Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the most awesome double feature at Sundance 2008 that any single fest goer saw.
RAMBO and UNTRACEABLE.
Because Rav had such a hard-on for UNTRACEABLE I figured we’d tag-team this double feature, with his review of that movie and my review of RAMBO.
It was a sunny warmish day when we hit the Red Stone cinema. Originally we were going to try to waitlist some movies since the press screening stopped the Friday before, but then we looked at the schedule. We had tickets for the evening’s screening of HENRY POOLE IS HERE, starring Luke Wilson, but a quick look online showed us that there were movies not in the Sundance schedule playing before it.
I am shocked that Sundance ran unannounced screenings of RAMBO and UNTRACEABLE considering they already had Colin Hanks in town for THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD and the Garth Jennings movie SON OF RAMBOW was such a hit last year. Maybe they were too mainstream or too close to release...
Anyway, with my badge around my neck I tried to get into the Rambo screening and was told I had to “purchase a ticket” which my badge said I didn’t have to do if I waitlisted. But I didn’t feel like standing in line or arguing with the theater employee, so I got the ticket for around $6, which is great considering these Sundance tickets are usually about $16 each.
Incredible. The audience was a little lite for Sundance, with (surprisingly) a lot of families with small children. RAMBO is a family movie, granted, but for Sundance it’s a strange sight.
Once the movie started it was easy to see why it was a Sundance movie. Sylvester Stallone’s style is very cinema verite, loose and documentary-like at times. There’s also the strong political subplot, shedding light on the Darfur-like extermination of a people that is going on in Burma. All that is placed underneath a bloody, visceral action movie, like a pill in a spoonful of sugar.
What I didn’t expect from the trailers was the sense of team-work as Rambo works with a team of Mercs trying to free the missionaries. I especially loved Rambo’s sniper buddy, but I’m a sucker for snipers. I love playing them in war games (Dragunov in COD4 ftw!), I love them in movies (ENEMY AT THE GATES rocks)... I just plain love snipers.
I hope that in Rambo II First Blood Part 5 that they keep that dynamic… with the sniper covering for Rambo as he uses his brawn and close-range skills while the long range sniper blows off dude’s heads with his huge fuckin’ sniper rifle.
The acting in the movie was solid, although I didn’t really like Julie Benz as the missionary Rambo has a crush on. She has the innocence locked down pat, but her line delivery wasn’t all that spectacular… or maybe I was just expecting more solid performances from a Sundance film.
I think that’s about it from me on that bit. Here’s Rav with his look at UNTRACEABLE!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Untraceable – Directed by Gregory Hoblit *Spoilers*
I was so happy to finally see this official selection of the festival at the redstone cinemas on Saturday afternoon. I don’t know why, but from the talk-backs on our festival preview some people didn’t think this film was actually playing the Sundance film festival. I know quint has some sort of photographic proof that this was indeed a secret festival selection.
Although it was a weird festival viewing experience, instead of a long filmmaker introduction by Geoffrey Gilmore there were Utah Chevy ads, in place of the usual Sundance logo there was a 14 minute long preview for Vantage Point.
I was eagerly looking forward to this movie, as I really love a good retarded movie that knows it’s a really stupid movie and how can a movie about a movie about a serial killer blogging online not know that it’s a stupid f’ing movie. It starts off really good, Colin Hanks and Diane Lane spouting off network techno-speak back and forth that you know good and well either doesn’t make sense in real life or that they barely understand more than pronunciation can entail, except instead of the USS enterprise its just an office in modern day.
The film opens with Colin and Diane tag-teaming to catch a person abusing someone’s ebay account or something retarded like that, Diane immediately shows off her elite skillz when she uses her detectives intuition to prove that the son of the culprit was also in on it all along. Colin shows her up by reading off several internet acronyms he knows like “Rolling on the Floor Laughing” and “Laugh out Loud.” Then they kill a cat, have that hilarious “You are the killer” press conference from the trailer, show you blatantly who the killer is so there is no mystery or point to watch the movie further, kill off colin hanks early, and then I fell asleep. Intermittently I would wake up watch the film then get lulled back to sleep by the bland Ashley Judd (played wonderfully by Diane Lane) serial killer movie.
Gregory Hoblit can make some really kinda good movies, I love Fallen and Frequency, the actors performances in both Primal Fear and Fallen make otherwise bland thrillers good. Unfortunately he’s also capable of shit like Hart’s War. Untraceable is more of that. Err I’m glad the sundance jury picked wisely and gave the grand jury prize to another movie. Diane Lane please go back to making good movies, and Universal when the hell are you going to release a dvd of “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains”?
Well that’s it for the Sundance film festival, I’ve still got like four or five reviews to tap out and send in this week as time allows, but for once I’m back in a world without snow and movies-all-day so things should be much easier. I want a chance to thank all the volunteers that made this years festival so much fun, specifically David at the yarrow for keeping me consistently entertained, Alex at the HQ bus stop for being the man behind blood car and for keeping his cool while quint and I pegged him for Anna Chlumsky gossip, Cailtin from the holiday village for her run-down of what we had learned while watching Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, and Mary-Ann from the press office for processing 70% of my ticket requests that kept me watching movies instead of writing the past 10 days. All the other volunteers were awesome too, I’m just a dick and can’t remember anyone else’s names. It was a fun week, back to work now.
Ravvy
ravkill@msn.com
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