Spinning Platters continues its coverage of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, which ended last Saturday, Jan. 30th with its evening awards presentation (all the winners can be found here).
We’re highlighting 18 of the nearly 200 films shown at the Fest, so you can know what to look for in the coming year – and what to avoid – as many of these titles are purchased and widely distributed.
As a reminder, we are using our patented Viewing Priority Level (VPL) Guide to advise you accordingly:
A silly, subversive, colorful day in the life of a 1950s Hollywood studio fixer — as only the Coens can envision.
Channing Tatum the singing, dancing sailor.
Expectations were high for Hail, Caesar! the new film from the modern great American filmmakers, Joel and Ethan Coen. Three years after their award-winning triple play of 2009’s A Serious Man, 2010’s True Grit, and 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis, the sparkling musical trailers for Hail, Caesar! began hitting the web, and suddenly Coen fever began spreading again. However, unlike the washed-out colors and quiet dramatic quality of the former titles, Hail, Caesar! seemed to promise bright colors, outlandish musical numbers, and an unbridled sense of fun. The question I found myself asking was — would Hail, Caesar! embrace the darkly comic bizarreness of early Coen films such as Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy, or the cynical chastisement of Hollywood in Barton Fink? Well, the answer is really ‘no’ to both. The most wonderful thing about Hail, Caesar! is that it has its own new brand of Coen humor, one of PG-13 lightweight, sarcastic and playful tones, but still filled to the brim with the filmmakers’ unparalleled attention to detail and love of subtle and not-so-subtle references.
Zombie-slaying Bennet sisters worth cheering for. Zombies, not so much.
Victorian era badassery.
More influenced by 2005’s Pride & Prejudice starring Keira Knightley than the classic piece of literature by Jane Austen or the works of George A. Romero, Pride & Prejudice and Zombies,based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith,is a mediocre popcorn flick. It’s not as campy or cheeky as I’d had hoped, nor as serious and emotional as it could be if it avoided being the former. Despite the PG-13 rating, there’s enough genre blending jokes and tame action to make the first hour an enjoyable piece of escapism. Unfortuantely, an apparent inability to conclude the story whilst providing a non-anticlimactic finish makes the last 30 min a bore — an uninspired CGI-filled bore. Yet PPZ can be taken in its entirety as a relative success. The failings don’t take away from what most folks will expect from a sci-fi period piece romance (not sure the appropriate genre?) based on a popular piece of spoof fiction.
Marking its closing with its annual awards ceremony, the 2016 Sundance Film Festival ended this past Saturday evening; you can see all the winners here.
For the second year in a row, I braved the Park City cold, snow, and the ubiquitous Los Angeles UGG-wearing throngs to bring you spotlights of a fraction of the films that played the Fest. With nearly 200 offerings, the Fest featured way more than this reviewer could see. While I sadly missed the big winner and much lauded The Birth of a Nation (you’ll have to stay tuned to Spinning Platters later in the year for a full review upon its wide release), I nevertheless managed to knock out a respectable 18 films in five days. Many of these may receive distribution deals (if they haven’t already), so you can study up now with these capsule reviews, which use our trademark Sundance Viewing Priority Level (VPL) Guide:
The dullest hours are spent with this rote seafaring rescue tale
Is Chris Pine screaming because of the CGI wave he’s encountering? Or because he’s in this dismal movie? We’ll never know for sure.
T.S. Eliot famously wrote that “April is the cruelest month,” but, for the movie-going public, January is the harshest. The embarrassment of riches that is the late fall quality Oscar contender rush is now just a faint memory, and theaters are filled instead with middling fare that studios don’t know what to do with. Case in point is director Craig Gillespie’s The Finest Hours, which had two previously scheduled release dates before finally opening nationally today – never a good sign. A dull, paint-by-numbers mess, the picture’s suitability as a January wasteland offering makes perfect sense, but the fact that it boasts a wealth of talent both in front of and behind the camera is both puzzling and disappointing.
A loud, intense disappointment from director Michael Bay-nghazi
I have a feeling we’re not in Scranton anymore.
I’ll start with what impressed me about Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. First (yes there is more than one thing), the story follows the real life sequence of events, at least based on what is publicly known about the attack. Second, Bay still knows how to capture intensive explosive action on screen. The firefights are, indeed, very effective. Despite knowing how the events played out, the chaotic gunfire and threat of technicals kept me on the edge of my seat. But those moments come and go, and the remaining minutes of the film completely misfire on all cylinders. The dialogue, comprised of 95% stupid one-liners, is an embarrassment. The stereotyped supporting characters are cringe-worthy. And the message Bay is trying to get across is confusing. 13 Hours shows some directorial maturation from Bay, but the film fails to properly honor the real life heroes due to the same annoyances that we’ve come to expect from Bay’s everlasting churn of slightly entertaining blockbuster garbage.
The 20th Anniversary of the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival has an amazing lineup, set to entertain audiences from Jan. 14-17 at the Castro Theatre and Jan. 18-20 at the Goethe-Institut — Tickets available here. Until Thursday, we wanted to provide you with some quick highlights to check out as you’re buying tickets:
Opening night film Who Am I: No System is Safe, a hacker-heist film that draws inspiration from Fight Club, The Usual Suspects, and has no doubt inspired a lot of story elements in the Golden Globe award winning show, Mr. Robot. The young award winning star of Who Am I, Tom Schilling, will be in attendance.
Kaufman’s tale of existential despair benefits from stop-motion artistry
Michael (voice of David Thewlis) and Lisa (voice of Jennifer Jason Leigh) hit it off.
Writer/director Charlie Kaufman returns to exploring familiar themes of existential angst with Anomalisa, the first film he’s both written and directed since 2008’s Synechdoche, New York. Judging from this new film, Kaufman hasn’t suddenly embraced a positive, life-is-beautiful philosophy in the intervening six years; indeed, if anything, his new picture is even more heartbreaking and pessimistic.
Revenge is a dish best served cold and gorgeously shot.
DiCaprio in the wild.
This is it, everyone. This is the movie that Leonardo DiCaprio will win an Oscar for…I think. That’s not to say that The Revenant is Leo’s best performance. I’d say that it ranks a few titles above midway through his filmography, right above Blood Diamond and just below The Departed (and far below The Aviator and Revolutionary Road). Nevertheless, it’s Leo’s most physically demanding performance and let’s give credit to director/writer/producer Alejandro González Iñárritu for convincing the actor to dive so deep into the demands of the role. The Revenant is most impressive when experiencing its outstanding technical achievements. As a simple tale of survival and revenge, its not overly impressive from a storytelling standpoint. But in capturing the tone and setting of the story, the skill set of the actors and filmmakers on display lift The Revenant to very memorable heights.
Spinning Platters film critics present their top 10 films of 2015
Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2015. Here is Chad’s list, presented in reverse-awesome order. Also check out Carrie‘s top ten list!
10.) Cinderella
Lily James emerging from her pumpkin-turned-coach.
A lack of the classic Disney song ‘Cinderelli!’ didn’t prevent Kenneth Branagh’s live action version of Cinderella from reaching magical heights. After a plethora of disappointing “re-imaginings” and “discover the true story” versions of classics — Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland, Oz the Great and Powerful — it was time for a movie to play it straight, and Cinderella did just that. With amazing performances from Lily James and Cate Blanchett and beautiful costumes and set designs, Cinderella (hopefully) represents the first in a new series of live action Disney remakes that stick to the strong source materials without egregious silly additions. (Read my full review of Cinderella here.)
