Seattlest at Sundance: Take Two

Of course everyone in Park City is excited about Obama. At every chance they get, the Sundance staff member announcing the film makes a comment about our new president and/or our ceremonial dumping of the old one, to great applause. The morning screenings today have been lightly attended, with folks staying in to catch the inauguration. Not us, though; we'll catch that shit on YouTube. We've got movies to watch!

Big Fan, directed by Robert Siegel, the writer of The Wrestler, features another washed-up sports figure. This time it's Patton Oswalt as Paul, a sad-sack Giants fan. He works as a parking attendant, and he lives with his mama (natch), but by night, he's all over talk radio, calling in and reading from his pre-written rants. But when he runs into his favorite player, Quantrell Bishop, at a gas station in Staten Island and follows him to a Manhattan strip club, things get ugly...and really, darkly, funny. Patton Oswalt brings some humanity to sad clown Paul, who is forced to consider putting his loyalty to his team before himself or his family.

Going into Johnny Mad Dog, a French movie made in Liberia, a man in line dryly commented, "This is a romantic comedy, right?" To which we replied, "Yes, a romantic comedy about child soldiers." Basically, the film's about a group of child soldiers taking part in civil war atrocities in a fictional African country. Of course, the fiction is based in horrifying fact, and director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire gave it additional veracity by casting former child soldiers. The acting is brave and brutally raw, and Sauvaire's unflinching eye is matched by his attention to detail, light, and sound. There's plenty of loud, anarchic moments in the movie, but to Sauvaire's credit, the quiet scenes are just as powerful. To put it mildly, this is a difficult film to watch; though very well done, we're not sure how much we can recommend it to others, given that it's the cinematic equivalent of an assault.

Only slightly lighter in tone was the next film, The Messenger, starring Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma) and Woody Harrelson as Will and Tony, officers in the Army's Casualty Notification Office. Their difficult assignment: notifying the next of kin that their loved one is not coming home from Iraq. They're trained to not get too close--or even touch--the families they meet, but before too long Will finds himself drawn to a young widow, played by Samantha Morton. While we're as tired of war films (and the war) as everyone else, the film draws attention to an overlooked aspect of the war, which director Oren Moverman handles delicately. This is a deliberately apolitical film, and Moverman gets strong, nuanced performances from all the actors, with some of most moving sequences consisting of understated long-takes of conversations, where one person is talking and the other person is simply listening.