The best movies of the year came from the elder classmen, the cinephile household names: Herzog, Malick, Scorsese, Almodovar, Skolimowski. Hopefully, some promising freshman will start to emerge in 2012.
We had an smidgen of an idea that the Real to Reel section might be especially strong this year, but with the likes of Frederick Wiseman, Rithy Panh, Jonathan Demme, Werner Herzog, Jessica Yu, Alex Gibney, Joe Berlinger, Ron Fricke, Nick Broomfield and Michael Glawogger, we're now beginning to think that Thom Powers' section has not only outclassed Toronto's sister event Hot Docs, but just about any other doc-related film festival.
Odds that a Sundance short films program will be a good harvest are in the high percentile -- with over 6000 short film submissions sent in and about less than 100 selected certainly increases those odds. In any given year at the festival, you could easily trace back a filmmaker's presenting his/her feature film to the roots of shorts included in the fest from previous years.
Autopsy is not a very good film. In its defense, though, it doesn't seem like 'a good film' is what writer/director Adam Gierasch actually intended to make...more like 'a gross film'.