EXCLUSIVE: Steven Ogg, notably recognized for his roles on The Walking Dead and Westworld, has signed with Buchwald for representation.
23.01.2023 - 19:39 / deadline.com
There is talent to spare in Alice Englert’s feature directorial debut, Bad Behaviour, and that is its biggest problem — it’s all over the place, rather than being channeled and controlled in productive ways. A fine cast, intriguing avenues of exploration, numerous artistic outbursts and a pronounced interest in the unusual are all to be found in this compulsively creative work, but the elements are not seized and shaped in ways that might have ultimately produced a coherent and satisfying whole. This first film gumbo by the eminent Jane Campion’s daughter has enough going for it to suggest that Englert has genuine talent behind the camera, but clarity of purpose is rather lacking.
Having your characters assemble at the outset at a guru-centric semi-silent retreat in a beautiful wilderness area signals all sorts of things about them: self-involvement, probable wealth, gullibility, societal dissatisfaction and spiritual searching of an often trendy and expensive variety. All this might not matter if the program’s leader was genuinely insightful and talented in exploring a subject’s inner world, but one look at Elon Bello (Ben Whishaw) welcoming his new guests might be enough to make you consider almost any alternative.
All the same, enlightenment seekers optimistically assemble at the Loveland Ranch in the foothills of Mount Hypnosis seeking understanding, clarity of mind and a way to reposition their priorities and modes of living. Chief among them are Lucy (Jennifer Connolly), a former child actress now searching for the meaning of life; Lucy’s daughter, Dylan (Englert), a stunt woman who flies in for the occasion; and, eventually, Beverly (Dasha Nekrasova), a young model.
From the outset, one senses talent here based
EXCLUSIVE: Steven Ogg, notably recognized for his roles on The Walking Dead and Westworld, has signed with Buchwald for representation.
Anyone who has traveled to seaside resort areas around the world will recognize them, the obvious foreigners who spend their days approaching tourists with assorted trinkets to sell and are most often ignored or shooed away by Westerners. Precious few films have put such figures centerstage, but Drift does that and quite a bit more as it examines a young woman whose currently forlorn position in the world masks the very different sort of life to which she was once accustomed.
Although trans rights are now the subject of a simmering culture war in America and the U.K., that conflict is largely predicated on the increasing visibility of trans women at a time where self-ID is controversially becoming the norm. Stories of trans men, however, tend to go under the radar, and this remarkable New York-set debut from Chilean-Serbian director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz goes some way to redressing that imbalance. Featuring a pitch-perfect performance from Puerto Rican/Greek actor Lío Mehiel, so far mostly known for the Apple show WeCrashed and a number of shorts, U.S. Dramatic Competition entry Mutt feels like an important but — for reasons about to be explained — perhaps interstitial film in the history of LGBTQ+ cinema, being fully cognizant of the fact that it is set and was made in a between-time that reflects the lead character’s existential sense of limbo.
The Accidental Getaway Driver is one those rare, where-did-this-come-from films that every so often pops up to invigorate festivals and adventurous viewers on the lookout for something fresh and different. Generically, this is nothing new, a low-down gritty crime drama populated by cars, guns and desperate characters. But the movie, which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival, benefits considerably from being set in the rarely, if ever, filmed Little Saigon section of Orange County south of Los Angeles; a highly unlikely cast dominated by an octogenarian not looking for trouble; and, crucially, a noirish nocturnal milieu that injects the action with dread, even with a final stretch doesn’t really pay off with the kind of tension you expect from a crime drama. However, despite its lack of an exciting climax, this is a film that draws you in and offers sufficient satisfactions to attract genre aficionados and others keen to partake of some good new brew in an old bottle.
EXCLUSIVE: Range Media Partners has signed Jarreau Carrillo, the actor-filmmaker whose new short The Vacation has generated substantial buzz on the ground at Sundance 2023.
The cost of living crisis has hit the U.K. hard, but you wouldn’t guess from the trio of films screening in the official selection at Sundance. Rye Lane, in Premieres, is a goofy love story set in south London; Girl, in World Dramatic, is a tender parent-child drama set in Glasgow; and Scrapper, also in World Dramatic, is a curious mixture of the two. It deals with issues such as social care, single parenting, truancy, and grief, but director Charlotte Regan handles these matters with a candy-colored levity that can quite often be charming, in a whimsical, Wes Anderson way, but sometimes just plain baffling (there’s a reason why you don’t see talking spiders in a Ken Loach movie).
Genre comedies are a mixed bag, and for every cult gem like 2010’s Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, the Sundance Midnight strand has been known to throw in a bomb. In its opening moments, Andrew Bowser’s fourth feature threatens to be such a write-off, with achingly broad comic strokes and jokes that don’t really land as Bowser introduces his leading man: himself. The awkward slapstick tone is reminiscent of very early Peter Jackson—notably his wonky debut, Bad Taste—but once the story gets underway, and other characters join the frame, things become demonstrably better. To such a degree that the style and production values mature faster than Jackson’s did, blossoming into a likable romp reminiscent of the director’s first real studio movie, The Frighteners (1996).
There’s a certain type of dystopian sci-fi that turns up in Sundance every few years, a kind of ‘EPCOT on acid’ that causes a big ripple then rapidly fades away (see Escape From Tomorrow, a paranoid conspiracy thriller shot, guerrilla-style, in Disneyworld). Divinity, screening in the Next section, fits the bill exactly, a quirky mad scientist movie that, for all its attempts to be arty, darkly satirical and out-there, ends up as a kind of lo-fi companion piece to Don’t Worry Darling in its not-so-subtle skewering of American consumerism. Shot in grainy black and white, its chief draw is Stephen Dorff as you’ve never seen him before, and will likely never want to see him again.
