Sundance 2010: Twelve Mini-Reviews

Posted on Saturday January 30, 2010, 01:00 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar

ONE FESTIVAL DARLING
I wanted to like the much-hyped Howl (pictured), but though I was dazzled by James Franco's great and very plausible portrayal of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, I think this experimental docudrama went in a few too many different directions. Primarily, it's an account of the 1957 trial in which San Francisco bookshop owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was taken to court for publishing and selling obscene material, namely Ginsberg's 1955 poem Howl, a semi-autobiographical tribute to his peers. The courtroom scenes were funny and quite insightful, but the filmmakers chose to weave in three extra elements: a faux 'interview', in which Ginsberg talks to an unseen journalist; a recreation of the poem's first ever public reading in 1955; and, most mystifying of all, some animated sections seeking to replicate the poem's jazzy, freeform imagery. Beat aficionados will find elements to enjoy, but, personally, I think this won't serve the experts and casual viewers may well find themselves baffled.

ONE MIDNIGHT MOVIE
Sundance wouldn't be Sundance without a horror film that puts you off doing something you wouldn't normally do. This year's Open Water is Frozen, in which three kids get stranded on a ski lift after blagging into a resort and dodging the usual admissions system. It takes a little while to get started, but the tension ratchets up when the power stops and the lights go down: do they jump (it's way too far) or climb the overhead wires (which are razor-sharp)? To say more would rob the film of the few surprises it has, and though it's technically a very impressive achievement, there wasn't enough peril to keep me going, and where the film should have been at its bloodiest and scariest, it was at its talkiest and worthiest.

ONE BY JOEL SCHUMACHER
Twelve, by Joel Schumacher, was an odd inclusion in this year's line-up. not being mainstream enough to work as a more commercial complement to main the selection and being a bit too serious for the OC-style world it seeks to lift the lid on. The title refers to a made-up drug – a fortuitous mix of cocaine and ecstasy – that has Manhattan in a whirl, and causes the death of a fanatical user when he pulls a gun on his dealer (50 Cent). The dead kid's cousin is a more scrupulous drug merchant named White Mike (Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford), who sells weed to rich kids, and what unfolds is a sort of junior Bret Easton Ellis story as an unnamed, omniscient narrator (Keifer Sutherland) recounts several fateful days in their lives. As usual in a Schumacher film, the cast is drop-dead gorgeous – which is handy, since quite a few of them do eventually drop dead. But while it was entertaining enough, the narration felt overdone and intrusive, even if the ghastly milieu was very deftly sketched.

TWO STARRING KATIE HOLMES
The Extra Man proved to be a bit of white elephant in the long run; while I laughed frequently, and thoroughly enjoyed it, I couldn't help thinking that this was a film that had been helped along by the high altitude. A sort of bohemian comedy that mixes elements of The Producers with Withnail & I, it starts with a nerdy, cross-dressing fixated schoolteacher (Paul Dano) being made redundant from a high-class school and moving to New York, where he lodges with a down-and-out dandy (Kevin Kline). Dano and Kline are great, with Kline giving an energetic and infectious performance. Ultimately, though, it felt just a little too fragmented and undernourished, especially in scenes that posited Katie Holmes as the love interest that never does anything much of interest. To balance this, Katie takes the lead in The Romantics, a film about a yuppie wedding that made me want to set fire to my eyes. Holmes plays a successful writer who attends the wedding of an old friend as her maid of honour, which is pretty weird to start with as it soon turns out that the groom is her ex-boyfriend (Josh Duhamel). There is a lot of soul-searching, truths are faced, and old romances may or may not be rekindled. “I want to die of excitement,” yells Holmes. Sadly, I had no such luck.

THREE WITH GREAT ACTING
Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right was the first bona fide buzz film of the festival, later going for $4.5m to Focus Features. I can see why, even though I wasn't exactly bowled over by it. The chief reason Focus bought it, I think, is because it features powerhouse performances by Julianne Moore and, in particular, Annette Bening as a pair of married middle-aged lesbians who each have a child by artificial insemination. Unknown to them, their kids become curious about their father and contact the sperm bank, which puts them in touch with Romeo restaurateur Paul (Mark Ruffalo), and for a while this new and rather odd family unit has fun finding out about itself. But when one of the moms falls for Paul, all hell breaks loose, and Cholodenko balances the serious notes with the comedy very well, even if the set-up will be a bit too bohemian for mainstream audiences. A more sombre affair was Blue Valentine, in which Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling play a young couple falling out of love in a film that resembles [500] Days Of Summer if it had been made by Ingmar Bergman. Like everyone here, I thought it was sensitive and smart, if a little long and rather indulgent of its actors' choices. Similarly stony-faced was Winter's Bone, a languid, poverty-shack drama in which a poor white hillbilly girl (Jennifer Lawrence) must make sure her missing jailbird father makes his upcoming court appearance – because if he doesn't, the local bondsman will take the family home as collateral. The few laughs are sardonic and grim, and the general mood is dour and a little grubby. Lawrence, though, is just amazing; I imagine she'll get a special mention at the awards ceremony on Saturday night.

FOUR DOCUMENTARIES
I missed most of the more political docs, like Waiting For Superman, Restrepo and Gas Land, but I made an effort to catch Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's Shock Doctrine, even though it was on More 4 recently. Short and sweet, it offers a page-turning speed-read of Naomi Klein's famous book, but, despite some good archive footage, it didn't really tell me much I didn't know already or hadn't gleaned from Michael Moore's recent Capitalism: A Love Story. Much more fun were the docs on the subject of celebrity. Teenage Paparazzo, by Entourage's Adrien Grenier, was an enjoyable but really messy doc-cum-expose of the snapper life that began when Grenier was paparazzi'd by a young 13-year-old boy called Austin Visschedyk. Hanging out with the paparazzis, and even becoming one, Grenier explores our fascination with celebrity culture in a film that loses its way in an ever more elaborate series of sidetracks (which include Grenier showing the boy his film and interviewing him after). Much slicker, and far more satisfying, was Leon Gast's Smash His Camera, a portrait of longtime paparazzi Ron Gallela, a street photographer who became famous for his pictures of Jackie Kennedy, an obsession that led to a huge, unwinnable court case in the 70s. Gallela is at once charming, oily, creepy, wacky, smart, awful and delightful, and the pleasure of Gast's film lies in its reluctance to judge him. Another film that doesn't judge, partly because it may not be true, is street artist Banksy's film debut Exit Through The Gift Shop, a delirious account of the rise of cheapjack post-graffiti artist called Mr Brainwash (who we are asked to believe is the alter ego of an ego-centric LA-based Frenchman called Thierry Guetta). All the entertainment in this great little film come from its revelations, so I won't say any more, but whether it is true or not, the filthy business of art trading has never been so artfully critiqued.