700 Miles from Sundance: Weekend Update

Christine Jeff talks about her new film Sunshine Cleaning at a post-screening Q&A at the Sundance International Film Festival. (Image courtesy of Sundance.org) 

The 2008 Sundance International Film Festival plows through its first weekend and we watch with fascination from the comfort of our own home.

Cinematical’s James Rocchi likes Stranded: I’ve come from a plane that crashed on the mountains, the documentary about the 1972 Andean plane crash that led to cannibalism on the part of the survivors, a story that continues to haunt and fascinate more than 35 years later.

Also at Cinematical, Scott Weinberg digs John Malkovich, Colin Hanks and Emily Blunt in The Great Buck Howard comparing the film about a law student (Hanks) who drops out of law school to become the road producer for a washed up magician (Malkovich) favorably to My Favorite Year. James Rocchi interviews Hanks and Blunt here.

Weinberg wasn’t as impressed with The Wackness, John Levine’s follow-up to All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. The film about a pot dealer who falls in love with the step-daughter of a psychiatrist he’s befriended. Weinberg likes Ben Kingsley as the psychiatrist, but says Levine’s screenplay “feels like something that was written by a bored 17-year-old during one lazy afternoon in detention.”

Jeff Wells reports that his screening of The Wackness was “wildly cheered,” but he wasn’t impressed. Taking a shot at the cinematography specifically he asks: ”good God, does everything have to look this fucking dreary? With all this grayish-green shadow slime covering everyone and everything?”

Every year, Wells offers up a uniquely personal take on Sundance that is alternately amusing and infuriating. He lacks the open-eyed wonder of some of the folks who are relatively new to the scene, but in its place there’s a joyless, jaded cynicism that makes one wonder why he bothers going at all.

Yesterday he bitched about getting tossed out of a screening of American Teen because he showed up late and there was nowhere to sit. He then brushes it off as no big deal because, in typical Wellsian fashion, he’d decided 5 minutes in “the film didn’t seem all that interesting or original.”  IndieWIRE on the other hand reports that Nanette Burstein’s documentary about a group of small town high school seniors was met with “howls and loud applause” on the part of the audience. 

Later that night, Wells feels humiliated trying to scare up tickets for the premiere of Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened? starring Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis and Stanley Tucci. After all his trouble getting into the film, he greets it with indifference.

Over at SpoutBlog, Karina calls Michelange Quay’s debut feature Eat, For This is My Body “the rare Sundance title that unquestionably bears the mark of an obstinately independent vision. It’s by turns exhilarating and totally confounding.”

She then takes a look at the buzz and hype surrounding the new documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. She seems to like the look at ”the media’s role in turning the very idea of justice into a farce,” but finds a troubling imbalance on the part of the filmmaker Marina Zenovich in favor of Polanski. Karina warns “there’s a lack of criticality towards Polanski that borders on hagiography.”

Meanwhile, IndieWIRE‘s Anthony Kaufman calls Christine Jeff’s (Rain, Sylvia) Sunshine Cleaning “an affecting, well-acted drama that casts an even brighter spotlight on rising starlet Amy Adams.” Adams plays Rose, a single mom/cleaning lady who starts up a business cleaning up after crime scenes. Kaufman invokes the name Little Miss Sunshine (now shorthand for “quirky indie comedy”), but likes Sunshine Cleaning much better. The film also stars Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin and Steve Zahn.

Also at IndieWIRE, Steve Ramos takes a look at American Son, Neil Abramson’s film about the “fast moving romance” between a Marine about to be sent for duty in Iraq and a girl he meets on a bus ride home. Ramos says the filmmakers ”…wisely brush aside political debate and battle scenes for an emotional, intimate tale…”

Filed under: Film Festivals