Mr. Chick Goes to Sundance 2005
TomChick - Features - Comments - 02/05/05
The Bad
Between
A movie about an uninteresting blonde woman wandering around Tijuana. I could tell it was supposed to be a supernatural thriller, because there’s almost nothing here that wasn't cribbed from Memento, Jacob's Ladder, or Sixth Sense. In fact, imagine a version of The Sixth Sense with a made-for-TV cast and production values. But this yarn tips its hand way too early and then takes its dear sweet time dragging out the plot as if the audience hadn't figured out what was going on in the first ten minutes. Imagine The Sixth Sense if people kept saying to Bruce Willis' character, "Hey, did you ever consider that maybe you're actually dead and you're one of the ghosts this kid is seeing...just a thought, you know?"
Drum
Taye Diggs is a journalist in South Africa in the, I dunno, 50s or something. The best thing about model-turned-actor Diggs' performance is his accent. Although actual South Africans sound to me like bad impressions of British accents. So as far as I could tell, Diggs totally nailed the accent in this blandly respectful by-the-numbers biopic. Far more compelling was the Q&A with the director, who is obviously very knowledgeable and passionate about the history of his country. It's too bad he's not an adept enough filmmaker to translate that knowledge and passion into a movie.
Ellie Parker
A vanity project for Naomi Watts, but minus the vanity part. This embarrassingly bad, unflattering, cheap-looking alleged comedy is about one of the least interesting subjects imaginable: a day in life of a struggling self-centered actor. Actually, "self-centered actor" is redundant, isn't it?
Okay, that comment I just made, although it wasn't particularly funny, was ten times funnier than the top ten funniest moments of Ellie Parker combined. There. I have just mathematically demonstrated how bad this movie was. My work here is done.
Forty Shades of Blue
I didn’t plan to see this, but then it won the Grand Jury Prize. So I found myself at the end of Sundance stumbling out of the awards screening into the afternoon glare with a thousand other people, all of us blinking and wondering what the fuck the Grand Jury was thinking. Because I’ll tell you what I’m thinking: this sloppily acted and even more sloppily shot story of a trophy wife and her brooding stepson is what you'd expect from someone who doesn't understand John Cassavetes trying to make a Cassavetes movie.
The Girl from Monday
It's the future and sex is a form of commerce controlled by corporations. Luckily for the dudes audience, an alien arrives and inhabits the body of a beautiful vapid model who will teach our hero a thing or two. Hal Hartley's clumsy attempt at sci-fi is like a crappy no-budget sci-fi movie from the 80s pretending it belongs in an art house but accidentally using the script for a movie that's supposed to star Shannon Tweed. I suppose Hartley can always fall back on the excuse that it's a comedy. In the Q&A, he seemed nonchalant about people laughing at lines like, "Come on, let's fuck and increase our personal value." The lead actor, Bill Sage, seems like he'd be a good fit for a non-sucky Hal Hartley movie. He was also great as a pedophile in Mysterious Skin.
Layer Cake
A British crime story from the producer of some of Guy Ritchie's movies. This fellow apparently learned all of Ritchie's convolution but none his energy and style. Daniel Craig is a great lead for this sort of movie, and there are some interesting cast members, particularly Colm Meany as a sympathetic crime boss and the dissolutely regal Michael Gambon as a rival sympathetic crime boss. There are some good scenes, and the ending is great, but all the set up for who's doing what to whom and why bogs the movie down and made me long for some of that funky Guy Ritchie camera wizardry.
Lonesome Jim
Another slow slow laconic Steve Buscemi movie, cold on the heels of the slow slow laconic Animal Factory and Trees Lounge. At least Buscemi had the presence of mind to star in Trees Lounge. But in Lonesome Jim, we get to watch Casey Affleck playing the lead character, an asshole slacker returning to his good-natured family to be an asshole to them, only to learns the true value of things like "family", "love", "cute little kids", and "not being an asshole". I'm not sure how he learns all this, because it happens kind of suddenly and then the movie ends, so you have to be paying attention. And here's the kicker: Liv Tyler plays a nurse who totally falls for him, even though he isn't the slightest bit interested in her. Ha ha. Yeah, right. Like someone who looks like Liv Tyler is going to chase a lesser Affleck around. Is there anything in celebritydom lower than a lesser Affleck?
Mirror Mask
Neil Gaiman wrote the script and illustrator Dave McKean directed Mirror Mask. The result is pretty and pretty empty. It's an ironically unimaginative Alice in Wonderland/Wizard of Oz retread. There's not an interesting character in sight and the occasional attempts at humor fall flatter than the green screen behind the actors. Although much of the artwork in impressive, the whole thing is too obvious as the actors futz around in empty spaces later filled with elaborate artwork.
Why We Fight
I'm guessing this won the documentary jury prize for political reasons, because it sure didn't win for its visceral appeal. This disjointed, overlong, and tedious look at the motivations for the war in Iraq suggests that it was a product of the "military-industrial complex". The premise isn't very well established and there's a lack of focus, as if the movie can't quite get around to making its point. And while I'm deeply opposed to the invasion of Iraq, there was almost nothing in this plodding impassive documentary that moved me. There were occasional comments from a New York policeman who'd lost his son in the World Trade Center that seemed included for no other reason than to add some emotional impact to an otherwise entirely wonky treatment of the subject.
...and now for the greats!
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