In Howl, James Franco portrays iconic counter-culture figure Allen Ginsberg as he faces his 1957 obscenity trial, while Mad Men’s Jon Hamm plays Ginsberg’s slick defense attorney, Jake Ehrlich. Written and directed by Rob Epstein ( The Times of Harvey Milk) and Jeffrey Friedman—who, a decade ago, made the documentary The Celluloid Closet—Franco is getting buzz for his role as the eccentric gay wordsmith, and is said to measure up to his memorable performance two years ago in Milk.
JoJo Whilden
Forget screaming tweens—at this year’s festival, Stewart will be hounded by puffy coat-wearing hipsters. The Twilight star is the lead in two films already generating heat: Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways, as the scowling ‘70s girl-band guitarist Joan Jett, and Jake Scott’s Welcome to the Rileys, in which she plays a young prostitute who finds an unlikely father figure in a depressed, broken man, portrayed by James Gandolfini.
A decade after Gurinder Chadha debuted in Park City with What’s Cooking?—soon followed by Bend It Like Beckham—the Indian director returns with her latest warm-hearted, very funny take on young love in cross-cultural London. It’s a Wonderful Afterlife stars Heroes hunk Sendhil Ramamurthy, Shabana Azmi, and Sally Hawkins, and follows a doting Punjabi mother obsessed with marrying off her daughter (Goldy Notay). It’s the kind if hip, indie-minded film that smells like a Little Miss Sunshine.
The Sundance darlings return this year as actors and directors—both will present their first efforts from behind the camera. Hoffman stars in his film, Jack Goes Boating, based on Bob Glaudini’s Off-Broadway play about two misfits who fall in love. And in Sympathy for Delicious, Ruffalo directs a cast led by Christopher Thornton (also the screenwriter) who plays a paralyzed DJ struggling to survive on the streets of Los Angeles before he turns to faith healing. Ruffalo costars, along with Orlando Bloom and Juliette Lewis.
Four years after Ryan Gosling made his Sundance breakout with Half Nelson, he’s back with Blue Valentine, directed by Derek Cianfrance. The film follows a young, married couple, played by Gosling and Michelle Williams, who attempt to save their troubled marriage by stealing away to a hotel and reliving their entire relationship from past to stormy present. Cianfrance, the director of Brother Tied, won the Cinematography Award at Sundance in 2003 for Streets of Legend.
Davi Russo
Adrian Grenier stepped away from his role as Entourage’s resident pretty boy to get behind the camera for Teenage Paparazzo, which follows the actor’s friendship with 13-year-old shutterbug Austin Visschedyk. The film examines America’s fixation with celebrity and is new territory for Grenier, who is already earning buzz for his artful exploration of his own fame as well as his ability to understand Visschedyk’s obsession with it.
Tilda Swinton is known for choosing unconventional (and award-winning) projects, and her latest film, I Am Love ( Io Sono L’Amore), is no exception. Directed by Luca Guadagnino (who is earning rave reviews for his technical skills), the Italian-language movie stars Swinton as a repressed mother of two who embarks on an affair with a young Milanese chef. The entire cast has impressed early reviewers, in particular Swinton’s costars Marisa Berenson, Maria Paiato, and Alba Rohrwacher.
Indie-favorite Catherine Keener stars alongside Oliver Platt in Please Give, a dark comedy that deals with the complications of family, friendship, and real estate as a married couple attempts to hurry their aging neighbor out of her apartment. Critics are enthralled with the ensemble cast as well as writer/director Nicole Holofcener for her perceptive take on human nature and moral ambiguity. This also marks Amanda Peet’s return to the big screen after a spurt of television roles.
Piotr Redlinksi / Sony Pictures Classics
In The Extra Man, Kevin Kline is a failed playwright (and high-class escort for older women) attempting to mentor Paul Dano, an aspiring writer himself. The project has gained some extra attention thanks to Katie Holmes, who departs from her usual fare in a supporting role. The script is based on the novel by Jonathan Ames, the writer behind HBO’s critical hit Bored to Death, and is skillfully co-written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the wickedly funny team behind American Splendor.
Fresh off major acclaim for his 2007 take on Marianne Pearl’s book A Mighty Heart, director Michael Winterbottom comes to Sundance with two polar-opposite films, The Killer Inside Me and The Shock Doctrine. Based on Jim Thompson’s pulp classic, Killer stars Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba as well as Casey Affleck, who lives up to the hype still lingering from his exceptional performance in Gone Baby Gone. Winterbottom executes a complete 180 with The Shock Doctrine, based on Naomi Klein’s book about the rise of disaster capitalism. Alongside co-director Mat Whitecross, Winterbottom effectively pairs archive footage with clips of Klein’s lectures, and sheds a frightening light on the exploitative relationship of big businesses to nations in crisis.
Director Rodrigo Garcia creates another one of his trademark multi-layered stories in Mother and Child, which follows the overlapping lives of different women and their relationships to motherhood. The film features an all-star cast including Samuel L. Jackson and Kerry Washington, but the main draws are Annette Bening and Naomi Watts, who play an older woman and the now-adult daughter she gave up for adoption. The decision continues to affect both their lives, and Garcia delicately shows the different ways they cope and the slow process by which they decide to finally meet.
Ralph Nelson / Sony Pictures Classics
Sundance is packed with major documentaries this year, a few of which are particularly buzz-worthy. An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim is back with Waiting for Superman, an examination of the dire state of public education. After a year spent living with the Second Platoon in Afghanistan, directors Sebastian Junger ( A Perfect Storm) and Tim Hetherington have produced Restrepo, a peek into day-to-day of life in a combat zone—according to critics, it breathes new life into the war-film genre. Oscar-winner Alex Gibney turns the lens on Jack Abramoff in Casino Jack, which tells the bizarre and engrossing true story of the infamous lobbyist’s rise and fall. And audiences will find comic relief in the Joan Rivers documentary A Piece of Work, in which the iconic comedian allows directors Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg to follow her for a year as she struggles to maintain her place in show business, and in the process exposes her rarely seen softer side.
CARLOS BARRIA
2010 may be even better than 2009 for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who won over critics and audiences in last year’s 500 Days of Summer. In Hesher, he stars alongside Natalie Portman. The dark comedy follows a 13-year-old boy named TJ (played by newcomer Devin Brochu) struggling with the death of his mother. TJ eventually bonds with Gordon-Levitt’s Hesher, a loner anarchist who lives in a trailer until moving in with the boy and his father (Rainn Wilson). Following the critical success of Brothers, Portman is again generating buzz for her supporting role as a grocery store clerk who becomes involved with the complicated family.
In The Company Men, Ben Affleck stars as a typical middle-class casualty of the recession when he loses his high-powered corporate sales job. In spite of his best efforts, Affleck’s boss, played by Tommy Lee Jones, finds himself unable to fight the company’s cost-cutting measures. The two actors are impressing critics with their moving on-screen partnership. Written and directed by John Wells, the film is rounded out by an talented cast that includes Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Chris Cooper, and Craig T. Nelson.
Adrian Grenier isn’t the only one taking tabloid photographers to Sundance this year. In Smash His Camera, director Leon Gast chronicles the life of Ron Galella, known by many as the founding father of the paparazzi. Galella has spent a lifetime hounding celebrities (he was even sued by Jackie Kennedy) and laid the groundwork for the era of 24-hour celebrity news, but some of his snapshots have become truly iconic pieces of art.
Ron Galella Ltd
