Avoid the snow in Park City
We go to Sundance Film Festival for you.
Q: Will more female directors be represented?
A: Of the 122 feature films premiering at Sundance this year, 37% are directed by women — a 3% increase from last year’s festival and a stark improvement on the 100 top-grossing movies of 2017, only eight of which featured female directors.
Even more heartening is how many of their movies are women’s stories: In Jennifer Fox’s The Tale, Laura Dern plays a woman who is forced to reexamine her first sexual relationship and its influence on her life. Desiree Akhavan directs Chloë Grace Moretz in gay-conversion-therapy drama The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley puts an empowering female spin on Hamlet in Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia.
Q: Who’s headed for Oscars 2019?
A: Sundance typically fires the starting pistol for at least a couple of major awards players, including gay comingof-age movie Call Me By Your Name and World War II-era drama Mudbound this season.
Sight unseen, which movies could be some of this festival’s heavy hitters? Coming off the awards triumphs of
Moonlight and Lady Bird, hotshot distributor A24 already has backed Eighth
Grade, the directorial debut of YouTube comedian Bo Burnham, which charts the last week of a girl’s (Elsie Fisher) disastrous final year in middle school.
Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal play a husband and wife whose marriage falls apart in 1960 Montana in
Wildlife, adapted from Richard Ford’s novel by Zoe Kazan ( The Big Sick) and Paul Dano ( Okja), who also directs. Other performances to watch out for include Joaquin Phoenix playing quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who already is earning strong early word-of-mouth as a fiercely dedicated educator in The Kindergarten Teacher.
Q: How will the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements come into play?
A: No corner of Hollywood has been left untouched by the wave of sexual harassment allegations against people in power, which dominated the conversation at the black-clad Golden Globes. Expect that many filmmakers and actors will want to continue the dialogue at the first major film festival since Harvey Weinstein was taken down last fall, with a Respect Rally planned for Saturday morning on Park City’s Main Street (the site of the star-studded Women’s March demonstration last year).
Onscreen, Netflix documentary See
ing Allred is sure to be a big talker for its subject, Gloria Allred, the longtime women’s rights attorney who has represented women accusing Bill Cosby and Donald Trump of sexual misconduct.
Q: What’s this year’s oddball breakout?
A: Last year, Rooney Mara binge-ate an entire pie in A Ghost Story; the year before, Dano used Daniel Radcliffe’s farting corpse as a speedboat. Sundance is never one to skimp on insanity, and this year looks to be no different.
Mandy promises bloody thrills with Nicolas Cage as a vengeful outdoorsman hunting the religious sect that slaughtered the love of his life. Sci-fi comedy Sorry to Bother You features Get
Out’s Lakeith Stanfield as a telemarketer who finds a magical key to success, alongside Thor: Ragnarok’s Tessa Thompson and Call Me By Your Name’s
Armie Hammer (whose character is described as a “cocaine-snorting, orgyhosting” CEO).
And never discount Aubrey Plaza, who returns to Sundance after last year’s The Little Hours and Ingrid Goes West in the equally bonkers An Evening
With Beverly Luff Linn. The movie follows a woman named Lulu Danger as she searches for a mysterious man from her past.
Q: Are all the best movies destined for streaming?
A: Last year, gutsy black comedy I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Any
more was crowned Sundance’s top Grand Jury Prize, only to be largely forgotten when it bowed on Netflix a month later. With other Park City darlings To
the Bone and Icarus largely buried on the streaming service, will more filmmakers favor Amazon, which nabbed
The Big Sick at last year’s fest and made it a sleeper summer hit ($42.9 million)? We’re guessing there will be some ambivalence toward Netflix, although the disappointing box office of many other strong Sundance acquisitions like
Patti Cake$ and Step paints an uncertain picture overall.