Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join the fun by writing about three movies that fit the week's theme.
The Sundance Film Festival is coming up soon, and will surely bring around another crop of quirky indie films that will barely get a theatrical release despite generating tons of buzz (Call Me By Your Name, anyone?).
Picking this week was actually harder than I had expected. It was difficult enough to narrow it down to a list of my ten favorite films that played at Sundance; I had to take out anything that I'd already featured on the blog to even get that far! And then I just decided to hell with it. I looked at the list, and went with my gut. Here you go: My Three Favorite Sundance Movies (That I Haven't Already Used For Thursday Movie Picks)
Once (John Carney, 2007) This minor miracle of a movie musical follows two musicians in Dublin who meet while he's busking on the streets. Before you know it, they're making beautiful (Oscar-winning) music together, and it's clear that they are "meant to be"... except that she's married with a kid and he has a girlfriend in London. Helped greatly by the natural chemistry (both musically and otherwise) of non-actor stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, but also by John Carney's intuitive, intimate direction, this is one of the all-time great movie musicals - and for those of you who hate musicals, don't worry: The musical numbers take place naturally within the context of the story. And as a bonus, Once was adapted into a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, which was one of the most magical things I've ever seen live on stage.
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) When done well, magical realism can touch us like nothing else. Beasts of the Southern Wild is magical realism at its absolute finest. Taking place in an alternate version of the Louisiana bayou that has left communities completely isolated and fending for themselves, a girl named Hushpuppy and her daddy live in an area called The Bathtub. Hushpuppy's daddy is very much a rolling stone, and while she's tough, she's still just a child. But the child's eye view this takes of the world is infectious, and ultimately beautiful, creating sequences of such devastating beauty (and not just audio-visually) that you'll leave smiling through tears. Quvenzhené Wallis, who was all of five years old at the start of filming, got a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her tremendous performance as Hushpuppy (the youngest ever nominated for Lead Actress), and Dwight Henry, a New Orleans native and baker by trade, is just as fantastic as her father.
It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2015) A girl has sex with a hot guy. She wakes up afterward tied to a chair in her underwear to hear him telling her that now some... THING... is going to be following her, at a walking pace, and won't stop until it kills her. The only way to stop it is to pass it on to someone else (by having sex, of course), but unless they pass it on, once it catches them it will move on to her, and then to him, and so on down the line. The perfect dream-logic of this "Why Hasn't Someone Thought Of This Before?" premise is perfectly complemented by the film's cinematography and score, as well as the setting of Any Suburb, USA. A near-perfect metaphor that can be applied to almost anything, It Follows technically falls into the horror genre, but it transcends that by truly feeling like a waking dream all the way through; it's a mood piece where the mood is that nightmare we've all had where we're being chased by something, don't know what it is, but know we just have to keep running.
BONUS: Rejected (Don Hertzfeldt) I love this deranged, bizarre little short SO MUCH. It's less than 10 minutes and so stupid it's genius. Just watch it.
Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. If you'd like to join (and you should), just pick three films that fit the week's them and post to your blog!
This month's "All in the Family Edition" of Thursday Movie Picks is focused on Father-Daughter Relationships. Being neither a father nor a daughter I have nothing to say in general about these kind of relationships, except that they're not always centered around a protective papa and a pony-wanting little girl. Here are my three picks for this week.
In A World... (Lake Bell, 2013) The story of a vocal coach and her famous voice-over actor father, actress Lake Bell's debut as a writer-director was one of the most pleasant surprises in recent years. As Bell's Carol tries to come into her own as a woman and as a professional, she inadvertently lands a trailer voice-over gig, earning the ire of her father (Fred Melamed, perfectly cast) and his protegé (the ever-reliable Ken Marino). Indignant that such a prominent gig would go to a woman, Daddy vows to come out of retirement to do the voice-over himself, and does just that when he finds out it's his own daughter who is the mysterious woman in question. Funny, smart, and cynical all in just the right amount, In A World... (yes, it's named after the immortal trailer line made famous by the late Don LaFontaine) has a lot to say about Hollywood and its attitudes toward women, in addition to the loving, contentious relationship between family members in the same professional arena.
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) Probably my favorite film of this decade, Benh Zeitlin's first full-length feature is a miracle. Adapted by Lucy Alibar from her play Juicy and Delicious, this lovely, lyrical film takes place in a Louisiana bayou in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Wink and his daughter Hushpuppy (played by revelatory first-time actors Dwight Henry and Quvenzhané Wallis, who won a deserved Oscar nomination for her stunning work) love their life in The Bathtub, primitive though we may find it. And when government-type outsiders try to take them away, they fight to stay. This film is unspeakably gorgeous on every level, and the incredibly lived-in performances make this thorny, touching father-daughter relationship one of the all-time greats.
To Kill A Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) Perhaps the greatest page-to-screen adaptation of all time, this adaptation of Harper Lee's novel is pitch perfect, and nowhere morseso than in Gregory Peck's wonderful performance as Southern lawyer and all-around good man Atticus Finch. Though the story is told from his young daughter Scout's point of view, so it could just as easily be a brother-sister movie, the heart of the film is in the relationship between father and daughter. And a more honest encapsulation of the perfect parent-child relationship you won't find in any film before or since.
