Sundance 2014: ScreenAnarchy Wraps It Up With Our Reviews and Top Picks

What was your overall favorite film?

Todd Brown - Calvary. I went in with very high expectations and it exceeded every one of them.

Valentina I. Valentini - Land Ho! - and not because of the brilliant and improvised one-liners from first-time actor Earl Lynn Nelson, but because there's this moment in the third act that brought me to tears after all the laughing. It'll spoil it if I tell you anymore...

Ben Umstead - I could say Boyhood. So I guess I will say Boyhood, but honestly I gotta show some love to a few titles that didn't get the same sized spotlight that Richard Linklater's latest marvel did. That'd be Tim Sutton's Memphis, a curious little experiment of a film that skews a near invisible line between doc and fiction. Musician Willis Earl Beal plays a version of himself, wandering the worn down streets of that titular southern city, like a prophet, a ghost, a wizard. It's observational, meditative, quirky, beautiful, and has some wildly good tunes from Beal himself. I Also must mention Serbian director Mina Djukic's The Disobedient. The description in the program made it sound like your basic euro drama-romance between two pretty people, but Djukic's film is as far as you can get from that. It is silly and weird and reminds me more than a little of early Milos Foreman.

Jason Gorber - The Raid 2, The Guest, Whiplash... all extraordinary experiences and films, but my top pick is likely The Overnighters. It's one of those festival delights, a film you have no (or low) expectations, only to be bowled away. But since we're talking feature films, I'll say The Raid 2, because, well, what the hell...

Ryland Aldrich - The most remarkable film I saw was Richard Linklater's Boyhood. This was a truly special film with incredible editing that took the incredibly audacious feat of filming over 12 years and made it feel like a traditionally scripted film. It's a brilliant exploration of life and a film-going experience I'll remember for a long time. Very honorable mentions go to The Raid 2 and Whiplash.

What title disappointed you the most?

Ben Umstead - The Sleepwalker. This tale of two sisters and their family secrets lost itself in its strive towards ambiguity. Now being ambiguous is all well and good, but as a filmmaker I don't think Mona Fastvold was able to define her level of ambiguity in a cohesive, satisfying, and chilling way. It was a lot of disparate emotional/psychological parts strung together by a hope that pretty and haunting pictures and gnarly sounds would be enough. It wasn't.

Todd Brown - You know, I really didn’t have one. Other obligations meant I didn't have as much time to screen things as some did so I did my homework pretty carefully when choosing my screenings and I came away quite happy. Even the 'weakest' thing I saw was still pretty damn good.

Ryland Aldrich - Other than the always disappointing inability to see more films, there were very few films that I didn't enjoy and none I walked out of. I suppose I had expected more from Tom Hardy one-man-show Locke. While his performance is strong, the plot of the film doesn't unfold in a way that allows things to feel fresh. It's not a bad film, just not as exciting as I'd hoped.

Jason Gorber - Other than the transportation system and ticketing process, all of which was far worse than anticipate, I have to say that most things lived up to or surpassed my usual state of reduced expectations.

Valentina I. Valentini - Drunktown's Finest was a very ambitious project for a newcomer like Sydney Freeland. I am not sure if my expectations were too high, but the acting by more than a few of the leads was not nearly up to par with the caliber of the content. In defense of the film and Freeland though, her heart was in the right place for the casting choices.

Who gave the best performance?

Jason Gorber - JK Simmons in Whiplash, reminding everyone that he's positively a treasure.

Valentina I. Valentini - Tessa Thompson in Dear White People. She's got 33 acting credits on IMDB, but this meaty, smart role will finally help her stand out beyond "FBI Agent: Rizzoli & Isles."

Todd Brown - Brendan Gleeson in Calvary. He’s remarkable.

Ryland Aldrich - There were a ton of strong performances this year but I'm going to call this one a tie between Rinko Kikuchi in the Zellner Brothers' Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter and John Boyega in Malik Vitthal's Imperial Dreams.

