SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2006

To keep this site dedicated solely to film reviews, a sister site named 'Seven Days in the Beehive State' has been set up to give personal reactions (in a sprawling, sloppy, and hopefully entertaining manner) to the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

You can find it here.

Quickie Sundance reviews follow:

FRIENDS WITH MONEY
Occasionally affecting, laugh-out-loud funny at times, and filled with stellar performances, 'Friends With Money' is nonetheless brought down a number of notches by a creeping sense that we've seen it all before. Look for it in limited release in theaters beginning April 7th, though you're probably better off waiting for the DVD.
MAYBE SO (6/10)

OFF THE BLACK
Above average only because it sets its sights so relatively high, this story of Nick Nolte as an aging loser who becomes friends with a high school boy suffers from illogical or unexplained plot points, a dragging pace, and some extremely inappropriate and unintentional sexual tension between a brother and sister. Nolte shines nonetheless, and there are moments in which the filmmakers' grasp does meet their reach.
MAYBE SO (6/10)

DESTRICTED
Six short takes on pornography by six avant garde directors, 'Destricted' is by far, by far the worst film you will ever have the pleasure of never seeing. If you have a choice between seeing this film and gouging your eyes out with sticks, ask for extra-sharp sticks. You don't want to leave any chance that you'll catch a glimpse of this pretentious dreck.
NO (0/10)

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Though it's really not much more than another ensemble comedy with quirky characters, 'Little Miss Sunshine' does just about everything right. The stellar cast (including Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Alan Arkin, and Greg Kinnear) doesn't hurt a bit, and things stay moving quickly enough that it's nearly impossible to get bored with this story of an impromptu family road trip. The Sundance audience whooped, cheered, and cried as usual, but this time the outbursts are well deserved.
YES (8/10)

OPEN WINDOW
It's hard to dislike a film about the tragedy of rape and the bravery it takes the victims to survive it, but director and screenwriter Mia Goldman makes it possible by pulling half the film's lines from Hallmark cards. The movie's cast is across the board likable, but there's only so much water they can squeeze from a stone so dry.
NO (3/10)

STEEL CITY
Brian Jun's first feature suffers from trying to cover so much ground that it ends up running in place.The story would have benefitted greatly from choosing a main plot and sticking to it, but Jun chooses instead to throw every idea in and wait to see if anything sticks. Not much does, but though it is extremely forgettable, 'Steel City' at least has the sense not to try anything its cast and budget can't handle.
NO (3/10)

IN BETWEEN DAYS
Filled with a genuine and honest sweetness, 'In Between Days' is unfortunately marred by one of the thinnest scripts ever seen in a feature-length film. The first-time actors do a commendable job, and the extremely low budget look actually helps with a sense of intimacy, but you'll find yourself watching your watch as much as the screen.
NO (4/10)

STAY
Written and directed by Bob Goldthwait (yes, Bobcat Goldthwait), 'Stay' is as funny as you'd hope, but also surprisingly touching and complex. It isn't flawless by any means - some early scenes miss their mark, its look is far from cinematic, and the film borrows too liberally from both 'Meet the Parents' and 'Everybody Loves Raymond' at times. Still, the highly original and hilarious premise is mined to surprising depths throughout, and this one will certainly leave you talking (and shuddering) for hours.
MAYBE SO (7/10)

DREAMLAND
'Dreamland' contains a great number of shots that are almost unbelievably beautiful, but both its jarring, trendy editing and its art school level poetry sequences drag the film down to average at best. The story - of a small trailer park in the desert and the girl who is trapped there by her own kindness - is solid, for the most part. When it asks us to believe in deep, teenage love at first sight, however, 'Dreamland' stretches credibility to the breaking point. Shakespeare could pull it off. Someone needs to tell director Jason Matzner that he can't.
MAYBE SO (5/10)

THE DESCENT
'The Descent' makes an audience jump the old-fashioned way - with loud noises, sudden violence, pitch black, and loads of creepy monsters. The film does scare, but since it never infiltrates the intellect (or even pretends to, really), any terror it creates dissipates the moment the credits finish rolling. In other words, it'll make a date jump into your arms, but it can't make her stay.
MAYBE SO (5/10)

LITTLE RED FLOWERS
Zhang Yuan's 'Little Red Flowers' is absolutely flawless visually, with every shot a small work of art in itself. It also (amazingly) features wonderful, complex performances from a cast comprised of mostly four and five year-olds. The film has so much going for it in this story of a rebellious orphaned boy whose teachers attempt to make him conform that its lack of resolution is especially frustrating. It doesn't end so much as it just stops, and the lack of closure makes all that came before lose some of its luster.
MAYBE SO (6/10)

RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR
Chris Gorak has worked on numerous films in the art department, as an Art Director, and as a Production Designer, and it shows in his directorial debut, 'Right at Your Door.' The visuals perfectly evoke a dark, mysterious terror that takes place after a series of dirty bombs are detonated in Los Angeles. The story does an equally adept job of evoking the same, but its major flaw is that it doesn't get much beyond setting the scene. It's fairly obvious that Gorak (who also wrote the screenplay) came up with a brilliant premise, a twist for the ending, and then had to scramble to fill in the very large blank between. What a shame it is that the product, though it comes close at times, cannot match the promise.
MAYBE SO (5/10)

STEPHANIE DALEY
A pregnant teenager prematurely gives birth on a high school skiing trip, then throws the dead baby into the woods. A middle-aged forensic psychologist is pregnant and worried that she will again give birth to a stillborn. The two women collide in 'Stephanie Daley,' and though there isn't much more to the story than finding the truth in the teenager's version of events, superior acting from both Tilda Swinton and Amber Tamblyn make the film eminently watchable and upsetting, if not quite as profound as it hopes.
MAYBE SO (7/10)

FORGIVEN
When Paul Fitzgerald's 'Forgiven' focuses on politicians and how their private selves do battle with public image, the film is subtle, nuanced, and believable. When the plot thickens with a 'Crash'-like confrontation in which a disenfranchised man gets his violent yet eloquent say, it stretches credibility and slaps us in the face. Issues are treated intelligently here, but 'Forgiven' often feels like an episode of TV's 'Law & Order' (albeit the best episode you've seen).
MAYBE SO (6/10)

UNDERTOW

Can bad editing ruin an otherwise good movie? The answer is yes. The proof is David Gordon Green’s ‘Undertow.’

Within the opening credit sequence alone, ‘Undertow’ makes use of just about every trick that comes with even the cheapest editing software. It repeats scenes. It uses slow motion. It shows us negative images. It freezes frames. And all to absolutely no effect other than to ensure that audiences cannot lose themselves to the story.

Throughout the film, a pattern emerges. Just when the story of two brothers on the run from an evil family member hooks you in, ‘Undertow’ uses some ten cent editing trick to take you right back out of the spell the story has cast. It’s an extremely frustrating experience.

What makes the editing catastrophe even more frustrating is the fact that the film at heart is often beautiful. David Gordon Green gets poor country folk exactly right, creates memorable, fully fleshed-out characters, and has an ear for natural dialogue like few others. His cast is good to superb, with the two child leads especially shining brightly.

The plot is one part ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’ two parts ‘Night of the Hunter,’ and a healthy dose of ‘The Dukes of Hazard.’ There are also biblical references, folklore, and more to sift through. Thankfully, there’s no need to catch any of these references in a story of two poor kids whose lives go from bad to worse when an uncle comes for a visit. The film is enjoyable on its surface alone. Enjoyable, that is, until in-your-face editing gimmicks break the spell and shatter all the beautiful realism that has come before. It could have been a small masterpiece, but 'Undertow' (and you) will have to settle for a pretty decent flick.

MAYBE SO (6/10)

YOJIMBO

When a screenwriter straps a sword on nearly every character in a small town, it’s pretty evident that there’s going to be some fighting. But when the screenwriter is Akira Kurosawa (with Ryuzo Kikushima), you can also count on the fact that there’s going to be a whole lot of heart as well.

‘Yojimbo’ begins as a simple story of an out of work samurai warrior who in his travels comes across a town where his help is sorely needed. Two rival businessmen in town are at odds, and both have hired a small army of thugs to do battle. As a master swordsman, our loner hero finds himself in great demand. That’s just fine with him, as his skills demand an ever-growing price from the men on both sides of the feud.

As the feud is brought to a head, the complexities of violence, loyalty, and friendship rear their ugly heads and attempt to bite their owners. The town leaders and hired thugs reveal themselves to be exactly what we expected. The samurai warrior, however, lets slip a few surprise glimpses into his character he’d rather we not know.

‘Yojimbo’ is Japanese, subtitled, and ridden with swords, but damn if it isn’t one of the better Westerns Hollywood never created (though Clint Eastwood made a remake in ‘A Fistful of Dollars’). While those who shudder at that description should probably stay away, others who know that Westerns can be more than pistols and spittoons will be glad to find that samurai films, in the hands of Akira Kurosawa, can be more than swordfights and stoicism.

MAYBE SO (7/10)

LA DOLCE VITA

Federico Fellini's 1960 film 'La Dolce Vita' is a often hailed as a masterpiece, though like many of Fellini's films it probably has as many detractors as fans. The film is certainly too long and drifting for most modern audiences, but nearly every scene is exciting in its own way (even if those scenes rarely 'add up' in the way we expect).

