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 weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
Last summer, Film Forum in NYC ran a series called "Return of the Double Feature!" (exclamation point included, as in Moulin Rouge!) that I had a LOT of fun attending. What was great was that it wasn't always immediately clear why two movies were paired together until you really thought about it, or even until you sat down and watched them. It made me think about programming a series like that and how much fun it would be.
Well thankfully, our lovely wandering host has given us that opportunity this week, as the theme for Thursday Movie Picks is DOUBLE FEATURES!
Naturally, I came up with far more ideas than I have time to write up, but here are three of my favorites.
GHOSTLY CHILDREN DOUBLE FEATURE!
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)/The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) Creepy old English manor houses haunted by ghostly children.... except the children aren't the ghosts! The Others is as close to a spiritual sequel to The Innocents as we're ever likely to get. Both films have a chilly formalism that doesn't make them any less scary or give them any less emotional impact, and their twists and turns will keep you guessing about what's REALLY going on all the way through in the best possible way. Plus, each possesses one of the greatest performances from a great actress: Deborah Kerr is utter perfection in The Innocents, while The Others gives Nicole Kidman a role that encapsulates all the best things about her screen persona. Both are perfection.
SEXUAL MORES DOUBLE FEATURE!
Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967)/Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johonson, 2015) Basically, watch Bunuel's semi-surrealist masterpiece of sexual desire, and then watch Taylor-Johnson's slightly-better-than-expected erotic romance/coming-of-age drama and marvel at how far we haven't come in depicting sex on screen. In the former, Catherine Deneuve's frigid, bored housewife becomes a prostitute in a high-class brothel during her days, acting out her "depraved" sexual fantasies while leading a supposedly perfect life with her doctor husband. In the latter, Dakota Johnson's mousy college student becomes entranced by the local handsome billionaire, only to be repulsed by/attracted to his kinky sexual proclivities. Both depict women taking ownership of their bodies and sexual desires in ways women are rarely allowed to do in film, but for all the hype, Fifty Shades is barely more explicit and FAR less provocative than a film released fifty years ago with a major star.
TEENAGE 80S BANDS DOUBLE FEATURE!
We Are The Best (Lukas Moodyson, 2014)/Sing Street (John Carney, 2016) Two of the most adorable movies you will ever see, these films really get what it feels like to be a teenager and needing to express yourself in ways that no one else understands - and how music can unlock something special inside of you. Even if it's terrible music. Wonderful performances from debuting leads, great songs, and fantastic costumes/makeup fill both of these films, which couldn't be more different, but are also wonderfully similar. They will both leave you walking on clouds of joy by the end.
BONUS PICK
Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino, 2007) This pre-packaged double feature from two hotshot directors is quite the tribute to the questionable-quality cheapie B-movies from the 70s, and has all the hallmarks of a late night double feature picture show: explosions, hookers, flat acting, fast cars, and FANTASTIC fake trailers in between the two halves. Rodriguez's zombie flick Planet Terror is more fun, but Tarantino's car chase/serial killer shot Death Proof has one of the greatest car chases ever filmed. All the actors are clearly having a blast, and most of them have never, ever been better.
