SUNDANCE January 2015

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/SD.png (http://www.sundance.org/)

Sundance 2015 (http://www.sundance.org/) is on, 22 January - 1 February. The festival's list of main offerings for 2015 is here (http://www.sundance.org/blogs/news/us-world-and-next-films-announced-for-2015-festival). There is a list of offerings to follow on Buzzfeed (http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/2015-sundance-film-festival-preview#.mbBlgrN9e). Here is their comment on the opening night film. NOTE: I am not at Sundance, only culling from on-the-spot reviews.

The Bronze (U.S. Dramatic Competition)
Starring: Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Haley Lu Richardson, and Cecily Strong
Directed by: Bryan Buckley
Last year’s Sundance opening film was current Best Picture nominee Whiplash, a bracing and dead serious look at the perils of striving for excellence. This year’s opening film also looks at what can happen when you strive to be the best, but this time, it’s a raunchy comedy about a former Olympic gymnast (The Big Bang Theory’s Melissa Rauch) whose fragile hometown fame is threatened by an up-and-coming gymnast who idolizes her. In other words, it’s about as far from Whiplash as you can get. Rauch co-wrote the film with her husband, Winston Rauch, and Sundance godfathers Jay and Mark Duplass executive produced.

A new film by Andrew Bujalski may be worth following up on:

Results (U.S. Dramatic Competition)
Starring: Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, Kevin Corrigan, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Michael Hall, and Brooklyn Decker
Directed by: Andrew Bujalski
The second film in Cobie Smulders’ Sundance double feature is this dramedy about a gym owner (Guy Pearce), his employee (Smulders), and the wealthy divorcé (Kevin Corrigan) who becomes their new client. “There are some things about yourself that you can’t ‘improve’ your way out of,” says director Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess) on the Sundance video about his film. Truer words have rarely been spoken. —A.B.V.

As an admirer of David Foster Wallace a film about him interests me, even if it seems a bit dubious:
The End of the Tour (Premieres)
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Segel, Anna Chlumsky, Joan Cusack, Mamie Gummer, and Mickey Sumner
Directed by: James Ponsoldt
After publishing Infinite Jest, author David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) spent five days with Rolling Stone’s David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) for a series of interviews that Lipsky published in a memoir only after Wallace’s suicide in 2008, which serves as the basis for this film. Wallace remains a towering literary figure of lasting interest, but this film was publicly disavowed last year by Wallace’s estate, family, and publisher, claiming they had no knowledge of the film before it had been announced, and that Wallace wouldn’t have consented to the use of the interviews for a film. Eisenberg, meanwhile, later told TheWrap that the film’s script “is almost verbatim” from Lipsky’s recorded interviews with Wallace. Suffice it to say, this will be a must-see for fans of Wallace, American literature, and potential Sundance controversy.

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[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/SD.png (http://www.sundance.org/)

Sundance 2015: opening night films.

Last year's Sundance dazzled first off with WHIPLASH and BOYHOOD. No such luck this year, so far, it appears.

BRONZE(clearly no WHIPLASH), the opening night film, AV Club reports was a "vulgar opening-night comedy [that flopped] with critics." It's about a former Olympic gymnast who's gone way downhill but is brought back by training a young hopeful and reviewers heaped "vitriol" on it.

THE WITCH, a horror film set in 17th-century New England. A.A. Dowd (AV Club again) liked this better, though found it had flaws.

WHITE GOD - not new: it beat FORCE MAJEURE for the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes. It's Hungarian, about dogs run amok. Mike D'Angelo's Letterboxed review begins "This movie's stupid."

THE TRIBE,Another novelty was Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s film about a kid drafted into a boarding school gang, which stars only deaf people. Another (inexplicable?) Cannes hit, it swept Director's Fortnight. Both these films may be technically accomplished, but pointless.

Meanwhile, Mike D'Angelo's Twitter feed from Sundance so far indicates he was brutalized by a new tiered system of passes that locked him out after long waits. He tweeted:
If you are running a festival at which journalists feel they must arrive two hours early or risk not getting in, you are running it poorly. also
Never coming here again. But he modified this stand later, reminding himself movie reviewing was a nice job.

