. At times morally ambiguous, at times heartbreakingly raw and honest, NANCY presents a female anti-hero for times like ours—when, for better or for worse, posturing and storytelling are the instruments we use to overcome loneliness and desperation. quote:Night Comes On
Eighteen-year-old Angel leaves her stint in juvenile detention with nothing but a few bucks and a dead cellphone. After serving time for unlawful possession of a weapon, she’s thrown back onto the streets and into a world riddled with the demons of her past. Her little sister, Abby, is stuck in foster care while her dad, responsible for the murder of their mother, roams free in some undisclosed suburb. But Angel, strong-willed and resourceful, has a quick-fix plan: find Abby, get a gun, hunt down her father, and hit the reset button on her and her sister’s life.
Filmmaker Jordana Spiro and co-writer Angelica Nwandu paint a tough but intimate portrait of sisterhood amid a hostile landscape where kids and young adults, desperate for guidance, are instead forced to fend for themselves. Naturalistic dialogue and restrained but deeply felt dynamics between the two sisters breathe humor and warmth into scenes otherwise loaded with tension. Night Comes On is a raw and lyrical coming-of-age tale and a testament to Spiro’s gifts as a nuanced and empathetic storyteller on the rise. quote:Lords of Chaos
Based on an astonishingly true story, Lords of Chaos recounts the exploits of the Norwegian black metal movement’s most notorious band: Mayhem. Its founder, Øystein Aarseth, better known as Euronymous, was one of the originators of the annihilating metal guitar sound that burst onto the scene in the early ’90s. After the gruesome suicide of vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin, who performed under the pseudonym “Dead,” Euronymous used the opportunity to inject a mix of satanism, havoc, and murder into the music to sell more records. Bassist Varg Vikernes began to take Euronymous’s headline-grabbing talk too seriously and went on a spree of church burnings, forming a deadly rivalry between the two bandmates that culminated in an infamous and bloody end.
Drawing from the 1998 book of the same name by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, director Jonas Åkerlund injects his distinct visual style into the material. Vigorous performances from Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Sky Ferreira, and Jack Kilmer bolster this unhinged account of black-metal brotherhood gone wickedly wrong. quote:The Last Race
Riverhead Raceway is a rare beast. For decades it has hosted showdowns between local residents who bring their Mad Max–inspired stock cars to do battle on a quarter-mile track, passions spilling out of the cockpit when the checkered flag drops. Forty such tracks used to exist on Long Island alone. Today Riverhead is the last. Acclaimed photographer Michael Dweck’s evocative portraiture turns the raceway into a theater of catharsis while the track’s owners struggle to maintain an American tradition as a real estate boom surrounds them.
Dweck’s stirring imagery takes you inside a race and eye to eye with the cars’ snarling grills and white roll bars that protrude like bones out of scarred metal. Yet a patient camera lets us know the drivers as everyday people and learn that Riverhead is tied to a deep sense of identity. The track is on the only piece of undeveloped land in the area—it's worth millions—and the only thing keeping the bulldozers at bay is track owners Barbara and Jim Cromarty’s love of the track and its community. quote:Never Goin Back
BFFs Angela (Maia Mitchell) and Jessie (Cami Morrone) are high school dropouts working dead-end waitressing jobs in the same lovely diner. Their dream vacation to sunny Galveston, Texas, is only a few shifts away. But after a drug deal goes bad and their home is invaded—and they have to serve a short stint in juvenile detention—their beach trip is in serious jeopardy. They’ll have to use every bit of guile their perpetually buzzed teenage brains can muster as they try to get (relatively) rich quick while wandering suburban Dallas.
Augustine Frizzell directs her scrappy debut feature with infectious energy and style. Co-stars Mitchell and Morrone imbue Angela and Jessie with such gonzo charm and stoned drive that it’s impossible not to root for them, no matter how misguided their scheme may be. An eclectic supporting cast, featuring Saturday Night Live’s Kyle Mooney as the girls’ weirdo housemate, shines as they bounce around suburban purgatory in search of cash. Never Goin’ Back is an engaging shaggy-dog crime story for the Snapchat generation. quote:Time Share (Tiempo Compartido)
Pedro and Eva arrive at the Vistamar mega-resort to “heal” their lives. Settling into a private villa with their young son, they’re surprised to find another family at the door; a clerical mistake has left them double-booked. The families make do, attending the resort’s time-share seminar and enjoying its pools and activities, and they are catered to by the staff of “leisure experts,” including Andres and Gloria, an estranged, middle-aged couple. While Gloria advances her career, Andres toils in a laundry job, dubious of the resort’s new corporate ownership. As Pedro becomes paranoid that his family is being pried away from him, he and Andres band together to expose the sinister forces at work in the tropical paradise.
