Folks, I'm running a bit behind this morning so I'm just gonna send ya straight to the meat that this Buffy oogler sent in....
Agent Xander reporting for duty once again with my overstuffed Sundance report. I saw 12 movies in three days at the beginning of the festival; four in the dramatic competition, the rest divided among the premieres, the World Cinema series, the documentary competition and the midnight movies. Following are brief reviews of each and every one of 'em, along with (when available)info on when they'll be released or whatever. Enjoy!
COOKIE'S FORTUNE
The new Robert Altman movie, opening in April courtesy of October Films. If John Grisham did comedy, he'd probably write something a lot like this. It's set in a quirky small town in Mississippi and stars Charles S. Dutton as a guy who gets accused of the "murder" of his employer--the eponymous Cookie, an eccentric old lady (Patricia Neal) he took care of. She actually committed suicide, but her daughter (Glenn Close) decided that her family's reputation would be harmed if word of the suicide got out and opted to make it look like a robbery/homicide. It may not sound like a comedy, but it definitely is one. The first 30 minutes are pretty slow, but the last 90 are vintage Altman and a lot of fun. Liv Tyler plays Dutton's best friend (who's Close's niece) and a lot of the best humor comes from her romance with an overzealous Barney Fife-type deputy played by Chris O'Donnell (who's really good). Altman regulars like Lyle Lovett, Ned Beatty and Julianne Moore round out the cast and do their usual good work.
JOE THE KING
Easily the best of the four competition movies I saw. It's written and directed by Frank Whaley (yes, him) and is about a dirt-poor 14-year-old boy in upstate New York in the late '70s. Val Kilmer, sporting a surprising beer gut, plays the kid's alcoholic dad, a school janitor--and it's probably his best performance since TOMBSTONE. There are other stars in it--John Leguizamo as a guy the protagonist works with at a restaurant, Ethan Hawke as a school guidance counselor/'70s fashion victim--but the focus is always on Joe, the lead character, and his friends. Instead of making a STAND BY ME-type movie, Whaley went for something more European--it's obviously influenced by movies like THE 400 BLOWS and AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS. Absolutely heartwrenching, with terrific performances from all the kids (a kid named Noah Fleiss is the star). It really nails a lot of stuff about childhood--the pain and loneliness of growing up, the confusing nature of the adult world, etc. It may be too depressing to be really successful, but it's damn impressive. No distribution as I write this, so who knows when it'll come out.
AFTER LIFE
A really strong metaphysical allegory by Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu. It's set in a limbo where the newly dead are asked to choose one memory from life to take with them into the beyond--a memory that is then made into a movie by the staffers who operate the place. Really poetic, and the great premise is backed up by an interesting plot that's only gradually revealed. In some respects it "feels like" WINGS OF DESIRE (though it has nothing in common with CITY OF ANGELS, the remake). It opens in May at New York's Film Forum and may wind up playing other arthouses around the country.
RUN, LOLA, RUN
One of the big hits at Toronto last year, this gimmicky German action movie pretty much lives up to its hype. It's very funny, has a lot of energy, and a terrific leading performance by the babealicious (if you like punk chicks, anyway) Franka Potente. For those who haven't heard of it, it's about this girl who has 20 minutes to come up with DM100,000 or else gangsters will kill her boyfriend. What follows are three real-time scenarios of what could happen depending on which decisions she makes. Man, would I ever like to have a tattooed girlfriend with cherry-red hair who'd go to such lengths for me! Director Tom Tykwer already has Hollywood agents looking to sell him as the new Paul Verhoeven, and I'm very curious to see what kind of jobs he gets offered in La-La Land. Opening in June from Sony Pictures Classics.
KILL THE MAN
I decided to check this one out because I love its stars, Luke Wilson and Paula Devicq (PARTY OF FIVE's divine Kirsten). Big, big mistake. It's a painful comedy about two guys (Wilson and Joshua Malina from SPORTS NIGHT) whose copy shop is being threatened by a chain store called King Co. Copies (get it?) across the street. Godawful porno-style music smothers almost every scene, making the film even harder to sit through than it would have been otherwise. And boy do I feel sorry for Michael McKean and Teri Garr, who play Devicq's parents. Everyone involved deserves much better. Probably the worst movie I've seen in at least six months. No idea what the distribution status is, but it's the kind of movie that has straight-to-cable (or video) written all over it.
THE MINUS MAN
Written and directed by Hampton Fancher (billed in all the festival materials as "the screenwriter of BLADE RUNNER", even though, last time I checked, he cowrote it with David Webb Peoples), this one's an arty, David Lynch-influenced movie about a serial killer who becomes a postal worker (instead of the other way around, for a change). Owen Wilson plays a drifter who drives around poisoning people (including, in the terrific opening sequence, a junkie played very well by Sheryl Crow) who decides to settle down and rent a room from a couple played by Brian Cox and Mercedes Ruehl. He gets a job at the post office and meets a coworker played by Janeane Garofalo who falls in love with him, but just can't suppress that urge to kill people. It's beautifully shot and has some great performances (and also avoids a lot of obvious-seeming plot twists I expected to pop out of the woodwork) but is also too long and very poorly paced. It's in competition, and was financed (and being distributed) by Monica Lewinsky's pals at The Shooting Gallery, not quite sure when it's coming out.
