When it comes to the world of independent film, all roads lead to Sundance. Not only does the Utah-based film festival kick-start the year in indie cinema, but it’s also now a breeding ground for Oscar movies. Last year’s Boyhood and Whiplash both premiered at Sundance, and have since gone on to receive multiple Oscar nominations including Best Picture. They join other recent films like Beasts of the Southern Wild, Winter’s Bone, 20 Feet from Stardom and Before Midnight in the growing list of Sundance films that have gone on to become among the year’s most talked-about movies.
So what Sundance movies will we be talking about this year? With the festival kicking off on Thursday, we break it down for ya.
Five Movies Everyone Is Talking About
Sleeping with Other People
The Stars: Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet, Jason Mantzoukas, Natasha Lyonne.
The Sell: Two serial cheaters (Sudeikis, Brie) form a bond to assist each other in finding healthier relationships.
The Buzz: Writer-director Leslye Headland likes her comedy a bit dark and dangerous (see her previous film, Bachelorette), so this won’t be your ordinary rom-com by any means. Also, its prime spot as a Saturday-night premiere means Sleeping with Other People is poised to become one of the festival’s breakout hits.
True Story
The Sell: Hill plays a disgraced New York Times reporter investigating why an accused killer (Franco) stole his identity.
The Buzz: This one’s based on a pretty freaky real-life story, and it’s one of two movies Franco has at the festival. In his other film, I Am Michael, Franco plays a gay activist who becomes a pastor.
Z for Zachariah
The Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine.
The Sell: It’s a postapocalyptic drama about a woman (Robbie) who thinks she’s the last human on Earth… until she meets two men (Ejiofor, Pine) who begin to compete for her affection.
The Buzz: Robbie is coming off her breakout role in The Wolf of Wall Street, and Ejiofer won the Best Actor Oscar for last year’s 12 Years a Slave. Also, director Craig Zobel’s last film, Compliance (also a Sundance premiere), caused a wild stir with its provocative portrayal of a fast-food employee who finds her life hijacked by a phone caller claiming to be a police officer.
Knock Knock
The Stars: Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo, Ana de Armas
The Sell: Two beautiful girls turn one man’s wild fantasy into his worst nightmare.
The Buzz: Hostel’s Eli Roth wrote and directed Knock Knock, so expect some blood and wickedness to come pouring out of this fun night gone horribly wrong.
Digging for Fire
The Stars: Jake Johnson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Orlando Bloom, Brie Larson, Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick
The Sell: Two parents (Johnson, DeWitt) on the verge of a nervous breakdown go on separate adventures following a strange discovery while house sitting.
The Buzz: Director Joe Swanberg is known for his natural, off-the-cuff style of filmmaking, and right now he’s at the top of his game. His last films, Drinking Buddies and Happy Christmas – which also starred Johnson and Kendrick, respectively -- do a great job at turning relatable everyday situations into compelling (and often quite funny) entertainment.
Four Performances We Need to See
Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn and Stockholm, Pennsylvania)
We're expecting Saoirse Ronan to have a big year at Sundance since the Atonement and Grand Budapest Hotel actress is starring in two very different films, Brooklyn and Stockholm, Pennsylvania (pictured above). In Brooklyn, she plays a girl in 1950s Ireland and New York who must make a difficult choice between two men in her life. In Stockholm, Pennsylvania Ronan stars as a girl who returns to her parents after living with her abductor for 17 years. Both parts seem challenging and dramatic, and they could help propel Ronan into this year's awards conversation.
Sarah Silverman (I Smile Back)
Even though Sarah Silverman has been making us laugh on the big and small screen for over a decade, we've never really seen her command a movie like this in a starring role. I Smile Back is all Silverman -- and it should be a great showcase for the comedienne as a lead actress -- because she's taking on the difficult role of playing a suburban wife and mother on the verge of a breakdown.
