Keep your eyes peeled for these movies about New England witches, amputated legs, ’70s sexual awakenings, and gym romances. They’re all coming soon to a theater (or television) near you.
Clockwise from upper left: Patti Perrett/A24, Ryan Green/Magnolia, Radium/Magnolia, Crystal Moselle/Magnolia
There's always going to be that movie that gets away from you at a festival, even if you show up, looking increasingly disheveled and puffy, for every early morning screening and keep powering through until late into the night. At Sundance 2015, that movie was Brooklyn, a 1950s immigrant romance starring Saoirse Ronan that had people swooning and was picked up by Fox Searchlight after a bidding war — but at least it's headed to theaters shortly.
I'm also sorry I missed The Forbidden Room, the latest effort from the singular Canadian director Guy Maddin, which was singularly strange enough to prompt walkouts, as well as Leslye Headland's raunchy sex addict rom-com Sleeping with Other People and Bobcat Goldthwait's doc about his friend and fellow comedian Barry Crimmins, Call Me Lucky.
Here's a list of the best films I did see at Sundance, at an unseasonably warm year for the festival that was also unusually good, and introduced plenty of future stars and movies we'll be talking about in the months to come.
9. Mississippi Grind
Patti Perret/A24
Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds are a pair of lovable losers who both see the other as their lucky charm in this shaggy, nicely '70s-esque road trip movie from filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the team behind Half Nelson. Gerry (Mendelsohn) is addicted to gambling and Curtis (Reynolds) is hooked on being a not-quite-magical drifter, latching onto hard-luck characters and following them down to rock bottom or, hopefully, to some happy end. The two meet in a crummy corner of Iowa and make their way down toward New Orleans, where there's a high-stakes poker game that may or may not be apocryphal. Mississippi Grind manages the difficult trick of making its characters charming and totally untrustworthy — you're increasingly concerned for them, but would never leave them alone with your wallet. And like the two heroes of Robert Altman's California Split, which Mississippi Grind sometimes feels like an informal remake of, Gerry and Curtis seem to be chasing the high of desperation as much as a win. The movie tries out half a dozen endings before actually coming to a close, but it's a fun, unsettling ride until then, with Mendelsohn a bedraggled standout.
How To See It: A24 will be giving Mississippi Grind a theatrical release later this year, after an exclusive window on DirecTV.
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