Sundance

Sundance 2016 and why we follow it

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Kyle Chandler and Casey Affleck in MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
Kyle Chandler and Casey Affleck in MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

The Sundance Film Festival happened this past week and it happened without The Movie Gourmet traveling to Park City, Utah.  Nevertheless, I followed Sundance on a daily basis and here’s why – the buzz from Sundance adds a bunch of movies to my “Must Find and See” list for the coming year.

Last year’s Sundance Film Festival produced six films for my Best Movies of 2015:  #2 Wild Tales, #5 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, #4 Brooklyn, and honorable mentions I’ll See You in My Dreams, The End of the Tour and ’71.  In addition, Sundance featured several of the year’s most notable films:  The Tribe, It Follows, Tangerine, Diary of a Teenage Girl, I Smile Back and 99 Homes.

The films on the top of my 2016 Sundance Must See list are Manchester By the Sea and The Birth of a Nation.  Manchester By the Sea is from Kenneth Lonergan, who also wrote and directed the brilliant You Can Count on Me and Margaret.  Manchester By the Sea features a reputedly searing performance by Casey Affleck; Kyle Chandler also stars.

The Birth of a Nation, which won the top prize at the fest, is the story of the slave rebellion chronicled in The Confessions of Nat Turner, written and directed by and starring the actor Nate Parker.   Believe it or not, both movies are ALREADY generating 2016 Oscar buzz.

This year, Amazon and Netflix, to the consternation of the movie studios, aggressively shopped for Sundance indies.  Amazon bought Manchester By the Sea and, although The Birth of a Nation was bought by Fox Searchlight, Netflix drove up the price.

Sundance is also usually especially rich with documentaries.  Last year’s haul included Listen to Me Marlon, What Happened Miss Simone?, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, Welcome to Leith, The Hunting Ground, Prophet’s Prey, Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Finders Keepers, Hot Girls Wanted and Cartel Land.  In other words, Amy, The Look of Silence and Hitchcock/Truffaut were the only major 2015 documentaries that did NOT play Sundance.

This year’s top doc at Sundance was Weiner, an inside look at the Anthony Weiner mayoral campaign that collapsed on his bafflingly gross tweets and sexts.  Mrs. Weiner is Huma Abedin, a longtime top aide to another Famously Wronged Woman, Hillary Clinton. Prepare to cringe.

Nate Parker (center) in THE BIRTH OF A NATION
Nate Parker (center) in THE BIRTH OF A NATION

DVD of the Week: The Locksmith

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Somehow, this comedy gem never earned a theatrical release, despite winning the low budget award at Sundance.  A decent guy is serving out his drug sentence and has a day job as a locksmith on work release.  He is determined to keep his nose clean and not get in any more trouble.  He meets a kooky gal, who – despite his resistance – introduces all kinds of chaos into his life.  The Locksmith was originally titled Homewrecker.

If it had been released into theaters, I think that this working class comedy would have become a real crowd pleaser.  Fortunately, it’s now available from Netflix.

The Music Never Stopped: sentimental movies can be good, after all

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Here’s a crowd pleasing movie.  Parents find their long lost adult son in a hospital, suffering from a brain tumor that has erased his much of his memory (and all of his short term memory).  A speech therapist discovers that the son’s personality is sparked by music that he remembers from his teens.  The father and the son have been estranged since the son left after an argument between them.  The father finds that he can reach over the memory disability and re-connect by learning the son’s music.

The son’s music is all from the period 1964 to 1970 – and this music is another character in the film.  Dad leaves behind his Big Band sensibilities to embrace Bob Dylan, Donovan, Steppenwolf, Crosby Stills & Nash and, especially the Grateful Dead.  Baby Boomers and Dead Heads will really enjoy this movie from the music alone.  Indeed, the Dead’s Bob Weir and Mickey Hart have been out supporting the movie.

The film is a showcase for the excellent actor J.K. Simmons, who plays the father.  Simmons is always very, very good (Juno‘s dad, getting fired in Up in the Air and on TV’s Oz and Law and Order).  Here, he plays a guy who is secure in his own righteousness, but then sees and accepts his own responsibility for the estrangement, and whose love for his son motivates him to make some big changes.  Lou Taylor Pucci is excellent as the son.  Julia Ormond does a good job playing the speech therapist.

Now I generally hate “disease of the week” movies.  Really hate them.  But here the real story is about the relationship between father and son, and the rebuilding of the bond between them.  The memory disability, along with their past and the father’s initial stubbornness,  is just another obstacle to their communication.

The story is based on an actual case described by Oliver Sacks in his essay The Last Hippie.

2010 in Movies: Biggest Disappointments

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1. I couldn’t see some of the Cannes and Sundance Festival favorites because they haven’t been released where I live: Poetry, Certified Copy, Uncle Boonmee, Cane Toads: The Conquest, Aurora, The Princess of Montpensier.

2. After director Niels Arden Opley’s super rockin’ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the second and third films in Stieg Larsson’s Milenium trilogy were dragged down by plodding director Daniel Alfredson.

3. The 2004 French action movie District B13 introduced us to thrilling parkour and was an original, offbeat spectacle.   But this year’s sequel District 13: Ultimatum was cartoonish and very, very dumb.

4.  Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps:  First of all, I hoped that the movie was going to be primarily about the Michael Douglas characterization of Gordon Gekko – which Douglas knocked out of the park yet again. Will someone explain to me why Shia LaBeouf seems to be a movie star? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Second, the screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking).  Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout.  The movie’s payoff (things will turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behave) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.

5. No one could find a better vehicle for the sublime Amy Adams than the execrable Leap Year?

6.  Pirate Radio:  Has Philip Seymour Hoffman been in a worse film?

7. From the trailer and the buzz, I thought that The Kids Are All Right was shaping up to contend for Best Picture.  It’s a good movie with a wonderful performance by Annette Bening, but  it didn’t fulfill its promise as one of the year’s best.

8. I really wanted to like Ireland’s animated The Secret of Kells, but it was a snoozer.

9. The German comedy Soul Kitchen had a fun trailer (that contained the actually funny three minutes in the entire film).

10.  Shutter Island:  Marty, what were you thinking?

Carlos

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I haven’t seen it yet, but Cannes audiences loved this 5-hour biopic of the 70s terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and the film was bought by IFC and Sundance Channel.  The Sundance Channel is broadcasting it in three parts, this Monday through Wednesday, October 11-13.  Set your TiVos.

Many see this as a star-making breakthrough for its Venezuelan star Edgar Ramirez.