BuzzSugar

Movie Preview: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

BuzzSugar — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:30:50 -0700

It wasn't my favorite of the 2008 Sundance movies I saw, but The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was still an interesting watch - and probably even more so for those who have read the Michael Chabon book on which the movie is based. Jon Foster plays the main character of Art Bechstein, a young man who passes his last Summer before entering the "real world" working at a book warehouse, meeting regularly with his dad (a shady Nick Nolte) for dinner, and sleeping with his boss, Phlox (Mena Suvari). Things get considerably more interesting, however, when Art meets the alluring Jane (Sienna Miller) and her boyfriend Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard). Suddenly, Art's Summer goes from mundane to exhilarating.

There's no release information just yet but there is a trailer you can check out if you read more.

Movie Preview: Michelle Williams, Ewan McGregor in Incendiary

BuzzSugar — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:30:08 -0700

Got your tissues handy? Because this trailer's probably going to make you sad and if you're like me (highly prone to crying at trailers) you might shed a tear (or five). Starring Michelle Williams and Ewan McGregor, Incendiary (based on a novel of the same name) is the story of a woman who loses her son and her husband in a suicide bombing, an event made more traumatic by the fact that she witnesses the attack on TV with the man with whom she's having an affair. I know, insanely sad.

The movie garnered a lot of attention at Sundance this year partly due to Williams's performance (which is supposed to be amazing) and also because of the eerie correspondence of its premiere with the death of Heath Ledger. The whole scenario becomes quite dark but definitely looks riveting as well.

A U.S. release date for Incendiary is so far unknown. To watch the trailer, read more.

Movie Preview: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt in Sunshine Cleaning

BuzzSugar — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:44:03 -0700

"Turns out it's against the law to throw biohazards in the dumpster. Who knew?"

Emily Blunt's character, Norah, dryly says this in the preview for Sunshine Cleaning, a little indie movie from this year's Sundance that finds two sisters starting up a "biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service." One of the sisters (Amy Adams) is a single mom who needs to earn money to send her son to a new school. From the trailer, the movie seems strange, dark and funny, a little like Six Feet Under but with the innocent sweetness of Amy Adams.

There's still no actual release date for the film, though apparently it'll open sometime this year. To check out the trailer, read more.

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Movie Preview: Trouble the Water

BuzzSugar — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:30:09 -0700

The documentary Trouble the Water was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and the buzz around this movie has continued to build from there. The film centers around Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her boyfriend who were trapped in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. Roberts videotaped the the entire ordeal, which was, as you might imagine, horrifying.

The extraordinary footage of the catastrophe aside, what appears to be at the heart of the movie is the additional devastation caused by the government's apparent indifference toward the city's most vulnerable citizens.

It seems like it would be a heart-wrenching film, but I've heard just the opposite. Even the trailer suggests there's something of a life-affirming vibe underneath the telling of this terrible chapter in our recent history.

The movie opens August 22 in L.A. and New York and will have a wider release later. To check out the trailer for yourself, read more.

Photo courtesy of Zeitgeist Films

Sundance Review: Henry Poole Is Here

BuzzSugar — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:30:17 -0700

Note: I posted this review soon after I saw this movie at Sundance, and today it's out in theaters, so I thought I'd share my thoughts again. It has some flaws, but overall I really like this movie.

Henry Poole Is Here was one of the first non-documentary feature films to be snatched up by a studio at this year's Sundance, and I can easily see why. It's a sweet, feel-good movie featuring great performances and a quirky look at the old discussion of faith vs. reason. It's not for everyone, veering as it does into some schmaltzy territory, but the subject matter lends itself to some cheesiness and I can't quite see how that could have been avoided. The hipster soundtrack helps to make things more edgy, as does the artful direction by Mark Pellington.

Luke Wilson plays Henry Poole, a grouchy man who buys an ordinary house in Southern California. Before long, his very friendly neighbor Esperanza (Adriana Barazza) notices a stain on the outside of Henry's house that she thinks is the face of Jesus. She calls in a priest (George Lopez) and starts telling everyone in town about "the miracle" at Henry's house, much to Henry's annoyance. Henry tries his best to get rid of the stain, wanting nothing more than to be left alone in his dreary house. 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. For more of my thoughts about Henry Poole, read more.

I can name two major reasons to see this movie: Adriana Barraza and Morgan Lily. Barraza, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance in Babel, is a compelling person to watch in general, and in this film she lends a truthful humanity to what might have been the silliest character in the story. Morgan Lily is a rising star; her big, sweet eyes and ease on camera indicate excellent things for her future. She will give those Fanning kids a run for their money. This photo in particular just slays me.

