Sundance, Saturday and Sunday

Saturday morning my first movie was Uncle Kent, the new movie from Joe Swanberg. Like all of his movies, it was very low budget, unwritten-sounding dialogue, and lots of sex and nudity. Actually, not as much sex and nudity as his other movies, but still quite a bit.

The story was about a guy named Kent. Kent is a single guy living in LA, and he meets a girl from New York over chatroulette. He invites her to come out and stay with him for the weekend. She accepts, even though she has a boyfriend. Obviously he likes her and is hoping something will happen between them. Something does, but not what we expect. They find a girl on craigslist that is advertising for a threesome.

I liked the movie, but like all of Swanberg's movies, it really could have used a re-write and some editing. There are parts with very interesting discussions, but also parts where nothing happens and we are just watching Kent sitting around doing nothing. I'm not sure who I could recommend it to.

Uncle Kent was proceeded by a short called Ex-sex, which was very good.

The next movie I saw was Happy, Happy. This Norwegian movie claims to be a comedy, but I didn't laugh much. It was more of a drama. It's about an unhappy housewife. Her husband won't pay attention to her, and she starts having an affair with the neighbor next door. The only thing unique about the movie was the setting. Other than that, this type of story has been done before, and done much better.

The strange thing about the movie was the musical interludes. Remember the scenes in There's Something About Mary where the guitarist and drummer would appear and sing a song randomly? Kind of like that, there are interludes where we see a vocal quartet singing. It makes no sense and the movie is not the kind of comedy that can pull off those kind of absurd interludes.

Next I saw The Last Mountain, a documentary about coal and mountaintop coal removal, a destructive process that was outlawed until the Bush administration made it legal. It was very good and it pissed me off, like all of these political documentaries do, because it shows once again how laws are written by corporations.

The last movie of the day was Abraxas, a movie about a Japanese monk who used to be a punk rock guitarist. He decides he wants to play again, so he gets a band together and performs outside at the monastery. It was very interesting and unique, but also very tedious. Not recommended.

On Sunday I started off with Terri, a movie about an overweight high school kid. He lives with his uncle (The Office's Creed Bratton) who is usually heavily medicated, he goes to school in his pajamas, and he has no friends. So it's a feel good.

Things get entertaining when he is talking to the vice principal (John C. Reilly), but there are quite a few boring scenes where he is off by himself doing things like setting mouse traps. Late in the movie it starts to get really interesting when he starts making a couple of friends. A really cute girl in his class starts to get interested in him because he is nice to her, and eventually he invites her over to his house to hang out. His other friend comes over and the three of them start drinking and taking his uncle's pills, then things really get interesting.

Yet another movie that I liked, but it isn't easy to sit through and most audiences probably won't enjoy it.

Next I went to check out A Machine to See With at the New Frontier. This is no movie. You register, they take your cell phone number, and 15 minutes later you get a call. For the next 70 or 80 minutes you are walking around town following instructions from a pre-recorded voice. The basic idea is you are planning to rob a bank. It was a fun experience, but the end was kind of a letdown. Although, the end really depends on how many other people are currently participating, and how they behave. It's a very interesting idea and I'd love to see the company behind it take the idea further.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Eccles Theater trying to cover Red State. The Westboro Baptist Church was in town to picket Kevin Smith's latest movie, and he invited his fans to show up and protest against the protest. There were some very funny signs out.

I covered the red carpet and managed to interview the actors from the movie, including Stephen Root and Melissa Leo. I will post some video once I get a chance to do a little editing.

I wasn't able to see Red State. There is no press screening, and there are only 2 public screenings, which made it the hottest ticket at the festival. There was a lot of hype about how he was going to auction off the rights to the movie right there in the theater after the screening, but he ended up deciding to release it himself. He will take the movie on a tour then release it himself in October.

The last movie I saw on Sunday was The Devil's Double. It's partly based on the true story of Latif Yahia who was chosen to be a double for Uday Hussein. Dominic Cooper plays both Latif and Uday, and this is the best work I have ever seen from him. He plays both parts so differently that I forgot it was the same actor.

There is some really tough stuff in the movie. I have read about Uday Hussein and some of the horrible things he did, like kidnapping random girls off the street, raping them, then dumping their bodies. We see a bit of that in the movie. We also see torture, disembowelment, shootings, all that gory stuff.

The movie uses the true story as a base, then it invents some stuff. I don't know how much is true, but at some point Latif decides to try to escape Iraq. I had some problems with the movie but it was worth seeing for Dominic Cooper's performance.