Sundance 2016: Celebrate Noam Chomsky Day with Captain Fantastic

Sundance 2016

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One look at the pic above or the synopsis below and you’d be forgiven for thinking that writer/director Matt Ross‘ new film Captain Fantastic is yet another quirky dramedy about oddballs trying to stay true to themselves in the face of society’s normality. You’d be right too, but while the film ticks off that seemingly generic box it also features elements and strengths well beyond it. It’s frequently funny and often affecting, but more than that it raises questions about family, responsibility, and the resiliency of children.

Ben (Viggo Mortensen) lives in a Pacific Northwest forest with his six kids who range in age from seven to seventeen. His wife, their mother, has spent the past few months in a hospital with an illness while their lives have continued like normal. Of course, normal is relative, and for them it means survival skills, meditation, knife fighting, music lessons, and a thorough education in science, history, and the arts. The youngest can shift a conversation from biology to Pol Pot while the eldest has recently philosophically transitioned from being a Trotskyite to a Maoist. Their self-created utopia is put on hold though when an issue involving their mother necessitates a bus trip into the real world.

There are multiple contrasts at the heart of Captain Fantastic as Ben’s parental style and choices are challenged by those around them. His youngest daughter outshines and outwits a more traditionally-schooled teenager in a head to head battle involving both knowledge and understanding of history, but for all of their smarts and broad education the kids have no idea how to interact with others. Ben’s oldest son, Bodevan (George Mackay, Pride, How I Live Now), has received college acceptance letters from top schools but feels compelled to hide them from his father. Ben’s father-in-law (Frank Langella) is threatening legal action to take custody of the kids on the grounds of abuse. One of the kids has even begun wondering aloud why they ignore celebrating Christmas in favor of Noam Chomsky Day.

One area almost guaranteed to generate conversation in audiences is Ben’s habit of giving the kids weapons as gifts. To be clear, they’re knives and bows as opposed to guns, but the potentially incendiary conflict remains. This is just one part of Ross’ theme though regarding the difference between what we think children can handle and what they can actually handle. They’re taught responsibility, but are some of them too young to even grasp the concept? When tragedy strikes Ben is upfront with the kids as to the details, but he’s chastised by others for sharing too much. Is there a benefit for the kids in shielding them from unsavory truths?

Ross works these somewhat serious ideas and questions into a film that’s just as much of a boisterous road trip romp as the family sets out to “save mom.” We’re along for the ride through scenes of intense grief, first kisses, teen rebellion, and family bonding, and it’s never less than engaging.

The cast is a big part of the film’s success with Mortensen taking the lead in more ways than just the obvious. His Ben is a firm parental force, but his affection for his kids is never in doubt. His decisions may challenge our own standards at times, but even when we’re in complete disagreement with him Mortensen makes him a man  we can’t help but respect and admire. The kids are all equally terrific and form a believable family through a visible fondness for each other.

The film’s balance does slip ever so slightly into lean entertainment on occasion, but it’s never enough to hurt the momentum and more serious elements. Ross also lets his movie end a couple times too many with scenes that feel somewhat extraneous. When it does finally end for real it does so on a high, but it’s with unnecessary detail and imagery.

Captain Fantastic is in some ways a less angry, more commercial take on The Mosquito Coast as a man fights against the norm to do what he believes to be best for his family, but while Peter Weir’s film found little warmth for its patriarch Ross’ heart is far bigger.

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Sundance 2016: Birth of a Nation Reclaims That Title to Honor Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Sundance 2016

Follow all of our Sundance 2016 coverage.

The greatest accomplishment of Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation might be reclaiming that title from the important and influential but irredeemably racist Birth of a Nation released 101 years earlier. That film said blacks and whites could never be integrated and that the KKK saved the South. The new one tells the true story of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion, bringing a long-remembered but little-discussed American hero into the limelight with shocking urgency.

Parker, an actor with minimal experience behind the camera, wrote and directed the film and stars as the grown-up version of Nat Turner. But when we first meet Nat, he’s a relatively carefree 9-year-old who plays hide-and-seek with his master’s boy, Samuel, and is invited by the master’s wife (Penelope Ann Miller) to learn to read. Mrs. Turner, a God-fearing Christian sincere in her beliefs, feel that if the good Lord has blessed this slave boy with more aptitude than most members of his inferior race, she’s duty-bound to foster it.

This tangled interaction of racism and religion runs through the film and is the most unified theme in it. As an adult, still a slave but now the property of grown-up Samuel (Armie Hammer), Nat comes to be in demand thanks to his knowledge of the Bible. A local minister (Mark Boone Junior) approaches Samuel with the idea of renting Nat out to preach to congregations of slaves on the subject of submission — in other words, to use the Bible to keep his fellow slaves placated.

This is what leads to revolt. (Actually, it was probably teaching Nat to read in the first place. Never let the people you are oppressing become literate!) Nat preaches as instructed and becomes a spiritual leader, sought out for guidance even by whites. But the more he sees of slavery’s atrocities — breaking a hunger-striking slave’s teeth to force-feed him; letting lusty white men rape whichever slave women they fancy — the less he can ignore the parts of the Bible that would seem to forbid it in favor of the parts he’s been using in its defense. This culminates in an absolutely electric scene where Nat and the white preacher have an argument about slavery that consists entirely of Bible verses.

Parker conveys the horrors of slavery without dwelling overmuch on them. In general, and in contrast to 12 Years a Slave, Parker doesn’t see a need to wallow in the specifics in order to convince us that slavery was awful. He assumes we agree that slavery was awful because owning another human being is inherently wrong, regardless of how they’re treated. Let’s not waste time (as so many slavery discussions do) nitpicking the details of which particular cruelties were inflicted on which wrongfully owned children of God.

Parker’s performance as Nat is stoic and charismatic — more than is accurate, probably, but why should Nat Turner get any less of a hagiography than other historical biopic subjects? I also like Miller’s earnestly Christian slave-owner, a woman doing her sincere best with the limited enlightenment she has received. She’s been taught that blacks are inferior to whites, but unlike many of her fellow Christians, she doesn’t take that as license to treat them uncharitably. Hammer likewise shows range, conveying the nuances of being a non-wealthy slave-owner in a rapidly changing world, a man at war against his own impulses and upbringing.

The last 30 minutes of the film, depicting the rebellion and its aftermath, are horrific and stirring, a righteous catharsis after 90 minutes of pent-up indignation. It makes up for the well-intentioned but clunky, sometimes meandering nature of the first half of the film, which has a TV-movie generic sheen to it. Some of the supporting performances are a bit off, too, a combination of on-the-nose writing and over-earnest acting.

1915’s Birth of a Nation introduced audiences and filmmakers to new cinematic techniques that would become part of the craft, but it had a false, poisonous story that has overshadowed it ever since. 2016’s Birth of a Nation is the opposite: brimming with urgent, truthful messages, but unremarkable as a film. D.W. Griffith might have been a better craftsman, but Nate Parker is a better American. Like the rebellion itself, the film tries to accomplish more than it’s capable of, but it’s a necessary step in the right direction.

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'Spotlight', Leonardo DiCaprio & Brie Larson Win 2016 SAG Awards

As the Sundance Film Festival was wrapping up with its awards in Utah, Hollywood was abuzz announcing the Screen Actors Guild Awards winners. The SAG Awards honor the greatest performances from 2015, as chosen by other actors which means this is one of the most definitive lists of the best performances. Actors know their profession better than anyone. This year, Leonardo DiCaprio took home his first SAG Award for The Revenant (after four nominations), and actress Brie Larson also won her first SAG Award for the film Room. Both of these films are nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars as well. Read on for the full list.

Here's all the film winners from the 22nd Screen Actors Guild Awards (see the TV winners at TVLine):

ACTOR:
Bryan Cranson - Trumbo
Johnny Depp - Black Mass
Leonardo DiCaprio - The Revenant
Michael Fassbender - Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne - The Danish Girl

ACTRESS:
Cate Blanchett - Carol
Brie Larson - Room
Helen Mirren - Woman in Gold
Saoirse Ronan - Brooklyn
Sarah Silverman - I Smile Back

SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Christian Bale - The Big Short
Idris Elba - Beasts of No Nation
Mark Rylance - Bridge of Spies
Michael Shannon - 99 Homes
Jacob Tremblay - Room

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Rooney Mara - Carol
Rachel McAdams - Spotlight
Helen Mirren - Trumbo
Alicia Vikander - The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet - Steve Jobs

ENSEMBLE CAST:
Beasts of No Nation - Abraham Attah, Kurt Egyiawan, Idris Elba

The Big Short - Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Melissa Leo, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Brad Pitt, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Marisa Tomei, Finn Wittrock

Spotlight - Billy Crudup, Brian d'Arcy James, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci

Straight Outta Compton - Neil Brown Jr., Paul Giamatti, Corey Hawkins, Aldis Hodge, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell

Trumbo - Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Louis C.K., Bryan Cranston, David James Elliott, Elle Fanning, John Goodman, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alan Tudyk

ENSEMBLE STUNTS:
Everest
Furious 7
Jurassic World
Mad Max: Fury Road
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Congrats to all of this year's SAG winners and the nominees! Now that Brie Larson has won, can everyone please go watch Short Term 12? And now that Idris Elba has won, can everyone please go watch Beasts of No Nation? (Why not toss in Trumbo while you're at it.) Both of these films were so hard to get people to actually watch them, and this is proof they're worth seeing. All of the actors nominated this year are some of the best working today, from Bryan Cranston to Rooney Mara to Michael Shannon to Saoirse Ronan. It's also awesome to see Mad Max: Fury Road getting recognized for its stunt work, since the action work in that movie is phenomenal and it deserves recognition. Stay tuned for more awards leading up to the Oscars.