Propelled by a wry, subversive tone and an unnerving aesthetic, Sebastián Hofmann (Halley) cleverly lures us into his dark imagination via the sunny Vistamar, where paradise is not only within reach—it’s on sale. Time Share offers a haunting vision of humanity, lounging by the pool as an insidious corporate organism callously dangles the false promise of happiness and healing. Enjoy your stay! quote:White Rabbit
Recently single, Korean-born LA artist Sophia devotes herself to her public performance art, whether it’s a provocative Korean perspective in the park on the LA Riots or face planting into cheesy puffs for Instagram. To pay the bills, she does odd jobs on TaskRabbit. When a filmmaker reaches out to discuss an acting role in his film, she is excited to explore the opportunity, only to realize he can’t distinguish between her art and her real-life identity. Meanwhile, when a stranger makes Sophia late for a TaskRabbit gig, she loses her temper with her, only to run into her repeatedly and discover a strong connection. Sophia develops feelings for her, but it’s unclear if her love is reciprocated.
Played by comedian Vivian Bang (who also co-wrote the screenplay with director Daryl Wein), Sophia is a delightfully refreshing character to watch. Emotionally open, curious, and unapologetic, Sophia’s art is fueled by unfettered self-expression. Her insatiable thirst for meaning and experience would make anyone want to follow her down the rabbit hole in this quirky, deeply felt dramedy. quote:Revenge
Jen joins her married lover, Richard, for a romp at his secluded desert villa before his annual hunting vacation. However, when his leering pals arrive, they’re a far cry from Richard’s millionaire-Adonis charms, and they feel entitled to make their own advances on Jen and ignore her rejections. After being violently assaulted and left for dead in the middle of the desert, Jen comes back to life, and the men’s hunting game is transformed into a ruthless manhunt.
Like its protagonist, Revenge (which premiered to shocked audiences at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival) rises like a phoenix from the ashes of its exploitation-film, rape-revenge forebears and celebrates grind-house style and excess while upending genre expectations with its director’s unapologetically female gaze. In her sunbaked, blood-soaked feature directorial debut, Coralie Fargeat brazenly and playfully embraces the intense violence of Jen’s retribution, creating a revelatory, righteous, gore-filled assault on misogyny that is not for the faint of heart. Actress Matilda Lutz embodies with ferocity and physicality Jen’s transformation from self-confident object of desire to superhuman survivor. quote:Come Sunday
Every Sunday, Bishop Carlton Pearson—evangelical megastar, brilliant orator, and television host with millions of followers—preaches the fundamentalist gospel to six thousand supplicants at his Higher Dimensions Church. He’s the pride and joy of his spiritual father, Oral Roberts, and the toast of Tulsa. One day, rattled by an uncle’s suicide and distraught by reports of the Rwandan Genocide, Pearson receives an epiphany. Suddenly it’s crystal clear—God loves all humankind; everyone is already saved, whether Christian or not; and there is no hell. But these ideas are heretical, violating sacrosanct doctrines.
The next Sunday, when Pearson unveils this theology of inclusion to his flock, shock waves sweep the enormous hall. Church leaders and members begin to defect in droves, and his empire topples. Based on the true story of a controversial and courageous man of God, Come Sunday elegantly and respectfully captures the authentic texture and tone of Pearson’s devout world, never resorting to hyperbole. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s tour-de-force performance embodies the effusive charisma and grounded humility of a character with everything to lose, yet even more to gain by heeding his convictions.
and I have one gap in my schedule to fill with
quote:Yardie
On a hot night in Kingston, Jamaica, 1973, Jerry Dread stops the music at an outdoor party to encourage a truce between warring gangs. His little brother Denis looks on from the crowd as an assassin's bullet rings out, taking Jerry’s life. A decade later, Denis is the right-hand man to gang boss Fox, who sends him on a loyalty-testing mission to London. But when the mission goes wrong, Denis hides out with an old flame and decides to find his brother’s killer.
Based on the cult novel by Victor Headley, Idris Elba’s standout directorial debut fuses the hard-boiled gangster genre with a dramatic coming-of-age period piece, bringing to life characters who struggle to find forgiveness while making their own paths between two worlds. Elba expertly re-creates the atmosphere of the times with an astute eye for detail and an evocative soundtrack that captures the tumultuous spirit of Kingston and London in the ’80s—where identity, culture, and even the cities themselves were in flux.
I'm gonna be honest, this is the weakest lineup I've ever seen at this festival. Almost nothing really pops out to me and many of these movies are ones I wouldn't even consider in better years. The main exception to this is Mandy which looks god damned insane. Outside of that there's maybe five more I'm really looking forward to. Still, the last time I thought the lineup looked terrible, it turned out to be the best year I've ever had at the fest, so who knows how this will turn out.
Any question, let me know and feel free to contribute whatever. It started today but I'm not showing up until Saturday.
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Jan 19, 2018 04:48
