Spoilers herein.
Instead of unleashing a newly free flood of interesting cinema, Sundance has created limitations of its own on so-called independents, limits which are as pandering and restrictive as anything from the larger establishment. Here is a prime example. The Sundance ethic is that a film be done well, meaning that the execution be adequate for the material. In a Sundance winner, there needs to be a `theme,' and that theme needs to be easy to read in a Time magazine sense: pseudocontroversial. It needs, of course, to have good acting. This must be straightahead acting without irony or distance or self-awareness.
In short, we have a mechanism for supporting a cinematic community theater that explores no new ground, invents no new cinema and cuts no flesh of the viewer's body. We get stuff that one can walk through without being changed.
`Gummo' and `Bully' have serious problems, but I recommend them over this competent, small stuff as explorations of adolescent sexual ennui.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.
Instead of unleashing a newly free flood of interesting cinema, Sundance has created limitations of its own on so-called independents, limits which are as pandering and restrictive as anything from the larger establishment. Here is a prime example. The Sundance ethic is that a film be done well, meaning that the execution be adequate for the material. In a Sundance winner, there needs to be a `theme,' and that theme needs to be easy to read in a Time magazine sense: pseudocontroversial. It needs, of course, to have good acting. This must be straightahead acting without irony or distance or self-awareness.
In short, we have a mechanism for supporting a cinematic community theater that explores no new ground, invents no new cinema and cuts no flesh of the viewer's body. We get stuff that one can walk through without being changed.
`Gummo' and `Bully' have serious problems, but I recommend them over this competent, small stuff as explorations of adolescent sexual ennui.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.