For me, Atticus Coffee/Teahouse/Books on lower Main Street has the only really really fast wifi in town. Park Regency wifi is sluggish, Park City Marriot wifi is passable, Eccles wifi is shit and Yarrow Hotel wifi is covered in molasses. But Atticus wifi is smooth and clean and just about perfect…thank God. I’m there right now, the blizzard coming down outside, sipping a hot chocolate.

I felt a little iffy about attending this morning’s screening of Rory Kennedy‘s Ethel, an HBO-funded doc about her famous and revered mom, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy who became known as a force of nature in he own right beginning in the 1950s, and certainly since the ’60s. I was wondering what could be historically new in this, and whether it might feel a little too tidy and boilerplatey.

Rory, Ethel Kennedy and grandkids somewhere in Park City with the last 24 hours.

Ethel director Rory Kennedy during this morning’s post-screening q & a at the Park City Library — Saturday, 1.21, 10:40 am.

The answers are “very little” and “it sorta kinda is.” But it’s a beautiful sonnet regardless — a funny, warm and deeply affectionate family tale that slips inside and, I swear, churns it all up again. Damned if it didn’t make me melt down a couple of times.

It’s focused, of course, on Ethel — her life with Bobby, the 11 kids (she was pregnant for 99 months all told), the White House and U.S. Senate years of the early to late ’60s, etc. But it’s primariy about Rory’s legendary rockstar dad. His political career and his marriage to Ethel are the spine of the doc, as they were so closely intertwined. The doc more or less ends with his death in June 1968, and barely touches Ethel’s life for the last 40-plus years. Her mom is very honestly and bluntly presented as very private and guarded, and amusing snippy at times. She “hates” introspection, she says at one point. Anyone who’s ever had a feisty grandmother will chuckle at this.

But it must be said that Rory Kennedy’s decision to only briefly summarize her mother’s life after 1968 and not explore any particulars (such as Ethel’s bout with alcoholism) makes this a lesser film than it could have been. It’s more than a bit of a gloss. But it’s such a charming and emotionally affecting one that almost all is forgiven. I couldn’t believe I was weeping at this, a significant portion of the the most familiar and widely told romantic tragedy of our times — the Kennedys who lived and soared and triumphed and made elective office sexy, and then were cut down. But I guess we all have our vulnerable spots.

I was struck by how closely Rory resembles her father — eyes, nose, jawline, teeth. She looks like him a little more than any of her siblings, and on some level I felt a vague RFK contact high from being relatively close to her this morning and taking her picture.

I’ve been up since 6 am. It’s 7:22 am right now. I have an 8:30 am screening of Ethel, an HBO doc about Ethel Kennedy, at the Library, and then a noon press conference for West of Memphis (moderated by David Poland!) followed by 28 Hotel Rooms (I think) at the Yarrow at 3pm and then Nicholas Jarecki‘s Abitrage at 6:30 pm, and then an Aribtrage after-party with the usual filings in-between and whenever.

Rodrigo Cortes‘ Red Lights, which screened at 10 pm last night, plays differently than you might expect — I’ll give it that. But in my view it suffers from a silly and confusing second half or, in the view of others, a terrible ending. Either way this faux-spooker didn’t go down all that well with the crowd. They were being polite, but they were somewhat confused and hadn’t really bought it.

Cillian Murphy, Elisabeth Olsen, Sigourney Weaver during last night’s post-screening q & a.

Rodrigo Cortes

It’s about a pair of investigators, Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy), who specialize in debunking bogus paranormal claims. Weaver is persuaded there’s no such animal as a ghost or messages from the after-life or anything along those lines — it’s all about theatre and seducing the gullible. The story gradually builds into an epic confrontation between the Weaver forces and Simon Silver (Robert DeNiro), perhaps the greatest paranormal performer or hoodwinker of all time…or is he?

The first 40 minutes are devoted to exploring Weaver’s literal and rational-minded reasons for being a skeptic, and a little about her own personal background involving a comatose son. And then something happens that I shouldn’t divulge, but when that thing happens the tone set by Weaver’s rationality is thrown out the window and the film devolves into a kind of emotional madhouse with “boo! surprise” jolts thrown in from time to time, plus a lot of raging emotion and red herrings that don’t lead anywhere and plot threads that aren’t developed and/or are abandoned.

It just goes nuts, this film. A kind of ComicCon idiot gene takes over. I was saying to myself, “What happened here? This thing was smart, absorbing and moving along pretty good fora while and then wham…a cheesy cheap-shock virus invaded and it went south.”

