Movie Time

Texas-made films grab center stage at Sundance Film Festival, including Houstonand Linsanity

One of the hottest tickets to this year’s Sundance is the documentary premiereof Linsanity, featuring Jeremy Lin.
Triple5Light
In the 12-entry category for World Dramatic, Houston, a dark psychological dramafeaturing a German executive recruiter and alcoholic who comes to Houston torecruit an energy executive will premiere Jan. 22.
FilmGuide.Sundance.org
Pit Stop, by director and screenwriter Yen Tan, tells the parallel stories oftwo working class gay men in a small Texas town who come together after eachsuffering struggles and heartbreak in other relationships.
FilmGuide.Sundance.org
Computer Chess, the fourth feature length film by Austin director AndrewBujalski, is an existential comedy about a computer convention in 1980 and themen who taught machines to play chess.
FilmGuide.Sundance.org
Sure to be controversial will be A Teacher, a psychological drama about a highschool teacher who has an affair with one of her students.
ATeacherFilm.com

PARK CITY, Utah — It is shaping up to be a banner year for Texas-centered films and filmmakers as the Sundance Film Festival kicks off Thursday and runs through January 27. More than a dozen films with Texas ties will be screened in the two drama categories, two documentary categories, the short film category and the edgy NEXT category.

One of the hottest tickets is the documentary premiere of Linsanity, featuring Jeremy Lin, the Harvard basketball player who came from a humble background and was undrafted by the NBA only to have an unbelievable run as an NBA player (he now plays for the Houston Rockets of course). A portion of the film was shot in Houston.

One of the hottest tickets is the documentary premiere of Linsanity, featuring Jeremy Lin.

The documentary, which was filmed by Lin's close friend Evan Leong, begins when Lin was a college student with no pro prospects, long before his magical run with the New York Knicks last season. The film premieres on Saturday with not a ticket to be had.

In the 12-entry category for World Dramatic, Houston, a dark psychological drama featuring a German executive recruiter and alcoholic who comes to Houston to recruit an energy executive will premiere Jan. 22. The film was — no surprise given its title — filmed in Houston and El Campo, as well as in Germany by German director and screenwriter, Bastian Gunther.

It is part-time Austin resident Gunther's first U.S. film.

Austin-based director Richard Linklater will show his latest movie, Before Midnight, a follow-up to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, on Sunday night.

Linklater will also co-host a party saluting 10 Texas films that will be shown at the festival, including Mud, starring Matthew McConaughey as a charismatic outlaw who recruits two boys to aid his clean getaway, and Prince Avalanche, which writer/director David Gordon Green adapted from the Icelandic film Either Way and clandestinely shot in Austin.

Bold works

Sundance’s NEXT group features "pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling" and usually made on a modest budget. Computer Chess, Pit Stop, and A Teacher are three of the 10 submissions.

Sure to be controversial, A Teacher is a psychological drama about a high school teacher who has an affair with one of her students. This film was shot entirely in Austin and marks the first Sundance entry for film director and screenwriter, Hannah Fidell.

Sure to be controversial, A Teacher is a psychological drama about a high school teacher who has an affair with one of her students.

Computer Chess, the fourth feature length film by Austin director Andrew Bujalski is an existential comedy about a computer convention in 1980 and the men who taught machines to play chess.

Pit Stop, by director and screenwriter Yen Tan, tells the parallel stories of two working class gay men in a small Texas town who come together after each suffering struggles and heartbreak in other relationships.

Tan's script for Pit Stop was selected out of hundreds of entries to participate in the Outfest Screenwriting Lab in 2009 and the project was awarded a $7,000 grant from the Austin Film Society’s Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund. The producers utilized crowd-funding from usaprojects.org to raise another $32,000 for the project.

Tan immigrated to Dallas from Malaysia in 1996 and currently lives in Austin where he is also the go-to person for graphic design of movie posters for independent films. Tan was assisted in co-writing duties by Dallasite David Lowery.

Buzzed-about film

Filmmaker Lowery is a busy guy. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, a film he wrote and directed, is one of one of the most buzzed-about films of the 16 submissions in the U.S. Dramatic category. It tells the story of an outlaw who escapes from prison and sets out across the Texas hills to reunite with his wife and the daughter he has never met.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is one of one of the most buzzed-about films of the 16 submissions in the U.S. Dramatic category.

