This was our second year at Sundance and I think this time we finally got this mess figured out. Granted, decent internet access is still hard to find but at least we didn’t end up riding endlessly around the city on the wrong busses or eating at Burger King as the only food source available. We upgraded to Pizza Hut instead! High class. Knowing our way around also meant we had more time for movies, interviews, and well, not much else. Look we’re workaholics ok?
The party raged down on Main Street but for the most part the Cinema Blend team stayed away, preferring to, you know, see movies. This is a film festival after all. Besides, Main Street is apparently not a safe place. Walking past the rich, spoiled-frat boy packed bars after dark was a dicey proposition this year and evidently a good way to get something thrown at your head, as discovered by our own Steve West who, made the grievous mistake of carrying a duffle bag. Paparazzi… screamed the spoiled frat boys, hurling insults at him. Personally my image of the paparazzi includes a camera but apparently for the rich elite, the classification has been extended to anyone not rich enough to hire someone else to carry their luggage.
Yet the great thing about Sundance is that the booze and the flicks are kept fairly separate, so if being peed on by Paris Hilton isn’t your cup of tea then you don’t need to bother with it. Stay in the theaters and you’ll see movies, some of which you’ll never be able to see anywhere else.
And we saw a lot of great films this year, far better than last year. 500 Days of Summer blew my mind and I feel confident it’ll end up on my top 10 of 2009, when it comes time to put together that list at the end of this year. I’m also jazzed up about Mystery Team, a hilarious, hardcore, rated-R spoof on the kid detective genre. I laughed my ass off. Meanwhile I’m still kicking myself over missing Black Dynamite, which our own Kelly West was still chuckling about the next day as we drove to the airport. Kelly was also pretty high on a movie called Dare, with Alan Cumming and Emmy Rossum involved in a story of teenagers in peril. Steve on the other hand came back raving about a movie called Humpday. The film’s plot description makes it sound like a gay Zack and Miri Make a Porno knockoff, but Steve insists it’s anything but.
So that’s what blew our mind at Sundance, keep an eye out for some of those films later in the year as they’re picked up by distributors and headed towards your neck of the woods. Click here for all of our Sundance 09 coverage or look below for a quick breakdown of all the movies we covered this year at the festival, with a synopsis and a link to our detailed review of each film. Browse through it and start planning to be there in this snow with us next year. We’ll buy you a drink… or maybe a safer, Richie Rich-free alternative like a Whopper.
500 Days of Summer
Tom and Summer sit on a park bench, holding hands. It’s day 488 and an engagement ring glitters on Summer’s finger. This is not a love story, booms the baritone voice of our narrator. He’s right, it isn’t, yet even so forewarned it takes a full 500 days before you’ll believe it. 500 Days of Summer isn’t a love story, but it is about love; a deep and thoughtful film about romance, commitment, and where the pursuit of it takes Tom over the course of a relationship. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s romantic, and it’s utterly heartbreaking. 500 Days of Summer is without question one of the best films to grace Sundance, and maybe one of the very best movies anybody will see all year...read more
Two heterosexual men making amateur porn is not gay; as Lynn Shelton’s Humpday puts it, it’s beyond gay. With that tag line Shelton endeavors to tell a story that is anything but exploitative or shocking art film, as the title and general synopsis would have the audience believe. What Humpday ends up being is an exploration into what makes up a relationship, and how two men can come to a place to physically show their love for one another. This is the first film to delve into that buddy comedy world in such an awkward way. In the end it’s not the porn, or even the two friends’ love for each other, that makes the movie work. Every moment of the film rings with truth and honesty, a rare and welcome thing for comedic movies...read more
“If Encyclopedia Brown, the kids from American Pie, and Nancy Drew all had sex, their baby would probably look something like Mystery Team.” That’s the description being used as the Mystery Team’s official plot synopsis, and I can’t think of anything more perfectly appropriate for one of the funniest surprises at Sundance this year and a sure thing to become the next big cult hit, should someone have the good sense to pick it up and put it in theaters. Mystery Team go! ...read more
What it is, jive turkeys! There’s a new sheriff in town and his name’s Black Dynamite. Ok, technically the lead character of the film Black Dynamite isn’t a sheriff but he sure is a master of taking down bad guys, bedding women and keeping drug dealing fools off the streets. Black Dynamite is a hilarious throwback to film and TV of the 70’s, embracing every cliché in the book as we come to appreciate why every other character in the film either fears or worships Black Dynamite...read more
Dare, for a movie about teenagers in their last semester of high school, is a deeper movie than you’d expect. The film, directed by Adam Salky, is broken up into three parts with each part focusing on one of three teens. Alexa (Emmy Rossum) is the overachieving good girl who’s used to excelling at everything she does. Ben (Ashley Springer), Alexa’s best friend, is on the verge of accepting his homosexuality. Johnny (Zach Gilford) is popular, rich, and puts on a show about being a bad boy but deep down he’s just a lonely guy...read more
