Jameson’s Best & Worst of Sundance

I had a really great time at Sundance, and have to say that for the most part, every film I saw was a pretty solid effort from the filmmakers. There were a few that really impressed me, and a few that didn’t. Here’s an overview of how I spent my time in Park City:

Top 5:

Black Snake Moan director Craig Brewer’s follow up to his breakthrough Hustle and Flow is another tale set in the south that centers on the transformative power of music. Here we have the blues instead of rap music, and the change sought is spiritual rather than socio-economic. Christina Ricci stars as a small-town Tennessee sex addict left for dead, Samuel L. Jackson the broken down blues guitarist who saves her life, then aims to save her soul. It’s nice to hear Jackson quoting scripture again.

Offscreen: From award-winning Danish filmmaker Christoffer Boe, a highly experimental fictional video-diary of actor Nicholas Bro as he descends into madness and violence after his girlfriend leaves him. Grungy videography has the look of a Dogme 95 film, but none of the stipulations on technique. Bro’s performance is brilliant and terrifying.

Fido: Great zombie comedy flick, funnier and more off the wall than Shaun of the Dead. Willard is a small town an idealized version of 1950’s America where flesh eating zombies walk the earth, but are kept under control by behavior modifying collars. It goes beyond parody to tap into the social-commentary vein that was the driving force behind Romero’s films.

The Signal: Great post-apocalyptic horror film where a transmission is sent out across every phone, television set, and radio (basically anything that picks up a signal), and turns those exposed to it into violent maniacs. The collaborative effort by three Atlanta-based filmmakers, it is suspenseful, bloody, and very scary. The world premiere got an incredible audience reaction, and rumor has it the directors were getting offers for the film before the screening was even over.

Protagonist: Best documentary the festival had to offer. Director Jessica Yu interviews four men of diverse backgrounds who sought to transform themselves through extremism – there’s a German terrorist, a Mexican bank robber, and ex-gay evangelist, and a teenage martial arts student. Yu uses rod puppets to interweave her subjects with scenes from 5th Century B.C. playwright Euripides’ body of work. My personal favorite is Mark Salzman’s (martial arts student) recollection of his insane Kung Fu instructor’s unconventional training techniques.

Other films I saw:

Chicago 10, Chapter 27, A Very British Gangster, It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE!, We Are the Strange, Resurrecting the Champ, Wonders Are Many, Teeth, Son of Rambow, VHS Kaloucha, River’s Edge

Least Impressive:

Zoo: Way too much dramatization calls you to question whether this can even be considered a documentary. Filmmakers give a boring, one-sided treatment of an attention-grabbing incident – a man’s tragic death from internal bleeding after having sex with a horse.

Smiley Face: Sure Anna Faris looks pretty hot as burnout slacker Jane, sure it’s a pretty funny movie, but it seems to drag on between the jokes, and the 80 min. runtime feels much longer than it should. I credit director Gregg Araki with continuing his departure from the campy, ultraviolent teen sex romps that make up the majority of his resume, but after Mysterious Skin, you would expect something more than this.