USA TODAY International Edition
‘ A Ghost Story’ gets lots of buzz at Sundance
Sundance Film Festival is over. But USA TODAY’s Patrick Ryan looks back over PARK CITY, UTAH the offerings to focus on five films that got a lot of buzz during the festivities.
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
Purchased by Sony Pictures Classics ahead of the festival, Luca Guadagnino’s sensual gay love story is one of the bestreviewed films out of Park City. Like Carol and Moonlight, “this is another movie that is every bit as powerful and necessary in its depiction of same- sex love,” Buchanan says. “It’s the best role that Armie Hammer has had in a long time and has a major find in lead actor Timothée Chalamet. It’s a wonderfully moving, emotional movie that has this resonance that stays with you.”
MUDBOUND
Dee Rees’ racially charged epic, set in rural Mississippi post-World War II, already is garnering serious Oscar talk after earning multiple standing ovations at its Sundance premiere. Although the star- studded drama with Carey Mulligan and
Straight Outta Compton’s Jason Mitchell has yet to land a distributor, expect a deal soon. There’s talk that “the thing holding up the deal is working out what sort of awards campaign the interested distributors would mount,” Buchanan says. “The team behind that film is very interested in making ( Rees) the first black female director to get a best director nomination.”
THE BIG SICK
The Judd Apatow- produced romantic comedy — about a comedian ( Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani) who tries to win back his ex- girlfriend ( Zoe Kazan) after she falls inexplicably ill — was nabbed by Amazon for $ 12 million, the biggest buy of this year’s fest to date. “Because it’s told by Kumail Nanjiani, who is not the sort of person who gets to star in and write these movies, it has a specificity to it that makes it funnier and more interesting, ( with) all of these twists and underpinnings that revitalize that genre,” Buchanan says. “It’s really moving in a lot of surprising ways and could be a major, unexpected hit.”
A GHOST STORY
Writer/ director David Lowery reunites with Ain’t
Them Bodies Saints stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara for this audacious, offbeat drama, which already has become a minor social- media phenomenon because of Affleck’s spectral bedsheet get- up and a sequence in which Mara scarfs down ( almost) an entire pie. The low- budget film — already picked up by A24 — “is probably going to be a major critical hit,” Vulture senior editor Kyle Buchanan says. “It’s probably a little too arty for mainstream audiences, but I expect it to be on a lot of end- of- year critics’ polls.”
PATTI CAKE$
A working- class New Jersey teen ( newcomer Danielle Macdonald) chases her dream of rap stardom in this vibrant coming- of- age tale, which Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired for $ 9.5 million. “Patti
Cake$ is one of those movies where the formula is tried- andtrue, but it’s brought off with so much enthusiasm by its actors and has the whole musical element that people are just sent out of it on a high,” Buchanan says. Now “it’s up to Fox Searchlight to get people in the door for it, because once they do, it’s going to find an audience. It’s the definition of a crowd- pleaser.”