Day: January 21, 2014

Jim Mickle‘s Cold in July didn’t cut it either. I bailed about halfway through. The part I saw felt like a Jim Thompson melodrama mixed with the kind of low-rent VOD film that throws in a totally unexpected third-act-plot-twist because viewers won’t expect it. I’d read the reviews, I knew what was coming…later. But the main issue (and I’m not saying this just to sound eccentric or obstinate) is Mickle’s decision to have his lead actor, Michael C. Hall, wear a mullet. My heart sank when I saw it. A brick wall. I tried to get past it but I couldn’t. I should have just walked out when I saw the damn thing but I stupidly hung in there.

Cold in July is set in rural Texas in 1989, and I realize that low-rent guys who lived in backwaters were still wearing mullets back then but I don’t care — I really can’t roll with a lead character who wears one. And Mickle knows there are thousands (perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands) who feel the same way. He’s not stupid– he knows that mullets are just as much of a blocking mechanism as having a lead character with (excuse the vulgar imagery) phlegm running out of his nose. Something like this stops the movie in its tracks. Imagine if Humphrey Bogart had a gross runny nose all through The Maltese Falcon — do you think that might have affected its popularity to some degree? Same thing with Hall’s mullet, and Mickle knows this. I have no patience with directors who pull this shit, and so I quit. I’m sorry but stuff like this kills me.

I bailed on Kat Chandler‘s Hellion, which everyone seems to admire, at roughly the one-hour mark. This is the kind of earnestly grungy indie that critics like Guy Lodge fall for or write about with some admiration, and which I want to escape from as soon as possible. I hate dealing with the problems of pissed-off, under-educated, lower-middle-class types. They’re not my kind of people. I didn’t give a damn about the anger or the pain or the bleachy color or the buzzing dirt bikes. I didn’t care about the characters or their problems or the cops or the social services lady…include me out.

The hell-bent Jacob, played by young Josh Wiggins…sorry, man. The angry, alcoholic, widowed dad played by HE nemesis Aaron Paul (who grew a beard and gained weight for the role — his head is shaped like a basketball)…later. Juliette Lewis is agreeably humane as the sister of Paul’s absent wife, but otherwise I wanted to put this hellish environment behind me as quickly as possible. It gave me a damn headache.

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One good Trip deserves another, and so Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and director Michael Winterbottom have delivered an affable, eye-filling, generally amusing film about a restaurant tour of Italy. Their route follows the Italian journeys of Lord Byron and Percy Byshe Shelley in the early 1800s, so that means Piemonte, Liguria (including a possible visit to Cinque Terre, or at least an area that resembles it), Rome, Pompeii, Napoli and the Amalfi Coast. They ride around in a Mini-Cooper, taking in the scenic splendor of the hilly regions and gorging on plates and plates of pasta, vegetables, truffles, seafood and various heavily sauced entrees. Italy has never been about dieting. Or abstaining from drink. Coogan is sober when he starts but soon succumbs to the lure of the grape.

Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon in Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip.

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The moderately positive to middling reviews of Anton Corbijn‘s A Most Wanted Man convinced me that I didn’t absolutely, positively need to see it here in Park City. Down the road, yes, but not now. Unless…you know, it’s easy and there’s nothing better showing at the moment. I’m sorry but once the word gets around that your film has issues, you’re more or less finished. Up here, I mean. Among the red pass know-it-alls.

I’m hesitant. I’m not sure how this is going to work out. But I’ve got five films on today’s Sundance Film Festival schedule, and the first one starts in 40 minutes. Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip to Italy at 9 am. Kat Chandler‘s Hellion (which I’m not looking forward to because it stars Aaron “tennis ball in a gray tuxedo” Paul) at 12:30 pm. Jim Mickle‘s Cold in July at 3:30 pm. Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Ida (which I should have seen at Telluride last September) at 5:45 pm. And Charlie McDowell‘s The One I Love at 8:30 pm.