As the 2009 Sundance Film Festival prepares to get started, much of the buzz seems to be focused on trying to figure out just what kind of festival this year's will be. Festival director Geoff Gilmore himself published a piece on Monday about the state of independent film, and by extension, the festival. He observed: "It's not at all clear that a new generation will embrace festival attendance and exposure in the same manner of the last generation" and went on to wonder if the influence of festivals have waned.
In the meantime, many have observed that this year's Sundance may well be akin to one of those rebuilding years sports teams have when they've lost key player; there are fewer big films, fewer companies, fewer journalists, and (probably) fewer deals likely to be made. But it's also possible this off-year Sundance may wind up surprising everybody. Certainly, as some advance screenings have proven, there are a number of excellent movies -- some big, some not-so-big -- set to premiere at the festival, and the sellers struck a positive tone in Variety earlier this week. Maybe they're just happy because there are titles with stars like Jim Carrey, Richard Gere, Pierce Brosnan, and Ashton Kutcher premiering at the fest. Or maybe the movies are just that good.
Here are the narrative features that people are buzzing about already:
Bronson - Former Brit pretty boy Tom Hardy's performance as "Britain's most violent prisoner" in this hyper-stylized film is largely expected to be one of the breakout performances of the festival. See the trailer here.
In the Loop - A Strangelovian satire about the run-up to the Iraq War from the acclaimed British satirist Armando Iannucci and starring (among others) James Gandolfini, recently left preview audiences in stitches.
The Greatest - The deafening anticipation around Shana Feste's debut feature, about a family trying to get over the loss of their teenage son and starring Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon, comes mainly from the remarkable description of it written by Gilmore himself in the festival catalogue: "This is one of the standout works of this Festival and is as fine a debut as we can present." When a powerful festival director puts things that directly, people listen.
The Informers - This adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel about Los Angeles in the 1980s, starring the now-hot-again Mickey Rourke, Billy Bob Thornton, and Kim Basinger, got a big boost from a New York Times article this week, even though the same article suggested that the movie, which is apparently full of sex, may wind up being divisive. Really? Bret Easton Ellis divisive?
