From Park City, Utah: Part 2

All the buzz

By Jayme Joyce
Published: February 2nd, 2009 | 11:50am

It's rare, but this year the Grand Jury Dramatic Prize and the Audience Award both went out to Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire. Both Push and The Cove emerged halfway through the festival as this years' buzz films with Sin Nombre following as a close third. You could hear people talking about them on the bus and waiting in line to get other tickets.

The Cove received a standing ovation at its premiere in Park City and continued to generate a lot of buzz over the course of the Sundance film festival. At a later screening, a friend of mine reported sitting next to a woman who not only fell asleep during the entire film, but had the audacity to use her fur coat as a blanket while she snored through the heartfelt crusade for animal rights! I wonder if she was surprised when she found an entire pack of chewed gum stuck to her sleeve since the group sitting next to her didn't appreciate her lack of respect for the truly powerful call to action inspired by The Cove!

The Cove

The 1960s television show Flipper single-handedly began a billion-dollar industry in dolphin training and “swim with dolphin” programs at amusement parks such as SeaWorld. It was dolphin trainer Richard O'Barry that began the bizarre dolphins-as-entertainment empire — but over the past 30 years he has made it his life's mission to topple it to the ground. When Louie Psihoyos of the Oceanic Preservation Society agrees to meet with O'Barry in Taiji, Japan, he wonders whether he is riding shotgun to a paranoid old man. The town of Taiji has cartoon dolphin and whale imagery everywhere and tourists might mistake this town for its cultural love and respect for dolphins. But as O'Barry explains and later illustrates — the town of Taiji also has a dark secret.

The Cove refers to a bay where Japanese fishermen trap tens of thousands of dolphins each year and auction them off to dolphin trainers from around the globe. Trainers are looking for female bottlenose dolphins — like O'Barry's Flipper. Trainers will pay over $150,000 for each dolphin and, after training them, will sell them to amusement parks all over the world. As for the dolphins not claimed by the entertainment industry? They’re slaughtered, sold, and packaged as "whale meat" to the unassuming Japanese people — who would be horrified to learn what they were actually eating.

The film evolves into a heist movie when the documentary filmmakers are harassed for getting too near the fishing bay while attempting to expose the dolphin massacres. Armed with dozens of hidden cameras camouflaged as rocks and underwater equipment, the filmmakers break into the state park at night to plant their weapons. They then sit back in their hotel rooms to watch the horrifying video evidence unfold.

Hundreds were turned away from screenings of these buzzed-about films. I barely managed to catch Push the last day of the festival, but after the crowds thinned out and there was just a snug group of a few thousand left to enjoy the award winners, I managed to attend a screening.

Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire

Taking both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the dramatic competition, Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire garnered a standing ovation at its World Premiere in the Eccles Theater at the Sundance Film Festival. Bringing 1270 film buffs to their feet is no small accomplishment — but then again, neither is the character of Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) in Lee Daniels’ debut feature. The title itself alludes to many metaphors important in the film and truly, this film will push you to go places you'd never take yourself, just like Precious' character pushes herself to rise above her devastating situation.

Precious is an obese high school girl who's been raped by her father and is now pregnant with his second child. Her abusive mother (Mo'Nique) resents Precious for stealing her man and is constantly beating her. When Precious begins to attend a special school because she shows promise in math, she makes the first friends of her entire lifetime. Her classmates are there for her through her childbirth and all of the problems along the way.

This movie is incredibly harsh and gritty — just when you think they can't, things only get worse. Luckily for us, Daniels skillfully cuts to something funny — Precious' knee-jerk escapes into a pop-culture inspired fantasy world. Before each screening the director warned audiences: "You are going to a very dark place, and unless you trust Precious as your light, you will get lost."

Very few movies really push you anymore, and for that, Push: Based on a Novel By Sapphire deserves all the attention it can get.

Sin Nombre

Few films on the topic of illegal immigrants focus on the harrowing journey taken by thousands before even arriving in the United States. Cary Joji Fukunaga's debut feature tells just that tale with all of the vibrant colors of Central America — and all its bleak realities. Two-thirds of this film takes place on the rooftops of freight trains, as thousands of immigrants train-hop their way over the border. Sayra, a young girl from Honduras, is traveling with her family, when three MS 13 gang members attack their car. A love story evolves when Sayra meets Casper, an escaped MS 13 member who is trying to cheat fate and the long arm of the MS 13.

This film immediately took me back to my summer in Guatemala as I watched these Central American characters embark on their beautiful journeys toward the United States. A large part of the film exposes the MS 13 gang — which was formed in Los Angeles by a group of El Salvadoran immigrants. When they were deported, the violent inner city gang culture of the LA went back to Central America with them, and has since spread like wildfire throughout Mexico and surrounding countries.

Fukunaga found his lead role Edgar Flores from the streets of Honduras. For his first dramatic film role, Fukunaga did his homework by interviewing gang members in jail and then riding on the tops of the freight trains for several days. On his first research trip aboard a train, a boy on the car ahead of him was robbed at gunpoint and then killed. It's no surprise that a lot of Fukunaga's real life experiences and the experiences of gang members he interviewed flavor the richest and most heart-wrenching moments in this film.

The Clone Returns Home

The Clone Returns Home is a token obscure foreign art flick disguised as a science fiction film. With sure and steady camera work that lingers on each shot like a photograph, filmmaker Kanji Nakajima never leaves a single element out of place. Each object, song, character, and place in the film recurs again and again in a rhythmic and haunting metaphyisical fashion.

The story surrounds Kohei a Japanese astronaut who consents to a governmental cloning program, which will store all of his memories. When tragedy strikes and Kohei's clone is regenerated, he regresses into a childhood memory that his mind had been suppressing. The film methodically takes its time exploring life, death, and concepts of the soul in an unusual and poetic science fiction format.

The Carter

Any documentary on Lil Wayne is bound to be ridiculous and entertaining — so long as the cameras keep rolling on Wayne. The Carter does little more than just that. Don't expect any back-story on Lil Wayne, or an revelations about his psyche, motivations, friends, or perspectives. Filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough is little more than a fly on the wall during Wayne’s recording sessions, press interviews, and performances. He seems too timid to push the footage, or himself, to reveal anything compelling or new about Wayne, let alone to march the documentary format into a unique or groundbreaking direction.

That said, The Carter is a decent tribute to Lil Wayne and a testament to Wayne's surprising work ethic as an artist (he’s never once shown at a party or surrounded by women) and an undeniably prolific one at that. He carries a suitcase with a microphone and stand around with him everywhere, and on average records two completely freestyle songs per day. At age 25, with a platinum album selling over a million copies in its first week, Lil Wayne is certainly a force to be reckoned with.