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Written by Pete Timmermann Saturday, 28 January 2006 11:21

I wonder how much my preconceived notions informed my liking and disliking of these movies.

 

You know, somewhere along the line, the titles of my diary entries (organized by what day of the festival the entry covers) got all out of line. It seems a simple a task as counting is too much for me to handle.

As I suspected, I was not able to write an entry in this Sundance diary yesterday, because I saw five movies, all of which were longer than the 80- to 90-minute average of almost all Sundance films. Also, four of the five films I saw were highly anticipated, which meant I had to get in line early. And the press office and library have funny hours on Fridays—but even if they had normal hours, I probably still wouldn’t have been able to make it.

Beyond the five films I saw yesterday and have yet to cover here, I saw two more films on Thursday after I wrote my journal entry for the day, so I have some catching up to do. Right after I finished up the piece that I wrote on Thursday, I saw Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential, which is his first film since Bad Santa back in 2003. Art School has been lumped by the trades and most people I’ve talked to as one of the major disappointments of the festival, alongside the likes of The Hawk Is Dying, which I liked. I actually really liked Art School Confidential; I wonder what the people who saw it were expecting, as it is pretty much what I assumed it would be coming from Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes (who last teamed up on Ghost World, one of my favorite films of 2001). It’s about a freshman in art school named Jerome, who tries to avoid the stereotypically arty students (when a normal-looking guy walks into an art class, one of the other students leans over to Jerome and says, “Who’s the weirdo?”) and develops a huge crush on the nude model. Unless it is a very good year for film, this will be one of my favorite films of the year. It opens in limited release in the U.S. in late April.

After Art School let out, I got back in line to see The Darwin Awards, a fictional film interwoven with Darwin Award reenactments starring Joe Fiennes, Winona Ryder, and a bunch of pseudo-famous people in small roles. The Darwin Awards was easily the worst film I’ve seen or will see at Sundance, and will be in contention for the worst film of 2006. It is indescribably awful. This isn’t a review, and I have just a little time to cover a lot more movies, but this is the type of film wherein Fiennes’ character faints at the sight of blood … but only when it is convenient in the plot for him to do so. Also, Fiennes plays an almost carbon copy of Ben Stiller’s character in Along Came Polly. You know you’re in trouble when a filmmaker is blatantly ripping off a really awful movie.

The first film I saw yesterday was the closing-night film at Sundance this year, Alpha Dog, which stars Justin Timberlake and Emile Hirsch, among others. There’s been a lot of talk regarding whether or not Timberlake is any good, and to answer that question: He’s functional; he isn’t distractingly bad, but he isn’t that great, either. Despite what it might sound like, this is actually fairly high praise, especially for someone as famous for being a non-movie star as he is. Hirsch, on the other hand, is beyond me. I can’t fathom how this talentless douche bag keeps getting decent roles (I liked him in Imaginary Heroes, but I think that’s been the only time). Here, he plays a character based partly on a real person who was one of the youngest people to ever get on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Hirsch and Timberlake aside, the real standout performance here is Ben Foster, as a total psychopath who owes Hirsch’s character a lot of money. Up to this point, Foster is probably best known for being the romantic lead in the Kirsten Dunst romantic comedy flop Get Over It!, while I personally best know him for playing Eli the special-ed kid on Freaks & Geeks. Regardless, he’s absolutely electric in Alpha Dog.

One of the most talked-about films at the festival this year has been Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, which was the second sale at the festival, and sold for a high-end $6 million. It screened for the public once or twice prior to the press screening, so in addition to all of the press it had been getting for its big sale, all week I have been hearing from pretentious college kids back at the lodge how good it was. Well, it’s not good—with some qualifications. First of all, it is certainly worth pointing out that this is the type of film that, had it been made by a first-time filmmaker, I probably would have loved. Coming from someone with a track record as established as Gondry’s, though, it just feels like a misfire. I realize that saying what I just said is kind of bullshit, but it’s also true; while a good film by other means, knowing that it doesn’t begin to fulfill Gondry’s potential does indeed go a long way toward making it a bad film. What’s more, it is one of those films that is playful and introduces lots of new ideas to film as a medium (who would expect less from Gondry?), but the film itself does not deserve these little flights of fancy (including Jan Svankmajer–like stop-motion animation interwoven into live action scenes), and generally does not make a whole lot of sense. Gondry himself wrote the script on this one (Charlie Kaufman wrote his previous two feature films), and I think that is a lot of the problem. Not that Kaufman is absolutely infallible as a writer (I hated Human Nature, his first collaboration with Gondry), but he does have the right instincts to allow for creativity and a worthwhile story—as opposed to creativity and sludge, which is what Gondry offers up here.

