..,.Gary Dretzka
..,.Leonard Klady
...David Poland
...Doug Pratt
...Ray Pride
...S.T. VanAirsdale

 

JANUARY 26, 2006

Things To Do At Sundance While You're Dead

If there is a Garden State or Napoleon Dynamite to come out of Sundance 2006, it seems that it will be Wristcutters: A Love Story.

Make no mistake, Little Miss Sunshine is more naturally commercial and The Science of Sleep will be more of a critics darling, but if there is a movie here that is going to win the hearts and minds of the angst & rebellion laden teenagers of America, it's going to be Wristcutters.

I'm not saying that Wristcutters is the best film in the festival or that whoever buy sit can just throw it up on 1200 screens and start counting the cash. It is a very specialized play. You don't have a network TV star and Queen Amidala to market and it is not quite as weird as Napoleon Dynamite. (Look for someone to buy Dynamite producer Jeremy Coon's Sasquatch Dumpling Gang out of Slamdance in the next week, hoping lightening strikes twice.) It's a little like last year's Everything Is Illuminated, though it promises less and delivers more.

Croatian first-time feature director Goran Dukic, a Sundance Lab guy, delivers the story of a young man who wakes up one morning, cleans up his apartment, and slits his wrists. This leads him to an unnamed place where all the suicides live. He's not going to try it again because he gathers that two-time-cutters end up someplace even worse.

But in a somewhat inverted spin on The Wizard of Oz, our hero, Zia (Patrick Fugit), ends up on a black pavement road with a former Russian rocker (Shea Whigman), and a girl who is looking for the People In Control (Shannon Sossamon) because she claims that her suicide was mistakenly categorized. The don't know they are off to see The Wizard, but still they find him, in the person of Kneller, played by the indomitable Tom Waits.

There are not a lot of wacky choices made here... but good ones that are sometimes wacky. Unlike Garden State orEverything Is Illuminated, the story structure here feels impossibly random while being considered in great specificity. And Dukic doesn't put a spotlight on his most interesting choices. He allows the audience to find them all for themselves. And that is how you end up with a true cult film.

It leaves a funny sensation, this film. I can feel in the pit of my stomach how strong it will play with young audiences, in great part because it doesn't have the easy marketing hooks that some of the other films have had. It respects its audience, even as it pushes the envelope.

Have you ever felt like the space under your passenger seat in your car was a black hole that when your things fall down there, they are never seen again? Wristcutters literalizes this conceit, but in a charming way that makes you think.

I kept trying to shake the film's subtle charm and unvarnished romantic strokes, but I was steadily, gently pulled in over and over and over again. I can't say I am deeply in love with the film, but it was a very good first date and by the end, I was thinking about the future. But you see, I am 41 and the audience for this movie, I think, really is teens and college kids. That doesn't mean I won't fall in love during a second or third viewing. But that kind of feeling is encouraging to me at Sundance. Too easily pushed over often means a bad call.

Wristcutters: A Love Story is now high one my Ones To Watch list.

And then there was Crash-ing Bore... or Open Whiner. The real name of the film is Right At Your Door, which feels like an Off-Off-Off-Broadway two person show extended to a fighting-get-to-90-minutes movie drama. By the end, you realize that it really was a 30 minute episode of The Outer Limits stretched to within an inch of its life.

However, Lions Gate will sell the crap out of it and make a tidy profit on the film using the Open Water-like elements that the film offers. It's good business and a bad movie.

The short version of the story is that L.A. gets hit by some dirty bombs, hubby is at home, wifey is on her way to work downtown where the bombs went off, and she doesn't get back to him until he's already sealed the house - on the instruction of the radio - and is afraid to let her potentially contaminated self in. My, what will happen?

It's not a terrible, terrible movie. But it's not a good movie either.

Whereas Mary McCormack is always fun to watch and accessible to the audience, Rory Cochran really isn't. He's a decent actor, but he's not Mr. Charisma on screen. And for what is essentially a two person film, you really need that.

Also in the "Didn't We Already Sell This Movie" category was Little Miss Sunshine. By the end of the movie, you can see exactly what made it feel like a glove that RiceUtleyGilula wanted to put their hand back into. But I wonder just how they are going to sell the movie without giving away the very funny, but very-funny-because-it-is-such-a-happy-surprise ending. I know it is blasphemy to use the phrase, but since I liked the movie I will... it reminded me more than a little of Happy, Tx. in tone and execution.

In spite of being the biggest box office draw in the film, this is not a Steve Carrell movie. It is a true ensemble piece. Greg Kinnear is the uptight guy, Alan Arkin is the sex/drugs/rock-n-roll grandfather, Steve Carrell is the gay, post-suicide-attempt intellectual, Paul Dano is the silent teen son, Toni Collette is the loving voice of reason, and Abigail Breslin (from Signs), is Little Miss Sunshine... well, kinda.

The family ends up on a road trip to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, forcing them to come together as they fall apart. The movie is often funny, but only tear-inducing in about five minutes of the third act. Still, a solid little movie. Searchlight may have overpaid a bit, given that it is R rated and doesn't smell of phenom.

One insight from one bright mind was that the film could be taken down to a PG-13. Keeping that in mind, I counted 13 "fucks" in the movie, and only one is allowed by the MPAA. But even a little drug use could probably get in under the wire and really, that is all that takes it out of the PG-13 arena. I would seriously consider dubbing the "fucks," mostly uttered by the great Alan Arkin, to get that more open rating. Because unlike Wedding Crashers or The 40 Year Old Virgin, this film doesn't really feel like an R. It feels like a sophisticated family road trip comedy.

In any case, it is not always crystal clear why Searchlight was willing to pay so much for this movie... until you get to the money scene. But I don't think they will market the surprise of that money scene. So what to do? No one better than Ms. Utley to be making that decision.

So two films bought by two studios that smell of other festival-based successes... and one complete original. It's enough to make you cut your wrists and make a movie about it.

January 25, 2006
January 23, 2006
January 22, 2006
January 21, 2006
January 20, 2006

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