Sundance 2013 – batch 1
January 24th, 2013 at 6:56 am (Movies, Reviews)
Crystal Fairy begins at a party in Chile, where a drug-obsessed but otherwise rational American, played by a less-girlish-than-usual Michael Cera, is planning a road trip with some local friends in pursuit of magic-cactus mescaline and a mind-opening experience. He accidentally invites a new-age hippy American, played with uninhibited loony fervor by Gaby Hoffmann, to join them. The escalating clash of those two personalities bewilders their laid-back Chilean hosts and also provides the central element of this well-acted but sometimes tedious story. The film eventually takes an interesting turn as we learn that people can be more than they seem.
In the Q/A following the screening, some of the cast suggested that they prepared for their roles by actually taking mescaline. In humorous contrast, Michael Cera said he prepared by googling mescaline. And oddly, Gaby Hoffmann talked about the Mayan apocalypse as if it was still going on. Perhaps she was still in character. C+.
By documenting the efforts of a few young activists among the thousands who occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Squire during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, The Square shows the events with all their chaos and urgency from a perspective we could not see in mainstream American media.
Fueled by an abundance of idealism and energy, but ultimately limited by lack of a solid post-Mubarak plan, the leaders at the focus of this film helped get rid of one menace only to find it replaced by another, when the army apparently turned against them and then the elections brought in a disappointing replacement. (A question facing the entire region, and parts of the US for that matter, is whether democracy can work at all in a culture where for many people religion trumps reason. But that would be another movie.) The film provides a memorable protestor-level view of historic events. B.
As uplifting and well-crafted as the best Foo Fighters music, David Grohl’s rocking documentary Sound City has been receiving well-deserved standing ovations at Sundance screenings. Housed in an industrial mall near LA, with a decor more like an abandoned vehicle than a top recording studio, the legendary Sound City Studios became the birthplace of many of huge records of the ’70s, and known for its big drum sound. In its heyday it was patronized by the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Metallica and Nirvana.
In more recent years, the low cost and convenience of computer-based recording systems undercut and displaced big tape-based studios, with a digital perfection that threatened to eliminate the natural drum sounds and unique emotional performances common in the analog days. But this film largely succeeds in demonstrating its claim that the essence of great music is in the human feel of individual musicians, and the natural interaction among multiple musicians, even if the result includes slight flaws in timing and pitch; in fact such a flawed performance is likely a better listening experience than an artificially perfect one. Any fan of real music will appreciate this film for that message and for the power chord bravado with which it is delivered. A.
In the visually engaging but uneven Il Futuro (The Future), we follow the story of two siblings in Rome as they try to move on after the loss of their parents. The brother finds some dead-end friends while the sister embarks on an odd and artificial relationship with an aging body builder. The film suffers a bit from a slow pace and subtle story telling. C.