There are some perks to having a branch of Robert Redford's favorite cineplex in Houston.
For the third year in a row, Houston has been selected as one of nine cities in the nation — and the only one in Texas — to take part in the Sundance Film Festival USA on Jan. 30. The national event screens films directly from the Sundance Film Festival, which Redford founded and takes place Jan. 16-26 in Park City, Utah.
The film selected to be shown in Houston is Cold in July, a crime thriller directed by Jim Mickle, whose previous film, We Are What We Are, drew lots of attention at Sundance last January. Cold in July stars Michael C. Hall, who recently finished portraying TV's most famous serial killer in the long-running cable series Dexter, Don Johnson and Sam Shepard and is based on the novel by Joe R. Landsdale. According to a description of the movie in Variety:
Cold on July turns on Richard Dane (Hall), a small town frame builder from East Texas who kills a burglar in self-defense. The dead man’s father swears revenge: A son’s life for a son’s life. But the two guilt-stricken fathers become unlikely allies, aided by Dane’s tough-minded wife and a pig-raising detective from the Houston backwoods, as they discover a bigger secret, darker and more dangerous than any of them could have imagined."
The movie will be shown at Sundance Cinemas at Bayou Place on Jan. 30. A filmmaker intimately involved with Cold in July will attend the screening and answer question from the audience afterwards.
“Year-round audiences and arthouse theaters are vital parts of the independent film community, and our Sundance Film Festival USA initiative allows us to extend the energy and excitement of the Festival to them,” Sundance Film Festival John Cooper said in a statement.
Don Johnson practically steals the movie in the role of a outlandish Houston investigator.
