Sundance Sunset Cinema

21 and over;Stadium Seating (2:30 PM), (4:45 PM), 8:00 PM, 10:05 PM

Jean-Luc Godard said, "All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun." But really, all you need is a girl, preferably a charismatic one with a secret in her heart. Director and actress Sarah Polley has found that girl: her own mother. Polley's... More »

Jean-Luc Godard said, "All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun." But really, all you need is a girl, preferably a charismatic one with a secret in her heart. Director and actress Sarah Polley has found that girl: her own mother. Polley's documentary, Stories We Tell, attempts to unravel some of the mysteries of her own family's life. This wondrous, absorbing little picture covers a great deal of winding meta-territory, reflecting on the ways in which a single family's story can be told—or maybe, more accurately, examining the idea that there’s no such thing as a "single story." One girl, as Sarah Polley learns, can actually be many girls in one. Polley opens by introducing us to her cast of characters: her father, Michael Polley, an assortment of family friends, and various siblings and stepsiblings, all of whom look a little like Polley-- and yet don't. The director has assembled this tribunal to reassemble the story of her late mother, Diane, a woman we get to know gradually through home-movie footage, re-creations that have the look and feel of that home-movie footage, and recollections from the people who knew and loved her. She shapes the picture into a riddle that keeps us guessing every minute, and what she ends up with is so oddly shaped that it could be categorized an experimental film. But it's too warm to be off-putting. There's no way, Polley concludes, to tell a reliably true tale. But this particular story, which begins and ends with a woman’s face, feels true enough. « Less

(2:00 PM), (4:30 PM), 7:15 PM, 10:00 PM

Some things are charming about European films that ape Hollywood, the same way that seeing yourself reflected through a funhouse mirror can be. The sentiments aren’t quite as saccharine. The obnoxious characters are a touch nastier. Some subplots... More »

Some things are charming about European films that ape Hollywood, the same way that seeing yourself reflected through a funhouse mirror can be. The sentiments aren’t quite as saccharine. The obnoxious characters are a touch nastier. Some subplots aren’t tidily resolved. Yet despite those deviations, the gist is essentially the same. Such is the case with Love Is All You Need, Susanne Bier’s take on a Nancy Meyers rom-com. It’s all here, from the house-porn of Italian seaside villas to the farcical tale of couples forged and dissolved. Philip (Pierce Brosnan) and Ida (Trine Dyrholm) are given a wholly unnecessary meet-cute (she crashes her car into his) on the way from Denmark to Italy, where Philip’s son is marrying Ida’s daughter. As extended family joins, the film veers from the dramatic (Ida has breast cancer and her husband has left her) to the comic (the husband arrives, floozy in tow) to the farcical and back again. Formulaic despite its trespasses, Love Is All You Need leaves the lingering sensation that more fun could have been had if the film cut loose and lived a little, as its central characters ultimately—if unoriginally—learn. Its strongest moments come when Bier exceeds the expectations of the genre, as glimpsed in an incorrigibly narcissistic aunt (Paprika Steen) or a key character’s uncertainty about his sexual orientation. In other moments the viewer may sense the whirring of an assembly line’s gears obediently at work. « Less

21 and over (1:30 PM), (4:00 PM), 7:00 PM, 9:25 PM

A dystopian romance in which two damaged people find their way to one another, Shane Carruth's Upstream Color is mysterious, beautifully shot, and far from inept. Carruth shot and edited the film himself, creating a cracked-mirror narrative that... More »

A dystopian romance in which two damaged people find their way to one another, Shane Carruth's Upstream Color is mysterious, beautifully shot, and far from inept. Carruth shot and edited the film himself, creating a cracked-mirror narrative that gradually pieces itself together. But beware the allure of the quasi-experimental one-man show: There’s a stream of pretension bubbling beneath the assured surface. Almost midway through a man named Jeff, played by Carruth, approaches a woman named Kris (Amy Seimetz) on a train in an unnamed city. Jeff and Kris strike up a tentative romance, pushed forward by fractured conversations and fracturing jump cuts. By this point in the film, we already know-- as much as we know anything for sure-- that an unnamed man has slipped Kris a narcotic made from what appear to be grubs. He kidnaps and brainwashes her; another mysterious figure, perhaps a scientist, a musician, or both (he's played by Andrew Sensenig and referred to as "the Sampler" in the credits) comes to her rescue. Or does he? His plan for her involves an anesthetized pig, some crude surgery, and a possible melding of plant, animal, and human life. Thoreau's Walden figures in there, too. To be bewildered by Upstream Color is to be human; the story is obtuse by design, though the filmmaking is X-Acto precise. The movie’s chief lament can be summed up pretty succinctly: We're disconnected from nature and each other. That idea is played out best in Seimetz's performance, the movie’s most affecting component. Her eyes are only half-blank—Seimetz makes sure there are flickers of life. « Less

(1:45 PM)

At last! A documentary about that underexposed group: the 1 percenters in their lair. In Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's, the storied store is presented in cinematic terms as ex-screenwriter Matthew Miele watches decorator David Hoey madly... More »

