Snowy Sundance and its showy best

Brandon Bartle (Alden Ehrenreich) is a young soldier burdened by a possibly unkeepable promise he made before shipping out for Iraq in The Yellow Birds.
Brandon Bartle (Alden Ehrenreich) is a young soldier burdened by a possibly unkeepable promise he made before shipping out for Iraq in The Yellow Birds.

Snow was present upon touching down in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 25. Then, heading up to Park City via shuttle, you could watch it incrementally increase in volume. By the time we crested the valley and headed into town, the drifts were already waist high. Then it snowed more on Thursday. Then it snowed more on Friday. Then it snowed more on Saturday. By Sunday, drifts were approaching chest-level, and the sidewalks were layered with giant ridges of dirty slush, sluicing into large, deep puddles, whose surface was deceptively benign. You stepped through these moats at your peril -- some of them were deeper than the top of your boots. With temperatures plunging, you would imagine the slush would at least freeze over, but such was not the case. Moviegoers, critics, industry types and celebrities all had to struggle through these wicked conditions as we trudged up and down Main Street, and from theater to theater.

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Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play an ill-fated couple in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, one of the most anticipated, strangest and — according to our critic — best films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

This isn't meant as a complaint, or a screed against the weather gods, but it does suggest something about the nature of Sundance that's actually an important aspect of the festival: Despite the fact that the venues are spread out all over the region (and woe betide you if you made the mistake of getting a ticket for a screening at the dreaded Temple or Redstone theaters, which are some miles away from the outskirts of town), and the vast majority of theaters are some distance away from Main Street in Park City where all the parties and celebs are crashing together, there is a sense of community. We are all in this together, we all suffer at the mercy of the Slush Kingdom, we are all here because we love movies and there's no American festival that better exemplifies this adoration.

By most accounts, this was something of a down year, at least compared to the wild fireworks of 2016 -- Manchester by the Sea, Certain Women, Under the Shadow, The Fits, et al. -- it didn't quite measure up. That may be true, but there were still a great number of fascinating films that we'll be lucky enough to see opening in the next year or so. Here are some of the highlights.

Most Underappreciated Actress: Melanie Lynskey, who appears in Mason Blair's I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (between this title and Call Me By Your Name, critics were tripping all over themselves trying to get these right), and in a chapter in the horror anthology XX, was one of the revelations of the festival. She has a manner that is down-to-earth and eminently engaging. Anchoring Blair's film, in which she plays a hard-luck nurse who stumbles onto a crime ring with her creepy neighbor (played by Elijah Wood), she's the film's emotional fulcrum, and helps keep the entire affair from spinning off its wheels. Since starring alongside Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures back in 1994, she has made dozens of films and appeared in numerous TV shows, yet has never really gotten her due. Maybe this film will finally open people's eyes to her talent.

Creepiest Villain: (tie) German (Aaron Pedersen) in Damien Power's lurid yet thrilling Killing Ground and Andi (Max Riemelt), a contemptuous control freak in Cate Shortland's excellent Berlin Syndrome (see below). In Power's Aussie thriller, a sweet young couple go camping out on the edge of a small river somewhere in the Aussie woods. There, they are spied by a pair of particularly creepy fellows, German and his stooge, Chook (Aaron Glenane). As much as Chook is hateful, it's the dead-eyed, completely unempathetic German who really chills your blood. When he marches another family up into the woods to torture and kill, he takes what would best be described as "casual interest." It's as if he's not even particularly motivated to commit his heinous crimes. Andi, the charming, good-looking German schoolteacher who ends up imprisoning Clare (Teresa Palmer), a beautiful Australian tourist, in his apartment, is a horse of a different color. He's meticulous and hyper-organized (as director Cate Shortland said, it's his "Prussian" nature), a control freak of the highest order. His precision and in-depth planning make him even a more hateful monster.

Worst Technical Mishap: At the screening of the aforementioned Berlin Syndrome, there were a couple of bad technical mistakes (a loudspeaker above the audience announced the closing of the racquet ball courts next door to the theater midscreening), but then the doozy. Just as the film was coming to a pulse-pounding climax, with the evil Andi about to discover the young woman who was attempting to help Clare escape, the screen froze. The crowd laughed nervously. The screen remained frozen, then went to black, and then, most horribly, somehow jumped to the last shot of the film, in which we immediately surmised what happened. The crowd really groaned. Then it went black, and they were unable to show us the last five minutes. Fortunately, Shortland and her two stars were there, so Palmer told us what we had missed, with Riemelt re-creating some of the action. It was a nice save, but the worst aspect of all of this (especially for the chipper director)? It was the freaking World Premiere of the film!

Best Use of Trees: My Happy Family. This Georgian film from directors Nana & Simon concerns a burned out woman who decides to leave her wild, extended family in their cramped apartment and live by herself very simply and quietly. The place she finds is small and rather grubby, but it's high up, and has a beautiful open veranda that looks out over the tops of a glade of trees. Watching her sitting in a chair in front of her open view, eating a piece of cake for dinner, listening to the trees rustling in the light wind, we're brought into the same sort of tranquil state of mind that she is, and the whole thing feels worth it.

Worst Food Choice: Popeye's mac and cheese, in the Salt Lake City airport. I have no one but myself to blame.

