I AM MOTHER (no distrib): Grant Sputore’s impressively controlled first feature brings us back to the post-apocalypse. In Michael Lloyd Green’s script, it appears as though the only surviving remnant of humanity is an unnamed girl (Clara Rugaard as a teen) raised from a fetus by a maternal robot (voiced by Rose Byrne). Mother […]
> Although Sundance still has several days to go, and surprises could spring up at any time (yesterday The Surrogate, a drama with John Hawkes as a man in an iron lung who decides to lose his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt, came out of nowhere to win a huge $6M […]
Maybe it’s time for a filmmaker who doesn’t give a damn about the Beat Generation to make the next movie about them. Michael Polish’s BIG SUR joins last year’s On the Road as a Jack Kerouac adaptation that’s gorgeously filmed, performed with seriousness and commitment, and dramatically paralyzed. (I missed this year’s other Sundance […]
THE OUTRUN (no distrib): Films about alcoholics and addicts in recovery are too numerous to count, and it’s easy to understand why. The stories offer a clear narrative path, usually with an inspirational destination (occasionally with a tragic end, which can be just as cathartic), as well as a ready-made showcase for the star, […]
The title ZIPPER suggests something wittier and more enticing than Mora Stephens’ well-made melodrama turns out to be. If a filmmaker is determined to reexamine the familiar story of a politician who can’t control his own personal excesses, some kind of new take or distinctive angle is advisable, but Stephens and her co-writer Joel Viertel […]
No one can accuse LOW DOWN of attempting to glamorize the true story it tells. Jeff Preiss’s first film as a director is a slow, grim dirge set in an underbelly of the jazz world in 1970s Los Angeles, and it’s been co-written (with Topper Lilien) and -produced (and based on the memoir by) Amy-Jo Albany, […]
> Sundance announced the second group of its 2012 titles today (Competition entries were announced yesterday; Premieres will be unveiled on Monday), mostly in what are traditionally the most untraditional categories of the Festival: Park City At Midnight, Next, and New Frontier. Also announced were the Spotlight films, which is where Sundance puts films that […]
IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE (Netflix – TBD): The biggest sale of the festival as of this writing–a $17M paycheck from Netflix–was its most dynamite entertainment. Greg Jardin’s feature writing/directing debut feels like Bodies Bodies Bodies was given an injection of The Last of Sheila‘s brains. Note: Jardin has asked that his central plot mechanism not be spoiled, which […]