The Winning Season
The Winning Season takes a familiar sports story, that of a curmudgeonly drunken coach forced to coach a team he isn’t interested in, and does something different by setting it in the world of girls high school basketball. Sam Rockwell plays Bill, a former coach turned alcoholic and reduced to bussing tables at the local TGI Friday’s equivalent. His friend, a high school principal shows up and offers him a job doing what he loves, coaching basketball. Unfortunately it’s a girls team...read more
Patton Oswalt has already proven his chops as a voice actor in Ratatouille, but few would have pegged him as a flat out great actor. He proves his chops in Big Fan, delivering a deep and nuanced performance as the world’s most deeply committed… and perhaps deeply disturbed super fan...read more
After Chris Rock’s daughter asked him why she didn’t have “good hair,” the actor/comedian embarked upon a journey to explore the history and culture of African American hair in America. The documentary, which is directed by Jeff Stilson and narrated by Chris Rock, follows Rock as he interviews various African American celebrities and travels across the globe visiting hair salons, styling battles, laboratories and Indian temples to learn about African American hair culture...read more
Charlyne Yi sets off to shoot a documentary about love and in the process finds herself kind of maybe falling for this boy. That boy is Michael Cera, playing Michael Cera. At first though, we meet Charlyne wandering the country interviewing different kinds of people to get their different kinds of views on love. When she starts dating Michael, her director insists that their relationship is also part of the story, and so she allows him to follow her and her new boyfriend around with his camera. The result is something nearly magical, with real couples talking about their experiences in love while we watch a new couple, in Michael and Charlyne, start the process of going through many of those same things at the same time. In the eyes of Charlyne’s interviewees we see her future… maybe...read more
The Greatest
As I was walking out of the theater after seeing The Greatest, I had the urge to find myself a broom closet or some other nearby private place so I could cry for at least five minutes. It’s that type of movie and not just because it’s so sad. It’s a very emotional film all around that will likely have people dabbing their eyes as they watch two parents come to terms with the loss of their son. The Greatest is both heartbreaking and heartwarming all at once...read more
Arlen (Jeff Daniels) wrote Me & God 20 years ago, and it changed the way the world saw spirituality. Today the man has never done an interview, never made an appearance, and has simply avoided the world. On the surface it’s clear Arlen doesn’t like the fame the book has granted him, but he also struggles with the act of convincing others he has answers from the Big Man himself. When Kris (Lou Taylor Pucci), a local bookstore owner, gets out of rehab he searches for answers from a reluctant Faber. Elizabeth (Lauren Graham) is a single mother who meets the author after he crawls, literally, into her office to have his back fixed...read more
After sitting through movies about suicidal cops and dead soldiers, a comedy, any comedy, is a relief. Even better if it’s a comedy like Spring Breakdown; you know, actually funny. It fits into the standard the standard geeky kids want to be cool comedy mold, except it’s not kids it’s Amy Poehler, Parker Posey, and Rachel Dratch. They’ve been friends and nerds since college. Now they’re in their thirties, still friends, still nerds, and living happy lives in houses full of pets...read more
Victoria Day exists as a snippet of life. It’s the story you tell family and friends about the event that changed you, and turned you into an adult. With that comes the simplicity of these stories. The tale of anyone’s transition to adulthood is not a glamorous Hollywood blockbuster. Most of us lost a friend, came to grips with our parents as people, had our heart broken, or faced other similarly banal situations. David Bezmozgis’ film is that story for one young man...read more
Do you remember the time during your adolescence when you started to see your parents as people rather than just… well, your parents? Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin) goes through this stage of his teen years in Lymelife. The backdrop of the film is Long Island, New York in 1979. Scott Bartlett is the younger of the two Bartlett boys. His older brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) joined the Army and only comes home to visit. Scott’s father Mickey (Alec Baldwin) is a successful real-estate developer. His mother Brenda (Jill Hennessy) is dealing with trying to ignore some of her husband’s less faithful qualities while also missing Queens and praying regularly that Scott doesn’t contract Lyme disease...read more
Is that pesky soul of yours getting in the way? Why not have it extracted? Then you can live your life free of remorse, guilt, compassion and all of the other natural human emotions that tend to weigh us down. This is the premise of Sophie Barthes film Cold Souls. It stars Paul Giamatti as an actor named Paul Giamatti. Paul is hard at work starring in a Russian play called “Uncle Vanya” when he finds himself on the verge of an emotional breakdown caused by role he’s playing. On the advice of his agent, he checks out “Soul Storage,” a private lab specializing in soul extraction and storage...read more