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Sundance 2016: Levity Makes 'The Fundamentals of Caring' a Winner

It's not exactly easy to make light of and laugh at disabilities without coming across as insensitive, which is why this film is so unique. The Fundamentals of Caring (original Sundance title, as it has apparently been changed to The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving) stars Craig Roberts as a boy named Trevor with Duchenne muscular dystrophy who is confined to an electric wheelchair. He requires a caregiver who helps him do many basic tasks, though he always tends to scare them away because he's blunt and loves playing sick jokes on them. The humor in this film is what makes it so entertaining to watch, since the script is otherwise full of too many easy cliches that prevent it from being much more than another good laugh.

Paul Rudd plays Ben, a rather somber, depressed person (you find out why in the film) looking for work who decides to become a caregiver. His first job after finishing training is to work with Trevor, a rather amusing and sort-of-charming, sort-of-not-charming boy who is confined to a wheelchair with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Trevor is a master of deadpan humor and one of his go-to tricks to new caregivers is to pretend he's choking on food. The reason the comedy in this is so unique is that the film is written and directed by Rob Burnett, who was a writer on "Late Night with David Letterman" for 12 years, and creator of the shows "Ed", "Bonnie" and "The Knights of Prosperity". He flirts with the very edges of comedy in this.

Aside from the humor, the film is a bit cliched as it becomes a roadtrip buddy movie when Ben and Trevor decided to drive to the world's deepest pit. It's a heartfelt way of attempting to get Trevor out of his house and into the world to experience life, but it's also something we've seen so many times. Of course, along the way they meet colorful characters like Selena Gomez as Dot, and Megan Ferguson as a kooky pregnant woman named Peaches. Alas, they don't add much. Even the big final climatic moment is cheesy. It's a joke they've been building the entire film and the payoff is supposed to be fun, but when it finally happens I was rolling my eyes rather than laughing. Maybe because it's clearly a CGI-enhanced shot when it shouldn't be.

That said, the film is still funny and the performances from Paul Rudd and Craig Roberts more than make up for the cliched plot. I've been a big fan of Craig Roberts ever since seeing Submarine in 2010, and I enjoy him the most when he challenges himself and yet still retains that sense of humor that made him so lovable in Submarine. Rudd is also pushing himself in this, more than he did in Ant-Man, and it's an important part of the dynamic between the two main characters that works well. Overall, while I happily laughed at many parts of The Fundamentals of Caring, the plot itself doesn't amount to much and it's easy to forget as soon as it's over. Which is a bit sad, because more than anything Burnett's edgy comedy is refreshing and unique.

Alex's Sundance 2016 Rating: 7 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter - @firstshowing

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Sundance 2016 Awards: 'Birth of a Nation' Wins Audience & Grand Jury

The official awards for the 2016 Sundance Film Festival were announced tonight at a ceremony in Park City. We've been anxiously awaiting the results of the awards at Sundance, and now we know who won big - The Birth of a Nation, the powerful directional debut of actor Nate Parker (read my review). The film won both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize, which has been the case at Sundance for the last four years (last year Me & Earl & the Dying Girl won both). In addition, the other Audience Awards were the docs Jim: The James Foley Story and Sonita, and the film First Girl I Loved. Read on for the full list.

Here's the full release of winners with synopsis info next to each. The 2016 festival wraps up this weekend.

2016 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL JURY AWARDS:

The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic was presented to: The Birth of a Nation (Director & Screenwriter: Nate Parker) — Set against the antebellum South, this story follows Nat Turner, a literate slave and preacher whose financially strained owner, Samuel Turner, accepts an offer to use Nat’s preaching to subdue unruly slaves. After witnessing countless atrocities against fellow slaves, Nat devises a plan to lead his people to freedom. Cast: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Jackie Earle Haley, Gabrielle Union, Mark Boone Jr.

The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary was presented to: Weiner (Directors: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg) — With unrestricted access to Anthony Weiner's New York City mayoral campaign, this film reveals the human story behind the scenes of a high-profile political scandal as it unfolds, and offers an unfiltered look at how much today's politics is driven by an appetite for spectacle.

The World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic was presented to: Sand Storm / Israel (Director & Screenwriter: Elite Zexer) — When their entire lives are shattered, two Bedouin women struggle to change the unchangeable rules, each in her own individual way. Cast: Lamis Ammar, Ruba Blal-Asfour, Hitham Omari, Khadija Alakel, Jalal Masrwa.

The World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary was presented to: Sonita / Germany, Iran, Switzerland (Director: Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami) — If 18-year-old Sonita had a say, Michael Jackson and Rihanna would be her parents and she'd be a rapper who tells the story of Afghan women and their fate as child brides. She finds out that her family plans to sell her to an unknown husband for $9,000.

The Directing Award: U.S. Documentary was presented to: Roger Ross Williams for his film Life, Animated — Owen Suskind, an autistic boy who could not speak for years, slowly emerged from his isolation by immersing himself in Disney animated movies. Using these films as a roadmap, he reconnects with his loving family and the wider world in this emotional coming-of-age story.

The Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic was presented to: Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan for their film Swiss Army Man — Hank, a hopeless man stranded in the wild, discovers a mysterious dead body. Together the two embark on an epic journey to get home. As Hank realizes the body is the key to his survival, this once-suicidal man is forced to convince a dead body that life is worth living. Cast: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

The Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary was presented to: Michal Marczak for his film All These Sleepless Nights / Poland — What does it mean to be awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep? Kris and Michal push their experiences of life and love to a breaking point as they restlessly roam the city streets in search of answers, adrift in the euphoria and uncertainty of youth.

The Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic was presented to: Felix van Groeningen for his film Belgica / Belgium, France, Netherlands — In the midst of Belgium's nightlife scene, two brothers start a bar and get swept up in its success. Cast: Stef Aerts, Tom Vermeir, Charlotte Vandermeersch, Hélène De Vos.

The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic was presented to: Chad Hartigan for Morris from America — Thirteen-year-old Morris, a hip-hop loving American, moves to Heidelberg, Germany, with his father. In this completely foreign land, he falls in love with a local girl, befriends his German tutor-turned-confidant, and attempts to navigate the unique trials and tribulations of adolescence. Cast: Markees Christmas, Craig Robinson, Carla Juri, Lina Keller, Jakub Gierszał, Levin Henning.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing was presented to: Penny Lane and Thom Stylinski for NUTS! — The mostly true story of Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, an eccentric genius who built an empire with his goat-testicle impotence cure and a million-watt radio station. Animated reenactments, interviews, archival footage, and one seriously unreliable narrator trace his rise from poverty to celebrity and influence in 1920s America.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for For Social Impact Filmmaking was presented to: Trapped (Director: Dawn Porter) — American abortion clinics are in a fight for survival. Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws are increasingly being passed by states that maintain they ensure women’s safety and health, but as clinics continue to shut their doors, opponents believe the real purpose of these laws is to outlaw abortion.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Writing was presented to: Kate Plays Christine / (Director: Robert Greene) — This psychological thriller follows actor Kate Lyn Sheil as she prepares to play the role of Christine Chubbuck, a Florida television host who committed suicide on air in 1974. Christine’s tragic death was the inspiration for Network, and the mysteries surrounding her final act haunt Kate and the production.

A U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Vérité Filmmaking was presented to: The Bad Kids / (Directors: Keith Fulton, Lou Pepe) — At a remote Mojave Desert high school, extraordinary educators believe that empathy and life skills, more than academics, give at-risk students command of their own futures. This coming-of-age story watches education combat the crippling effects of poverty in the lives of these so-called "bad kids."

