Sundance Film Review // Ain't Them Bodies Saints

What the film is technically about:
A Texas outlaw treks across the country to make it back to his wife and child, who are trying to build peaceful and new lives for themselves until he can come for them.

What the film is really about:
It is about loving someone so much, you can sense them walking down the street.
It is about just wanting to hold her.
It is a love letter; it is an elegy.

What I have to say about it:
Ain't Them Bodies Saints feels like a story you've heard your whole life, and never heard before at all. The script is refreshing, the cinematography folds you into the film, and somehow David Lowery manages to write a final act that simultaneously gives nothing away and yet completely appeases your expectations.

The story is simple but compelling. When the director asked for questions at the Q&A after, it was silent for a while, I think for this very reason. We couldn't figure out how to put into words the questions we had. You sense there are deep currents in this film, and yet it is all put forward so sincerely and unpretentiously that it takes some careful words and some careful thoughts.

And as for the music, well, it is perfect. There is clapping. There are mandolins. The score couldn't be more imaginative nor more perfectly suited for the film.

Things you should know:
1) director: David Lowery (with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara starring)
2) run time: 104 minutes
3) about the thumbnail image: yes, this film lives up to everything you would imagine from that snapshot. it is mesmerizing and haunting and completely beautiful.
4) content: there's some shoot-out scenes (as one would imagine in a film about outlaws), some blood, and a few swears. nothing gratuitous, either in blood or in language.
5) the title: brilliant huh. Ain't Them Bodies Saints. David Lowery said it's from an old Americana-sty;e song he misheard all these years. Sometimes mishearing can be the best kind of hearing.
5) you might cry. But it won't be because your emotions have been manipulated by cheap tricks. It will be because you recognize the characters in yourself, and because what you recognize is sweet and sad and so so worthy of love.

Do I recommend it?
If you have a heart, you need to see this film.

Sundance Film Review // Valentine Road

It's that time of year again! Time for Ryan Gosling and James Franco sightings, for getting lost in Park City trying to find parking, for waiting in lines, and for otherwise freezing in the subzero temperatures of the Wasatch Back. That's right folks, it's time for the Sundance Film Festival: the two weekends a year that Utah has more to offer the world than skiing and the oddities of Mormon culture.

I'm hoping to see a few films over the next couple of weeks (Have you seen the lineup? How is anyone supposed to choose only one?!), and I actually got to see my first last night, at a special exclusive premiere night! (I know, I know, lifestyles of the rich and the famous.) I know it can be hard to choose from the 200 films Sundance offers every year, especially when all you've got to go off is the paragraph in the Film Festival Guide. So I thought it'd be fun to do a couple of reviews of the ones I see. To kick it off, probably the last film I would have chosen to go to but one that I was incredibly moved by, Valentine Road.



What the film is technically about:
Valentine Road is about the school shooting of 8th-grader Larry King by his fellow classmate, Brandon McInerney. Valentine Road follows the friends, family, teachers, and lawyers of the two 8th-graders through the aftermath of the event.

What the film is really about:
Justice. Mercy. Tolerance. Intolerance. The penal system. The education system. Nature and nurture. Crippling regret. Slow-to-come healing. Bravery. Forgiveness.

What I have to say about it:
You know a film is good when its hour and a half length elicits an hour and a half discussion afterwards. We talked the whole way home about right and wrong, justice and mercy, parenting and schooling, objectivity and manipulation in film-making, context and characterization as a key to swaying opinions, and most of all penitence and real change.

This film made me ask questions I haven't asked before. The story unfolded piece by piece, until this seemingly simple incident between two 8th-graders becomes rich with the many heartbreaking and inspiring side-stories of the people who knew them. With incredible finesse and captivation, Valentine Road shows the complexity of any moral decision. It shows how similar we all are, and how much each of us need love love love.

