In anticipation of tonight’s kickoff of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, I’ve been previewing the must-see films: Tuesday we looked at documentaries and yesterday we checked out the narrative features. But it’s not all sunshine and lollipops. Every film festival of note screens its share of duds, and you don’t want be wasting valuable time you could spend riding a giant inner tube down a snowy peak. (Seriously, if you’re in Park City this week, do this. It’s super fun.) Here are five movies I’d scratch off my list if I happened to be in town.
BLACK DYNAMITE
Sure, this could be entertaining. The trailer makes it looks like pure blaxploitation pastiche, as if it’s the missing third piece of Grindhouse. The Sundance guide does nothing to dissuade me from this perception: “Black Dynamite is a throwback with an attitude. Hilarious, campy, hot, and sexy, it plays with every cliché from 1970s film and television, with a few new ones thrown in for color.” Personally, I think that could get real old real quick, but then, I sat through both I’m Gonna Get You Sucka and Undercover Brother, so maybe I’m just burnt out.
THE INFORMERS
Less Than Zero and American Psycho have their defenders, I suppose, but none of them are currently typing these words. So this description doesn’t particular light my fire: “Sex, drugs, and new wave...Los Angeles in the early 1980s: a time of excess and decadence, and nobody captures it better than Bret Easton Ellis as he coadapts his own acclaimed novel for the screen.” That’s not a world I have any interest in revisiting, although given that the cast includes Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder and the late Brad Renfro, I wouldn’t mind seeing a warts-and-all making-of documentary. I’m guessing it was not a placid, well-oiled production.
SHRINK
In another time – it seems so distant now – I would have watched Kevin Spacey read the phone book. His string of ‘90s performances, including Glengarry Glen Ross, Swimming with Sharks and The Usual Suspects left me eager to see what he’d do next. Then he caught the worst case of Oscar-itis since Nicolas Cage. (Pay It Forward. K-PAX. The Fucking Life of David Fucking Gale!) Now I can scarcely stand the sight of him, and Shrink sure doesn’t sound like the movie that will change that. “What happens when the people we count on to hold us together…are barely holding it together themselves? Jonas Pate's Shrink is a striking, fast-paced exposé of the ‘other’ Hollywood, featuring folks living outside their comfort zone and the people who put them there. Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey) is a psychiatrist with an A-list clientele, including a once-famous actress (Saffron Burrows), an insecure young writer (Mark Webber), and a comically obsessive-compulsive superagent (Dallas Roberts).” Kevin – get help!
SPREAD
The Sundance guide’s description of Spread is simply overflowing with sentences that make me never want to set foot in a movie theater again. ‘Los Angeles is often the customary site for mythmaking in the American cultural iconography. It is a place, for instance, where the legend of the sexual exploits of the male gigolo seems perfectly at home in the decadent universe of Hollywood dreams and nightmares. Surely inspired by the classic tradition of American Gigolo and Shampoo, Spread is such a perfectly tuned, contemporary depiction of the trials and tribulations of sleeping your way to wealth and success that, guilty pleasure or not, it’s irresistible. Especially so since it’s driven by the iconic persona of Ashton Kutcher. – ” Aaaand, this is the point where I make a break for the bathroom and hug the toilet close to my face. I didn’t even get to the part about his romancing of “middle-aged client” Anne Heche. There are some visuals I don’t need in my head.
SPRING BREAKDOWN
I don’t want to hate on Amy Poehler or (especially) Parker Posey, whose big screen appearances have been all too scarce of late, but this looks like absolute dogshit. “For Judi, Gayle, and Becky, tragically unhip bosom buddies pushing 40, “make-your-own-pizza night” constitutes the pinnacle of revelry. But when Judi’s fiancé turns out to be gay, Gayle’s face repulses a blind guy, and Becky’s beloved cat kicks the bucket, they’re ready for real pampering. Dusting themselves off, the trio heads for some R&R;on South Padre Island, where Becky’s supposed to chaperone her boss’s daughter.” Seriously, try to get through the trailer above. This is a Sundance movie? Time to hit the slopes!