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award was presented to: As You Are (Director: Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Screenwriters: Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Madison Harrison) — As You Are is the telling and retelling of a relationship between three teenagers as it traces the course of their friendship through a construction of disparate memories prompted by a police investigation. Cast: Owen Campbell, Charlie Heaton, Amandla Stenberg, John Scurti, Scott Cohen, Mary Stuart Masterson.

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance was presented to: Joe Seo for Spa Night (Director & Screenwriter: Andrew Ahn) — Los Angeles’s Korean spas serve not only as meeting places but also as a bridge between past and future for generations of immigrant families. Spa Night explores one Korean American family’s dreams and realities as each member struggles with the overlap of personal desire, disillusionment, and sense of tradition. Cast: Joe Seo, Haerry Kim, Youn Ho Cho, Tae Song, Ho Young Chung, Linda Han.

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Individual Performance was presented by to: Melanie Lynskey in The Intervention (Director & Screenwriter: Clea DuVall) — A weekend getaway for four couples takes a sharp turn when one of the couples discovers the entire trip was orchestrated to host an intervention on their marriage. Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Cobie Smulders, Alia Shawkat, Clea DuVall, Natasha Lyonne, Ben Schwartz.

A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Individual Performance was presented to: Craig Robinson in Morris from America (Director & Screenwriter: Chad Hartigan) — Thirteen-year-old Morris, a hip-hop loving American, moves to Heidelberg, Germany, with his father. In this completely foreign land, he falls in love with a local girl, befriends his German tutor-turned-confidant, and attempts to navigate the unique trials and tribulations of adolescence. Cast: Markees Christmas, Craig Robinson, Carla Juri, Lina Keller, Jakub Gierszał, Levin Henning.

2016 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL AUDIENCE AWARDS:

The Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic, Presented by Acura was presented to: The Birth of a Nation (Director & Screenwriter: Nate Parker) — Set against the antebellum South, this story follows Nat Turner, a literate slave and preacher whose financially strained owner, Samuel Turner, accepts an offer to use Nat’s preaching to subdue unruly slaves. After witnessing countless atrocities against fellow slaves, Nat devises a plan to lead his people to freedom. Cast: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Jackie Earle Haley, Gabrielle Union, Mark Boone Jr.

The Audience Award: U.S. Documentary, Presented by Acura was presented to: Jim: The James Foley Story (Director: Brian Oakes) — The public execution of American conflict journalist James Foley captured the world’s attention, but he was more than just a man in an orange jumpsuit. Seen through the lens of his close childhood friend, Jim: The James Foley Story moves from adrenaline-fueled front lines and devastated neighborhoods of Syria into the hands of ISIS.

The Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic was presented to: Between Sea and Land / Colombia (Director: Carlos del Castillo, Screenwriter: Manolo Cruz) — Alberto, who suffers from an illness that binds him into a body that doesn’t obey him, lives with his loving mom, who dedicates her life to him. His sickness impedes him from achieving his greatest dream of knowing the sea, despite one being located just across the street. Cast: Manolo Cruz, Vicky Hernandéz, Viviana Serna, Jorge Cao, Mile Vergara, Javier Sáenz.

The Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary was presented to: Sonita / Germany, Iran, Switzerland (Director: Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami) — If 18-year-old Sonita had a say, Michael Jackson and Rihanna would be her parents and she'd be a rapper who tells the story of Afghan women and their fate as child brides. She finds out that her family plans to sell her to an unknown husband for $9,000.

The Audience Award: NEXT, Presented by Adobe was presented to: First Girl I Loved / U.S.A. (Director & Screenwriter: Kerem Sanga) — Seventeen-year-old Anne just fell in love with Sasha, the most popular girl at her L.A. public high school. But when Anne tells her best friend, Clifton—who has always harbored a secret crush on her—he does his best to get in the way. Cast: Dylan Gelula, Brianna Hildebrand, Mateo Arias, Jennifer Prediger, Tim Heidecker, Pamela Adlon.

Congrats to all of 2016's winners! I'm very happy with all of them. I loved Birth of a Nation, I loved Morris From America, I loved NUTS!, I loved Trapped, I am a big fan of As You Are (and First Girl I Loved). I'm surprised but also overjoyed that actor Craig Robinson won an award for his outstanding performance in Morris from America. There are always tons of films that deserve recognition, but it's such a relief when some of my favorites of the festival end up getting recognized. This seems like quite an unforgettable year at Sundance, and I'm so glad I was a part of it this year. As always, these are only Sundance awards and not the only good films from the fest, but this wraps up my 10th year. Recap the last of our Sundance 2016 coverage.

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Rotterdam 2016. First Steps

Ear, Nose and Throat

I've arrived in the Dutch city of Rotterdam after a one year absence—flummoxed several editions in a row by the sprawling but often undistinguishable festival program of international cinema, I decided to try the Berlin film festival instead in 2015. But I've been lured back to the IFFR, as the Rotterdam film festival is abbreviated, for the favorite old reasons: the promise of a fabulously congenial and casual atmosphere of cinema discovery and discussion, extensive retrospective programs, and a promising showing of terrific avant-garde work, some of it projected on film. After attending Locarno for the first time last year in the summer, I have newly kindled hopes for this other European festival, an expansive wintertime festivity once so renowned for premiering adventurous new cinema.

You may note I did not mention the festival's Tiger competition, what it is perhaps most known for in international film culture, but in the past I've found this section, despite its admirable restriction of only showing first and second feature films, often disappointingly unremarkable. (Ask a well-watched cinephile to name a great Tiger winner in the last several years and you may be met with a confused look.) The 2016 version of the festival, with its new director in charge, has made a number of changes to the organization of the event, the most prominent of which in fact is a paring of the number of competitors for the Tiger down to eight, so that the festival premieres just one competing film a day. This tighter focus, combined with the greater allowance and ease of scheduling for both audiences and press & industry folk (in an event featuring over a hundred films), is appreciated and will no doubt ensure more people see the competing films by emerging filmmakers. Whether those films are worthy of such attention is another question; the first competitor I caught, the feature debut of Indonesia-born Dutch installation artist Fiona Tan, worrisomely fell squarely into that category of over-conceived, under-executed "festival film."

There are a few other new sections, some removed ones, others renamed; but to be honest I've never understood to whom such section delineations are important at such a sprawling festival as this. For myself, at most festivals I look for names of filmmakers whose work I love or find interesting, gravitate towards certain preferred genres and countries, skim catalog notes for intriguing aspects that may fall out of this purview, and keep an ear open for recommendations, especially from well-traveled European critics and programmers. Whether any given film is in the Perspectives, Bright Future or Voices section matters not to me; and I wonder for whom such organization helps. With such a big program, the curation of the festival overall is nearly impossible to get a sense of, and the few sections with more pointed missions, such as the centerpiece competition and, of equal importance in theory and great importance in fact, the dedicated retrospectives inherently conduct the feeling of a sensibility and provoke with the ideas of and behind their choices. That in its semi-rebooted state the festival has elected to show new films by Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella and Japanese radical Masao Adachi, and amplify these new works within the context, historical and political, of their past (including an expansive series on “La Escuela de Barcelona,” which included Portabella in the 1960s and 1970s), suggests a potent and crucial support for cinema as a force for controversial vision, documentation, critique and social change.

How such a vision will translate to the new work premiering at the festival will be seen in the coming days. Having only recently arrived, I've caught few films, but two were exceptional. Ear, Noses and Throat, by the American director Kevin Jerome Everson, is precisely the kind of terse, evocative and reality-founded filmmaking that continues, in a different context and method, the Portabella-Adachi strand of cinema. This short documentary of a young African American woman is made of two parts—the titular doctor's visit, which finds she has a malformed vocal cord which will cause her to grow hoarser as time passes; and the woman's oral history of witnessing a shooting on her block—interwoven together in image and sound. This clean portraiture, shot with intimate textures regardless of the camera's distance, and shown with a prologue presumably sketching the location of the woman's house, offers a lucid approach to an idea of considerable force. Everson both stretches and collapses the distance between the human body as a site for perception and the body as a physical thing that can be damaged. The context for this expansion and contraction of experiences is crucial, as its sadly quotidian example of this woman and what she saw illustrates the position of African Americans in the United States as both victims of violence and/or those who see are receptors of violence experiences. Hearing-test sonic beeps bookend the film, and the speakers the left and right effects come out of in the theatre differ from where the woman indicates they are coming from in Everson's footage of her at the doctor's. It is a fictionalized finale, but a pointed one: a woman whose experience is to hear the opposite of that which we do, and who the more she talks the less she is able to say.