Things you should know:
1) director: Marta Cunningham
2) run time: 89 minutes
3) about the 80s-looking thumbnail image: don't be deceived into thinking the filming will be lackluster. It is refreshing and engaging and not for one moment did I disconnect from what was going on onscreen.
4) content: there is some language (a few f-words) and a couple of pictures of the blood at the crime scene. The content itself is already heavy (as Ira Glass would say, the film does acknowledge the existence of homosexuality (Larry identified as transgender), drugs, domestic violence, and hate crimes), but all is handled tactfully and gracefully.
5) and yes, there are funny moments in Valentine Road too. This one runs the gamut of emotion.

Do I recommend it? 
Yes. Highly. Go with someone who has things to say about the world, someone who is naturally curious and who likes discussing ideas, and then after the film, go to a restaurant in Park City or find a ski lodge at Sundance to sit in or drive for a few hours so you have the chance to process all the incredible things that Marta Cunningham makes happen here.

MOVE

My friend Amanda just sent this video to me. Watching it made me want to pack up my backpack and fly to Europe again.



In the first watch, I caught the Louvre, the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, and the escalators up to the Park Güell in Barcelona...and then I went through and paused it a million times so I could catch everything. What places did you catch watching it??

What's incredible to me about traveling is that once you've been to a place, even if for only a few days, it gets burned in your memory, and all you have to see is a split-second shot of it, and you know exactly where it is, and remember exactly what you did there. We waited in a huge line outside the Louvre to get in for free on student day, and one our last night in Paris, the air was cool and I was in my purple skirt, and we were alone in front of the Louvre and we climbed on pedestals and took pictures. I was alone in Hyde Park and the Albert Memorial was under construction and was draped in orange tape and orange barricades and I walked around it and around it and the sun was bright and warm. On our ride up to the Parc Güell, I wore the sunglasses I had just bought off a fat old man and his fat cheery wife at the bottom of the hill. I was thinking, "This is brilliant--an outdoor escalator up a hill that no one's gonna want to climb."

movies i still wanna see

Yeah so I'm lame and never go to the movie theatre. But here are five movies I'm still dying to watch.

1. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
2. Sleepwalk with Me
3. Beasts of the Southern Wild
4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Any takers? And any other suggestions for good recent movies?

a london tea party

what with the warm weather and what with it being march (aka: when i started preparing for my summer abroad last year) i've been missing london quite a bit.  i've been meaning to make this video for months now, and finally, during a five hour layover in the denver airport, i had the chance.

one afternoon in london, four of us went to hyde park because we had nothing else pressing to do...wait, that's not true.  we had a play to read by seven o'clock that evening.  none of us had read it yet.  so we went to the park to read...  of course very little of that ended up happening.  hyde park is a place so beautiful it can swallow up whole afternoons.  we passed the hours under a big tree.  

i read maybe two lines of the play that afternoon.  i don't even remember which play it was, but i do still remember the color of the grass and the smell of the dirt when i laid my face down and the rustle of the wind and the birds in the trees.

this video isn't about that afternoon, but it is about kensington gardens.  that park is one of my favorite places in the world.

(a note to preston: sorry the video thumbnail is your face.  i'm not sure if this will bug you or what but it won't let me change it sooo.....deal with it?  as for you patrick, sorry the thumbnail of your face is blurry.  i'm sure if you had it your way, you'd be in all your full, focused glory.)

princess grace, peyton place

image via

"We finally discovered that season of love. It is only found in someone else's heart. Right now, someone you know is looking everywhere for it - and it's in you."

(i watched 'peyton place' for the first time last night.  there are so many things i love about old movies:)

1) how slowly they move

2) how real the characters' conversations seem to be

3) how courteous everyone is

4) the clothes (particularly the fedoras)

5) how earnestly the characters speak

6) the humor

7) having friends to watch them with who love them as much as i do

review #5: inception

i have never

and i repeat

NEVER

seen a movie this good

in my entire life.

ENTIRE LIFE.

go see it.

(here's the trailer for your viewing pleasure)