my mspiff picks: the week of apr 18

Just like last time, I actually haven't seen any of these films.  These just happen to be the ones I want to see.

•Monday

Top Pick -- Bill Cunningham New York; Mon Apr 18 @ 7:00, Wed Apr 27 @ 9:30

This is a documentary on fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, a reclusive man who very reluctantly agreed to have the camera turned on him for this movie.  Carina Chocano in The New York Times writes, "If the film suggests that there’s something bittersweet about a life dedicated to a single pursuit cultivated with an almost religious fervor, it also stands in awe of its subject’s seemingly inexhaustible, self-abnegating capacity to remain attuned to the expression of others."

2nd Choices -- Nostalgia For The Light (8:45) and We Are What We Are (9:30).  And don't forget to check out the Work-in-Progress film (free screening!) All Over The Walls.  And I'm not just plugging that cause my good friends worked on it- it's a good film, and I'll certainly be there.

•Tuesday
Top Pick -- Jess + Moss; Tue Apr 19 @ 7:15, Thu Apr 28 @ 4:45

A bit of an experimental film, where the story of two teens in the hot Kentucky summer is told through old video and audio recordings.  The Hollywood Reporter says, "Experimental films at Sundance are not unlike the flu bugs that run rampant through the festival’s many crowded venues: They’re inevitable but to be avoided if possible. First-time writer-director Clay Jeter’s Jess + Moss proves an exception... Jess + Moss represents a bracing jolt from the usual film experience while at the same time lacking the pretension that accompanies so many experimental films."

2nd Choices -- Haru's Journey (8:30) and The White Meadows (6:30).  And also check out the MN Shorts program at 7pm.  MN shorts collections always sell out fast, and seeing as this one if the "narrative" portion, this certainly won't be any different.

•Wednesday
Top Pick -- On The Ice; Wed Apr 20 @ 6:45, Fri Apr 22 @ 9:15 (Director Present)

In a small Alaskan town, a drunken fight leads two teenagers to covering up the death of a friend.  John Horn in the LA Times wrote, "Much like "Winter's Bone" a year ago, "On the Ice" takes audiences into a part of the country -- and a way of life -- that most moviegoers have never seen or even considered...The film went through the Sundance Institute's screenwriting and producing workshops, and because founder Robert Redford has made Native American projects a Sundance staple, "On the Ice" was in many ways a perfect dramatic competition entry. The movie hasn't yet been picked up.

2nd Choices -- The Light Thief (9:00), Green Wave (5:15), and Position Among The Stars (7:15)

•Thursday
Top Pick -- Applause; Thu Apr 21 @ 7:15, Sun Apr 24 @ 9:00

This film is all about Paprika Steen's performance as the recovering alcoholic stage actress Thea.  When reading about this Danish film, the names Cassavetes and Agnes Varda come up a lot.  Diego Costa writes in Slant, "Steen's performance is so mesmerizingly nuanced, her face so overwhelmed, almost twitching with complexity, it's like watching a volcanic explosion inside a small, very delicate flask. Her skin, which Thea calls "human packaging," works to camouflage the fractured structure inside her that is always about to collapse. Is she going to flee? Is she going to claw somebody's face? Or lick her lips before coyly exiting the frame? Hers is the body of the hysteric, as Freud would have said, steeped in jewelry and makeup, anything to cover up the sick corpse that lies beneath."

2nd Choices -- A Useful Life (5:30), The Stoker (9:15) and Louder Than A Bomb (9:15)