Ben Umstead - Ellar Coltrane. Boyhood. Sure, one could argue that this isn't a "performance", but I scoff at such notions. In the context of this project it was something stellar.

What was your favorite documentary?

Ryland Aldrich - Steve James's Roger Ebert Life Itself is a beautiful remembrance of Roger Ebert that wonderfully captures the importance and character of the great man.

Ben Umstead - I didn't catch any at Sundance. Saw quite a few at Slamdance, though. Including Elliot, which is, by the way, Tim League approved (he was on the jury who gave it their doc award).

Valentina I. Valentini - I didn't get to see a single one. I'm ashamed of myself.

Todd Brown - Didn’t see any.

Jason Gorber - Unlike many of my fellow critics, over 50% of the films I saw were docs. Plenty to love - Whitey, Life Itself, Rich Hill, but it was The Overnighters that was easily my fav of the fest.

What was your top discovery of the fest?

Valentina I. Valentini - What We Do in the Shadows. Taikia Waititi and Jemaine Clement have some serious talent going on in those Kiwi brains. There's so many ways for a vampire mockumentary to go wrong, but this one (are there more??) never steered adrift.

Jason Gorber - I sound like a broken record, but I'd like to think The Overnighters may well be a film that generates momentum. We'll see if my feelings about it are shared as the film goes on to the rest of the fest circuit, but that's certainly one instance I feel I may be ahead of the curve.

Ben Umstead - Cheating a bit again and saying it was Ian Legarde and his short film Daybreak, which won the short narrative prize at Slamdance. 10 of the most fascinating, beguiling and terrifying minutes I've spent at any fest.

Ryland Aldrich - There were a whole lot of great filmmaker discoveries this year with Damien Chazelle and Malik Vitthal leading the way. But the most memorable discovery for me were the acting talents found in The Raid 2; namely Oka Antara (also the lead in Killers) and Arifin Putra. Both these guys speak perfect English and will hopefully be making the jump to this side of the Pacific soon.

Todd Brown - I don’t know that I can answer this, honestly. Super impressed by the directing in Cooties but I’ve been a fan of those guys since their shorts, so that’s no surprise. Maybe Essie Davis in The Babadook. She turns in a great performance. Or Leigh Whannell for his acting performance in Cooties... you expect his scripts to be solid but his performance in this was absolutely HILARIOUS on a level I did not expect.

Finally, what was your favorite Sundance moment?

Ryland Aldrich - Expectations could not have been any higher for Gareth Evans and the XYZ team after the success of The Raid Redemption. The good news is that those expectations were actually EXCEEDED with The Raid 2. I've never heard so many audible "oooooohs" and "ouchs" in an audience. It was really rewarding to see how excited the whole team was after the incredible premiere. Next up... the world!

Todd Brown - The ovation at the end of The Raid 2 certainly didn’t suck. And I got to chat with Chris O’Dowd one on one for twenty minutes or so. That was pretty great. And I got to talk about our crack smoking mayor with Michael C Hall, also not so bad.

Ben Umstead - I was with the American crew from Fishing Without Nets when two of their Somali actors, Abdikani Muktar and Abu Bakr, arrived for the first time in the states. It was ten glorious minutes of hugging, crying, laughing, dancing and picture taking in the snow.

Jason Gorber - Attending the Life Itself screening was pretty magical, having a delightful conversation with fest director John Cooper, dinner with team XYZ and a certain Welsh guy, it was all a pretty wonderful experience for this first timer.

Valentina I. Valentini - When the Stella Artois interview lounge director sent me upstairs to get some food at the Stella Artois Cafe, and the door guy up there sent me back down because I "wasn't on the list," and when I got back down to the director he said there was no list and to ask for so-and-so, and I went back up to door guy who said he didn't know so-and-so, and sent me to get a ticket because maybe there was no list, and I went and got the ticket around the corner and came back and the door guy let me in. Classic Sundance.