Seattlest at Sundance: Take Two

We just barely made it into Be Kind Rewind. Due to the previous night's snowstorm, director/brilliantly weird little man Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) didn't make it all. It's too bad, since his creative vision is what makes this film worth a viewing (in theaters soon). The cheesy storyline--after erasing the VHS inventory of a dying video store with magnets, Mos Def and Jack Black have to reshoot all the films to keep customers happy--takes a backseat when compared to Gondry's use of visuals. His low-rent (even crafty) effects in the video remakes are what really wow. By using everyday items, like car parts to fashion a Robocop, pizza serving as a head wound, or a fan in front of the camera to make everything look old-timey, Gondry proves filmmaking doesn't have to be slick and hi-tech to pop.

And then there was Downloading Nancy. Whether you loved it or had serious issues with it (we fell into the latter camp), everyone agreed that the film is beyond "difficult" to watch. Deliberately so: loosely based on a true story, the topic is a wretched woman (Maria Bello, fearless as always), full of pain and desperate for a way out of her current situation. The film delves into Nancy's mental illness and the tenuous relationship that comes to exist between her husband (Rufus Sewell) and the new man in her life (Jason Patric). Downloading Nancy is provocative, and the violent images of cutting and other self-inflicted sadism caused quite a few audience members to walk out, some in tears. The entire film is bruised--master cinematographer Christopher Doyle provided sallow tones of yellow and blue. Sure, it's well-made, but with its dark tone and subject matter (and shades of misogyny), how exactly do you market such a downer?

Just Another Love Story is one of our favorites of the fest. Depending on how you look at it, the Danish movie's a dark romantic comedy or a film noir. Either way, we wouldn't be surprised if it ends up getting an American remake. A previously content married man witnesses a car accident and ends up posing as one of the victim's boyfriends. He tries to correct the mistaken identity, but finds himself falling in love with her, all the while piecing together more of the secrets in her past. So it's kinda like While You Were Sleeping, just twisted, and much much better.

Finally, after a looooong time spent in line, there was Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, the latest documentary romp from Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me). Instead of eating his weight in McDonald's food, this time around Spurlock's life experiment is traveling across the globe (Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan), trying to find the world's most wanted man. Spoiler alert: OBL is still at large. Spurlock's films always fly by with great pacing and crisp editing, but for the first third of the film, his use of animation is a little OCD. We know he's trying to approach a heavy subject while also keeping things light, but distracting visuals don't allow the audience to process the presented information. If anything, the most striking set pieces in the film are those that are understated: an interview with a radical imam, or a road sign in Pakistan leading to Peshawar graffiti-ed with "KILL ME." Still, Spurlock's a charming film presence, and his movie has the potential to reach a lot of people with an important message: Osama ain't the ultimate problem--finding one man just won't solve the root causes of terrorism.