Lejos de los árboles

The first film showing in the retrospective from the 1960s and 70s school of Barcelona was Jacinto Esteva Grewe’s Lejos de los árboles (1972), part of a series of films that curator Olaf Möller described as "the unofficial new cinema” of Spain, with Grewe as "one of its founders and main theoretician.” Ending his introduction, “now I’’ll let you go to cruel, wonderful Spain,” this feature documentary followed an untranslated short about Spanish immigration, and indeed with Lejos de los árboles we could see why people would want to leave. A survey of Catalonian customs and rituals existing in the final decade of the Franco dictatorship, Grewe reveals the melding of Christianity and superstition (flagellants, possessions, at times resembling Antonioni’s under known 1949 short Superstitions), masculine ideals (bull fighting), conventions of femininity (a young nun’s astounding induction, an elderly nun’s funeral), and various remnants and flourishes of local celebration and carnival. A conflicted mixture of ethnographic reportage, vague patronizing attitude, and manifold subtle (and unsubtle) national critique, Grewe’s film exhibits wonder at the Catalonian character—but at a distance. A joyful and creative expression mixes thoroughly with repression, bloodshed, provincialism and twisted traditions: we seen Catalonia as both resistant to Franco’s Spain and perhaps a very pure expression of the worst side of “national character.”

The natural awkwardness and unevenness of Lejos de los árboles bodes well for Rotterdam’s Barcelona retrospective and the festival in general: a desire to discover and expose, but at conflict with itself and its subject. Such tensions are what the best of cinema thrives on.

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Sundance 2016: Animated Disney Films as Therapy in 'Life, Animated'

We all know that movies can change lives, in small ways and in big ways. But that change is often internal, and it's hard to track exactly how we are affected. The documentary Life, Animated (which premiered at Sundance) is an absolutely wonderful documentary that perfectly captures how one autistic boy learned to communicate and engage with the world through Disney animated movies. It's a triumphant and inspiring story, but it's also a beautiful documentary that features many clips from Disney movies as well as original animation (by Mac Guff). The film is about Owen Suskind, following him as he moves into his own place for the first time in his life. His entire VHS collection of Disney movies is the very first thing he unpacks.

At Sundance last year, I was moved to tears by a film about autistic children called How to Dance in Ohio (please seek it out ASAP). Following in those footsteps is Life, Animated, a documentary that also examines autism and one of the most remarkable ways that one boy has figured out how to become independent. His love for Disney animated movies is what helped him open up and talk with others. His favorites include The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Beauty and the Beast and Pinocchio, although he seems to love just about every last one of them equally. During the Q&A it was revealed that Disney exec Sean Bailey is a champion of the doc and has allowed them to use footage and characters in this.

This doc is full of so much life. There's an outstanding score that builds up in certain scenes, making Owen's breakthrough moments (often recounted by his father Ron Suskind - who also wrote a book about all of this) even more powerful and emotional. While it addresses the struggles of raising an austic child, and being afraid that he may never communicate or be independent, it's still open and optimistic in the way it fully embraces the fact that these Disney movies are the key to his growth. Owen will suddenly pace around, reciting lines from the movies in a goofy voice, and it's nothing to make fun of. It's shown and presented in a way where this will make you smile and laugh and feel so happy that this is how he connects to our society.

Beyond the triumphant story of Owen's progress and growth, this documentary really reminded me of the power of great movies. One of the doctors points out that these animated Disney movies feature exaggerated expressions and emotions, and that's what Owen attaches onto while he's watching them. Owen, inspired by how much he loves this movies, hosts a viewing for the rest of his austic class, giving them a chance to open up and learn from them as well. It's impossible not to smile during these scenes. Even if you're no longer a kid and just don't like animated movies anymore, there's a certain magic to them that will light you up, and warm your heart, especially when you realize just how much they can and have changed lives for the better.

Alex's Sundance 2016 Rating: 9 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter - @firstshowing

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Sundance 2016: Frightening Iranian Ghost Horror 'Under the Shadow'

Sundance loves to find and premiere the next generation of horror films, and this is one of them. It's very likely most people have never seen a ghost movie like this before, which is refreshing for the genre. Under the Shadow is a horror-thriller set in Tehran, Iran, about a mother and her daughter encountering eerie supernatural forces in their bombed out building. The only worthwhile comparison to make is that this film reminded me of The Babadook, another Sundance film (from 2014), with a plot involving tensions between a mother and her child, not to mention some very creepy things going on. Under the Shadow is frightening and captivating, and while it doesn't have the most extensive mythology, it is a satisfying horror experience.

The film is set entirely in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when both countries were bombing / attacking each other's major cities without much warning. It takes place primarily in a big apartment building, where an intelligent and independent woman named Shideh, played by Narges Rashidi, cares for her daughter Dorsa, played by Avin Manshadi. One of the remarkably shocking moments in the film is when a huge missile suddenly crashes into the building, but it doesn't explode. Instead, it smashes through the room above and pokes a hole into their ceiling. Dorsa can see djinn (the word for ghosts in Islamic mythology) but her mother cannot, and as other residents flee these djinn become increasingly malevolent.

Alas, that's pretty much the only explanation given for the supernatural side of this film, though I wish there was more to it. I was expecting they would spend a bit more time building up a mythology around these particular djinn. Instead, the film focuses on the relationship between Dorsa and Shideh, as well as a few other residents in the building. It's really great to see a smart woman leading a film like this, but she is so stubborn at times I was worried it might get annoying (thankfully it never did). Compared to The Babadook, Under the Shadow isn't as fleshed out or as expansive as that film, but it is as entertaining and thrilling to watch. It's left open for a sequel, though writer/director Babak Anvari tells a complete story with this film.

There are a number of extremely effective jump scares and freaky moments that will have you grabbing onto someone/something nearby. The supernatural aspects of the film are unique, and they never go overboard with excessive scares or unnecessary tropes. It's a simple, sleek, well-made film that above all is efficient in telling a creepy ghost story with an emotional undercurrent. It's one of the better horror films to come out of Sundance in years and I'm hopeful it will find an audience in North America. Not only will it scare the shit out of you, but maybe you'll learn a thing or two about the culture of Iran and how hard it is to be a mother when you never know if a missile is going to hit your building and destroy it. This is definitely worth seeing.

Alex's Sundance 2016 Rating: 8 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter - @firstshowing

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Video Essay. The Semantics of Adventureland’s Mixtape

The eleventh entry in an on-going series of audiovisual essays by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin. Greg Mottola's Adventureland (2009) is now playing in the United States through February 29.

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Few subjects divide people more sharply and ferociously than respective tastes in music. We build our identities, our system of values, even our world-views, through the music we choose to love and cultivate, whether as players or listeners—and we project our musical distastes onto a screen (or a variety of screens) constituting those monstrous Others from which we differentiate and dissociate ourselves.

Popular movies have a lot to do with propagating this fascinating but treacherous and unstable cultural process. Especially teen movies, which involve themselves with the vagaries of pop, rock, and other musical styles more extensively and intimately than most genres—particularly at the level of ‘sampling,’ of the selection of pre-existing tracks for the film soundtrack (and, often, for the subsequent CD tie-in).

Greg Mottola’s Adventureland (2009), as a typical example, cries out for a structuralist breakdown of its musical-cultural semantics. On the one side—the side of its central characters, James (Jesse Eisenberg) and Em (Kristen Stewart)—we have a raft of personal, sensitive, poetic, thoughtful, sometimes angry, supposedly “authentic” songs. An intriguing mosaic is pieced together here: set in 1987, the film aligns certain, revered singer-songwriters of the 1960s and 70s (pre-eminently Lou Reed, in and out of The Velvet Underground) with the “indie rock” of The Replacements or Hüsker Dü, and the early 80s post punk/neo-romantic/New Wave of The Cure—with a special place of affection reserved for several non-American tracks by INXS and Crowded House. (First sign of the treacherousness of these semantic operations: to our Spanish-Australian ears, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” is a nightmare of bland, middle-of-the-road pop fare.)

On the other, negative side, another mosaic: Heavy Metal (Judas Priest, Rush), 80s Euro disco (Falco, endlessly pilloried for “Rock Me Amadeus”), ‘dance music’ in general (Shannon, Animotion), MTV, and some highlights of mainstream rock/pop (The Rolling Stones, and David Bowie in his “Modern Love” 80s, not as the 70s Aladdin Sane glimpsed on Em’s wall). This side of the music-culture equation is associated, overwhelmingly, with values of superficiality, vulgarity (a nasty class bias peeks in here), consumerism, and commercial values. The tawdry emblem of this particular world-within-a-world is Adventureland itself, with its endlessly flashing lights and mindlessly spinning rides and games. To the fairground’s grinding “Musik Express” is opposed James’s customized “Bummer Mixtape,” the playlist details of which can be deciphered on microscopic inspection.

