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pages: 1 | 2
 In Haruki Murakami's 1995 novel Dance Dance Dance,
the narrator, a freelance writer specializing in puff pieces for travel and
women's magazines, describes his profession as "shoveling cultural snow." Someone's
got to do it, he seems to suggest, and it might as well be him. Cultural snow was one of several varieties on display at this year's Sundance
Film Festival, which in the past decade has evolved into the most highly
charged gathering of the independent and not-so-independent film community
in the United States. Although it began as an artistic retreat for filmmakers seeking
refuge from the "commercial dogma" of Hollywood (as festival founder Robert Redford reminded the audience on opening night), Sundance has become a place where all the triumphs and problems of American filmmaking — the artistic passion, the unforgiving financial climate, the worship of celebrity, and the ongoing conundrum concerning the commercial viability of the art film — come
together in one exhausting ten-day stretch in the quaint ski town of Park City, Utah.
Yet the engine that powers Sundance continues to be its main dramatic and documentary competitions. This are where the genuine discoveries are made: Steven Soderbergh (1989's Sex, Lies, and Videotape) and Todd Solondz (1995's Welcome to the Dollhouse) got their first industry recognition here. It's also a place where festival frenzy can bestow hype — and huge sales numbers — upon marginally interesting work like 1999's Happy Texas, a banal comedy Miramax bought for $10 million.
Navigating Sundance isn't easy. Only a smattering of the 100-plus features selected for the festival are shown to the press. We can't pretend this is a definitive list of the best work the festival had to offer, but these were our early favorites:  28 Days LaterTrainspotting director Danny Boyle returns to the fore with an apocalyptic zombiefest that's already a hit in the UK. Later follows a group of Londoners fleeing the city after a deadly virus turns people into crazed beasts. First-rate digital camerawork by Dogme 95 maestro Anthony Dod Mantle (including some breathtaking sequences on the deserted streets of London) and two gorgeous lead actors (Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris) make for delicious eye candy that enhances the imaginative screenplay by novelist Alex Garland (The Beach). — Matthew Ross  IrreversibleFrench provocateur Gaspar Noé (I Stand Alone, Carné) caused a scandal at Cannes with this rape-and-revenge shocker, so it wasn't surprising that two people fainted during a special screening here. Even the film's champions (myself included) were taken aback by a brutal killing and nine-minute rape scene. Thankfully, the explicit violence plays an essential role in the story, set during one extremely unpleasant evening in Paris. With spectacular performances from real-life lovers and Euro heartthrobs Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci, this is a visionary and courageous tale about the underpinnings of male rage in contemporary society. — MR  Mondays in the SunJavier Bardem is one of the best actors on the planet, and this story of class strife among unemployed Spanish dockworkers is a testament to his technical abilities and boundless charisma. Written and directed by acclaimed social realist Fernando Léon de Aranoa, the film caused a minor uproar last month when it beat out Pedro Almodovar's terrific Talk to Her for Spain's foreign-language Oscar entry. But what Mondays in the Sun lacks in narrative invention, it makes up for in heart and intelligence. Victims of the downsizing bug will relate. — MR  Raising Victor VargasTwenty-six-year-old director Peter Sollett makes an auspicious debut with this tender portrait of young love on New York City's Lower East Side. When thirteen-year-old Victor (Victor Rasuk) gets caught with the neighborhood fattie, he decides to redeem his reputation by making a go for the neighborhood hottie, "Juicy" Judy (Judy Marte). But Judy isn't so easy. Sollett cast the film with nonprofessional locals, and the authenticity shines through in Altagracia Guzman, who plays Victor's comically overbearing grandmother. Amazingly, Sollett manages to capture the anxiety of teenage sex without patronizing or clichés. — MR  American SplendorMarried filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasens) put a new spin on the biopic genre with this ambitious portrait of Harvey Pekar, the neurotic grandfather of autobiographical comics. In 1976, Pekar wrote the breakthrough graphic novel American Splendor, which expressed frustration with his mundane life in Cleveland and was illustrated by his friend Robert Crumb. Using a mixture of animation, film and video, Berman and Pulcini construct a touchingly raw confessional that evokes wincing familiarity, and Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis are note-perfect as Pekar and his pragmatic wife Joyce. — Alisa Volkman
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