BeerMOVIESMusic Gets Festive:
SUNDANCE NEXT FEST 2016
Written by Dan Sinclair
No, I don't know who that person is...
The 2016 version of Sundance’s NEXT FEST marks the very first time BeerMoviesMusic has been granted passes to any film festival, so please celebrate how you will. It was also the first time, the writer had stepped foot inside The Theater at Ace Hotel, so go ahead and celebrate some more. It’s a pretty fucking cool theater, so get your ass down there sometime if you get a chance. For now, please enjoy the few shitty pictures I took on my cell phone instead.
Like this one.
So just what is NEXT FEST? Well, according to the little brochure they handed out: “Sundance NEXT FEST is a summer festival fusing music, film and comedy into a celebration of the renegade spirit of independent artists.” I couldn’t have said it better myself… so I didn’t. But as you can see, the festival blends movies and music, and technically there is beer there, so what better place for yours truly to cover his first film festival? Uh, Sundance, SXSW, Telluride, Toronto… Oh, shut up! It’s a cool festival and I was very happy to have covered it, so sit back and enjoy my reviews of the films I saw…
Right after one more crappy cell phone pic...
ON SATURDAY:
MORRIS FROM AMERICA
Written & directed by Chad Hartigan
I’ve been in a lot of awkward, challenging situations in my life, but I’ve never been the only black person in Germany. Okay, so technically I’ve never been the only black person anywhere, and maybe Morris (Markees Christmas) and his father Curtis (Craig Robinson) weren’t the only black people in all of Germany, but they certainly seemed to be the only two in town. In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s a line in there somewhere where Curtis tells Morris that they are “the only two brothers in Heidelberg.” Not exactly the best place for an aspiring, young hip-hop star to get his career started, but that is Morris’ dream, and as soon as he gets over his fear of performing on stage in front of people, it should be smooth sailing.
But surprise, surprise, it’s not smooth sailing. Morris from America is, after all, a coming of age tale, so there will be all sorts of challenges in his way... mostly all of which will have to do with a girl because that is the way these things work. But this film is not a walking/talking cliché of any sort. Though you may recognize a few tropes of the genre, the film is smart enough to turn them on their sides enough to make it feel like something new. It’s not tidy and clean, the main characters do not necessarily get what they want, and it is also, above all, funny as fuck and sincerely heartfelt, specifically the scenes between Morris and his father. Robinson and Christmas really do have a believable, one-of-a-kind father/son chemistry that really is the best part of this movie. Other highlights include strong supporting roles from Carla Juri as Morris’ tutor & Lina Keller as the rebellious love interest/femme fatale, as well as a very personal moment between Mo and his pillow that you will never be able to unsee.
Sure, Morris from America doesn’t exactly break new ground and it does sort of leave the audience with a slightly incomplete feeling in the end, but it is also a very solid, funny genre film that hits all the right points while adding a few new wrinkles all the while providing plenty of sincere laughs.
GRADE: B-
WHITE GIRL
Written & directed by Elizabeth Wood
Ladies and gentlemen, please take the time right fucking now to give props to the ridiculously talented Morgan Saylor for giving one of the bravest, grittiest, most sexually powerful performances this writer has seen on the big screen. She portrays Leah, a young white woman who spends her summer living in a newly gentrified neighborhood in New City, experimenting with just about every drug she can get her hands on, including her own sexuality. This is where she shares some sort of deep connection with a Puerto Rican drug dealer named Blue (Brian "Sene" Marc), and will eventually have to do anything and everything in her power to get him out of jail.
Elizabeth Wood's White Girl is the anti-hero film millennial women in a gentrified New York have been begging for. Sorry, I know that sounds a little snarky and I fucking hate snark, but I firmly believe this film will connect with its very specifically intended audience wholeheartedly, while the rest of the film-watching world's opinions will be all over the place. While Wood attempts to paint an glimpse into a of a turn-of-the-millennium New York City much in the same way Larry Clark's Kids did for it back in the '90s, it's also weighed down the same great flaw-- why should the audience care about these characters in this city?
New York and Los Angeles are the two cities creative types tend to flock to in this country and also serve as setting for just about every other film that comes out. What the artists in these cities tend to forget is that not many people outside of those cities actually care about what the fuck people who do live in them do on a day-to-day basis. While White Girl does, at times, feel like its own unique movie, the characters are at no time, in any shape or form, empathetic, and the city looks no different than it has than in the majority of the stories that came before it. But even having said that, it's still a film, that once it finally gets going (about 20 minutes or so in), grabs you and doesn't let go and won't get out of your head for days later.
White Girl is a shockingly daring, but fairly flawed, sometimes messy, but ultimately admirable piece of first-time filmmaking. I do very much look forward to Elizabeth's next film, though, whatever it may be.
GRADE: C+
ON SUNDAY:
UNDER THE SHADOW
Written & directed by Babak Anvari
If you would’ve told me that a horror movie in Farsi would’ve been the gem of the festival, I would've told you… Well, no, actually I probably would’ve said, “Shit, that sounds really interesting. Let’s go see it.” And that's what happened! Under the Shadow is set in ‘80s Tehran in the midst of the Iran/Iraq war and captivates from scene one. In said scene, some dickhead tells Shideh (Narges Rashidi) she will never be allowed to resume her studies to become a doctor as a missile strikes a building a few blocks away outside of the window. Neither one reacts to the explosion.
Shideh returns home to learn that her doctor husband must go serve in the military, leaving her to stay home and take care of their young daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). And can we stop for a second a take a moment to appreciate just how goddamn good kids these days are acting? Long gone are the shitty days of Phantom Menace... but I digress. Anyway, Shideh not only has to play housewife/mother and not be a doctor, she also has to deal with the bomb warnings going off every few hours where the electricity goes off and everyone in the building has to head to the basement. Oh, and also there's the creepy mute neighbor kid who convinces Dorsa that there are supernatural evil spirits called jinn on their way as well.
So while this may be a haunted house/ghost story in some senses, it's so much more than that. It's about the horrors of life in general: war, the tragedies of survival, life/death, raising a child, the depression that comes from not becoming what you wanted to be, etc. Like recent psychological horror flicks The Babadook and The Witch, Babak Anvari's Under the Shadow takes its time to tell a story, relying more on atmosphere, tone, story and character than jump scares and gore, which may make it popular with many of today's short-attention spanned audiences, but makes it great cinema in this writer's book... or Web site. Granted there are actually a few real jump scares, too, but they work so much better because of the creepy tone set by the pacing and developed storytelling. Another impressive feature from a first-time filmmaker. Good job, Sundance Next Fest!
GRADE: A