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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Sundance 2019 or How I Spent My Sundance Vacation
 
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axelblaze
Oct 18, 2006

Congratulations The One Concern!!!

You're addicted to Ivory!!

and...oh my...could you please...
oh my...
Grimey Drawer


So every year for I think the past 10 years I've gone to Sundance. It's honestly kind of a pain in the rear end festival in many ways. It is really designed to give you as many advantages as you're willing to pay and if you can't pay, it can often be frustrating. Still, it's cool as hell and I've become very good at scheduling the festival over the years so I see a ton of movies.

Anyways, in theory I'm gonna use this thread to talk about the movies I'm gonna see and talk about the festical in general. I say "in theory" because sometimes I actually do this and sometimes I put it off until it never gets done and I feel guilty for having not done it all year. Let's see what happens this year! I bought a good bluetooth keyboard for my tablet so I'm hoping that will leave me less of an excuse to not type things up. Still, I suck and we'll see.

Of course if anyone else out there is going and wants to talk about, post away and take over the thread for all I care. Also if you wanna post about the festival in general or even ask any question, please I encourage you to do so. Lastly if you hear any hype and want to push me towards seeing a particular movie, I'll see what I can do.

Anyways, here are the movies I 100% already have tickets for (with the expection of seven shorts programs, which I'll post about when I'm writing them (or not; they're the thing that always trip me up and I might just put that off so if anything doesn't get done it's just that)).

The Nightingale

quote:

Writer/director Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale premiered in the 2018 Venice International Film Festival’s Venezia 75 competition. Kent launched her debut feature, The Babadook, in the Midnight section at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

One night in 1820s Tasmania, Clare, a young Irish convict, loses everything she holds dear after her family is horrifically attacked. She’s immediately driven to track down and seek revenge against the British officer who oversaw the horror, so she enlists the service of an Aboriginal tracker named Billy. Marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past, Billy reluctantly agrees to take her through the interior of Tasmania. On this brutal quest for blood, Clare gets much more than she bargained for.

A snarling Aisling Franciosi drives this merciless revenge thriller through the unforgiving land of 19th-century Tasmania, a time when British colonists nearly decimated Aboriginal Tasmanians. With horrors around every corner, Jennifer Kent’s new nightmare will traumatize the weak of heart, but those willing will discover a majestic achievement most striking in its haunting moments of grace.

The Lodge

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Devoted to their devastated mother, siblings Aidan and Mia resent Grace, the younger woman their newly separated father plans to marry. They flatly reject Grace’s attempts to bond, and they dig up dirt on her tragic past—but soon they find themselves trapped with her, snowed in in a remote holiday village after their dad heads back to the city for work. Just as relations begin to thaw, strange and frightening events threaten to unearth psychological demons from Grace’s strictly religious childhood.

An unblinking study of human frailty, The Lodge offers a haunting exploration of the traumatic aftershocks of religious devotion while positing that some evils just don’t die. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala build an overwhelming disquiet from this visceral and stylish film’s very first scene, before nestling their claustrophobic thriller within a disorientingly endless snow-filled landscape. Riley Keough exudes fragility as well-meaning Grace’s every good intention leads her deeper back toward the hell of her own past, while Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh do impressive work as the kids’ practiced defiance turns to fear.

Them That Follow

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In the rugged wilderness of Appalachia, the members of an isolated community of Pentecostal snake handlers led by Pastor Lemuel (Walton Goggins) risk their lives to attest themselves before God. Lemuel’s daughter Mara (Alice Englert) prepares for her upcoming wedding to the young believer her father has singled out for her under the watchful eye of Hope (Olivia Colman), while scrambling to hide a secret that has the potential to drive her father’s church to ruin.

For their feature debut, writer-directors Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage have crafted a thrilling, poignant look at a misunderstood community. An all-star cast brings this distinctive story to life, catapulting audiences into a world where morality and belief are not always aligned, and where the consequences can be devastating when faith is stretched to a breaking point.

A Hole in the Ground

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Sarah moves her precocious son, Chris, to a secluded new home in a rural town, trying to ease his apprehensions as they hope for a fresh start after a difficult past. But after a startling encounter with a mysterious new neighbor, Sarah’s nerves are set on edge. Chris disappears in the night into the forest behind their house, and Sarah discovers an ominous, gaping sinkhole while searching for him. Though he returns, some disturbing behavioral changes emerge, and Sarah begins to worry that the boy who came back is not her son.