Robert Redford (A Walk in the Woods)
The Sundance Film Festival founder stars in this film about a travel writer who decides to hike the Appalachian Trail with an estranged friend, played by Nick Nolte. The chance to see Redford starring in a big premiere at the festival he created is definitely special, let alone the fact that he's starring opposite another great Hollywood veteran in Nolte. Ken Kwapis (License to Wed, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) directs, while Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen and Nick Offerman also star.
Ewan McGregor (Last Days in the Desert)
In Last Days in the Desert, McGregor takes on the difficult task of playing both Jesus and the Devil in a character study that tracks Jesus’ last days fasting in the desert.
Three Sundance "Stories" to Keep an Eye On
The Opening-Night Oscar Movie?
Last year’s opening-night movie was Whiplash, and it’s a film that not only won the festival’s top awards, but has since gone on to nab multiple Oscar nominations. Will Sundance follow in last year’s footsteps and save one of its best films for first?
This year that film is The Bronze, and it stars Big Bang Theory’s Melissa Rauch as a former bronze medal-winning gymnast who fights to hang onto whatever small-town celebrity status she has left when a new rising star lands on the scene. Bryan Buckley makes his feature directorial debut, and he should know a thing or two about sports and athletes following a successful stint directing upwards of 50 Super Bowl commercials since 2000.
Major Sundance Veterans Return with New Movies
Every year at the festival we find filmmakers who’ve had their movies play there before, but this year especially sees the creators behind some major, memorable Sundance movies returning with new projects.
They include Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess (Don Verdean), The Spectacular Now director James Pondoldt (End of the Tour), Half Nelson directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (Mississippi Grind) and The Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach (Mistress America), among others.
Of those, it’s Hess’ Don Verdean (pictured above) that’s our most anticipated, mainly for a terrific cast full of folks who always make us laugh, like Sam Rockwell, Jermaine Clement, Amy Ryan, Danny McBride, Leslie Bibb and Will Forte. The comedy follows a biblical archeologist who must get “creative” when he’s unsuccessful in locating faith-promoting relics while on assignment for a local church pastor.
Is 18-Year-Old Tye Sheridan Our Next Big Star?
Since his debut in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, 18-year-old Tye Sheridan has been among the hottest up-and-coming stars in Hollywood. He last came to Sundance with the 2012 film Mud, starring opposite Matthew McConaughey, and now he’s returning with three major movies for the 2015 festival. Festgoers will see him in The Last Days in the Desert (the Ewan McGregor movie highlighted above), as well as Entertainment (about an aging comedian touring the California desert) and The Stanford Prison Experiment, (based on the real-life research conducted in the early '70s where 24 male undergraduates assume the roles of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison).
In addition to all his indie work, Sheridan -- who reminds us of a young Jake Gyllenhaal -- is also slated to costar in Scouts vs. Zombies, due this October. But first he's got a big Sundance ahead of them, with all three his movies carrying the potential to become a breakout hit.
Two Fascinating-Sounding Documentaries
The Visit
The Story: What would it look like in the event we actually made first contact with aliens? This hybrid documentary mixes narrative footage and interviews with experts from NASA, the United Nations and more as they envision what would happen to our world – and us – if aliens paid us a visit.
The Facts: Here's a look at the film's trailer...
The Wolfpack
The Story: We follow the lives of six teenage brothers, all locked indoors and home-schooled, their only contact with the outside world coming from movies. And it’s through those movies -- and they’re spirited re-creation of them -- that helps the brothers cope with their isolated lives.
The Facts: Here’s the film’s director Crystal Moselle with more…
One Don't-Miss Movie Experience
Kaiju Fury
It’s being billed as the world’s first virtual reality monster movie, and it’s one of many virtual reality experiences coming to this year’s Sundance Film Festival as part of its annual New Frontier program.
So what will it feel like to hang out inside a monster movie? That’s what we want to know! Here’s the film’s description from the Sundance program: “A dark energy experiment leads to a devastating attack by a monstrous Kaiju. Shot in 360-degree, stereoscopic 3-D cinematic virtual reality, this film puts you at ground zero—at the feet of beasts laying waste to a crumbling city, as humanity makes its last stand.”