All these associations are deftly meshed with the dramatic and comedic situations of the film. The good, cool music is almost always situated in a personalised way, within the fiction: the characters manually place needles on records, push a cassette into a car radio, press jukebox buttons. These lyrical songs usually accompany travel of many kinds, from solemn or happy car and bus rides to thrill-fun on the dodgems. The tracks are chosen in order to underline the characters’s emotions, and to express their moods. The uncool music, by contrast, is always just ‘there,’ blaring away—in the clubs, on TV, or at the fairground. It prompts robotic physical movement, and preening personal display—especially as condensed in the character of gum-chewing Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva). The one occasion on which Em and James deign to immerse themselves in Lisa’s musical world at the Razzmatazz club, they dance ‘against its grain,’ in an old-fashioned way, ironically—and to a song (Animotion’s “Obsession”) that, suitably, is often mistaken among casual music listeners as being by The Human League.

Not many movies remain content to simply oppose ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ poles of music, however, an A-Side and a B-Side—and Adventureland is no exception in this field. Movement, slippage, and mediation between these extremes happen for three reasons, along three axes. First, for semantic color and complexity: it is necessary that characters ‘cross the tracks’ sometimes for interesting things to happen, and for the general, narrative situation to evolve. The dance of Em and James at Razzmatazz, for instance, functions in this way; and, from one end of the film to the other (and providing one of its plot resolutions), the link of the shifty adult character of Connell (Ryan Reynolds) with Lou Reed and the song “Satellite of Love.” Second, for expressive purposes: Judas Priest may not be exactly revered by this movie, but the track “Breaking the Law” serves well enough to punch a bit of instant energy into a chase scene. Third, for all-round entertainment’s sake: popular movies are always balancing (trading off) their semantic argument about cultural values (which is an inherently polarizing operation) against their pressing need to please (and thus not alienate) any possible audience member: therefore, there should be no truly ‘dud’ tracks in the central soundtrack mix, and nothing that cannot be proudly included on the CD release. Hence “Modern Love,” and “Tops” by The Rolling Stones, even “Let the Music Play” (which didn’t make it onto the official Adventureland CD) or “Rock Me Amadeus” (which did).

Obligatory Disclaimer in any forum that raises the issue of musical taste: we don’t happen to share the system of musical-cultural values that we lay out in our audiovisual essay The Semantics of Adventureland’s Mixtape, and so we are not proposing these ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ positive and negative categories as absolute. Indeed, studying Mottola’s film closely makes us more keenly aware how—in another context, another story, another film—these semantic poles could be exactly reversed, or otherwise completely scrambled and complicated. And, as a side benefit, it makes us appreciate, all over again, the lack of any kind of snobbishness accompanying the gesture of Leos Carax including “Modern Love” in his Mauvais sang (1986) or, supremely, Claire Denis making sublime cinematic poetry from Corona’s “Rhythm of the Night” (in Beau travail, 1999) or Commodores’ “Nightshift” (in 35 Rhums, 2008).

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Two quick, overdue announcements

Lee Yongkwan.

DB here:

The first, only slightly overdue: Tony Rayns criticizes the ongoing efforts to dismiss Busan Festival Co-Director Lee Yongkwan. Tony’s open letter is at Geoff Gardner’s estimable blog.

As far as I can tell, this turn of events has scarcely been covered in the English-language film press. Mr. Yongkwan has been beleaguered for some time. The initial pressure on him goes back to 2014, and his response came early the following year. A spring 2015 meeting of South Korean filmmakers defending him is reported here.

The second announcement is that Peter Labuza, mastermind of the Cinephiliacs, has mounted two podcast interviews with us. The one with Kristin is here, the one with me is here. We thank Peter for asking us to participate, and we hope that people think our comments are worth a listen.

Opening ceremony, Busan International Film Festival, 2015.

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Everyone is Getting Into Talking Animals in 2016

The history of talking animals in cinema is one that is long, checkered and filled with plenty of big name stars. The likes of Eddie Murphy, Jeff Goldblum and Kevin James have all done either human work or voice work in films such as Dr. Doolittle, Cats & Dogs and The Zookeeper, respectively. Looking over that list of movies, it’s easy to question these decisions. Except for Kevin James. The Zookeeper was right in Kevin James’ wheelhouse. But what do we know about movies that involve talking animals?

1. Kids love them.
2. It doesn’t require a lot of effort for the actors, especially if they are doing voice work.
3. Traditionally these movies make plenty of money.

On that last point, let’s consider the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise. The first film, which released in 2007, was made on a budget of $60 million. It went on to gross $361 million worldwide in its theatrical release. This doesn’t include publicity and marketing costs, but it also doesn’t take into account the considerable licensing deals that come along with making a movie that generates wide interest in toys. Even Cats & Dogs, Warner Bros’ 2001 comedy that featured Michael Clarke Duncan, Tobey Maguire, Alex Baldwin and Susan Sarandon, grossed $200 million worldwide. In 2001.

The value proposition is there. Talking animal movies, both live-action and animated, have always been a strong bet for Hollywood. Should it surprise us that 2016 is full of them? Not really. The thing that causes a bit of pause is the overwhelming number of talking animal movies that will vie for audience dollars this year. This week, studios have delivered trailers for a number of these, giving us a clear look at what awaits over the horizon.

Some of these are new. Some of these have been lurking for a while. One has no trailer just yet. Let’s go through these one at a time and try to determine which ones, if any, will be worth watching. Because in 2016, everyone is getting into talking animals…

Kevin Spacey, Nine Lives

The newest of these movies to enter the fray, at least in trailer form, is the Kevin Spacey-led film Nine Lives. This one combines Look Who’s Talking with (insert popular body swap comedy here) to create a world in which a man not unlike House of Cards‘ Frank Underwood is turned into a cat and given back to his family. What is less believable? That Barry Sonnenfeld, the director of Wild Wild West, would make a good movie about Kevin Spacey being turned into a cat. Or that a man of Kevin Spacey’s age (56) would be married to Jennifer Garner, a woman 16 years his junior? I agree, it’s the Sonnenfeld part.

To its credit, Nine Lives might get a little mileage out of the talented Malina Weissman, who plays the daughter. We’ve seen her as young Kara on Supergirl and she’s recently been cast in Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Beyond that, this movie looks awful. I know what you’re thinking, “What about Christopher Walken?!” Don’t forget, Christopher Walken was in Click.

It’s in theaters on August 5.

Louis CK, The Secret Life of Pets

Not-so-secretly, The Secret Life of Pets might be the most promising big screen entry on this list. Both trailers have been funny. The cast includes Kevin Hart, Lake Bell, Ellie Kemper, Jenny Slate and Steve Coogan. And its central character is a dog voiced by Louis CK. In smaller roles, it has both Albert Brooks and Dana Carvey.

A great cast does not always make a great animated film. There’s no denying that. But this one also comes from Despicable Me and The Lorax director Chris Renaud, who also produced the mega-hit Minions last year. The team at Illumination Entertainment are probably the closest to Pixar in their ability to create films with some artfulness and wide-reaching appeal. They make fun movies, whereas Pixar often adds thoughtfulness. But they are good, fun movies. And The Secret Life of Pets appears to have a similar charm.

It’s in theaters on July 8.

The Duplass Brothers, Animals

Earlier today, my good friend Peter over at /Film wrote about Animals, a new Duplass Brothers project that screened at the Sundance Film Festival this week. In his piece, he called it the “weirdest, craziest, most interesting television show in a long time.” I’m going to cut him a little slack on the hyperbole. He’s mostly a movie guy and probably didn’t watch that episode of The Knick last season. But the message throughout his piece is that Animals is packed with talent and weird as fuck.

It’s got Marc Maron as a rat version of himself doing a rat podcast. It drops references to Boogie Nights and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Basically it’s just the sort of nerdy and esoteric thing you’d expect to see with The Duplass Brothers banner on it, only this time it’s an animated show set in the streets of New York. Show creators (and stars) Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano aren’t household names just yet, but they did create a short upon that received a lot of good buzz last year at Sundance.

On February 5, the full breadth of their vision will appear in a new series airing on HBO. It’s going to be weird.

Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman, Zootopia

Along the lines of The Secret Lives of Pets, Zootopia is another of the big screen contenders with not only big casts, but a lot of behind the scenes pedigree. This is a Walt Disney Animation Studios joint co-directed by Byron Howard (Tangled) and Rich Moore (Wreck-it Ralph). It’s going to feature a city populated by anthropomorphic animals and revolve around an unlikely pair — a con artist fox and a rookie bunny cop — who are trying to uncover a conspiracy. The two central characters will be voiced by Jason Bateman and Once Upon a Time‘s Ginnifer Goodwin, respectively. They will be joined by Idris Elba, Alan Tudyk, J.K. Simmons and Jenny Slate.