[Chris Knipp]

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Sundance first day.

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The Witch

First Mike D'Angelo twitter reviews. In descending order of numerical ratings.

The Witch: A New England Folktale (Eggers): 75. AAAAIIIIIEEEEEE!!!

Christmas, Again (Poekel): 70. Lovely, delicate portrait of loneliness and fleeting connections. Ideal mix of happy/sad for a Xmas film.

The Overnight (Brice): 68. Goes exactly where you assume and then kinda goes in circles. But often very funny, sometimes surprisingly bold.

Z for Zachariah (Zobel): 44. Kind of stunned that folks are loving this. I was with it until it tossed the book aside & became a dopey ❤️

Stockholm, Pennsylvania (Beckwith): W/O. Partly due to fear that I'd get shut out of THE WITCH again, but also I didn't buy a second of it.

He reported getting shut out of THE BRONZE after waiting 45 minutes, and getting shut out of THE WITCH the first time.

Justin Chang Variety (http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/sundance-film-review-the-witch-1201411310/) review of THE WITCH lead paragraph:
A fiercely committed ensemble and an exquisite sense of historical detail conspire to cast a highly atmospheric spell in “The Witch,” a strikingly achieved tale of a mid-17th-century New England family’s steady descent into religious hysteria and madness. Laying an imaginative foundation for the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials that would follow decades later, writer-director Robert Eggers’ impressive debut feature walks a tricky line between disquieting ambiguity and full-bore supernatural horror, but leaves no doubt about the dangerously oppressive hold that Christianity exerted on some dark corners of the Puritan psyche. With its formal, stylized diction and austere approach to genre, this accomplished feat of low-budget period filmmaking will have to work considerable marketing magic to translate appreciative reviews into specialty box-office success, but clearly marks Eggers as a storyteller of unusual rigor and ambition.

Jenni Miller The Playlist (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/sundance-review-low-key-and-wistful-christmas-again-20150125) CHRISTMAS, AGAIN review first paraagraph:
Charles Poekel's feature-length directorial debut, "Christmas, Again," is practically whispercore, full of blinky Christmas lights and the sort of weird quiet that descends on the streets of New York City in the middle of a December night. Noel (Kentucker Audley) travels down to the city every year from upstate New York to sell Christmas trees to locals, and as we gather from the people who greet him with some familiarity, he used to come with a girlfriend who's no longer around. For the most part, Noel keeps this sadness to himself; he works the night shift and sleeps during the day in a trailer parked next to the trees, and bickers with the folks who work the day shift. He occasionally goes for a swim and a shower at the local Y. And, maybe most importantly, he carefully pries one pill out of an Advent calendar every night.

Z for Zachariah: Zabel made the irritating semi-documentary COMPLIANCE (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2171) about an evil psychological experiment, which I hated. This one has big names Chris Pine, Chiwetel Ejiofor but sounds relatively blah. See Foundas in [i]Variety[/i (http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/sundance-film-review-z-for-zachariah-1201413906/)].

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/SD.png (http://www.sundance.org/)

And more D'Angelo Twitter reviews from Sundance.

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Dope

He's adding a second tweet to some.. He has detailed comments in daily "postcards" on THE DISSOLVE (https://thedissolve.com/features/postcards-from-sundance/892-day-2-witching-and-bitching/).

Dope (Famuyiwa): 65. Fun hip-hop update of RISKY BUSINESS for the era of Bitcoin and viral memes. "How'm I spose to eat my pound cake?"
DOPE is really quite crafty: current enough to risk seeming dated down the road, except that its characters are obsessed with the '90s.

Tangerine (Baker): 62. First few minutes had me sure the hyperactivity would wear me down, but instead it gradually won me over.

Mississippi Grind (Boden/Fleck): 60. Entertaining right to the end, but it feigns grittiness only to settle for Hollywood bullshit.
(For those who've seen it: I assume the steak/cheeseburger scène & Navarro CD are meant to imply a bleaker future, but I needed more.)