Lee Cronin’s exquisitely crafted and sublimely atmospheric feature debut pairs unsettling camera work with a deeply ominous score, casting even such innocuous images as a row of toys or a children’s recital in markedly sinister light. Seána Kerslake delivers an impressively controlled performance as a mother who has centered her strength around protecting her child but finds her devotion overcome by a terrified feeling—that there’s an impostor in her house, and he’s watching her as closely as she’s watching him.

Wounds

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Will is a bartender in New Orleans. He has a great job, great friends, and a girlfriend, Carrie, who loves him. He skates across life’s surface, ignoring complications and concentrating on enjoying the moment. One night at the bar, a violent brawl breaks out, which injures one of his regular customers and causes some college kids to leave behind a cell phone in their haste. Will begins receiving disturbing texts and calls from the stranger’s phone. While Will hopes to not get involved, Carrie gets lost down a rabbit hole investigating this strange malevolence. They’ve discovered something unspeakable, and it’s crawling slowly into the light.

Writer/director Babak Anvari returns to terrify at the Sundance Film Festival Midnight section with this adaptation of the novella The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud. From its opening scene, Wounds strikes an uneasy tone that begins to fester and continues to spread until its shocking climax. Armie Hammer revels in this unlikely turn that allows his attractive smile to fade away and reveals the true creature that may be lurking on the inside.

I Am Mother

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Shortly after humanity’s extinction, in a high-tech bunker deep beneath the earth’s surface, a robot named Mother commences her protocol. Designed to repopulate the earth with humans born from test-tube embryos, Mother raises a baby girl to become an intelligent, compassionate teenager (Clara Rugaard). But the arrival of a wounded woman (Hilary Swank) at the bunker door soon casts doubt on Mother’s account of the earth’s fate and threatens the unique bond between Mother and her “daughter.”

Grant Sputore’s first feature, I Am Mother is a dazzling, character-driven sci-fi thriller that builds a smart philosophical framework around the “man vs. machine” trope and deftly questions what it means to be human. Based on Michael Lloyd Green’s Black List script, it interrogates Mother’s motivations, and it twists unexpectedly to culminate in a gripping dilemma about who the heroine can trust: a fellow human or the robot who raised her. Voiced by Rose Byrne, Mother is a curiously loving presence in this postapocalyptic story that also explores the imminent age of autonomous and moral machines.

Koko-di Koko-da

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Knowing their relationship is falling apart, Elin and Tobias embark on a mirthless camping trip hoping to find their way back to one another. Instead, they find themselves in an endless loop of torment, humiliation, and tangled dreams at the hands of a troupe of outlandishly distorted nursery-rhyme antagonists.

Festival alumnus Johannes Nyholm (whose short Las Palmas played at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival) creates a savage riff on Groundhog Day set to the haunting rhythm of a music-box melody. He deploys the darkest of circumstances to explore how a couple crippled by despair and embittered against each other try to fight their way back to one another. Injected with bursts of sadistic imagination and twisted slapstick, Koko-di Koko-da is a psychological horror film set within the nightmarish landscape between wakefulness and sleep, giving a tangible, physical manifestation of a relationship in disrepair.

The Infiltrators

quote:

Without warning, Claudio Rojas is detained by ICE officials outside his Florida home. He is transferred to the Broward Transitional Center, a detention facility used as a holding space for imminent deportations. Terrified of never seeing him again, Claudio’s family contacts the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA), a group of activist Dreamers known for stopping deportations. Believing that no one is free as long as one is in detention, NIYA enlists Marco Saavedra to self-deport with the hopes of gaining access to the detention center and impeding Claudio’s expulsion. Once inside, Marco discovers a complex for-profit institution housing hundreds of multinational immigrants, all imprisoned without trial.

Directors Cristina Ibarra (in her Sundance debut) and Alex Rivera (Sleep Dealer, 2008 Sundance Film Festival) design a hybrid cinematic language, combining familiar documentary form and scripted narrative to map an uncharted domain: inside an Obama-era immigration detention system. Based on true events, The Infiltrators is both a suspenseful account of a high-stakes mission and an emotionally charged portrait of visionary youth fighting for their community.

The Sunlit Night

quote:

Summer is off to a terrible start for Frances (Jenny Slate). Her art project fails, her boyfriend unceremoniously kicks her out of his Hamptons home, and, to top it all off, her younger sister reveals she’s engaged just moments before her parents announce their separation. Out of a mixture of panic and frustration, Frances hastily takes an opening for an art residency in Norway and heads off to an isolated island where the sun never sets.