I got so sick of Murphy shouting and getting angry and parting his mouth and going “whuh?” when a shock moment occurs and driving like an idiot and stumbling around with blood on his face I was ready to throw something at the screen.

A guy asked during the post-screening q & a if Cortes could please explain the last five minutes, and most of the audience chuckled and some applauded. When that happens you’re dead. It means you haven’t provided the right information and tied things up with sufficient clarity.

Cortes is an obviously intelligent young director who’s unfortunately into second- and third-act wham-bams (yelling, violence, boo!, exploding lights) rather than developing things internally. As an audacious Latino who’s made a “things go bump in the night” flick, I regret to say that Cortes doesn’t begin to approach the poise or expertise of, say, Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage) or Alejandro Amen√°bar (The Others). So this one gets tossed on the heap, I’m afraid.

Sigourney Weaver’s snowboots.

Just to recap the day so far: West of Memphis (excellent, highly absorbing…best film with Peter Jackson‘s name on it since Heavenly Creatures), I’m Not A Hipster (slightly downish but smartly written, emotionally affecting with intriguing breakout performance by Dominic Bogart), and Simon Killer (a disaster film). Next is a West of Memphis party and then Rodrigo Cortes‘ Red Lights at 10 pm.

Late this afternoon I suffered through Antonio Campos‘ Simon Killer at the Eccles. It’s an empty, meandering audience-torture film about sex and nihilism and stupidity in Paris. Brady Corbet (the slightly dopey-looking guy who briefly boffed Kirsten Dunst on the golf course in Melancholia) plays a grungy-looking dork who seems “normal” at first but then things turn dark and deranged as he morphs into a psychopathic asshole.

Approaching Park City shuttle outside the Eccles following this afternoon’s screening of Simon Killer.

There are no resonating echoes or metaphors that add up in this bleak nihilistic film. Corbet is a recent college graduate who’s distraught about a breakup with his girlfriend of five years, and is visiting Paris to…whatever, hide out and do nothing for a while. His primary trait is that he’s obsessive.

I saw him as a whiner with little cash and nothing on his mind except jerking off and fucking and money and extortion and hurting the women who like or love him. One of these is Mati Diop, a drop-dead beautiful cafe au lait girl who works as a prostitute and eventually lets Corbet stay with her because he’s broke, and who lets him goad her into a half-assed “john” blackmail scheme.

I didn’t relate to Corbet or get what he was about or anything. I hated his unshaven cheeks and chin and neck. And so I just sat there and watched…and watched…and nodded off for a few minutes…and watched a bit more. And then Corbet finally flew back to the States and it was over.

I thought I might at least enjoy a few shots of Paris, but Campos and cinematographer Joe Anderson are very careful to show us nothing recognizable whatsoever. When Corbet is roaming around the camera is always focused on the back of his head and the rest is always in soft focus.

The most memorable thing that happened during the screening was when I nodded out for five minutes. I was holding a half-filled can of Monster, and as I dropped off the can slipped my grip and hit the floor…clahk!…and rolled out of my aisle and into the next, dribbling green Monster juice as it went along. Attorney Linda Lichter and L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan were sitting next to me, and I’m sure they wondered what the noise was. I avoided looking in their direction out of embarassment.

Late this afternoon I suffered through Antonio Campos‘ Simon Killer at the Eccles. It’s an empty, meandering audience-torture film about sex and nihilism and stupidity in Paris. Brady Corbet (the slightly dopey-looking guy who briefly boffed Kirsten Dunst on the golf course in Melancholia) plays a grungy-looking dork who seems “normal” at first but then things turn dark and deranged as he morphs into a psychopathic asshole.

Approaching Park City shuttle outside the Eccles following this afternoon’s screening of Simon Killer.

There are no resonating echoes or metaphors that add up in this bleak nihilistic film. Corbet is a recent college graduate who’s distraught about a breakup with his girlfriend of five years, and is visiting Paris to…whatever, hide out and do nothing for a while. Paris is a good town to do that in, but the appeal of Paris plummets if you’re stuck hanging out with an asshole.

Corbet’s primary trait is that he’s obsessive. I saw him as a whiner with little cash and nothing on his mind except jerking off and fucking and money and extortion and hurting the women who like or love him. One of these is Mati Diop, a drop-dead beautiful cafe au lait girl who works as a prostitute and eventually lets Corbet stay with her because he’s broke, and who lets him goad her into a half-assed “john” blackmail scheme.

I didn’t relate to Corbet or get what he was about or anything. I hated his unshaven cheeks and chin and neck. I just sat there and watched…and watched…and nodded off for a few minutes…and watched a bit more. And then Corbet finally flew back to the States and it was over.

