SUNDANCE PREVIEW
What’s going to set Park City on fire?
The caTcher Was a spy
Famous in America, lesser so elsewhere, the true story of baseballplayer-turned-spy Moe Berg is almost too crazy to believe – which makes it a perfect vehicle for this Ben Lewinhelmed thriller, based on Nicholas Dawidoff’s novel. Paul Rudd stars as Berg, a baseball vet who enlists as a spy for the OSS as the US race to build an atomic bomb before the Germans. Guy Pearce, Jeff Daniels and Sienna Miller round out the cast for a film that promises serious bang for your buck.
The KindergarTen Teacher
“The film is really centred on a woman’s mind,” says Maggie Gyllenhaal of this drama, based on a hit Israeli film, from director/writer Sara Colangelo (Little Accidents). Gyllenhaal – who also produced – plays a teacher who risks her future to nurture the prodigious talents of one of her five-year-old students. The film was made by an almost exclusively female crew, something Sundance has always championed (“It really is a very feminine kind of experience,” says Gyllenhaal), and something Hollywood could no doubt learn from.
Burden
Andrea Riseborough is a Sundance stalwart, and she’s going for broke this year with three films premiering at the festival. The first is this drama about a KKK gunshop owner (Garrett Hedlund) who falls for a single mother and sets out on a journey of redemption. It’s the directorial debut of Andrew Heckler, also the writer, who previously acted in TV’s Ally McBeal and Oz. Elsewhere, Riseborough’s appearing in Christina Choe’s kidnapping mystery Nancy, and 1980s-set cult horror Mandy, alongside the irrepressible Nicolas Cage.
an evening WiTh Beverly luff linn
Remember The Greasy Strangler? Well, director Jim Hosking is back with an equally odd second serving, this time starring Aubrey Plaza as a woman whose life is given a fuel injection by the titular showman (Craig Robinson). “It’s quite different,” Hosking tells Total Film. “I would say it’s a comedy. It’s also almost a love story, but it’s definitely quite singular, quite peculiar. I hope it’s equally distinctive but in a very different way.” And, probably, a little less slippery.
ophelia
Move over Hamlet, this Shakespeare-inspired historical drama is all about Ophelia. In a POV switch to rival Grey: Fifty Shades As Told By Christian, director Claire McCarthy’s adap stars Daisy Ridley as Ophelia who, in this version of the tale, doesn’t die. Which causes a bit of trouble for our erstwhile Hamlet (George MacKay), though not necessarily for MacKay. “Daisy’s wonderful,” he says of co-starring with Star Wars’ Rey. “There’s an immediacy [to working with her] which is really exciting.”
The Tale
After her powerhouse turns in
Big Little Lies, Twin Peaks and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Laura Dern looks set to dominate 2018 as well. Here, she stars as a woman who reminisces about her sexual relationships aged 13 with two adult coaches. Written and directed by Jennifer Fox, the story’s inspired by her own experiences. “It’s chilling to sit in the edit room and watch the enactment of an event that, as a teenager, I thought was love, but which changed the course of my entire identity,” she says.
american animals
Bart Layton’s 2012 debut, The Imposter, was a riveting white-knuckle documentary that felt like a narrative feature as it traced the remarkable case of a missing youngster. American Animals, though, is Layton’s first feature proper, a crime drama starring Evan Peters (American Horror Story), Brit up-and-comer Barry Keoghan, and Blake Jenner (Everybody Wants Some!!), and is inspired by a real-life art heist. If it’s even half as gripping as
The Imposter, this could be the big hit of Sundance 2018.
Wildlife
Paul Dano’s been a Sundance hero since 2006, when Little Miss Sunshine debuted to wild acclaim, so where better for him to unveil his directorial debut than snowy Park City? Adapted from Richard Ford’s novel, Wildlife boasts a predictably A-grade cast in Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan, who star in a ’60s-set story about a marriage in crisis. “In Richard’s book I saw myself and many others,” says Dano. “I have always known I would make films about family.”
Tyrel
A group of guys head to an isolated cabin in the Catskills… what could possibly go wrong? Sebastián Silva’s latest film (after Magic Magic and Kristen Wiig hit Nasty Baby) confines Michael Cera, Caleb Landry Jones and Christopher Abbott (The Sinner) to a hut for a weekend of partying, but when Jason Mitchell’s party-goer realises he’s the only black person in attendance, things “spiral out of control”. Whisper it quietly, but Tyrel could be 2018’s Get Out.
lizzie
Legendarily the prime suspect in an 1893 axe murder case, Lizzie Borden has been the subject of lurid tabloid reports and bad TV movies ever since. This historical drama seeks to uncover the human behind the horror. Chloë Sevigny plays Lizzie, who’s put on trial in Massachusetts for the murder of her mother and father, and finds sympathy in young maid Bridget Sullivan (Kristen Stewart).
ETA | 18-28 jAnuAry / sundAncE film fEsTivAl is on This monTh.