Buyer’s remorse kicks in when she meets the cantankerous Norwegian artist she’ll have to spend nearly all her time painting a barn with. But even as this strange man and the town’s relentlessly bright light keep her up at night, Frances finds herself falling for its surreal Viking landscape and, in particular, for a cute, mournful Russian American drifter (Alex Sharp).

Director David Wnendt (Wetlands) returns to the Sundance Film Festival with a playful, absurdist transatlantic romp that showcases not only Norway’s striking beauty, but also Slate’s ability to inhabit complex comedic roles with unmatched timing, charm, and intelligence.

Corporate Animals

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Lucy (Demi Moore) is the egotistical, megalomaniac CEO of Incredible Edibles, America’s premier provider of edible cutlery. In her infinite wisdom, Lucy leads her staff, including her long-suffering assistants, Freddie (Karan Soni) and Jess (Jessica Williams), on a corporate team-building caving weekend in New Mexico. When disaster strikes, not even their useless guide, Brandon (Ed Helms), can save them. Trapped underground by a cave-in, this mismatched and disgruntled group must pull together in order to survive.

Monos

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Belonging to a rebel group called “the Organization,” a ragtag band of child soldiers, brandishing guns and war names like Rambo, Wolf, Lady, and Bigfoot, occupies a derelict ruin atop a remote mountain where they train themselves, watch over a “conscripted” milk cow, and hold hostage a kidnapped American engineer, Doctora (Julianne Nicholson). But after an attack forces them to abandon their base, playtime is over for the motley young crew.

The visionary third feature of Alejandro Landes (Cocalero, Porfirio), Monos captivates us with its striking baroque aesthetic, otherworldly setting, and ingenious reframing of the war film—one that uses adolescence to insinuate a youthful but elusive dream of peace. With enthralling performances from Nicholson and a talented young ensemble led by Moises Arias, Landes constructs a stylized, deceptively surreal space that teeters between tedium and hedonism, made more unsettling by its disquieting soundscape and Mica Levi’s brilliant score. As they descend into a jungle, captors and captive alike find themselves in an increasingly anarchic, unhinged “nowhere world” that echoes Lord of the Flies and Apocalypse Now.

TAKING THE HORSE TO EAT JALEBIS

quote:

The nimble fingers of a pickpocket, the sweet smells of a street vendor’s food, a tour guide’s speech—their stories weave together to reveal a side of New Delhi life that exists on its wits. When Patru, the pickpocket, decides to take tourists on alternative walks and show them the city’s underbelly, we enter the subterranean consciousness of the city’s migrant population. Dreamscapes come to life and are richly explored through playful, layered visuals that blend magic, realism, and documentary to deliver a rare vision of street life.

As if by compulsion, director Anamika Haksar’s camera draws down to the streets of the old city before it floats over moonlit roof tops, focusing on the forgotten fringes where life thrives amid concrete and smog. Haksar’s unique storytelling vision is devoted to seeing the ancient city through the eyes of the working classes. Recordings from real-life street characters form the backbone of this tribute to a beautiful city, its culture, and the ghosts of its history. Within it, we start to understand what a city loses when its heart succumbs to progress.

Judy & Punch

quote:

In the rough-and-tumble town of Seaside (nowhere near the sea), villagers flock to Punch and Judy’s marionette theatre. Though Punch (Damon Herriman) proclaims himself the greatest puppeteer and his beating stick rouses cheers from the crowd, it’s Judy (Mia Wasikowska) who breathes artistry into the otherwise crude show. But during a drinking bout and a tragic mishap with their child, the hot-tempered Punch brutally beats Judy, leaving her for dead in the woods. Taken in by Doctor Goodtime and a society of outcasts, Judy plots her revenge.

Mirrah Foulkes’s imaginative first feature conjures a town given over to fear, superstition, callousness, and mob rule, where a scourge of witchcraft is met with “stoning days.” An allegorical period tale for a modern time, Judy & Punc wryly blends dark humor, revenge-drama tropes, and tongue-in-cheek repurposing of stock elements from traditional Punch and Judy shows (a beating stick, a baby, a crocodile ... ) to fashion a sophisticated, satirical romp. You can beat the devil with your stick, but tomorrow the devil will be you.

Sweetheart

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Washing ashore onto a desolate island, Jen (Kiersey Clemons) has already survived a harrowing ordeal. Stranded and alone, she searches for shelter. Finding only the scattered remains of a long-abandoned campground and weary from her terrible journey, she collapses in hope of a peaceful rest. But night is when it’s most dangerous here. That’s when the creature comes. And when it slithers out of the water, it must feed.