To further complicate my Science of Sleep screening, let me tell you a little story: Remember how, on my first Sundance diary entry this year, I mentioned a fat guy sleeping one bed over and one bunk up from me who farted so loudly in his sleep it would wake me up several times a night? Well, this guy is a film critic, I found out later. He no longer sleeps near me, so his midnight flatulence no longer keeps me awake, but still, I see him on a daily basis both around the lodge as well as at the press screenings. This gentleman sat next to me during The Science of Sleep, and, while presumably not farting, he smelled like a combination of week-old, room-temperature fried rice, sausage patties, and asshole. So, trying to hold my breath for the duration of The Science of Sleep’s 100-minute running time probably had something to do with my not liking the movie as well.

After The Science of Sleep let out, I immediately turned around and got back in line for Thank You for Smoking, the Toronto hit that stars Aaron Eckhart, whose job is to defend cigarette smoking in debates on the news or in front of Congress, or wherever he is needed. Since this film got a lot of coverage at Toronto last year, and because I plan on reviewing it for the March edition of PLAYBACK:stl (it is released March 31 in the United States), I will save my discussion of it for later, except to let it be known that I liked it quite a bit.

I try to see all of the midnight movies programmed into any given festival I attend, and Sundance is no different. Unfortunately for me, two of Sundance’s midnight movies series, Moonshine and Salvage, had their press screenings at the same time. I made a judgment call and went with Salvage, as it sounded mildly more interesting than Moonshine (based on their respective descriptions in the festival program book). Salvage looks and feels like your typical indie horror movie (not-very-attractive girl gets brutally murdered amid bad acting and dialogue within the first ten minutes), but later reveals itself to have more going on than just that. The girl who gets murdered in the beginning of the film keeps finding herself starting that same day over and over again, Groundhog Day–style, and getting murdered by the same man every time, albeit in slightly different ways. Also, her boyfriend is kind of goofy and likeable, which makes the slower parts of the film easier to take. This film was made by no-names on no budget and will more likely than not get no release, but it is prime fodder to be remade by Hollywood; if they keep its story more or less intact and just up the production values, this film could make a serious amount of money. I’m very inclined to give away the ending to the film right now, especially since it seems near impossible that just about anyone reading this Sundance diary will ever actually get to see the film—and because the ending is very good, and makes the movie. But I won’t, if only to maintain the hope that the film shows in other festivals, or does get that well-deserved Hollywood remake.

My final film of last night was The Illusionist, which stars Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, and Jessica Biel, and has—like Art School Confidential—been talked about as a disappointment. While it certainly is flawed, I actually liked it. Philip Glass wrote the score, which is always a good sign, and the look of the film is kind of like Guy Maddin–lite, another strong point. The plot often veers a little close to The Usual Suspects, but still, it is an interesting enough spin on the subject that it didn’t bother me too much.

I wonder how much my preconceived notions re: hearing that The Science of Sleep was good and Art School Confidential and The Illusionist were bad informed my liking and disliking of these movies. It seems like if one were to attend the film festival where films such as these have their world premieres, it would be easier to not get caught up in the hype, because for the most part, it is us that is creating it—but it turns out that it is not that easy.

Anyway, today there are no more press screenings, so I’m going to try to get into a public screening of the Beastie Boys concert doc, Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That, and then I have a ticket to see The Foot Fist Way at midnight. I probably won’t get into Awesome, as I have no ticket and it is in a small auditorium, so Foot Fist might very well be the last movie I see at Sundance 2006. I fly out tomorrow evening, and all of tomorrow’s films are the award winners, which I will likely have already seen (the awards are announced tonight). So, there will probably be one more short diary entry, and that’ll be all for this year.