Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the last of my Sundance reviews. I’m not quite done with the fest, but as for my mindless, profane, grammatically incorrect, typo-ridden opinions on the films I’ve seen, this is it!
RED HOOK SUMMER
I almost didn’t write this up because next to Black Rock it was my least favorite movie at Sundance. I’m not sure about its distribution, but it’s a Spike Lee Joint so it’ll be seen, I’m sure about that.
The positives: Lee has a great eye for characters, so the film has a lot of personality. It’s shot well and the actual story part is heavy, fascinating stuff.
The cons: That great story part only comes in for the last half hour of a 2 ½ hour long movie that feels like its easily double that length. The great eye for characters is applied to everybody except for the two lead kids who deliver dialogue in way that made me miss Jake Lloyd’s performance in The Phantom Menace.
I assume the idea is that Lee wants you to get to know the residents of this Brooklyn neighborhood and that’s why you spend so long just wandering around meeting everybody and then when the shoe drops in the last act you get a feeling of the impact it has on everybody. That’d be fine, but he so miscast the lead kid, a young boy spending the summer with his preacher grandfather, that I could never really connect into the world because I’m supposed to be doing it through this kid’s eyes.
However he’s a blank slate, so devoid of personality and one-note that he kind of makes the movie tedious.
Clarke Peters as his grandfather does his best to keep the audience hooked and he was the reason I didn’t just decide to walk out and catch up on writing. He’s fantastic, a forceful man of God who is driven to do right by his community, but has a shady past. Such a good, meaty role and Peters tackles it effortlessly.
But the film can not be supported by good supporting performances. I imagine Lee was going for naturalistic, but the two lead kids in this movie aren’t natural kids, they’re the ones that get beat out for Nickelodeon shows.
So, Red Hook Summer was one of my biggest disappointments of the fest. Sure, it was fun to see Mookie back, but the whole film is way too sloppy and too unfocused to make me give it a pass.
EXCISION
I almost didn’t see this one. When covering a large fest like Sundance you get this feeling of being in a marathon. I was on the ground 9 days and when you get well into the festival the grind and lack of sleep does get to you. The most vulnerable slots in any fest-attendee’s schedule are the midnights and early mornings.
Excision was a midnight slot and I had heard divisive things about it and just frankly wasn’t in the mood to trudge through the snow to the Library theater when I could spend that time catching up on reviews. But Twitter folks guilted me into it and I ended up digging the flick, so thanks peer-pressurers!
As you can tell from the above pic, this flick gets gross. Think of it as if David Cronenberg and John Waters gang-banged Heathers and Heathers decided to keep the child. This is that baby.
Excision kind of has that Serial Mom John Waters tone, that slightly exaggerated world view that makes his films stand out and focuses on a weird girl in an even weirder family. This is the kind of film that casts Traci Lords as a super Christian mom and a 90210 hottie as the ugly girl. And they do ugly Annalynne McCord up here. Dumpy barely describes her… oily hair, horrible skin, false teeth that are too big for her mouth… it’s not just the typical “put a pretty girl in glasses” territory here. They go the extra mile.
McCord’s Pauline is obsessed with blood and boy does it show. She has some daydreams that are downright disturbing and that’s saying something considering what happens in the rest of the movie.
However, the film isn’t just an exploitation flick. There’s some real smart filmmaking going on here, setting up expectations and taking the audience down a completely unexpected avenue. There’s a lot at play here… the gross-out movie, the underdog movie, the crazy girl movie, the first time movie… all that is in here, but writer/director Richard Bates Jr. makes sure you’re never in a position to guess what happens next.
Excision is a weird one, but one that comes from a place of such passion that you can’t help but become infected with it’s unique vision and tone. The audience for a movie like this isn’t big, but man will they be loyal. People who love this film will LOVE this film.
THE WORDS
This film was one of the high profile pick ups this year and it doesn’t surprise me. There are a whole lotta faces you can put on a poster here. Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Dennis Quaid, Olivia Wilde, Jeremy Irons and Ben Barnes all play a part in this film ultimately about insecurity.
Bradley Cooper is a struggling writer who apparently is talented, but can not get his foot in the door. He’s being pressured by his wife, father and friends to either give up his passion for writing and get a real job or to finally sell something and make that his legitimate living. He happens upon an old, brilliant manuscript and that takes him down a route of questionable morality in the face of one’s own insecurities.
The performances are fine across the board here. Cooper is such a likeable actor that you’re on his side and totally relate to him when he gets cornered. He’s not a dick doing everything he can to get a foot up in the world, but someone who chooses to remain silent at a moment when he should have spoken up and spends the rest of the story trying to clean up the mess that moment caused.
Now there are three different stories being told here, although they are all directly connected. One is the story being told in the manuscript that Cooper finds, one is Cooper’s story and then there’s the top level story involving Quaid’s character, an aging writer separated from his wife and flirting with a pretty young thing that seems to worship him (Wilde).
The reaction out of Sundance wasn't hugely favorable, but I found the movie to be very well done. Maybe because I could easily relate to Cooper’s insecurities, the overall story worked for me. Maybe it was because Jeremy Irons kills it in his brief time in the film. Maybe it was because the production value was super high. Maybe it was all of these things, but I walked away from the movie thinking it was clever, honest and an entertaining watch even if it doesn’t show up trying to blow everybody out of their socks.
Not every movie has to be a completely unique take on a subject. You’ve seen movies like The Words before, but with a little smarts in the script department, a great cast of characters and an attention toward professionalism this one manages to just be a solid piece of work.
Well, that’s it for Sundance reviews this year. Hope you guys have enjoyed reading along! I still have a couple of interviews to post before I can fully put Park City in the rearview mirror, but that day is coming very soon.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