For his part, Wilson is surprisingly good in the title role. Henry Poole is difficult to like, yet Wilson elicits our sympathy. When we find out the painful reasons behind Poole's curmudgeonly demeanor, Wilson still manages to keep things grounded; we are compassionate toward Poole but we aren't allowed to pity him.

The music chosen for the film is its own character, though sometimes it almost plays too big a part. Still, it's like the filmmakers took a spin through my music collection and made some great choices: The Eels, Cake, Badly Drawn Boy, and many more. In truth, I probably wouldn't have liked the movie quite so much if it weren't for the carefully selected tunes.

Bottom line: Henry Poole Is Here is beautifully directed, features great performances and uses music in a lovely way. At times it's overly cheesy but if you're generally a fan of indie film, this is a must-see.

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Movie Preview: Phoebe in Wonderland

BuzzSugar — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:30:57 -0700

One of my saddest moments at Sundance this year was not being able to get into a screening of Phoebe in Wonderland, which looks like a darkly whimsical, adorably bizarre film all about the incredible imagination of a little girl. The girl at the heart of it is Phoebe (played by Elle Fanning), who is talented, gifted, and obsessed with a powerful fantasy life. She has trouble with her rule-filled world, and finds relief and inspiration in her quirky teacher (Patricia Clarkson). Felicity Huffman and Bill Pullman play Phoebe's frustrated parents.

We already got a tiny taste of the movie, which opens in limited release Sept. 12, and this new trailer for it makes me a little weepy (perhaps it's the use of both "Everybody Hurts" by REM and "Imagine"). To see it for yourself, read more.

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An Interview With American Teen Director Nanette Burstein

BuzzSugar — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:30:02 -0700

When I saw the documentary American Teen at Sundance this year, I was totally wowed, and I knew I was watching something special. It's truly one of the most insightful documentaries on American life to come out in years. The film is in select theaters now, and I highly recommend you check it out.

As you can imagine, it was a delight to sit down with the director of American Teen, Nanette Burstein, and pick her brain about the making of the film, what it means in the grander scope of current teen culture, and what it's like to be a lady director in a field that is still staggeringly dominated by men.

Buzz: When you were first filming at the high school in Warsaw (Indiana), how did you know you found the "right" kids with Colin and Hannah and Jake and Megan, etc.?

Nannette Burstein: Well, I didn't know for a while. I'm used to looking for not only the people but also a story that's already in process. And it's really funny because I found the best stories all in this one town - but that was in the summer. And then I got there like a month later and every one of their stories had changed, and I was so upset! I was like, "Oh my God, I've raised all this money and this film is going to be a disaster." (laughs) But they're teenagers! And their lives change like that.

The interview continues if you read more.

Buzz: Did it take a while for them to trust you, especially in regard to filming them doing potentially incriminating things, like vandalism, drinking, etc.? Were they OK with you filming that?

NB: No, not in the beginning. It did take a while . . . because they were worried that I was going to show that they drank a lot. So, I made this promise to them that I wouldn't do that, and I did keep that promise. There's only one scene where you actually see them drinking alcohol. [But] that wasn't what I was interested in, and in fact, they weren't doing really anything. I was worse in high school, I was drinking and doing more drugs than they were. I think it’s something that teenagers do, and if anything it was tamer. But yeah, it definitely took them a few months to trust me and feel comfortable on camera.

Buzz: Speaking of things that you did when you were younger and what they did, do you think there's anything unique about teenage life right now? And are there things that are the same and are always going to be the same?

NB: Yes, I think what's different about teenage life now is communication. Just overwhelming different forms of communication like the Internet and text messaging and i-chatting and YouTube, and it’s really hard for them to navigate. There's already enough rumors and misunderstandings that happen when you’re a teenager and this has just multiplied them, you know, a hundred-fold. I think what hasn't changed are the core issues of wanting to fit in and feeling insecure and fragile hearts and your parents pressuring you . . . All of these emotional issues are timeless. And up until now, you have these fiction films that deal with these kinds of subjects, but they tend to be more one-dimensional and everyone has a happy ending and nothing is very realistic. And then these reality shows are very stagey and tend to be about the wealthier classes in life so they don't feel very real either. So I haven't really seen a film that's depicted - both on an entertaining level and a complexity and substantive level - what teenage life is like. Hopefully in that way this film is new and different and could have wide appeal.

