2008 Sundance Film Festival

A few months ago I was thrilled to hear that Henry Poole Is Here got picked up by a studio at Sundance because it was hands-down one of my favorite movies there. Luke Wilson is totally engaging as Henry Poole, a curmudgeonly man who buys an ordinary house in Southern California. Soon his neighbor Esperanza (Adriana Barazza) notices a stain on the outside of Henry's house that she thinks is the face of Jesus. She starts telling everyone in town about "the miracle" at Henry's house, much to Henry's annoyance. He tries his best to get rid of the stain, but the more he angrily resists the "miracle" on his house, the more proof presents itself that the stain truly does have some kind of power.

It gets a little overwrought and message-y at times, but overall the movie is sweetly funny and ultimately touching. Henry Poole opens in theaters August 15. To check out the trailer, read more

The Wackness was one of the films that received a lot of buzz during the Sundance film festival — even taking home the 2008 Audience Award. When I first heard about the film it was hard to piece together what this thing would be about, especially with the bizarre combo of Mary-Kate Olsen and Ben Kingsley.

Finally, The Wackness has a trailer and I can see that the story centers around some teenagers mostly concerned with "chillin'" in New York. Based on the preview, Juno's Olivia Thirlby and Drillbit Taylor's Josh Peck are the two talents at the forefront of this oddball dramedy. Despite reactions I got from folks at Sundance that ranged from "meh" to "amazing!" I'm still really looking forward to seeing it.

The trailer looks like a quirky tale about urban teens — and drugs — and I get the feeling that even if the movie strikes some false notes, the performances will make it worthwhile. I guess we'll see when The Wackness hits theaters in limited release July 3. In the meantime, you can watch the trailer if you read more

Man, people love to push the whole "this generation's Breakfast Club" angle with the documentary American Teen (though the poster for it, ah, doesn't help). I suppose this makes sense, but only in that The Breakfast Club featured timeless high school themes and characters. Yet, The Breakfast Club was still fiction, and a documentary is always going to be more complex and more nuanced than the stereotypes in a scripted film.

The movie follows four Indiana teenagers — introduced in the trailer as The Jock, The Princess, The Rebel and The Geek — as they go through their senior year of high school. It's both a familiar chronicling of the ups and downs of high school as well as a revealing look at how teens today are quite different from those of other generations. This was one of my favorite movies at Sundance a few months ago, and I plan on seeing it again when it opens July 25. To check out the trailer, read more

I often find it interesting to debate just how "real" so-called reality series like Laguna Beach and The Hills are, given that the lives of these wealthy young people are far from any reality known to most of America. While shows about the very rich provide their share of glamour and intrigue, there are plenty of compelling tales to be mined from the rest of America, especially when it comes to youth culture. One example of this is the documentary film American Teen that I was lucky enough to view at Sundance.

Another is a new reality series debuting tonight on the WE network, High School Confidential. The series, created by Sharon Liese, follows 12 girls through all four years of high school in Overland Park, Kansas. The issues facing the diverse group of girls range from body image and popularity, to disease and depression. Liese describes what motivated her to do the project:

High school can be a really painful, complicated time for a girl. It was painful for me. And what girls are experiencing today in terms of angst, the struggles and how difficult it is to forge your own identity is similar to what women faced years ago.

To find out why I'm crossing my fingers this is a good one, and to see clips of the show read more

The Deal, a lighthearted industry satire, can be loosely deemed a "romantic comedy," though there's not much romance and the comedy sometimes comes out flat. William H. Macy wrote the screenplay from Peter Lefcourt's novel and the movie is so filled with winky inside jokes about Hollywood and The Film Industry that one grows tired trying to catch them all. Still, it's not without its charms and fun silliness. It isn't a movie I would seek out ever again, but it was certainly a welcome reprieve from some of the more draining Sundance fare this year.

Meg Ryan and William H. Macy serve as the film's core romantic couple who supposedly have passion for one another simmering below all their sassy, contentious banter. Macy plays the formerly successful now deeply depressed filmmaker Charlie Berns whose suicide attempts are interrupted when his bright, upbeat nephew Lionel (the ridiculously cute Jason Ritter) comes to town toting his screenplay about about 19th century English statesman Benjamin Disraeli. Suddenly, Charlie is struck with the inspiration to make his nephew's script into a big-budget action flick starring the hot actor of the time: a giant beefcake (LL Cool J) who recently converted to Judaism. From there, it's just a matter of getting a studio to back the project and a couple writers to rewrite the script into Hollywood fluff. Of course, it's not quite that easy, so read more

What is it about teenagers that fascinates us so? In the case of many TV shows — from The O.C. to My Super Sweet 16 — there's an obsession with wealthy teens, kids who seem to have way too much way too young. We love seeing the spectacle these kids provide, their outrageous demands, their bratty tantrums that make us tsk-tsk even as we turn up the volume. We love affirming (in certain cases) that money doesn't solve everything, nor does it make anyone a better person.

The documentary American Teen, however, never focuses on this kind of outrageous opulence. The main idea is to get a glimpse at four Indiana kids from different backgrounds and social circles. Yet while everything in the film is completely ordinary, it still fascinates us.

American Teen was one of the best-received documentaries at Sundance, as evidenced in part by the various studios that courted filmmaker Nanette Burstein before Paramount Vantage bought up the rights. I admit I was driven to see the film partly out of curiosity to see these kids go through this delicate, difficult, and intense time of life that I've already experienced in my own way. Is this curiosity the thing that drives the desire to see American Teen? If not, why do we want to see these relatively normal stories so badly?

More thoughts on this if you read more

According to Charlize Theron at the Q&A session after the Sundance premiere screening for Sleepwalking, the movie's script really spoke to her, enough to make her want to produce and star in it. I have to wonder what, exactly, the script said to her that made it seem like a real standout project. It's not that this coming-of-age story with strains of poverty and abandonment is bad, necessarily, it's just forgettable. It didn't make me feel anything in particular except sleepy, which is perhaps appropriate, given the title.

The story follows young Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) whose unemployed, unsteady mother Joleen (Theron) suddenly disappears one day, leaving Tara in the care of her meek uncle James (Nick Stahl). Yet James soon finds that he can't care for his 12-year-old niece as well as keep a job and pay the rent, so when Tara insists they set out to find her mother, James eventually agrees. Their journey brings them to James and Joleen's father's ranch, despite the fact that this is the same gruff father (played by Dennis Hopper) who consistently berated and abused his children. Though the movie mostly seems like Tara's story, it's James who learns the most about himself and his own power, something he thought he didn't possess. To find out more of my thoughts on Sleepwalking, read more

As this year's Sundance Film Festival came to a close this weekend, some movies found their way into studio hands while others were honored with awards. By now some of these are familiar names (Choke, The Wackness, American Teen) while others are just now coming into the spotlight. Check out some of the awards and acquisitions:

• Sony Pictures Classics acquired the rights to The Wackness for under $2 million, the odd little film starring Ben Kingsley and Mary-Kate Olsen. The Wackness also won the Audience Award in the Dramatic category.
• The Audience Award: Documentary was given to Josh Tickell’s Fields of Fuel, a look at America's addiction to oil.
• The 2008 Grand Jury Prize in the Dramatic competition went to Frozen River, which was directed by Courtney Hunt. According to Variety, "The film tells the story of a desperate trailer mom and a Mohawk woman who team up to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States from Canada. Accepting the award, Hunt said, 'Thanks to Sundance Institute because without these programmers, this film could easily have been lost....I believe in a universe of abundance and I believe that every filmmaker here will find their perfect audience.'" Sony Pictures Classics also bought the rights to River.

More Sundance news if you read more