It’s worth noting that Jenny Slate’s voice will appear in three of these — Secret Life, Animals and Zootopia. That’s worth the price of admission right there.

Zootopia is also the movie with that very funny trailer involving sloths working at the DMV. That might actually be enough of a sales pitch for most, especially the little ones.

Zootopia is in theaters on March 4.

Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray and Idris Elba, The Jungle Book

Even though it’s live-action, Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book gives Idris Elba (who voices Shere Khan) a second entry on this list, with a third coming shortly. This ties him with Jenny Slate in the early competition to end up as the “Most Watched Actor” on my eventual Letterboxd 2016 Year in Review.

Favreau’s film is a tale we know, but it’s also playing with all kinds of new visual effects tools. The same kinds of tools that made Life of Pi so magical will bring The Jungle Book to new life. And the voice cast ain’t so bad, either. Elba will be joined by Scarlett Johansson, Lupita Nyong’o, Bill Murray, Christopher Walken, Giancarlo Esposito and Ben Kingsley. Underrated is the fact that of all the voice casts listed here, this is the most diverse. One school of thought might say that a jungle setting calls for a more diverse range of accents and tones. But that’s not a given. They did cast Scarlett Johansson as Kaa.

The film looks slick and will be in theaters on April 15. So pay your taxes, then use whatever is left on bare necessities.

Ellen Page and Rainn Wilson, Robodog

The picture above is all we really have from Robodog, a movie that will feature voice acting from Ellen Page, Rainn Wilson, Ron Perlman and Glee star Chris Colfer. It will be the first film from newcomer Marza Animation Planet Inc. and be directed by the Oscar-nominated Henry F. Anderson (Gnomeo & Juliet).

The story goes something like this: it’s about “an unlikely duo who couldn’t be more different. KC (Kinetic Canine) (Colfer) is a bright, energetic but overzealous robotic dog, while Marshall (Perlman) is an old, curmudgeonly “real” dog, set in his ways and has little patience for anything new. This canine odd couple embarks on the adventure of a lifetime where each will learn the true nature of friendship, and not to judge a book by its cover.”

This has a real Doogal smell to it from afar. Remember Doogal, the movie in which Kevin Smith voiced a moose? Without a trailer, it’s hard to say. It could end up being something more akin to Gnomeo & Juliet or Over the Hedge. As in, not that bad.

We’ll know hopefully sometime in 2016, as it hasn’t locked down a hard release date just yet.

Ellen, Idris Elba and Dominic West, Finding Dory

There’s Idris Elba again. And Albert Brooks, for those who are keeping score at home. Pixar’s only 2016 movie is a sequel, something they don’t always nail. But it’s a return to the seas for director Andrew Stanton and a return for Pixar to one of its most beloved franchises (one that grossed almost a billion dollars worldwide in 2003).

This is Pixar’s first chance in a long time to make a legitimately good sequel. Toy Story 3 was a hit, but that was 5 years ago. Since then they’ve made a ho-hum sequel to Monsters, Inc. and put another Cars movie on the schedule for 2017. Finding Nemo is a top-flight Pixar movie. Easily in the top three regardless of who you ask. It was also a gigantic box office hit, despite the fact that it had a relatively low-key voice cast. It was all about making the world under the sea vibrant and alive. If they can accomplish something similar this time around, they will have yet another big winner on their hands.

Finding Dory drops on June 17.

Predictions and Prop Bets

In summation, here are a few predictions for the talking animal projects of 2016:

Highest Box Office Gross: Finding Dory, with The Secret Life of Pets a close second thanks to an on-point marketing campaign from Universal (and Kevin Hart on every late night show).

Most Think Pieces Generated: Animals, because everything HBO does generates a lot of chatter. It will benefit from being on every week for more than 2 months. And it will likely touch on relevant social issues that kids movies won’t touch.

Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: The Jungle Book. This movie is the highest risk-reward bet of the bunch. It stands to really wow audiences and critics in the heat of summer movie season. Plus if Finding Dory is anything less than stellar, critics are always waiting to pummel Pixar for making too many sequels (often unfairly, especially lately).

Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: Based on the trailer alone, Nine Lives is going to get slaughtered. But Robodog is the dark horse, assuming anyone sees it.

Movie That Will Cost Parents The Most Money in Merch: Zootopia. It’s got a million characters, it exists inside the Disney Marketing Machine and I’m pretty sure I’ve already got a sloth plush on order, I just don’t know it yet.

Did I miss something?

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For the Love of Storytelling - Why I Can't Stop Going to Film Festivals

When you really think about it - film festivals are a bit crazy. They gather up 100+ films, show them all 3 or 4 times over the course of 10 days, invite thousands and thousands of movie fans to town, and most of us (at least many of my colleagues) watch as many of them as we can. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, we all get to tweet and discuss these films instantly, spreading the word about what's good (or bad) to fellow film fans who are not in attendance. While everyone else around the world is going about their normal day jobs, thousands of us (various members of the press, industry, cinephiles and beyond) are packing in 3, 4, or 5, sometimes even 6 films every day. We're desperate to see something that leaves us in awe. I adore festivals.

Why do we do this? Why do we subject ourselves to a few hours of sleep each night, barely one meal a day, trudging through the cold and snow just to stare at a screen for hours? Why so much stress and anxiety? It's because great films make your life better. This comes true every day. It's because great films inspire us to be passionate, they make us care about other people no matter their suffering or differences, they make us think deeply about the world we live on, and wonder how we can make this a better place for everyone. They open up our minds to think about different stories that we've never heard before, showing us unique perspectives, and they address in subtle ways the concerns, fears, anxieties, fixations and joys of storytellers.

Every film that I see at a film festival, no matter if it's good or bad, makes me a better person. I mean that. They have taught me about different lifestyles, different ways to cope, different ways to learn or change. They have taught me that this world is an amazingly big place, with so much beauty to be found, even in the darkest places. They have shown me that we're all individuals, and we shouldn't be anyone but ourselves; but we're also all the same, we're all human beings with feelings and love to offer. They have reminded me that I'm not alone in my fears, my convictions. They have shown me there are other ways to approach every situation. They have shown me the most respectable people are the ones who care the most about others.

These are only some of the reasons why I can't stop going to film festivals. It's not just the films, but it's all the people, the experiences, the friends, the volunteers, and everyone I meet along the way. It's about being able to shake the hand and chat with a filmmaker whose film I just saw the night before. It's about giving a proper standing ovation to the cast and crew that made a film that left me floored and in tears. It's about engaging in lively discussions with strangers about their favorite films they've seen during the festival. It's about being filled with vivid emotions when a person you just learned about is suddenly standing in front of you. It's about catching up with old friends, making new ones, and recognizing that we're all here together.

I have an immense amount of respect for each and every filmmaker / screenwriter / producer / actor I meet at film festivals. They are the storytellers that have made my life better. These are the people that have inspired me to be a better person and open my mind. They have figured out how to reach deep into each and every one of us, stir up emotions, grab our attention, and make our minds light up with thoughts. They are the ones going all out, committing so much time and money to create a 90 minute (or 120 minute) movie that audiences may or may not love. These are the people who are risking everything to express their true selves. Film festivals are where storytellers thrive, and where I get to fall in love with the stories they've told.

It really hit me when I was at the annual "blogger party" at Sundance this year. This is my 10th year back at Sundance, and I feel like a true veteran, as I know this town so well. At the party, I met a few young bloggers (including Sergio from Crossfader Mag + Jasper and Nelson from Cinemacy) attending for their first time. We chatted about films and festivals, and I suddenly realized in the middle of a conversation that I was passing the torch to the next generation. I remember my first time at Sundance, looking up to all the other critics who had been attending for years. But this time I was the old one, I was the guy who'd been around forever, imparting wisdom to newcomers. I am truly honored, and humbled, to still be here 10 years later.

Film festivals are my jam. I love them more than I love just about anything else. I still love attending for all 10 days, it's the complete experience. I still love packing in 5 films in a day, no matter how tired I am. I still love walking in to watch a film I don't know anything about, in hopes that maybe it's everything I've been waiting to see. I still love meeting people at film festivals, talking with friends old and new, and catching up with my colleagues in the industry. We're all here with the same goal - to be moved by unforgettable stories; to seek out great films and rave about the ones we love. This is what cinema is all about – the power to connect, inspire, engage, change, improve. Thank you, Sundance, for all these fond memories over the years.

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What’s Happening on Hulu

This week, enjoy a vacation from winter’s muted palette with Directing in Color, our free festival on Hulu, featuring a selection of our favorite directors’ first films in color. On offer are: Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, and Tim Whelan’s The . . .