At last! A documentary about that underexposed group: the 1 percenters in their lair. In Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's, the storied store is presented in cinematic terms as ex-screenwriter Matthew Miele watches decorator David Hoey madly creating window displays of phantasmagorical "installation art" that moves. The film's climax is the famous annual holiday unveiling as the hoi polloi press their noses against the glass. Yet the long-term employees fascinate more than the clothes: They are beautiful gargoyles, true freaks of fashion. We don’t get interviews with non-celeb shoppers of the reticent monied class, but designers Manolo Blahnik, Jason Wu, Patricia Field, and others each give their rendition of "What Bergdorf's Meant to Me." Vera Wang nails it: Being obsessive is a given; the key is how you fit into the market. A one-size-fits-all documentary format includes a mini-history; apparently the founders weren't just in it for the money. Edwin Goodman was a tailor who knew how to cut and cared about quality. Yet this macchiato with 24-karat gold flecks may not be to everyone’s taste. Spending $7,000 on shoes is shrugged off, since here success is affording Bergdorf Goodman's. Without the dueling-divas drama of The September Issue, or the shiny dynamism of Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, this doc, title taken from a remark by a wealthy European shopper and immortalized in a New Yorker cartoon, is fun and frothy, a fan's mash note. « Less

21 and over (4:15 PM)

A film seemingly produced only because it boasts enough sizable roles to entice multiple stars, Craig Zisk's The English Teacher reveals that a respectable cast and much noisy boisterousness isn't enough to generate a single laugh. Introduced by... More »

A film seemingly produced only because it boasts enough sizable roles to entice multiple stars, Craig Zisk's The English Teacher reveals that a respectable cast and much noisy boisterousness isn't enough to generate a single laugh. Introduced by a stuffy female British narrator as a spinster with no marriage prospects, high school English teacher Linda (Julianne Moore) finds her staid, solitary life upended when former student Jason (Michael Angarano) returns home from New York with an unpublished play that she and drama teacher Carl (Nathan Lane) adore and demand to stage. Close-minded small-town administrators who'd rather put on Our Town soon prove the least of Linda's problems once she sleeps with Jason and-- after he proves to be a two-timing sleazeball—their inappropriate tryst is exposed. The ensuing shame, however, is no worse than the embarrassment caused by watching Moore and company flounder through this quirky indie, which when not dully mocking artistic pretensions or referencing A Tale of Two Cities is busy wasting time shoehorning Greg Kinnear into the action as Jason's supposedly unsupportive dad. It's a cartoony stew of unlikable characters, albeit one whose most repugnant is still easy to identify: He's the loser unironically posting Jack Kerouac quotes on Facebook. « Less

(2:15 PM), (5:00 PM), 7:30 PM, 9:45 PM

Identity theft! Cyber bullying! Runaway teens doing lurid cam shows! This ambitious, multistoried, state-of-us-all ensemble drama plumbs our fears of the plugged-in now more stridently than local news in TV sweeps. While well-crafted and at times... More »

Identity theft! Cyber bullying! Runaway teens doing lurid cam shows! This ambitious, multistoried, state-of-us-all ensemble drama plumbs our fears of the plugged-in now more stridently than local news in TV sweeps. While well-crafted and at times moving, screenwriter Andrew Stern's cautionary tales can't help but feel behind the curve, the news they're so urgently sharing already fully absorbed by the culture. They still build some power, especially the central story of a misfit teen (Jonah Bobo) getting catfished by a couple of bullies-- and then the inevitable shame of a 15-year-old's nude photos getting shared all over his high school. With tenderness and economy, Stern and director Henry-Alex Rubin humanize all parties, especially the bullies and the father of the poor, pranked kid; this story accumulates serious weight and vitality. That dad is played by Jason Bateman, who proves adept at drama, although it's little surprise when this distracted, suit-and-tie middle-management type winds up in a hopeless brawl on a suburban lawn, as that's in the cards for all Jason Bateman characters. A less involving thread has TV news reporter (Andrea Riseborough) getting too close to a male runaway (Max Thieriot) who masturbates on webcam. Then there's the long-soured married couple whose accounts get drained via the usual cyber-pilferers—this family seems to have the same do-nothing, plot-advancing credit card company Bateman had in Identity Thief. That said, one of their moments resonates: husband and wife (Paula Patton and Alexander Skarsgård), each with the other's Internet history laid bare, finally coming to see each other. Disconnect might play better a decade from now, when it's more clearly a compendium of contemporary fears rather than some dire expression of them. « Less

7:45 PM

Say what you will about Jim Baker, also known as Yod, Yahowha, Father, and then just plain God to his tribe of hippie acolytes in Los Angeles's so-called Source Family, but the man had the hair for the job. Zeus himself might envy the pillowy,... More »

Say what you will about Jim Baker, also known as Yod, Yahowha, Father, and then just plain God to his tribe of hippie acolytes in Los Angeles's so-called Source Family, but the man had the hair for the job. Zeus himself might envy the pillowy, platinum coils that Baker grew out in the late 1960s while reinventing himself as a spiritual cult leader with a sideline in the restaurant business. It wasn’t just the hair that drew in the kids, as we learn in The Source Family, Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille's largely sympathetic history of the Baker-led phenomenon. Baker knew his market so well that he advertised meditation classes for "all the confused, lost children of the new age" in the local paper. Offering himself as a father, protector, and-- if you were a teenage girl-- sexual instructor, Baker ruled a mini-society of about 150 kids, several of whom appear to tell their story. That kind of charisma is tough to translate, and indeed photos, footage, and recordings of Baker do little to suggest he was more than a gifted huckster with great hair. With some focus and critical perspective, The Source Family might have documented more than a spectacle of its time. « Less

21 and over 10:10 PM