Featuring an all-star cast of Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster, the film opens in the “A” venue — the 1,100 seat Eccles Theater — on the first weekend of the festival. Ain't Them Bodies Saints follows Lowery's debut feature, St. Nick, which premiered at SXSW, in 2009 and was released commercially in 2011.

The movie will also be shown in Houston on Jan. 31 at the Sundance Cinemas as part of the Sundance Film Festival USA series held in 10 cities. Lowery and producer Toby Halbrooks will be in Houston to introduce the film and participate in an audience question-and-answer session moderated by CultureMap editor-in-chief Clifford Pugh. Tickets are on sale on the Sundance Cinemas website.

Shorts competition

In the 65 films that will screen in the Shorts Competition, Texans directors get the nod in Black Metal, The Cub, and Thank You. Black Metal, made in Austin, is a nine-minute film focused on the actions of a fan of the lead singer of a black metal band.

The Cub, filmed by Austin director Riley Stearns, is a short five-minute film, that examines the relationship of a wolf and its cubs.

Thank You, a 12-minute animated film by Austin directors Pendleton Ward and Tom Herpich, focuses on a snow golem that is attacked in the forest by a pack of wolves, who accidentally leave a cub behind after their retreat. The golem’s life is thrown into chaos as he attempts to reunite the cub with its family.

unspecified

Movie Review

Feuding couple fights for survival in dark comedy Over Your Dead Body

Photo courtesy of IFC Films

Jason Segel and Samara Weaving on Over Your Dead Body.

When dysfunctional couples are depicted in movies, about the worst that typically happens is an acrimonious divorce. But in the new comedy/thriller Over Your Dead Body, the husband-and-wife have already gone way past that point by the time they’re introduced to the audience, with their plans leaning toward murder.

Dan (Jason Segel) is a low-level filmmaker relegated to directing pop-up ads, while Lisa (Samara Weaving) is an actor making do in small theater productions. The film finds them heading toward a rare getaway to a remote lake cabin, but it’s clear from the start that the married couple has been at odds for months, if not years. As the film begins, Dan clumsily drops hints at an alibi for his planned murder of Lisa to his ailing dad (Paul Guilfoyle) and others.

His shoddy planning was already sussed out by Lisa, who turns the tables on him when he tries to attack her, revealing a plan of her own. The situation naturally heightens their shared enmity of each other, but their blind hatred turns out to reveal the presence of Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Todd (Keith Jardine), two escapees from a nearby prison who were helped by guard Allegra (Juliette Lewis). What was once a shared murder plan turns into a fight for survival, forcing Dan and Lisa to work together.

Directed by Jorma Taccone (The Lonely Island) and written by former SNL writers Nick Kocher and Briand McElhaney, the film aims to mine comedy out of darkness. Dan and Lisa’s ire for each other is palpable, and their interactions early in the film are uncomfortable. As the film turns increasingly violent with the introduction of other unsavory characters, most of the humor is derived from the creative ways people are attacked and the ultraviolence that results from them going after each other.

It’s a little tough to get fully invested in the story when the filmmakers throw the audience directly into the plot with almost zero setup. There’s not even a cursory montage of Dan and Lisa being in love, so it’s hard to care a lot about their current hate for each other. Likewise, the presence of the prison guard and escapees is completely random, and the three of them aren’t utilized well in the story despite having a couple of well-known actors portraying them.

The saving grace of the film, though, is the twists and turns it takes in the final act. Everyone on screen is put through the wringer, with each of them suffering multiple injuries or worse. The mayhem becomes so chaotic that it’s almost impossible to tell what’s going to happen next, which slightly makes up for the fact that the story as a whole is lackluster. Even though the audience knows they’re being manipulated, the sequences are entertaining enough to overcome that fact.

The cast as a whole is solid. Segel (How I Met Your Mother, Shrinking) uses his comic sensibility to keep the proceedings light. Weaving (Ready or Not) has done multiple movies in this vein, so she knows how to navigate the comedy/thriller waters. Olyphant feels a little out of place, but he has a presence that elevates his part. Lewis goes a little too manic in her part, and Jardine ably embodies the dumb brute.

The comedy history of Taccone, Segel, and Weaving keeps Over Your Dead Body as a positive experience even when the story doesn’t quite measure up. The film never becomes fully predictable, giving the audience a great dose of pandemonium that lifts it up despite its other faults.

---

Over Your Dead Body is now playing in theaters.

movies film