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Kathryn Bigelow & Mark Boal Making a Film on Detroit's Race Riots

This sounds like it could be pretty good. After making Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal were planning to make a movie about POW Bowe Bergdahl. They've been working on it but with changes in Bowe's story and planned coverage in the upcoming second season of the podcast Serial (not to mention competing projects), they've decided to look for something else in the meantime. Deadline reports that Bigelow and Boal are next working on a film (currently untitled) that will be set around the race riots in Detroit in 1967. They're already pushing forward on pre-production with plans to release in 2017.

Details are a bit sparse right now, but the other amazing news about this project is that it will be financed by Annapurna Pictures (The Master, Zero Dark Thirty, Her, American Hustle, Joy, Foxcatcher, Everybody Wants Some). Deadline states that filming will start in the summer. "Boal has been researching and working on the project, which explores systemic racism in urban Detroit, for more than a year." This is definitely a hot topic right now and I'm curious to see how they're going to tell this story. The Detroit riots, aka the "12th Street Riot", in July of 1967 lasted five days and was started when the police raided a bar and arrested over 80 black people who were holding a celebration for a soldier who'd just returned home from Vietnam.

The report doesn't reveal what the exact plot will be, or the characters we'll follow. Bigelow & Boal last made Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker together, and also worked on the script for the Triple Frontier movie (which J.C. Chandor is now directing). We'll keep watching for updates as the project continues to develop.

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Is You, Me and The Apocalypse a Winner?

Welcome to Last Night on TV, our daily column that looks back at what happened on television the night before. If we’re going to stay up all night and watch TV, we might as well talk about it the next morning.

Last night on TV, we spend some time at the end of the world with You, Me and The Apocalypse, Alisha Grauso checks in on the second episode of Legends of Tomorrow, and Christopher Campbell reviews both Top Chef and Portlandia‘s midseason return. Plus some quick notes about Baskets.

Legends of Tomorrow

Alisha Grauso: The second episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was technically part two of the pilot that aired last week, and I’m impressed at how quickly the show is already taking care of some of the weaker points from the first episode. Last week’s episode was fun, but a completely rushed mess that focused too heavily on the wrong characters. Part two, however, slowed down a bit and started to focus more on the character development that is so vital to an ensemble show. Last week was a bunch of disparate characters with very little background thrown into a situation that asked for some serious suspension of disbelief from viewers; this week, those characters actually had time to breathe and interact with one another. The result was some great moments of dialogue, most notably from Captain Cold, who manages to steal every scene he’s in, and Heat Wave, who may be crazy, but at least he’s loyal and crazy.

This may mostly be a team of criminals and miscreants, but they’re miscreants with heart, and this episode showed that. The team dynamic has already started to gel as everyone got the chance to pair up in small groups to accomplish their individual objectives: Captain Cold and Heat Wave with The Atom; Martin Stein and Jefferson Jackson – Firestorm – with White Canary; Hawkman and Hawkgirl together. Those small groupings gave the team a chance to interact with one another and start breaking down the barriers that separate them from one another. And there was a nice, poignant moment between Stein and Rip Hunter that showed us that maybe Rip Hunter isn’t quite as oblivious to the enormous sacrifices he’s asking this team to make as we thought.

That’s not to say there wasn’t spectacle: A truly fun scene featured the entire team joining forces to battle Vandal Savage and it was as chaotic as you’d expect – Firestorm and Atom flying around and blasting things while White Canary, Captain Cold, and Heat Wave held it down on the ground, Hawkman and Hawkgirl doing…whatever it is they do.

And that right there is the only major problem with Legends of Tomorrow: Both Hawkman and Hawkgirl are really hard to care about (though I’m starting to slowly come around on Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders), and the storyline of them being separated through centuries and losing their son last week feels both forced and rushed. It’s hard to get emotionally invested in a story about star-crossed soulmates when you can’t really feel any chemistry between them. When Carter apologized to Kendra for pushing her too hard and too fast to care for him, he may as well have been apologizing to us, the audience. Later, when he was killed by Vandal Savage (but temporarily because, you know…reincarnation) and the team finally came together fully to mourn his loss, it was only thanks to the strength of the other cast members that the scene had any emotional resonance. Hawkman and Hawkgirl may be inextricably linked to Vandal Savage, but if Legends wants to move forward, it needs to unlink itself from the thus far dead weight of their story as the focus, and fast. If it does, this just might end up being one of the most entertaining and fun shows on television.

You, Me and The Apocalypse

Neil Miller: Until it actually happens, the notion of the impending apocalypse will always be an interesting thought experiment for modern humanity. And as our real world continues to grow more and more cynical, the idea that we’re all going to be taken in an Extinction Level Event is something that we will continue to explore. For show creator Iain Hollands, whose previous work can be narrowed to the British comedy Beaver Falls, this means gathering together all the talent that NBC can find for a comedy about our end of days.

It involves putting Jenna Fischer, in her first prominent TV project since playing Pam on The Office, in prison. And Rob Lowe shows up as a smoking, swearing priest. If the previews are to be believed, Parks and Rec‘s Nick Offerman is going to show up very soon. It’s going to be a who’s who of NBC last few decades of television. Plus, the apocalypse!

The bulk of this show’s first episode rests on the shoulders of Fischer and Peep Show alum Matthew Baynton. With a nice assist from newcomer Gaia Scodellaro, who plays it straight next to the absurd priesthood of Rob Lowe. The first episode plays fast and loose with backstory, but the opening scene tells us that these characters — those of Fischer, Baynton and Scodalerro — make it into a bunker as the world is about to be demolished by a comet. The mystery that Hollands and his writer’s room are unraveling is how they ended up there. And as half hour comedy pilots go, it’s a fun little puzzle with plenty of laughter along the way. We’re likely to learn a lot more in the coming episodes as the show begins to introduce the other 12 people who end up in the bunker. Next week’s promo indulges us in more white supremacy, Rob Lowe investigating the second coming of Jesus Christ and yes, Nick Offerman with a shotgun. The big question for this show going forward will be whether or not the apocalyptic thought experiment or the characters are more interesting. Or perhaps both. If it’s both, we’re in for a good time.

Top Chef

Christopher Campbell: This week, the chef-testants were given some really fun challenges, and for some reason they didn’t really have any fun at all. First up was a “food porn” Quickfire Challenge where the remaining nine had to make pretty plates consisting of creatively arranged junk food, like chips and candy. They got to be artistic, which isn’t really the strong suit of most of them, but they did seem happy to play around, and Phillip got to be uber precise in his usual obnoxious manner. The winner of immunity in this task was chosen by Instagram and wasn’t revealed until after the main challenge. Karen got the most “likes” for her kid-friendly “mud” design, which stood out for being different at least.

For the big event, the chefs were tasked with feeding the attendants of one of Vibiana’s Beefsteak events. They’re told that this is an occasion for the wealthy and Hollywood elite (including Colin Hanks and Arrow’s Cynthia Addai-Robinson were among those prominently highlighted) to wear fancy clothes but then dig into meats without utensils or napkins. It seemed pretty clear the idea was to cook up a carnivore’s dream, something for a caveman, as it’s noted too late. Too many people still went for dainty cuisine, a lot of seafood over red meat, as if they thought a well-cooked slab wasn’t worthy of the show or something. Only Phillip really got the challenge, serving up lamb on the bone, and big bearded Chad was out for giving the people fish with leafy greens.

At least it was one of those episodes where the judges appeared to be drinking way too much, tossing their leftover bones across the room and encouraging chefs to talk about putting their sausage in people’s mouths. And that was in the same episode that spotlighted, during the Quickfire, an Instagram-famous guest judge who goes by the name Chef Jacques La Merde (or Jacques the Shit).

Portlandia

Christopher Campbell: Kyle Maclachlan made a return to the show as the Mayor of Portland in this hilarious satire of aging Gen Xers. I’m actually slightly younger than Carrie Brownstein, but I could relate more to what Fred Armisen’s character was going through. He wakes up one day with a full head of grey hair and wonders how that could happen since he believes he’s only in his early 30s. After all, he’s still hip and listens to cool music and stuff. During an absurd scene with his mother, he finds out he’s actually 48! Was he asleep for much longer, like Rip Van Winkle? No, it just creeps up on us. He sets out on a quest that takes him to see Kumail Nanjiani and an astrophysicist who gives him a box with a black hole in it. After diving in, he learns that all he needs to do is dye his hair. But isn’t grey hip now?

Maclachlan appears for a scene with Carrie, telling her it’s time to make good on a deal they made years earlier to have kids if they weren’t with anyone at this point in their lives. She’s not interested in his can of sperm, but she does consider having a baby with someone. Because that’s what getting old for women is, needing to have kids before time runs out, while for men it’s needing to still be a big kid before — well, time never runs out for that. She sees the worst jokester of an OB/GYN, meets up with her pals, including Natasha Lyonne because she dates Armisen so she’s on this show regularly now, and they explain the physical reality of birth’s damage to your body. Eventually Carrie asks Fred if he wants to have a baby, and he says yes.