Buzz: You had mentioned at Sundance that you wished there had been more diversity, but it just didn’t work out that way. Did it ever give you pause to call the film American Teen when it's about basically one sort of homogeneous group of people?

NB: Yes! It gave me great pause, in fact. And I was struggling until Sundance - I knew once I got to Sundance I couldn't change the name because there would be all this publicity and we went through a bunch of different names. But I was and still am concerned about that.

Buzz: It's still quite different from what we're getting a lot of on TV, The Hills, all that stuff, and to me this is endlessly fascinating - the heartland of America, etc. - perhaps more so than say, Southern California.

NB: I know, and it's so funny because when I first got to Warsaw, the more popular kids were like, "Why are you filming here? You should be in California! Who's gonna want to watch this?" (laughs) They were so dubious of the movie because it was set in their Midwestern town.

Buzz: But it’s actually fulfilling a need.

NB: Yeah! Oh, it totally is.

Buzz: As a female director, what has been your experience within the film community as it is today?

NB: You know, I haven’t yet experienced discrimination, and I'm going to do a fictional film next so I'm sure it could be very different. Documentaries, there are a lot of female directors, probably because you don’t make much money (laughs). And it's not quite as political. But subject matter-wise, you look at the movies out there and every year has some exceptions. Maybe Juno is about pregnancy, but it was more than that to me, it was a film about a really smart . . . like a Hannah type of girl. And it's great, and you never see movies with young, female icons like that, that don’t care about being popular and are not vapid but are actually quite witty.

Buzz: And that movie just took off.

NB: I know! Exactly. And the success of it is because there's obviously a desire to see girls depicted that way. Yeah, I don't know why there are so few female directors, but there are . . . I do think there are strong female characters in [my movie], which is cool. I think that both Megan and Hannah are even more complicated than the boys, and I think that definitely comes from a woman making the film. And I didn’t even consciously think about it.

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Movie Preview: What Just Happened?

BuzzSugar — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:29:59 -0700

What Just Happened? was a fairly big deal at this year's Sundance mostly because of Robert De Niro who is at the center of this strange comedy. It's a Hollywood satire that some people will probably appreciate more than others, and the reviews I've read of the film have said there may be too many "insider" jokes about "the industry" for most people, but that otherwise it's a great movie.

The story follows "two weeks in the life of a fading Hollywood producer (De Niro) who's having a rough time trying to get his new picture made." Sean Penn plays himself, as does Bruce Willis (pretty hilariously, it seems) and Twilight's Bella, Kristen Stewart, also stars in the film, which opens October 3.

To check out the funny/odd trailer for What Just Happened?, read more.

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Movie Preview: Diminished Capacity

BuzzSugar — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:30:26 -0700

Another day, another trailer for a movie from this year's Sundance Film Festival. Today's features Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda as an uncle-nephew duo in Diminished Capacity. The plot is this: "A man (Broderick) suffering from memory [trouble] takes a trip to a memorabilia expo with his Alzheimer's-impaired relative (Alda) and his high school flame (Virginia Madsen), where the trio plans to. . . sell a rare baseball card."

I didn't get to see this one at Sundance, but my friend Molly did and she said it was pretty good. Sad, of course, but also touching and well-acted. Diminished Capacity opens in limited release July 8. To check out the trailer, read more.

Movie Preview: Towelhead

BuzzSugar — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:31:05 -0700

Towelhead (which also goes by the title Nothing Is Private) was one of the movies on my to-see list at Sundance that kept getting edged down by other movies, partially because of other priorities, though I also worried that it would be really disturbing. Now the film, based on the novel by Alicia Erian, has a theatrical release date of August 8 and a trailer that has only made me more uneasy about watching the movie - though also more curious, too.

The story is of the coming-of-age variety, though this one features a 13-year-old girl (Summer Bishil) whose Caucasian mother (Maria Bello) sends her to live with her Lebanese father (Peter Macdissi) in a small suburban town. She begins to explore her awakening sexuality, spending time with a boy from school (Eugene Jones III) and befriending a neighbor (Aaron Eckhart) whose intentions are far from pure. Her home life with a strict and sometimes abusive father only further drives her curiosity about her identity, her sexuality, her place in the world.

Alan Ball, creator of Six Feet Under, tries his hand at directing with the movie, and it seems to bear his signature marks of examining the darkest corners of the human soul while offering glimmers of humor and redemption. I'm both interested in and slightly afraid of this film. To check out the trailer, read more.

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