Mistress America (Baumbach): 57. Felt labored to me for a long time, but takes off once it commits wholeheartedly to a screwball vibe.
Such a Baumbachian line from Baumbach in response to a "question" afterward: "I take it as a compliment. I don't receive it as one."

The D Train (Paul/Mogel): 56. Not sure Jack Black was the best choice for this surprisingly provocative comedy, which has some tonal issues.
Still, I feel like even 5 years ago this movie couldn't possibly have been made with two major stars. That's progress of some kind, surely.

The Summer of Sangaile (Kavaïté): 51. Marvelously sensual during the lengthy seduction phase; turns risible re protags' cutting & vertigo. [World Cinema Dramatic Competition, which D'Angelo always says isn't exciting, and he's not wrong.]

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Gomez-Rejon): W/O. "Destined...to endure as a touchstone for its generation."—Variety. Get off my lawn.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl: travelin' and livin' off the land. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; how I love bein' a free man.
[D'Angelo should have watched this if he wanted to see popular films from Sundance '15, evidently: see below. But I had a hard time sitting through THE FAULT IN OUR STARS myself.

In a later tweet D'Angelo points out he walked out of LITLTE MISS SUNSHINE 7 years ago (he meant 9); that "populist hits" don't "tend to appeal" to him.]

Dennis Harvey Variety (http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/sundance-film-review-rick-famuyiwas-dope-1201414331/)review of DOPE lead paragraph:


Sure to be one of the buzzier commercial prospects coming out of Sundance this year, “Dope” is a buoyant teenage caper that has at least as much in common with John Hughes-style high-school comedies as it does with most ‘hood narratives involving drugs, gangs and crime. That mix risks silliness at times, but there’s so much playful energy and wit to Rick Famuyiwa’s indie-est project since “The Wood” (1999) that few viewers will mind. A soundtrack featuring new songs by Pharrell Williams will be a big plus in promoting a film that might conceivably fall between arthouse and mainstream camps theatrically, but should play well to any wider audiences it reaches.

First paragraph of Peter Debruge Variety (http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/sundance-film-review-me-and-earl-and-the-dying-girl-1201414455/)review of ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL:
Enthusiastically received at Sundance, this cancer-themed dramedy has the potential to outperform last year's The Fault in Our Stars.Anyone who buys a ticket to a film called Me and Earl and the Dying Girl goes in fully expecting to cry. It’s sort of a given. The surprise, then, is the laughter: the near-constant stream of wise, insightful jokes that make it so easy to cozy up to characters dealing with a tough emotional situation. The story of a high school senior forced to befriend a classmate who has just diagnosed with leukemia, and the sincere, nonsexual connection that forms as a result (sorry, The Fault in Our Stars, but there’s no nookie here), this rousing adaptation of Jesse Andrews’ novel is destined not only to connect with young audiences in a big way, but to endure as a touchstone for its generation.

ME AND EARLY & THE DYING GIRL sold to Fox Searchlight for $6 million.

First paragraph of Justin Chang Variety (http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/film-review-mississippi-grind-1201414368/) review of MISSISSIPI GRIND:
The moody, measured intelligence and exceptional skill with actors long evinced by filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (“Half Nelson,” “Sugar”) once again serves them well in “Mississippi Grind,” a bittersweet, beautifully textured road movie that plays like a conscious throwback to the lost souls and open highways of 1970s American cinema. Starring a never-better Ben Mendelsohn as a desperate poker player who embarks on a high-stake gambling trip through the South with his personal good-luck charm (Ryan Reynolds) in tow, this low-key but emotionally rich journey may not deliver the narrative oomph that some audiences may crave from their tales of addiction and redemption, spelling modest commercial impact. Still, discerning arthouse-goers will warm to the film’s superb performances, haunting sense of place and willingness to meander, as well as its sly rumination on the mysterious interplay of fate and friendship in shaping an individual’s destiny.
Chang's lengthy (11380-word) review shows no signs of his considering the "open-ended" finale a capitulation to "Hollywood bullshit."