Returning to the Sundance Film Festival after the genre-bending Sleight wowed audiences in 2016, director JD Dillard brings a refreshingly scrappy yet sophisticated sense of urgency and ingenuity to the classic creature feature. Kiersey Clemons owns every frame of the story, shining each step of the way as she’s forced to outrun, outwit, and outfight an otherworldly thing that hunts her each night. Methodically stripping this Blumhouse Productions chiller down to the raw essentials, Dillard shrewdly keeps the tension on a calculated simmer until the moment it boils.

Little Monster

quote:

After a rough breakup, directionless Dave (Alexander England) crashes at his sister’s place and spends his days expanding his young nephew’s questionable vocabulary. When an opportunity arises to chaperone an upcoming school excursion alongside the charming and enigmatic teacher, Miss Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o), Dave jumps at the chance to impress her. What he wasn’t anticipating was Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad), an obnoxious children’s television personality who shapes the excursion’s activities. What he was expecting even less was a zombie invasion, which unfolds after an experiment at a nearby military base goes awry. Armed only with the resourcefulness of kindergartners, Dave, Miss Caroline, and Teddy must work together to keep the monsters at bay and carve a way out with their guts intact.

Doused with a generous helping of absurdity, and pitch-perfect in its timing, this genre comedy forges a path all its own, blending gore and wit like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Writer-director Abe Forsythe has crafted a wild, frenetic ride with Little Monsters, bolstered by a knowing self-awareness and an uproarious cast.

The Wolf Hour

quote:

It’s July 1977, and New York City is awash with escalating violence. A citywide blackout is triggering fires, looting, and countless arrests, and the Son of Sam murders are riddling the city with panic. June, once a celebrated counterculture figure, attempts to retreat from the chaos by shutting herself inside the yellowed walls of her grandmother’s South Bronx apartment. But her doorbell is ringing incessantly, the heat is unbearable, and creeping paranoia and fear are taking hold. Visitors, some invited, some unsolicited, arrive one by one, and June must determine whom she can trust and whether she can find a path back to her former self.

With Hitchcockian tautness, writer-director Alistair Banks Griffin flawlessly captures the style and texture of the 1970s and the interior unraveling of a woman who, like her city, is teetering on a knife-edge. Naomi Watts’s astonishing performance is that of an antihero racked with paralyzing anxiety. In this eerily resonant allegory for our times, she is, like all of us, weighing her actions in a world on the brink of collapse.

Birds of Paradise

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Sharing directing duties for the first time, longtime collaborators Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Embrace of the Serpent) returned to the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight this year with their epic mafia saga, Birds of Passage.

In the late 1960s, on the arid lands of the indigenous Wayúu people, a ceremony introduces potential suitors to Zaida, the daughter of Wayúu matriarch Ursula. By winning Zaida’s hand, the ambitious young Raphayet becomes a part of Ursula’s powerful family. When he and his business partner, reckless outsider Moises, stumble upon Peace Corps volunteers looking for marijuana, they start a lucrative drug-trafficking trade that absorbs and threatens to destroy the family.

Just as Embrace of the Serpent defied categorization, Birds of Passage is as audacious, original, and artful a mafia film as you’ll see, one that laments the corrosive power of capitalism and the loss of a more spiritual connection to nature. With its astonishing visual style, striking colors, and vivid sense of place, it’s as if The Godfather were transplanted to a matriarchal tribe in Colombia—with Ursula as the indelible mob boss.

Relive

quote:

Los Angeles detective Jack Radcliff fields a distressed phone call from his niece Ashley and rushes to the rescue—only to find the girl and her parents dead in an apparent murder-suicide. Then, just as the police department declares the killings an open-and-shut case, Jack gets another call from Ashley. With the cell-phone connection acting as a link between the past and the present, Jack urges Ashley to collect clues that will help him to solve her murder and change her fate.

Part supernatural thriller, part time-warped police procedural, Relive is the newest release from Blumhouse Productions, the innovative horror hit makers behind Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017 Sundance Film Festival). Writer-director and Sundance Film Festival alumnus Jacob Estes (Mean Creek, The Details) infuses this heady hybrid with the chills of an old-fashioned ghost story and the paranoia of a conspiracy thriller. David Oyelowo gives a nervy performance as the haunted hero, and Storm Reid, star of last year’s A Wrinkle in Time, is remarkable as the spectral teen detective.

Gonna be honest: the lineup is the weakest I've seen in years, but weaker lineup means I usually just do all the more Midnight movies and as you can see there are a tone there. Also, if you're wondering, as cool as it looks, I probably won't get tickets to Velvet Buzzsaw because it'll literally be on Netflix by the time I get back, so I just don't see the point in putting effort into seeing it. I also do want to see the Zac Efron Ted Bundy movie, but that's completely sold out and I really only have one chance at getting to see it, but I'll try.

