The Bachelorette
Photo: BCDF Pictures
This year’s Sundance Film Festival lineup has earned a lot of buyer buzz, and it’s easy to see why: Not only are there a lot of high-concept films filled with big names and TV favorites, but all the movies on display are up for grabs (unlike years past, when many films that already had studio distribution — like (500) Days of Summer and Cedar Rapids — would premiere at the festival simply to soak up that Sundance attention). This Thursday, your Vulture team will arrive in Park City ready to report on all things Sundance, and while part of the festival fun comes from those unexpected sleeper hits that few saw coming, here are eleven notable movies we’re already eager to check out.
All eyes are on this Kirsten Dunst comedy to see whether it’s the next Bridesmaids or simply the first of many wedding-centered wannabes. Dunst plays a former New York City mean girl who’s horrified when the least popular member of her high-school clique is the first to get engaged, but she goes ahead and throws her a wild bachelorette party anyway. With Isla Fisher and Lizzy Caplan (the latter of whom also stars in another Sundance movie involving a wedding, Save the Date).
Talk about a killer cast: For this movie about two young people whose alcohol-soaked relationship is threatened when one starts to get sober, the filmmakers lined up Aaron Paul and Mary Elizabeth Winstead to play the central couple and supported them with Oscar front-runner Octavia Spencer and golden comic couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. We’re in.
Spike Lee hasn’t made an ode to New York street life since filming
that amazing rant in 2002’s 25th Hour, but this story of a wealthy kid from Atlanta shipped off to spend the summer in Brooklyn with a preacher grandfather he’s never met could be Lee’s welcome return to his Do The Right Thing roots.
Last January, 28 year-old Brooklynite Antonio Campos and
his Borderline Films comrades had a Sundance hit with Martha Marcy May Marlene, directed by Sean Durkin and produced by Campos and Josh Mond. Now they’re back with the first movie Campos has directed since his skillful and divisive 2008 debut, Afterschool. It’s a film noir about a young New Yorker (Brady Corbet) who goes to Paris to get over a bad breakup, falls into an affair with a prostitute (Mati Diop), and gets drawn into the city’s underbelly … and word is that it’s dark and positively packed with graphic sex.
In 1993, three teenagers in West Memphis, Arkansas, were convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys, despite an almost total lack of evidence. HBO’s film triptych on the subject, Paradise Lost, inspired Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson to fund the effort to release the West Memphis Three, and now he’s produced his own documentary about it, directed by Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil).
Rashida Jones makes for a great co-star on Parks and Recreation, but she finally gets to take the lead in this comedy, which she co-wrote. Jones and Andy Samberg play a couple who married young and still adore each other … but decide it’s time to divorce. Can they keep the good vibes going even when they’re broken up?
Did last year’s acclaimed Weekend herald a breakthrough for the languishing genre of gay independent cinema? Let’s hope that director Ira Sachs can expand on it with Keep the Lights On, about two New York men who meet in the late nineties and carry on an intense, decade-long bad romance.
Paul Giamatti produced and co-stars in this cleverly titled, futuristic gore-fest about two college dropouts who have to save the world from a hot new drug that sends users on the trippiest of trips but robs many of them of their humanity. It’s part of this year’s extremely strong Midnight films section, which also features a headless AnnaLynne McCord (in Excision), and Kate Bosworth and Lake Bell marooned on a sinister island in Maine (in Black Rock).
In the follow-up to Julie Delpy’s quite funny 2 Days in Paris, Delpy’s character is scrambling to accommodate her loud French family as they descend on the tiny apartment she shares with her new boyfriend (and their two kids from previous relationships). Bonus: Said new boyfriend is Chris Rock.
Photo: JOJO WHILDEN
Sundance staple James Marsh is known for acclaimed documentaries like Man on Wire and Project Nim, but he’s brought a moody touch to non-doc films The King and Red Riding, too. We’re interested to see what he’ll do with IRA drama Shadow Dancer, especially with a cast that includes W.E. standout Andrea Riseborough and Clive Owen.
Photo: Jonathan Hession
Ry Russo-Young’s new movie casts Olivia Thirlby as a young artist who comes to stay with a married couple in Silver Lake (John Krasinski and Rosemarie DeWitt), and romantic entanglements ensue. The extra X-factor here: heavily hyped comedienne Lena Dunham co-wrote.