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/SD.png (http://www.sundance.org/)

And still more D'Angelo Twitter reviews from Sundance.

His column in The Dissolve (https://thedissolve.com/features/postcards-from-sundance/899-day-6-the-limits-of-likability/) for Day Six.

Noel Murray in The Dissolve column on Day Five. (https://thedissolve.com/features/postcards-from-sundance/897-day-5-hitting-home/)

Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story (Almereyda): 59. Formally dazzling enough to disguise its essentially expository nature…for a while.

Advantageous (Phang): 57. Hugely ambitious feminist gloss on SECONDS serves as a superb showcase for Jacqueline Kim (who co-wrote it).

Cop Car (Watts): 55. Way darker than I expected. Sort of an early John Dahl vibe. Refreshing lack of interest in backstory. No ending.

Results (Bujalski): 42. Feels like a big step backward after COMPUTER CHESS, w/a tight focus on 3 characters who never came alive for me.

Unexpected (K. Swanberg): W/O. This time mostly 'cause I got 3 hrs sleep and needed to go back to bed. But what I saw was beyond innocuous.


The Strongest Man (Riches): W/O. And here I'd just been thinking "at least the wacky quirkfests that used to choke this fest are extinct."

Bujalski's RESULTS.

D'Angelo went overboard over Bujalski's wonderfully weird COMPUTER CHESS and felt betrayed by RESULTS because it's ostensibly more mainstream. But others admired and enjoyed it and Magnolia bought it. A.A. Dowd of AV Club (http://www.avclub.com/article/sundance-2015-day-6-shut-out-jupiter-ascending-cha-214471), for instance. Here is the Hollywood Reporter (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/results-sundance-review-767567)review from 27 Jan. by John DeFore:

A love story about two people who understand their bodies much more than their hearts and one who understands neither, Andrew Bujalski's Results takes its title from the promises made by gyms selling memberships to the flabby and insecure. The results in this case can't be measured in pounds lost or muscle gained, but in the distance put between oneself and the illusion of having control over one's life. A perfectly chosen cast sells this unhurried comedy, which flows unconventionally but is still, by a long stretch, the most mainstream-friendly picture Bujalski has made.

Guy Pearce is Trevor, a gym owner who's a true believer in the holistic, perfect-yourself ethos he sells; Kat (Cobie Smulders), the tightly wound employee he sometimes sleeps with, is the kind of overinvested trainer who can make a client's doing 16 stretches instead of 20 feel like a personal betrayal. When gone-to-seed Danny (Kevin Corrigan) comes in "hoping to get in shape a little bit," Trevor puts his hardcore trainer on the case. (She puts herself on the case, actually, an early example of Kat's refusal to cede control to others.)

[Chris Knipp]

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Brooklyn

Brooklyn (John Crowley) is a big one.

The popular hit from Sundance may be the Irish immigrant drama BROOKLYN, starring Saorse Ronan with Domhnall Gleeson -- Nick Hornby's adaptation of a novel by Colm Tóibín. It's predicted be a future awards contender and sold for the biggest price, $9 million. (Sales this year have been very brisk with an expectation that the fest includes a lot of movies destined to be popular. Whereas $3.5 was the top paid last year, a bunch have fone for $3 and one for $4 million.) Here is The Playlist review's (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/sundance-review-john-crowleys-gorgeous-bittersweet-brooklyn-with-saoirse-ronan-domhnall-gleeson-emory-cohen-20150128) opening paragraph on John Crowley's BROOKLYN:
Home is where the heart is, and love, longing, and grieving for the departed fragments of our lives we can never return to are lovingly realized in John Crowley’s exquisitely crafted and beautiful “Brooklyn.” Based on the novel by Irish author Colm Tóibín, and delicately adapted by Nick Hornby, “Brooklyn” tells the story of Eilis Lacey, an Irish immigrant who travels to America in the early 1950s for a more prosperous life. Living quietly in a small rural Irish town, opportunities are scarce, and Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) feels she has little choice when a unexpected chance to move abroad at the behest of a vicar presents itself. But the unplanned adventure to America is a sudden one, and leaving behind her beloved sister (Fiona Glascott), fragile mother (Jane Brennan), and the warm familiarity she came of age in is devastating for the trepidatious young girl.