When sitting down to watch a film penned by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About A Boy) you expect something lighthearted and emotional, with a bit of British humor. He's a British author after all. But An Education is different than what Hornby has written before. Perhaps because it’s adapted from the memoir by Lynn Barber, or that it takes place in a post war style 60’s England. The film is a coming of age story for young Jenny, played to perfection by an enchanting Carey Mulligan, who is swept off her feet by the apparently sophisticated David (Peter Sarsgaard)...read more
Take 2001, mix in a little Cast Away, and you have Moon the latest attempt by the brilliantly talented Sam Rockwell to make something really good. Rockwell deserves to land in an Oscar caliber film some day but he’s yet again just missed the mark here as an astronaut living out a lonely existence on an isolated lunar mining colony...read more
After Superbad you might think director Greg Mottola is out to make his way as the new Judd Apatow, but what he really wants to be is John Hughes. Mottola’s latest film is Adventureland and though it involves youngsters drinking and smoking and swearing, it couldn’t possibly be further from the raunch-com realm of his previous, McLovin-powered film. Adventureland seems to want desperately to be The Breakfast Club or 16 Candles, or maybe it simply wants to live in the same space those films in, right down to its setting back in good old 1987...read more
With Endgame director Pete Travis has formulated the minute details of pre-negotiations to rid South Africa of apartheid. What begins as a slow and boring history lesson quickly turns into the emotional tale of two opposing men fighting to end the armed conflict between their people. Set in the years leading up to President F.W. de Klerk’s release of Nelson Mandela Endgame does what few political thrillers attempt: presents both sides at the table just as they are. This is not a film meant to slap the wrists of the oppressor or terrorist, it is instead the story of how two opposing men can come to respect and care for one another...read more
Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech
Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech explores free speech in America by addressing contemporary cases in which the First Amendment has played a very significant role. The documentary not only looks at how free speech has been challenged in our country, but also how willing or unwilling Americans are to give up civil liberties in exchange for national security in a post-9/11 era...read more
I Love You Phillip Morris seems to take perverse pleasure in confounding its audience. Is it a comedy? A drama? A romance? The story of a man in the midst of a perpetual personality crisis? A con-man caper flick? The tale of a professional prison escape artist? At some point it’s all of those things, but never all of those things at once...read more
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
After her boyfriend dumps her without really telling her why, Sara Quinn embarks on a project through her job as a doctoral candidate in anthropology at an East Coast university to explore the effects of the feminist movement from the male perspective. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a dark comedy that blends Quinn’s interviews with flashbacks from the life she had when she was happy and in love, and the life she’s living now, post-relationship...read more
The Carter
Let me be up front about this: I had no interest in Lil’ Wayne before watching The Carter and I have even less interest in him afterward. Fans of the up and coming rapper will no doubt gloss over the crap in his life much the same as this documentary attempts to but that doesn’t change the facts of who Lil’ Wayne is: A musician with a scant handful of good ideas which he uses over and over and over again as a means of making lots and lots of money thrown at him by the always easily won over rap fan...read more
Brooklyn’s Finest
Attempting to recover from recent missteps, director Antoine Fuqua reaches to recapture the career glory of Training Day by returning to the much traveled corrupt cops genre. This time it’s not one cop, but three, in one of those separate lives which all come together in the end concoctions we’ve all grown so tired of since Crash. Brooklyn’s Finest is not a subtle film. This is the kind of movie which introduces a character by having him wake up, drink whiskey, and put a gun in his mouth...read more
Viewers with ties to the military, or an obsession with the burial practices of the Marine Corps may find something interesting in Taking Chance, but for anyone else it’s a tedious 85 minutes of Kevin Bacon saluting. Bacon plays Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl, a Marine working a desk job as an analyst and carrying around a lot of unnecessary guilt. While his buddies fight it out in Iraq, he rides a cubicle crunching numbers for military commanders who won’t listen to him...read more
The Informers
The Informers is all about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. Well, new wave, technically but you get the picture. The film takes place in 1984 and follows a number of people most of whose lives are intertwined in some way or another. There’s the newscaster, the dissolute rock star, an ex-con, a voyeuristic doorman, and a bunch of rich blonde people doing drugs, sleeping around and over-indulging...read more
If you’re going to title your film Manure you had best ensure it isn’t true to the name. The Polish Brother’s latest film premiered at Sundance to – I’m not joking here – a few snores and the most people walking out prior to the Q&A I have seen. Usually a few press people walk out after a public screening in Park City because they have elsewhere to be, or will be interviewing the cast and crew later anyways. This was a near mass exodus. I’m saying all of this so you can fully understand that Manure is a lot like shit, whenever possible you want to avoid stepping anywhere near it...read more
