By [From Jan. 19 to 29, Flixist will be bringing you live coverage, from Park City, Utah, of Sundance Film Festival 2012. Keep an eye out for news, features, videos, and reviews of some of the most anticipated films to hit the festival circuit in 2012.]
Many films and nut bars (man, I’m sick of these things) later, we arrive at the end of our Day 2 coverage. Sundance is finally in full effect with screenings from morning to night. If you’d like to see what checked out and thought of Sean Penn, Stacey Peralta, and Andy Samberg’s latest, read on below.
Features:
Five Questions with Director Stacy Peralta
At Sundance 2001, pro-skateboarder-turned-documentarian Stacy Peralta presented the origins of the competitive California skateboard scene in his documentary Dogtown and the Z-Boys. After walking away with awards (Best Director, Audience Award), he returned to the festival in 2008 with a much different film, Crips and Bloods: Made in America.
Now, Peralta returns to Sundance once again, but with much more familiar material in hand with Bones Brigade: An Autobiography. This documentary gives viewers a look into the origin of one of the most famous skateboard crews that featured Tony Hawk, Bucky Lasek, and Rodney Mullen among others.
Reviews:
This Must Be the Place
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
While waiting to enter the theater for a Sundance press screening, a critic from another queue shouted that we’re all about to regret how we were about to spend our next two hours. I don’t know anything about this person, but by the end of This Must Be the Place I felt pretty sure that I hated him. Such is the bond that a viewer forms with such a unique piece of cinema. — Spectacular, 94 [Read the full review]
Celeste and Jesse Forever
Director: Lee Toland Krieger
Once the jokes die down and we have to see Celeste make the predictable romantic-comedy character steps, it reminds us that we’re not seeing the movie we thought we were. We’re just seeing a mix of indie drama cliches mixed with a Los Anglese star-filled comedy. It’s a shame because both Samberg and Jones prove themselves capable of being endearing comedic leads, but they have the spotlight stollen from them in the end for the sake of dull, cliche indie relationship drama. — 69, Decent [Read the Full Review]
About the Pink Sky
Director: Keiichi Kobayashi
Celebrated at the Tokyo Film Festival as a bold, new vision of Japanese cinema, I had high hopes going into About the Pink Sky. Shot in washed-out black & white and lacking any music, it’s amazing how much the film gets wrong even though it’s working in a sparse environment. Everything from the sound mixing to the translation is sloppy, but these would be forgivable mistakes if there was a story worth telling behind it all. Instead, we are presented an impossibly dull story of a girl who finds a wallet full of money, shares it with her friends, returns it, and faces repercussions with the wallet’s owner who demands she helps him make a newspaper. Actually, that sounds kind of interesting. Except, it’s not. I walked out of the film, as did 90% of the audience. I can’t rate it since I only saw the first half, but I was feeling a strong 42. If nothing else, it was a nice palette cleanser. So, I got my palette cleansed and left.