The plot of the film is as close to novelistic as any movie you're likely to see. The narrative is loose, as 'La Dolce Vita' attempts to capture the scope of an entire life instead of strictly a series of events. Marcello Mastroianni plays Marcello Rubini, an entertainment journalist. Rubini is part of the high living celebrity world, but only in that he waits in prey on its fringes. Rubini is nearly always accompanied by a swarm of photographers, and it depicts them so well that the term 'paparazzi' was borne of the film, a play on one of the photographers' name.

Rubini longs to write a novel, to make more of an impact on the world and his own soul than trash journalism allows. However, he finds it nearly impossible to succeed. The pull of the upper crust (and especially, especially its women, for Rubini is a playboy to a fault) is a constant obstacle.

Of course, this synopsis is like describing a house by humming the tune of its doorbell. Fellini packs so much into the film that each memory of its viewing yields new information and insight.

On the potentially off-putting side, 'La Dolce Vita' clocks in at very nearly three hours in length, and (true to form) Fellini seems to have put very minimal effort into syncing recorded dialogue to the movements of the actors' mouths. In addition, the film's culminating statement may be that life is unbearably empty and sad, no matter to which social rung you climb.

Whether 'La Dolce Vita' is an immortal masterpiece will remain a cinephilic debate. Is the movie dull at times? Yes. But is it astoundingly ambitious, multi-layered, and affecting? Yes.

So is the film worth checking out or not, Mr. Reviewer? The answer is a resounding...

MAYBE SO (7/10)

MELINDA AND MELINDA

'Melinda and Melinda,' Woody Allen's 739th film, seemed to appear and disappear both from theaters and the public consciousness with hardly a blip. When it was noticed at all, it was generally by critics who compared the film unfavorably to Allen's career highs. That's a shame, because even though it does pale with Allen's greatest films, 'Melinda and Melinda' is a perfectly serviceable, enjoyable little movie.

The gimmick of the plot here is that the events in the film aren't "really" happening. They are simply stories told by two writers sitting around a restaurant table. One is a comedy writer, the other writes tragedies, and once they are given a premise by a friend the film unwinds as two versions of an often similar story about the fictional Melinda.

In both the comedic and tragic storylines, Melinda is played by Radha Mitchell, who does an admirable job of separating the identities of the two Melindas with more than just different hairstyles. Unfortunately, the tragic version of the character quickly becomes tiring. When she threatens to jump out a high-rise window, you almost wish Allen would write in the sidewalk splat.

In the comedy version of things, Will Ferrell alternates between a pretty decent Woody Allen imitation and the same old Will Ferrell with just the right touch of added sadness. Based solely on some of the houndog looks he's able to make work here, it's easy to imagine that Ferrell will one day pull a Tom Hanks and make the leap to roles with more depth. The rest of the cast keep things running smoothly, save for a number of clunky lines that most likely couldn't be saved by Brando at his best.

'Melinda and Melinda' strives to be a deep look at whether life itself is comedy or tragedy, but when it forgets these pretensions and simply entertains, it doesn't matter whether we're laughing or crying. We're caring, and sometimes that's just enough.

MAYBE SO (6/10)

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

Around 1665, Johannes Vermeer painted 'Girl With A Pearl Earring,' a beautifully haunting portrait of a young woman. In 2003, Peter Webber directed a film by the same name that attempts to achieve a similar effect. One of them has survived over 300 years to become a masterpiece. The other stars Scarlett Johansson.

'Girl With a Pearl Earring' - the movie - tells the story behind Vermeer's painting. In truth, nothing is known about the subjects of any of Vermeer's portraits, but in the film we find an imagined tale of unconsumated longing (or possibly only musing) and a battle of class. The film is based on a bestselling historical fiction novel by Tracy Chevalier, but where that novel delved deep into the fictional story of Griet, a maid who poses for the portrait and tells the story herself, the film keeps Griet at a distance. In fact, Johansson delivers so few lines in the film that it's nearly comedic. We hardly know her well enough by the end of the movie to care much about what's happened to her, and we know her better than anyone here.

Visually, the film is at times stunning. It's obvious that great care was taken to attempt to match the luminosity of Vermeer's paintings. Most of the time, it's a rousing success. Some shots, however, do make it look as though the film stock was accidentally dropped in bleach.

While there's nothing very intriguing beyond the premise here, there's also nothing to offend. You could do worse than renting the film, but it's a much better idea to hop on the bus and get yourself to a museum.

MAYBE SO (5/10)