A SLIPPING-DOWN LIFE
Another competition movie, it's an uneven adaptation of an Anne Tyler novel with a couple of really solid lead performances that save it from being a disaster. Lili Taylor plays a shy young woman in a tiny town in North Carolina who's obsessed with a small-time local rock musician (LA CONFIDENTIAL's Guy Pearce) and who carves his name in her forehead to attract his attention. Pearce is great (and he sings and plays the guitar quite nicely), but Taylor's character is a little one-note, and the whole thing is just a little too cute and predictable. No distribution deal at this time.
SEX: THE ANNABEL CHONG STORY
A documentary about porn star Annabel Chong who, back in 1995, participated in what was (then) "the world's biggest gang bang", having sex with 251 men in 10 hours. It was very repetitive (if I had five cents for every time Chong said something about wanting to empower women to take charge of their sexuality, I could retire next week)and some of the interviews and stuff seemed suspiciously staged. Since the director only heard about Chong and decided to make the movie after seeing her on Jerry Springer, all of the footage of the gang bang--and there's quite a bit of it--comes from the video of the gang-bang that was released back in '95. The director makes fun of some people in the porn biz who deserve to be made fun of (Rob Black, Ron Jeremy, John T. Bone, Ed Powers) and, somewhat cruelly I thought, of others who don't (Ona Zee, Seymore Butts, Chi-Chi LaRue). It'll be interesting to see if this gets picked up for distribution, especially in the wake of the scandal around the alleged faking of FRAT HOUSE last year, since parts of this seem equally suspect.
THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE
An absolutely stunning new movie from Mike Figgis (LEAVING LAS VEGAS, etc.). Some people thought it was very pretentious (and/or a ripoff of stuff done by Andrei Tarkofsky and Krysztof Kieslowski--please, no spelling flames if I got their names wrong) but I just loved it. The protagonist is a documentary filmmaker named Nic (played by Julian Sands), who is shown at various ages of his life (played by different actors at ages 5, 12, and 16 in scenes that are presented out of sequence and all deal with various discoveries he makes about the nature of human sexuality). Juxtaposed with the stuff from Nic's life is a quirky retelling of the story of Adam and Eve and the original sin. Although full of nudity (male and female alike), there's only one scene that really qualifies as "erotic". I hope the lack of softcore content doesn't further diminish its limited commercial prospects, although it's a very low budget movie that's been presold worldwide, so it probably won't lose money. It's incredibly beautiful (the Eden stuff especially, also the finale in the Sahara desert), and has some really solid work from Sands, Saffron Burrows and VELVET GOLDMINE's Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (as the 1-year-old Nic). If you like Peter Greenaway and/or Bertolucci, you'll probably eat this one up. Coming in the spring from Sony Pictures Classics.
HITCHCOCK, SELZNICK AND THE END OF HOLLYWOOD
An absolutely terrific documentary about the lives of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick, who brought Hitch to America right before WWII. The focus is on Selznick's obsession with repeating the success of GONE WITH THE WIND--and how he treated Hitchcock like a slave and monkeyed with his movies as part of this mania (in addition to becoming a speed freak and a compulsive gambler--Selznick, that is, not the clean-living Hitchcock). If you love Hitchcock and/or old-school Hollywood in general, you'll go nuts over this one. It airs on PBS in October or November as part of their American Masters series.
MR. DEATH: THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER JR.
The new documentary from Errol Morris (FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL, etc.), this is about an engineer who, in the '80s, had quite the career designing execution equipment--electricchairs, lethal injection machines, etc.--for state prisons around the USA. His career was ruined when he signed on as an expert witness for the defense of a neo-Nazi in Canada--he was basically hired to prove that the Holocaust never happened. He traveled to Auschwitz and took paint, mortar and plaster samples from the gas chambers, and the lab tests came back negative for any sign of poison gas (the lab techs interviewed say that since he didn't tell them where the samples were from--he claimed they were from the site of an industrial accident--they didn't do the right tests, thus invalidating his conclusion). After testifying in court that he believed the holocaust was a hoax, he stopped getting hired to design electric chairs, got hounded by Jewish groups and basically had his life fall apart around him. Really fascinating stuff, as funny as Morris's documentaries usually are, but thought-provoking, too, and it did a good job of not taking sides. This was a workprint dumped from an Avid onto 35mm film, and it seems Morris will be tweaking it for awhile before it comes out.
TUMBLEWEEDS
A *very* generic chick-flick that the audience loved but completely left me cold. It's about a woman who keeps moving around the country with her young daughter, in an endless pattern of settling down, then moving in with an abusive boyfriend, then moving on when he gets to be too much. Lather, wrinse, repeat, until she finally learns a Very Important Heartwarming Lesson. No distribution yet, although this seems likely to be one of the festival's most highly-touted--and bid over--movies, judging by the reaction at the first screening. I, myself, couldn't abide it--it had nothing to do with real life and everything to do with the movies the filmmakers pilfered stuff from.
So that's it for this year. I saw more I liked this time than I did in '98, although old festival hands said that this year's crop seemed weak to them. Go figure. This early, at a festival this big, it's all just the luck of the draw, I s'pose. My plane home is now about to land, so I'm gonna sign out now...