Most On-The-Nose Sound Cue: The Yellow Birds. Alexandre Moors' film, based on the novel by Iraq vet Kevin Powers, features stirring performances from Alden Ehrenreich and Tye Sheridan. It's got good and bad points, to be sure, but it mars its otherwise moving last scene by closing the last shot with Radiohead's "Exit Music (for a Film)." Might have gone a little less literal to good effect there.

Most Irritating Film: Axolotl Overdrive. Basing the film on her novel, which was a sensation in Germany, Helene Hegemann's film dutifully follows the circuitous route of a teen, Mifti (Janna Fritzi Bauer), as she falls in and out of a relationship with an older woman, does countless drugs, and essentially acts as if she couldn't care less about any of it. I get documenting the blase mentality of some teens, but the trumped up apathy just renders the whole thing dull and mostly pointless. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, if the characters don't even care to be there, why should anyone else?

Darkest Film: Where Is Kyra? We mean this literally and figuratively. The film stars Michelle Pfeiffer, finally returned to the screen, as the poor, bedraggled Kyra, a middle-aged woman, newly divorced and taking care of her elderly mother in Brooklyn. Unable to land even the most basic of jobs -- and one early job interview scene was so horrible, I had to avert my eyes -- she becomes even more desperate after her mother dies, and she can't cash her mother's pension checks because of an accounting error. The dire emotional tone is equally matched by the bleakness of the lighting. It's as if Andrew Dosunmu's entire film were shot using 10-watt bulbs. Every apartment is dark and uninviting, every corridor is cramped, and even when the film shifts outdoors, it's gray, flat and thoroughly miserable.

Best Use of Natural Setting: Wind River. Set in the plains of Wyoming in the dead of winter, director Taylor Sheridan expertly mines the haunting, desolate splendor of the place to set up the atmosphere of beautiful inhospitability for his hard-hitting murder mystery. With temperatures said to be consistently below zero, and the snow a powdery cushion, Sheridan captures the allure and the inherent danger of living out on the American frontier.

Biggest Gross Out: Raw. Julia Ducournau's vet school cannibalism film earned its notoriety by freaking crowds out at the Toronto International Film Festival. It's mostly forgettable, despite its intentional gross-out scenes, but the one moment that really had the crowd roaring in anxious anticipation was when the protagonist (Garance Marillier), a former vegetarian now obsessed with meat, starts munching on human flesh. The relish with which she gives in to her urge, and the ghastly nature of watching her eat a human appendage like a chicken wing, gives the scene an unmistakable jolt.

Best Monologue: Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me By Your Name. For the better part of two hours, Luca Guadagnino's film plays like an exceptionally well done and gorgeous summer romance, between Elio (Timothee Chalamet), a young musical prodigy, and Oliver (Armie Hammer), an archaeology student working with Elio's father. But in the last 15 minutes, after the pair have been forced by geography to go their separate ways, it becomes something altogether more far-reaching and powerful. This is typified in a scene between Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his heartbroken son. What ensues is a mesmerizing monologue on the nature of love and pain, delivered exquisitely by the criminally underappreciated Stuhlbarg. By the time he'd finished, the only sound in the packed theater was the harsh intake of breath of many critics openly sobbing.

Most Awkward Dinner Moment: Beatriz at Dinner. The scene where the nature-loving, gentle, earth mother masseuse Beatriz (Selma Hayek), is forced to look at the trophy-hunting photos of the brilliantly named Trumpian tycoon Doug Strutt (John Lithgow) at a fancy dinner party of one of her wealthiest clients. "Are you ****ing kidding me?!" she yells incredulously, whipping the phone at the astonished Strutt. Then things really go south.

Best Actor: Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name. His mixed filmography includes small parts in Interstellar, The Adderall Diaries and Homeland, but the young Chalamet can expect a great deal more attention and much larger roles after his stunning turn as the young man fallen in desperate love with his father's intern. He is nothing less than a revelation, and the film's last shot -- his face flickering in the firelight, with all the joy and abject misery of love coursing through him -- is an absolute tour de force.

Best Actress: Ia Shugliashvili, My Happy Family. Playing the haggard matriarch who yearns for the peace and tranquility of living alone, Shugliashvili is the emotional fulcrum of Nana & Simon's fantastic domestic drama. With understated force, she powers the film, and creates an indelible portrait of a woman whose time has finally come.

Best Film: A Ghost Story. David Lowery's lyric tone poem about love, loss, mourning and the passage of time is hard to describe. Essentially, a young husband (Casey Affleck) is killed in a car wreck, comes off the morgue slab as a ghost (in the classic sense: white sheet, two eye holes), and chooses to return to the house he shared with his wife (Rooney Mara). Unable to communicate beyond the occasional poltergeist-like disturbance, and forced to bear witness, the ghost then watches his widow leave, and endures numerous other renters and owners, until finally the house is gutted and replaced with giant office buildings. With a minimum of dialogue -- save that of a stoned Will Oldham, who holds forth at great length about the nature of our transience -- Lowery manages to convey an enormous amount of almost overpowering sadness. Behind the sheet, we don't get to see Affleck's face at all, but he is still able to evince the utter miserable loneliness of our existence. It's fabulous movie-making, but would perhaps not make for the best date-night flick, if you had any designs.

MovieStyle on 02/03/2017

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