What To Watch At Sundance

14 January 2009

0Comments | Comment on this Article

No sooner has the festival circuit finished and it seems to be beginning all over again as the Sundance Film Festival gets underway tomorrow with a screening of Adam Elliot's first feature Mary and Max.

In recent years Sundance has unearthed some real cinema gems as Choke and The Wackness caused a stir with audiences last year and who can forget Little Miss Sunshine which lit up screenings back in 2006?

2008 was a successful year for the festival as the likes of Frozen River and Man on Wire were screened to acclaim and have gone on to find success on the awards circuit as did Martin MxDonagh's black comedy In Bruges, which saw Colin Farrell pick up a Golden Globe for his performance at the weekend.

So here at FemaleFirst we have taken a look at the movies lined up for the ten day festival to provide a guide as to what you should be watching at Sundance this time around.

Animation Mary and Max from Australian filmmaker Adam Elliot kicks off the festival using the voices of Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the title characters in a tale of pen-friendship between two very different people; Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horovitz, a 44 year old, severely obese, Jewish man with Aspergers Syndrome living in the chaos of New York.

Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, Mary and Max's friendship survives much more than the average diet of life's ups and downs.

Greg Mottola's comedy Adventureland is also one to look out for starring Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg. Set in the summer of 1987 and centred around a recent college grad (Eisenberg) who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.

Robert Siegel, the writer behind Darren Aronofsky and Mickey Rourke's current hit The Wrestler, makes his directorial debut with Big Fan and this film is getting a lot of attention off the back of The Wrestler's success.

Starring Patton Oswalt, the voice of Remy in Ratatouille, the film follows Paul Aufiero, a hardcore New York Giants football fan, struggles to deal with the consequences when he is beaten up by his favourite player.

After the success of Choke last year Sam Rockwell is back at Sundance with his new thought provoking science fiction movie Moon.

After spending three years on the moon as a solitary miner, Sam Bell (Rockwell) is almost ready to return home to his wife and daughter.

Isolated, determined and steadfast, Sam has followed the rulebook obediently and his time on the moon has been enlightening, but uneventful. The solitude has given him time to reflect on the mistakes of his past and work on his raging temper.

But 2 weeks shy of his departure from Selene, Sam starts seeing things, hearing things and feeling strange. And when a routine extraction goes horribly wrong, he discovers that Lunar have their own plans for replacing him and the new recruit is eerily familiar.

In the World Cinema Dramatic Competition Bronson is one of the most talked about movies of the festival. Directed by Nicolas Winding the film follows notorious British criminal Charlie Bronson as he tries to fight the prison system.

Other foreign movies that everyone is fighting to see during the festival is vampire move Let the Right One In from Sweden and Dead Snow from Germany, a Nazi zombie movie.

Earth Days is the film that will close Sundance 2009 and is a documentary that recounts the history of the modern environment from its beginning nearly four decades ago to the present day.

The Sundance Film Festival begins 15th January and runs until 25th

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

0Comments | Be the first to comment!