I thought I might at least enjoy a few shots of Paris, but Campos and cinematographer Joe Anderson are very careful to show us nothing recognizable whatsoever. When Corbet is roaming around the camera is always focused on the back of his head and the rest is always in soft focus.

The most memorable thing that happened during the screening was when I nodded out for five minutes. I was holding a half-filled can of Monster, and as I dropped off the can slipped my grip and hit the floor…clahk!…and rolled out of my aisle and into the next, dribbling green Monster juice as it went along. Attorney Linda Lichter and L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan were sitting next to me, and I’m sure they wondered what the noise was. I avoided looking in their direction out of embarassment.

A 123-minute crowd-sourced Star Wars — a feature-length pic “that contains hand-picked scenes from the entire StarWarsUncut.com collection.” Uploaded two days ago and edited by Aaron Valdez and Bryan Pugh.

It’s getting so crazy now that I barely have time to file about the Sundance films I’ve seen and make the next film I want/need to see. It’s 2:45 pm and I have a 3:30 pm screening of Simon Killer at the Eccles…which gives me 15 minutes to wrap things up.

This morning I caught the 8:30 am screening of Amy Berg and Peter Jackson‘s West of Memphis — a completely solid and compelling doc about the West Memphis 3 that never drags and feels vital and necessary every step of the way. I…Jesus, 12 minutes to go! Homina, homina, homina. I agree entirely with John DeFore‘s Hollywood Reporter review…how abotu that?

I went right over to the Prospector Square Cinema after Memphis to catch an 11:30 am screening of Destin Daniel Cretton‘s I’m Not a Hipster, an absorbing, emotionally balanced, nicely written and well acted character drama about a scowling San Diego hipster-musician (played by the darkly charismatic Dominic Bogart) who comes to an emotional reckoning when his sisters and father visit town to dispose of his recently deceased mother’s ashes. Six minutes to go but Hipster is a smart, believable, honestly realized indie pic. Not “entertaining,” per se, but straight and true.

I’m outta here…

Lauren Greenfield‘s The Queen of Versailles, an oddly spelllbinding, must-see documentary that screened last night, is fundamentally about how the vacation-timeshare empire of former billionaire David Siegel started to collapse after the financial meltdown of 2008. But the focus is about how his marriage to 40something Jackie, a clueless, fake-boobed 40something bimbo, began to rot around the edges when the money began to evaporate and budgetary restraint became necessary.

Jackie Siegel and Sundance Film Festival honcho John Cooper at the Eccles theatre last night.

Jackie Siegel is truly appalling — a metaphor for a kind of profligate soul cancer, a poster lady for the insipid American emptiness of the 21st Century. She’s not without “good” qualities, but she makes Imelda Marcos look like June Cleaver. She admits to Greenfield that she had kids because she knew her nannies would take care of them. She is compulsive, immature and uneducated — an eight-year old. She’s had a deceased pet stuffed and keeps his remains inside a glass case. When times get tough dogshit turds are seen on the floor of her home. She asks a car-rental rep at an airport who her driver will be, and is surprised to discover that she’ll have to drive the car herself. (I wonder if this last bit was genuine — it seems too much even for her.)

The press notes say that The Queen of Versailles has “the epic dimensions of a Shakespearean tragedy,” and there is a kind of grandiosity about the downswirl that affects the lives of David and Jackie and their seven or eight kids and their domestic staff.

It follows their riches-to-rags story over a two…make that a three-year period. It begins before the ’08 crash when Westgate, Siegel’s timeshare company, is bringing in millions hand over fist, and finishes with a financial move that David made in November 2011.

The material centerpiece of the film is a ridiculous, half-built, 90,000-square-foot mansion — inspired by the palace of Versailles — that David began building in flush times. And then comes the crash and it all gradually turns to shit.

The Queen of Versailles is a portrait of American cluelessness by way of absurd financial irresponsibilty. It’s a cautionary tale about the cost of living an unexamined life — of living an unrefined and largely uneducated life that’s solely about yourself and your tacky creature comforts and never seeing beyond that. What Greenfield shows is a metaphor about 21st Century American greed, and what happened to the faux-royal easy-money crowd after the good times stopped rolling.

It’s also a kind of comedy, if you watch it with the right frame of mind. I’m calling it another Al Qaeda recruitment film — the best I’ve seen since Sex and the City 2.

Siegel has sued Greenfield and the Sundance Film Festival because he fears that the film will harm his financial profile and/or make Westgate appear to have less value. He’s not wrong.