More D'Angelo tweets:

The Forbidden Room ([Guy] Maddin): 77. SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT nesting structure both a limitation and (more frequently) a great strength. Hilarious.

James White (Mond): 66. Scrupulously observed, feels truthful in every way. But somehow doesn't burrow very deep. "This is what it's like."

The Nightmare (Ascher): 61. I have sleep paralysis, but it's way less dramatic than what these folks describe. Fascinating, repetitive.
[This is a documentary about sleep paralysis, with Erroll Morris-style recreations of dreams.]

Call Me Lucky (Goldthwait): 54. Crimmins is a remarkable guy; wish doc were < hagiographic, tho, & didn't treat his abuse as a big reveal.

D'Angelo departs:

Mike D'Angelo @gemko · 6h 6 hours ago
That's it for me. Few other scattered W/Os (TAKE ME TO THE RIVER, THE HALLOW, CHLORINE), but they're not worth belaboring. Maddin my fave.

He also clearly also loved THE WITCH, CHRISTMAS AGAIN, and THE OVERNIGHT from early in the festival.

There are other comedies and dramas I haven't listed here, and a spate of docs on psychological experimentation and scientology. A summing-up of sorts may be in the Variety article, "Sundance: Sales Are Booming, But Will Filmgoers Respond?" (http://variety.com/2015/film/news/sundance-sales-are-booming-but-will-filmgoers-respond-1201417300/) A quote: "This year was so different. People seemed to jump early and on movies they like right away." They give some figures:
. . .all this buying fever doesn’t necessarily guarantee profits. No Sundance acquisition from 2014 made more than $8 million theatrically, and the highest-grossing festival title, “Boyhood,” which drew $24.9 million in receipts, was released by financial backer IFC. The reason the prices have climbed isn’t that moviegoers are embracing arthouse pictures with greater fervor; the bull market is due to the presence of the added players, hunting for product in an effort to prove themselves in the ever-changing landscape of the movie business.

The NYTimes Carpetbagger blog coverage has an entry (http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/sundance-2015-a-buying-spree-propelled-by-video-on-demand/)saying the spike in sales is caused by the new potential of a Video on Demand (VOD) market.

AV Club and The Dissolve, and the big journals.

AV Club provided one-person coverage of Sundance by A.A Dowd (http://www.avclub.com/article/sundance-2015-day-one-vulgar-opening-night-comedy--214294)in seven daily bulletins. Click on that link for the first day. Each will lead to the next.

The Dissolve alternates back and fourth among four different writers on different days with different opinions Their coverage begins here (https://thedissolve.com/features/postcards-from-sundance/891-day-1-yesterday-and-tomorrow/).

Hollywood Reporter or Variety are the places to go for more positive and market-oriented reviews by real pros who often provide more complete descriptions of the movies they're reviewing.

The Guardian also provides a bunch of Sundance reviews. Find them here. (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/29/sundance-2015-dope-review-subversive-crisp-teen-comedy) They provide 1-5 star ratings. There were no 5-star reviews and they were very stingy with 4-star ones, which went only to two documentaries. Writing for The Guardian is usually good, but they seem to have relied on US stringers this year.

Grantland. New to me, has Pulitzer Prize for criticism (on the Boston Globe) writer Wesley Morris writing a festival journal (http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/sundance-diary-exploitation-blues/) in which he protests how all-white the Sundance slate is, or has blacks only as losers, or dead.

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Wesley Morris

[Chris Knipp]

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18 best films of Sundance 2015 (http://www.vulture.com/2015/02/18-best-films-from-sundance-2015.html?mid=twitter_vulture) from Vulture. Annotated and illustrated.

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@Vulture