Landscape with Invisible Hand is a unique story of survival under economic occupation of the Vuvv, an extraterrestrial race who aim to dominate humanity in every way except violence. Written and directed by Cory Finley (Bad Education, Thoroughbreds), the innovative, poignant film explores how humanity might handle an Earth-altering alien occupation and the resulting clash between class and commerce.
For anyone wondering how a film called Crazy Rich Asians ever came to be the poster child for diversity and inclusion, Randall Park’s humorous rebuttal is, almost literally, that film’s poor distant relation. Adapted from a comic book rather than a novel and with a cast of character actors rather than stars, Shortcomings even seems to admit its modest production values in the title. But for adventurous audiences, this rough-edged indie is a refreshing antidote to the horrors of the factory-farmed studio romcom, featuring a caustic male thirtysomething Asian-American lead whose messy love life should ring bells right across the age, gender and culture divide.
Breathing fresh life into the rom-com genre, Raine Allen Miller’s Rye Lane is a delight. Premiering at Sundance, it pays affectionate tribute to its forebears while injecting a youthful British energy reminiscent of seminal TV shows such as Skins. This is a sunny, irreverent take on life and love, following two strangers over the course of one eventful day, and more — though it’s at its most exhilarating when playing out in real time, Before Sunrise-style.
It is always a time for celebration whenever we get a new Nicole Holofcener film, and that is especially true of her latest one that stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus. You Hurt My Feelings which had its premiere Sunday night at Sundance, the pair’s second collaboration, with 2013’s Enough Said co-starring the late James Gandolfini being the first. In that film, and other Holofcener writing/directing efforts like Friends With Money, Lovely & Amazing, and perhaps my favorite, Please Give (not to forget the wonderful Can You Ever Forgive Me? which she co-wrote), they always focus on the quirky nature of our relationships with others in our lives. Holofcener just has always had a knack for getting right to the heart of things, often with a witty and wise, and truthful touch.
JG Ballard meets Ben Wheatley in Brandon Cronenberg’s latest. Which is a bit of a surprise, since the two have already met: in 2015, in the latter’s dystopian satire High-Rise. There are (literal) shades of Nicolas Winding Refn, too, and a healthy smattering of body horror inherited from the old man, whose filmography Cronenberg Jr. raids to make an unlikely fusion of Videodrome and A History of Violence, two very opposing milestones in his father’s career.
Premiering in the World Dramatic Competition, Adura Onashile’s debut feature Girl takes place in Glasgow, Scotland, but, given its themes of identity and belonging, this tender story of a refugee mother and daughter might as well be happening anywhere. Though the production values are exceptional for a low-budget British movie, there is also the sense that, by leaning into her restrictions, Onashile has found an interesting way to tell her story, taking us into the claustrophobic, fishbowl lives of these two loners so that it is the outside world that seems strange and ‘other’ to us whenever we are faced with it.
Based on one of the most sensational and much-discussed short stories of recent times, which was heralded as the most-read story ever to appear in The New Yorker, Cat Person is a disarmingly creepy film with a disturbing edge that will surely trigger further discussion about contemporary dating and romantic protocols. Years ago, a little film like this would have found a modest but loyal following among young audiences. Now, however, its forthright presentation of the pitfalls of flashing yellow lights where male-female relations are concerned should make this a must-see and a subject of hot discussion at least among teens and young adults.
Working at the opposite end of the spectrum to Baz Luhrmann, Ireland’s John Carney seems content to make low-key, localized musicals that are almost custom-sized for Sundance. True, some fingers were burned when, perhaps emboldened by the slow-burn success of 2007’s Once, he hired a big star (Keira Knightley), filmed in New York, and endured the full horror of a hands-on Harvey Weinstein release for the bigger-budgeted follow-up, Begin Again, in 2013. After whatever went down on that film, however, he returned to Ireland with a bunch of largely unknown actors for his next and arguably best so far: Sing Street (2016), an underrated romantic comedy about a young man (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) trying to find his identity through his love of music.
Children shouldn’t play with dead things: not just the title of a low-budget American horror from 1972 but words to live by, especially in this unnerving and highly effective Midnight entry from Australia. But though it employs some familiar tropes — high-schoolers dabble in the occult and soon begin to wish they hadn’t, Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou’s film Talk to Me does attempt to do something new with an old idea, for one thing making the crossing of infernal thresholds seem like an awful lot of fun.
Spanning three time periods and two continents, “Past Lives,” the directorial debut of Celine Song (“Endlings”), tells the story of two childhood friends and sweethearts pulled apart by time, circumstance, and fate. They come back together and end in a way that might subvert the romantic fantasies of the audience — but this only shows the important roles people play in our lives, even if it’s not what we expected. READ MORE: 25 Most Anticipated Films At The Sundance Film Festival Disembodied voices start us off in “Past Lives,” making guesses at who Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), and Arthur (John Magaro) are to each other as they sit at an NYC bar.
Actor-turned-filmmaker Alice Englert’s “Bad Behaviour” is a dirty bomb of a movie, and it almost seems intentionally devised to keep the viewer off-balance. What at first appears a rather obvious send-up of self-help culture turns into a take-no-prisoners assault on narrative expectations and norms, all the while painting a pointed portrait of a truly complicated protagonist, the kind of character whose motivations and intentions are so slippery, you can barely make up your mind about her before she gives you a reason to change it again.
Actor-turned-filmmaker Alice Englert’s “Bad Behaviour” is a dirty bomb of a movie, and it almost seems intentionally devised to keep the viewer off-balance. What at first appears a rather obvious send-up of self-help culture turns into a take-no-prisoners assault on narrative expectations and norms, all the while painting a pointed portrait of a truly complicated protagonist, the kind of character whose motivations and intentions are so slippery, you can barely make up your mind about her before she gives you a reason to change it again.