The evening screenings in Park City began under a light snow and a heavy cloud of gloom as this town of movie nuts talked in hushed, flattened tones about the death of Heath Ledger. There are those core-meltdown stars you expect to hear via friend's IM that they finally rang down the shade, but Ledger was not one of those stars. Whatever was going on inside him, he kept it off the screen and out of the papers. Maybe he'd still be here if he hadn't.

In the circumstances, Clark Gregg's "Choke" seemed a perfectly appropriate viewing choice: a comedy of the most cynical, dysfunctional bleakness, topped off with a message-y warmth that fooled no one at the screening. Based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel, it concerns the misadventures of Victor (Sam Rockwell), sex addict, scam artist, colonial re-enactor, and momma's boy. Anjelica Huston plays mom, hospitalized with dementia, and Kelly McDonald plays a doctor with most unusual notions of patient care. (As Bill Murray said in "Tootsie," "That is one nutty hospital.")

There are as many laughs as gasps of calculated shock in "Choke," and everything to do with Victor's job at a historical theme park is blitheringly funny. The film loses focus, though, and eventually it loses its nerve, although always entertainingly. You'll get a chance to decide for yourself: Fox Searchlight has just acquired the film for $5 million. Finally, some business gets done at Sundance 2008.

"Sugar" is directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's follow-up to the much-loved "Half Nelson," and while the new film couldn't be more different on the surface, it continues the duo's love affair with characters who are gifted and unhappy and far out of their element. Here that character is Miguel "Sugar" Santos (Algenis Perez Soto), a young pitching sensation in the Dominican Republic who's drafted into the U.S. farm system and finds himself spinning out of control. It's a long, observant, quietly eventful drama -- an epic boy's life, in a sense -- that looks at Middle America through alien eyes and that ultimately says some rather trenchant things about professional sports and their casualties. "Sugar" ends on a note of muted regret that becomes less and less regretful the more you think about it. After today, I needed that.

Filed under: Documentary, Sundance, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Celebrities and Controversy, The Weinstein Co., Politics, Cinematical Indie

Morgan Spurlock -- whose mix of affable good humor, wise guy populism, shameless showmanship and participatory journalism made Super Size Me a breakout hit at Sundance in 2004 -- is back in Park City with his follow-up feature documentary, Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? And those elements are all still very much in effect in Spurlock's sophomore feature film, even if they may occasionally feel in need of slight fine-tuning. Inspired by the impending birth of his first child, Spurlock hits upon one thing he can do to make the world a safer place for his yet-to-be-born offspring; find and capture Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind September 11th and the leader of Al Qaeda. As Spurlock notes in his introduction, "If I've learned anything from big budget action films, it's that complicated world problems are best solved by one lonely guy. ...." And while Spurlock may not actually answer the question of where, he actually tackles, with humor, probing wit and a certain grace, the much more important question of why.

And while Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? offers more than a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, at least there is a little medicine. After security training and an extensive battery of shots, Spurlock begins touring the globe to find out who Osama is and where he came from. A quote from Dick Cheney gives a party-line take on the roots of terrorist hatred for America: "They hate us, they hate our country, they hate the liberties for which we stand." But, as comedian David Cross notes in one of his charged stand-up bits, if the terrorists really hated freedom, then the Netherlands would be dust long before America got attacked. ...

So why do they hate us? Spurlock goes out into, as the op-ed pieces call it, 'the Arab street,' in Jordan and Morocco and Palestine and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to not only ask about Osama's whereabouts but also ask the people there how they feel about 9-11 and America. And with a mix of interviews and escapades and animations, Spurlock lays out a simple thesis: That America's image has been hurt and sullied for years by its own conduct, primarily by propping up authoritarian regimes that deny their citizens economic and political freedoms, with those angry, disenfranchised poor embracing Islamic fundimentalism as the only thing that will listen and violence as the only way they can be heard. (Oh, and invading Iraq. And supporting Israel's efforts in the contested territories. And ...) Al Franken notes that when Liberals say they love America, it's like the love in a long marriage -- "I love you, but I'm mad you didn't take out the trash ... " or "I love you, but I can't believe you gave billions of dollars in arms and aid to Iraq during the '80s." It's still love, but it's tough love -- which includes asking hard questions and raising ugly facts. Spurlock says, flat-out, that in our desire to support two precious resources -- anti-communism during the Cold War and oil right now -- we have helped create the poverty, hopelessness and anger that is the meat and drink of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.

Continue reading Sundance Review: Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

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It seems surreal to be in Park City given what's going on elsewhere: the tragic passing of Heath Ledger (see below), the studiously wacky Academy Award nominations ("There Will be Blood" gets 8 nominations?! And not one for Jonny Greenwood?!?)

But here I am, in a town without pity or much in the way of compelling movies, it seems. The first film one screens in any festival is almost always pot-luck, and it usually turns out to be the worst thing you see. All I can say in the case of "Pretty Bird" is that it had better be. Written and directed by the engagingly rumpled young actor Paul Schneider ("Lars and the Real Girl," "All the Real Girls"), this strident comedy about a deluded entrepeneur (Billy Crudup) trying to invent a rocket belt with the help of a paranoid scientist (Paul Giamatti) is notable for having no real people in it whatsoever. The stars must have realized they've been dealt a set of mannerisms rather than actual characters, so they mug endlessly and mirthlessly. Schneider has a tin ear for dialogue, too, and even a reliable farceur like SNL's Kristen Wiig flails. It's the kind of precious oddball whimsy that Sundance used to take to the bank and that here reaches a thundering dead end. It's not a good feeling to start a festival with what feels like the death of indie cinema.

I'm going to see "Choke," based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel, followed by "Sugar," about which I'm hearing very good things. Fingers crossed.

Maybe drugs. Maybe suicide. What a goddamned waste. The Times city desk has the latest, but it's a whole bunch of nothing at this point. He was 28.

This was a guy who was growing further and further into himself as an actor. His performance in "Brokeback Mountain" trumped anything he had done up to that time -- it remains one of the most daringly internalized things I've ever seen. The trailers alone of his turn as The Joker had me excited about the prospect of seeing another "Batman" movie, something I didn't think was possible.

All the things he could have done, and now we'll never see them. Stupid, stupid, stupid. My deepest condolences to his family.

Like The Goonies, The Monster Squad congers up memories of my childhood. I remember the first time I saw it, when I was around 8 or 9 years old, and thought how awesome it was that you had all these classic movie monsters on one screen AND have a group of kids fight them. So when I finally got the chance to watch it again after nearly two decades, I was enthusiastic as ever. It was like opening up a time capsule, now encased in a two disk DVD. Yet, after about half-way through I realized that like Pop Rocks and Santa Claus, I had outgrown The Monster Squad. (more…)

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OK, I’ll keep this short : what a load of shite! Good God, it’s been a while since I watched such a crap film. Annabelle (Erin Kelly), the seventeen-year-old daughter of a senator, is packed off to a Catholic girl’s boarding school after being expelled from her two previous schools. Pretty girls in uniform, stuck on campus and feeling rebellious is a promising arena for some forbidden love and steamy sex scenes, but boy did they f*ck this one up.
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ADVISORY, Jan. 22, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) --