Anyways, hopefully I'll have a ton to post tomorrow or at least the day after.

* # ? Jan 25, 2019 06:07
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Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer
Goonspeed, axelblaze!

* # ? Jan 28, 2019 17:21
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CopywrightMMXI
Jun 1, 2011

One time a guy stole some downhill skis out of my jeep and I was so mad I punched a mailbox. I'm against crime, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
Hey Axel thanks for throwing up these threads every year. You always make good recommendations and give me lesser known movies to be hyped for.

* # ? Feb 3, 2019 05:19
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axelblaze
Oct 18, 2006

Congratulations The One Concern!!!

You're addicted to Ivory!!

and...oh my...could you please...
oh my...
Grimey Drawer
Oh god, I'm going to do this, really I am!

Let me start by just tl;dring this so I at least have something down. So for everything I'll list the movie, give a letter grade and like a sentence or two.

I Am Mother B+
Silly but still smart scifi with a believable enough world and a plot that takes it time to show it's hand.

The Nightingale B-
Well made and interesting but kind of tonally all over the place and at least a half hour too long.

Shorts Program 4
Best Short: Squirrel
I feel bad saying my favorite short of this program and probably the entire fest was this silly, but man was it good.

Koko-di Koko-Da A
I don't even know where to begin with this. This movie is loving crazy.

The Infiltrators B-
Kind of badly made and acted but the intentions are so good and the story is so hard to gently caress up that it's still enjoyable.

The Lodge B+
My friend hated it but I thought it was creepy and unsettling in just the way I like.

The Sunlit Night
Probably the most typical indie move I saw of the fest but it was pleasant enough and I love Jenny Slate. The romantic lead kind of bored me but once again, Jenny Slate.

Shorts Program 5
best short: sometimes, i think about dying
Simple but emotional and heartwarming. Contains the rare manic pixie guy.

Monos C
Unique but ultimately felt sort of shallow and unfocused.

TAKING THE HORSE TO EAT JALEBIS B+
Kind of slapdash in it's way but so weird and fully of just pure joy of people and cinema that it's hard to really hold it against it to much.

New Frontier Shorts Program
Best Short: As Told to G/D Thyself
As usual this program was challenging and not always engaging but this short was just gorgeous on all levels and I'm totally going to check out the musician the short is built around.

Them That Follow D+
Despite great performances, this was just an extremely dull love triangle between boring characters. Also not nearly enough snakes. Like, not even close to enough. Get it together Them That Follow!

Judy and Punch C+
Tonally extremely weird but I also think that's the point because I think it's suposed to reflect the source material. Definitely enjoyable but I feel I'd be pushing it by calling it "good"

Documentary Shorts
Best Short: Ghosts of Sugar Land
Honestly these were all great, but this one slightly edges the other two out just by having a goofy conceit that it takes totally seriously and it completely pays off.

The Hole in the Ground B
Did what it needed to do: it had a spooky kid and had some spooky moments and it all added up to something kind of weird and spooky. What else could I ask for?

Sweetheart A
While the acting and writing can be a little shakey, this is a lady kicking rear end while trapped on an island with a Lizardman movie and you should be upset you can't watch this right now!

Little Monsters A-
Extremely goofy horror comedy but it is consistently funny and the performances are great, even from Josh Gad and especially from Lupita Nyong'o who is just...well just :swoon:

The Wolf Hour C+
I thought this was gonna be a tense psychological movie and my friend thought it was going to be a "this time sure was crazy" movie and, for better or worse, we were both right. It was ok.

Animation Spotlight
Best short: Knockstrike
This was a pretty good year but I'm giving it to the crazy energetic one made by two guys in an absurd;y small amount of time.

Birds of Passage A
Probably the best of the year. Gorgeous tribal Mafia film where none of the dynamics really work like you'd expect.


Midnight Shorts Program
Best Short: Acid
Weak program overall but it had it's moment, including this pretty straightforward and horrific disaster short.

Corporate Animals C
Good performances and amusing enough but just feels limited and like it's either missing something or far far too long.

Relive B+
I'm a sucker for some time/space fuckery and this delivered though not much above the minimum required.

Wounds A
Really unpleasant horror in the best possible way. The director has noticeably gotten better since Under the Shadows.

I will try to write more in the coming days but I at least have a start.

* # ? Feb 12, 2019 19:42
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Sundance 2019 or How I Spent My Sundance Vacation