Scarves and winter jackets. Boots and sunglasses. Snowy mountains and film tickets. It’s the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah!
Hosted by the non-profit Sundance Film Institute, it’s one of the largest independent films festivals in the United States, the place to premiere famous films such as Reservoir Dogs, The Blair Witch Project, The Usual Suspects, Napoleon Dynamite, and Little Miss Sunshine. This year’s Sundance ran from January 16-26, 2014, ten wonderful days of over 200 dramatic features, short films, and live music.
The films range from Spotlight films that have shown elsewhere but were officially selected for the festival, film premieres of various dramatic films to be released in 2014, and US Dramatic and World Dramatic films and documentaries competing in the festival for awards.
Whiplash, originally a 2013 Sundance award-winning short film, took home this year both the US Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and the Audience Award: US Dramatic. Directed by Damien Chazelle, the film told a story of a 19-year-old drummer, Andrew (a breakout role for Miles Teller, whom you may or may not have seen in the flop that was a Footloose remake, back in 2011), who, practicing under his brutal instructor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), was determined to reach perfection at all costs. It’s more than likely that this film would be widely distributed very soon.
God Help the Girl, recipient of the World Cinematic Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Performance, is the first feature film, directed and written, by Stuart Murdoch, lead singer and songwriter of the band, Belle and Sebastian. The ensemble featured Emily Browning (Sucker Punch’s Babydoll), Olly Alexander, and Hannah Murray (the British series, Skins’ Cassie Ainsworth). Browning takes the center role as Eve, a emotionally troubled girl living in Glasgow, Scotland, whose songwriting leads her to two musicians, James (Alexander) and Cassie (Murray). I’m curious about a story about songwriting written by a songwriter himself, yet the reviews so far are less than flattering.
The Skeleton Twins, starring Saturday Night Live alums Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as twins Maggie and Milo, won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Craig Johnson, the director and co-screenwriter alongside screenwriter Mark Heyman, crafted a melancholic, yet funny and touching film on a pair of siblings’ reunion after years of being apart. An award winning script always sets a film apart from the rest. Add in performances from Hader and Wiig, and I’m set on waiting for this film to hit theaters.
If you’re missing Pacific Rim’s Rinko Kikuchi, she’s made her return in Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, directed by David Zellner, this year’s US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Musical Score winner. (The film’s score was composed by The Octopus Project.) An introspective Tokyo girl living a mundane life as an office lady, Kumiko becomes obsessed with the famous Coen Brothers’ film, Fargo. Convinced that the briefcase containing treasure in the film was real, she sets out on a journey to Minnesota to search for it. The synopsis alone intrigued me, and, as we all know, Rinko Kikuchi doesn’t disappoint.
The next two films may not have won awards but clearly have won the critics over. Idiosyncratic, delightful, and dramatic, these are Sundance’s top rated films.
Frank, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, features redhead Domhnall Gleeson as Jon, a young man seeking to become a musician, who finds himself entangled in an eccentric band, led by Frank (Michael Fassbender) and his right hand woman, Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Sounds like another journey of Jon finding himself as a musician, but no – you don’t get to see Fassbender’s face in any scene of the film. He spends the entirety of Frank wearing a giant paper mache head, and yet Frank itself is more than that. It’s a rich comedy already lauded by critics as an examination of art and nature of artists. Music and Michael Fassbender in a light role, after all his Steve McQueen, drama-heavy characters, well, why not?
Critics claim our next film to be the best of its director’s career. Acclaimed director and screenwriter Richard Linklater, who has brought us the unforgettable Before (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight) trilogy over the years, finally premiered his film, Boyhood. With a shoot which started all the way back in 2002, the crew and Linklater met up annually to film the script, following a young boy’s (Ellar Salmon as a boy and Ethan Hawke, a Linklater regular, as his father) 12-year journey, from boyhood to becoming a college freshman. Now that’s dedication in filmmaking. I’ve loved Linklater’s work, and I trust this would more than likely become a top favorite in 2014.
The last two are favorite picks of mine, films I’m especially looking forward to seeing and which have premiered at this year’s Sundance.
Chloe Moretz (Kick Ass’s Hit Girl) teamed up for the first time with Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean’s Elizabeth Swann, or, more recently, Anna Karenina in a film of the same name) in the film Laggies, directed by Lynn Shelton, a comedy about 28-year-old Megan (Knightley), who refuses to grow up. Fleeing after her high school boyfriend suddenly proposes, Megan seeks refuge at her 16-year-old friend Annika’s (Moretz) home and encounters Annika’s single father (Sam Rockwell). A star-studded cast in a coming-of-age comedy about three intertwined lives in today’s “imperfect reality” (official Sundance review)? Of course, I’m excited about this.
Our last film, Life After Beth, is what its cast likes to call a “zom-com-rom-drom,” a romantic drama featuring comedic moments and, obviously, a zombie. Except the zombie happens to be Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation’s April Ludgate). Jeff Baena’s directorial and screenwriting debut puts a unique twist on the zom-rom-com (Zombie Romantic Comedy) genre. Dane DeHaan (soon-to-be The Amazing Spiderman 2’s Harry Osborn) stars as Zach, a devastated-turned-confused boyfriend of a mysteriously resurrected girl, Beth. While Zach is initially eager to have a second chance to mend his relationship with Beth, who seems to have forgotten their fight before her death, things take a turn for the worse. As the undead mixes in with the living, Beth turns out not to be as “alive” as she may seem. Framed by the critics as “funnier than Warm Bodies and sweeter than Zombieland,” both of which I have seen and can verify to be decent zom-rom-coms, Life After Beth sounds like a fun ride to take.
2014 is shaping up to be another great year in films. Blockbusters may have already lined up to dominate box offices, but it’s these independent films which, more than often, tend to affect you in a way you may have not thought of before.
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