Baskets

Neil Miller: Not a terrible lot to say about Baskets this week, if I’m honest. Yet another episode that explores the meekness of Martha and provides for a nice sandbox in which Martha Kelly can play. She’s a lot of fun. You know who else is a lot of fun? Louie Anderson. He brings a real Roseanne vibe to this show and every moment he is on screen is a delight. If he continues to find screen time, this show will continue to soar on its own messed up wavelength.

What did you watch last night?

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Watch: First Trailer for New Remake of Eli Roth's 'Cabin Fever' Horror

Another day, another remake. The first official trailer for the remake of Eli Roth's 2002 horror film Cabin Fever has arrived online. I don't know why anyone felt it was necessary to remake this horror film, but they went for it anyway. Eli Roth actually executive produced this new version of his freaky horror hit, which is full of pretty people screaming and getting all bloody and chopped up. The cast includes Gage Golightly, Matthew Daddario, Nadine Crocker, Dustin Ingram, Samuel Davis, Louise Linton and Randy Schulman. Nothing I'm interested in seeing, but if you're curious about this film, give this trailer a look.

Here's the first trailer for Travis Zariwny's Cabin Fever remake, found directly on YouTube:

A group of five friends rent a getaway cabin in the woods and begin to fall victim to a horrifying flesh-eating virus, which attracts the unwanted attention of the homicidal locals. This film is a remake of Eli Roth's Cabin Fever from 2002. This new Cabin Fever is directed by Travis Zariwny (a former production designer and camera assistant), from a screenplay written by Randy Pearlstein. Eli Roth executive produced this remake. Zariwny's Cabin Fever arrives in theaters starting February 12th this winter. Anyone going?

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Sundance 2016: Down a Crazy Rabbit Hole in 'Tickled' Documentary

This documentary is freakier than most horror movies. Tickled is not really a documentary about tickling, even though it is a documentary about tickling. Produced out of New Zealand, this entertaining and egaging documentary (co-directed by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve) follows Kiwi pop culture journalist David Farrier as he investigates a company that films professional tickling events. It all starts when he discovers a wacky video online of "competitive endurance tickling", and attempts to contact the people behind it. Suddenly, David is tumbling down a rabbit hole of legal threats and insane discoveries as he attempts to get to the bottom of this. It becomes a doc about the abuse of money, and how power hungry some people are.

One the main reasons Tickled is so entertaining is David Farrier, as he is pretty much the star of the film (leading every new discovery) and he has a very appealing on-screen vibe, like realizing he's your best friend five minutes after meeting him. Farrier gets in almost too deep with this doc, putting himself at risk because the people he reaches out to go after him with very serious legal (and personal) threats. For some of the film I was reminded of Catfish, another documentary from Sundance 2010 where every next scene in the story seems to be crazier than the one before it. Every new discovery is more insane than the last, and watching it unfold this way was both terrifying and exhilarating. I can't shake this documentary from my thoughts.

At this point I'm honestly nervous to even write about it. Tickled is less about tickling and much more about how wealthy people use their limitless power to control other people, hiding behind the internet (and the privacy that money provides them) and making it genuinely scary to even address them in any way thanks to threats from lawyers (they even hired a lawyer in New Zealand to go after them). But that's why this is such an incredible doc, as it's hard to forget it once you've seen it. There are so many "what the fuck?!" moments in it, and by the end none of the important questions are actually answered, making it even more mysterious and unbelievable. But that's the scariest part - I do believe it. These kind of people are definitely out there.

My biggest complaint is that I wanted to see more than it does show, I wanted to learn more about what was going on. It ends at a point in the story where I'm already so invested and caught up in what's going on, that I wondered if this was just Part 1. Will they be back at Sundance in 2017 with the sequel? It certainly seems like this story isn't over yet. The film never actually answers the question of why tickling is the cover for this person's actions, but maybe that's the whole point - they could never find out the answer to that question because the people behind the "tickling competitions" did not want that answer revealed. I'm still curious why that is. When you see the lengths they go to to stop this, it's seriously shocking and very eye-opening.

To top it off, apparently one of the subjects seen in the film that objected to being shown on film at all was at our screening furiously taking notes. The cops were called but he had already left by then. David, at the Q&A afterwards, talked about how shaken up he was after hearing he was there. I'm freaked out, too. In the back of my mind, there's a tinge of consideration that maybe this is just like Catfish - it's not all what it seems. But the more I think about it, the more I believe that David and Dylan stumbled upon something much bigger, much scarier, than just a story about being tickled for money. They ended making a story about how our crazy money-driven society works and the abuses of power so prevalent in every corner of this world.

Alex's Sundance 2016 Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter - @firstshowing

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2016 Oscar Nominated Documentary Short Films Ranked From Worst to Best

It’s that special time of year when movie theaters all over America start playing short films. Some places are hosting a total of 15 of them. Most of those participating, though, will be screening only 10. The shorts receiving this privileged exhibition are the Oscar nominees in the three categories devoted to the best in cinema of a length of 40 minutes or less. Thanks to ShortsHD, each category — live-action, animated and documentary — are showing separately (docs in fewer theaters), and all five contenders for each are included. You can find them in a theater near you (find one here) beginning this Friday.

Continuing our review and ranking of the 2016 Oscar-nominated shorts (see our posts on the animated and live-action contenders), below is my take on the documentary category. Despite typically favoring nonfiction films, I’ve never been too excited about the docs chosen by the Academy. They seem mainly highlighted for what they’re about rather than how they’re about. This year is no exception, unfortunately, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few notably strong shorts in the bunch, great films with significant subjects. As always, it’s a tough category to predict since it’s not necessarily about quality, but I will bet the one former winner in the category won’t get it again. Regarding their theatrical run starting this weekend, I don’t recommend it as being necessary. Two are already streaming on Netflix and the other three air on HBO within the next six months.

 

5. Body Team 12

Actress Olivia Wilde and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen are executive producers of this 13-minute short that looks at Ebola victim clean up in Liberia. The film focuses on one member of the titular team tasked with collecting the bodies of the dead, transporting them and burning them in a crematorium. This woman tells of the dangers, the need for brave people to risk their lives for the sake their country, the reasons why women are more suited to be a part of Body Team 12 and the drama that comes with trying to collect bodies from families who violently refuse to let their loved ones go, especially to be incinerated, despite the concern for contagion.

There’s no question that this is an important subject, a multi-personal side of the Ebola story that most of us wouldn’t see otherwise, and there’s no question that the primary documented worker, Garmai, is a brave woman. The doc, however, is pretty basic stuff. It’s hard to see the achievement of the filmmaking, outside of maybe director David Darg risked his own life to capture this story. But he didn’t capture it adequately enough as it was happening, or didn’t trust that footage to work on its own, so has Garmai comment on what we’re seeing through a later interview, reality TV-style, so even though it’s a film that shows a lot, it’s more interesting in telling. Body Team 12 is the kind of doc short that seems more likely nominated because of the content than how it’s presented. Fortunately it’s quite brief, a quick in and out with the essential facts and narrative and that’s it.

Could it win? Typically the worst nominee, in my opinion, winds up being the winner, so I guess we can bet on it.

How else to see it: HBO, premiering March 12th

 

4. Chau, Beyond the Lines

Think the effects of Agent Orange have decreased by now? It’s been 45 years since the stuff was last dropped over Vietnam, but children continue to be born with defects as a result of what it did to the environment there. Courtney Marsh’s film highlights the ongoing aftermath of the war on its people but focuses solely on one teenager with physical disabilities caused by America’s use of “orange crush.” Filmed over eight years, Chau is followed from a care center filled with other disabled kids, mostly orphans, back home to his unloving parents and through various other residences as he tries to make it on his own as an artist.

Chau, Beyond the Lines is at first heartbreaking and angering and shocking — particularly for how the care center is a tourist spot for people to gawk at the poor, deformed children. Then it becomes an inspirational tale of the highest order. This is a film that takes the overcoming all odds and obstacles idea to the extreme. Chau barely has use of his hands and his legs are different sizes, but he’s of very sound and passionate mind to do what he loves. While only 34 minutes, the short doc does feel a lot longer, due to the span of time. And it does seems a little directionless in the middle. Obviously that’s how it had to have been for much of those eight years, until Marsh found some kind of conclusion or at least a solid stopping point. At least she didn’t try to stretch it out to a feature.

Could it win? It’s possible, given that it’s similar to 2012 winner Inocente except here the artist is disabled not undocumented, which could be seen as even more powerful to the voters.

How else to see it: Netflix

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