Sundance 2013 Movie Review: “The Spectacular Now”

Another best of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Article first published as Sundance 2013 Movie Review: The Spectacular Now on Blogcritics.

Last year, I happened to get a ticket for a public screening of director James Pondsolt’s >Smashed at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was able to vote in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category. This year, I was able to attend another screening to vote for his latest entry, The Spectacular Now. Smashed was one of my favorites from last year’s festival and it wound up winning the Special Jury Prize (Dramatic). This time, Ponsoldt has teamed up with the writers of another festival fave ((500) Days of Summer), Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, to adapt the novel by Tim Tharp, and bring us one of my favorites from this year’s festival.

Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) fully believes in living in the now as he explains while writing a college admissions letter. He also explains in great detail that he’s just broken up with his girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson). He describes them as having been the life of every party. After a night of getting drunk at the bar, Sutter wakes up passed out on the front lawn of another classmate’s house, Aimee Finicky (Shailene Woodley). Sutter has no idea where he left his car and Aimee is about to head out to cover her mom’s paper route, so she agrees to let him tag along so he can throw papers and look for his car.

After Sutter has lunch with Aimee at school, he realizes that while she may not have a “thing,” and isn’t the most popular girl, he sees something in her he likes, and asks her to tutor him in order to pull off graduation and possibly get through the rebound stage. At home, his mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is loving but always busy with work, his sister (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is performing the socialite duties of trophy wife, and Sutter is trying to find out the truth as to where his dad (Kyle Chandler) has been half his life. Aimee, of course, begins to fall for Sutter but he can’t accept the fact that he may be falling for her too. Sutter is also dealing with being a teenage alcoholic, something he manages to pass on to Aimee which winds up hurting one of them far worse than the other.

It amazes me just how fantastic Woodley can be. Anyone who’s ever caught an episode of The Secret Life of the American Teenager knows that she’s just a good actress on a horrible show. When given the right material and a director who actually cares about the end product, it’s no wonder she comes off as such a surprise in something like The Spectacular Now or The Descendants. At first Teller plays like a low-rent Shia LaBeouf, but finally comes into his own as the film gets more serious in the last third.

Writers Neustadter and Weber clearly know how to write romantic comedies with a fair share of drama between this and (500) Days of Summer and should stick to what they’re good at. There’s even a line towards the end that has to be a reference to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World seeing how it’s delivered with a smile by Envy Adams (Larson) herself and the film also features Ramona Flowers (Winstead). Hopefully, the film wins something at this year’s festival, because The Spectacular Now feels more like The Spectacular Wow, and I can’t wait to see it again.

Movie Review: “Warm Bodies”

Don't write this one off as “the next Twilight.” It's way better than that.

**** out of 5

97 minutes

Rated PG-13 for zombie violence and some language

Summit Entertainment

Article first published as Movie Review: Warm Bodies on Blogcritics.

When I heard director Jonathan Levine was spearheading the production of Warm Bodies, adapting Isaac Marion’s novel himself, it made me giddy. Here was the man who also brought us 50/50, the film I thought deserved 2011’s Best Picture honor. Levine is no stranger to the horror genre, his All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is one of the better horror movies you’ve never seen. But even Romeo and Juliet would be impressed with the star-crossed lovers in Warm Bodies.

R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie. He spends his days wandering airport terminals infested with his fellow undead, many of whom still spend their days at whatever tasks they had before the zombie outbreak. The rest of his free time is spent staring and grunting at best friend M (Rob Corddry) when they’re not slowly looking for food. Things take a drastic change when R chases down a collection of armed teens searching for medical supplies. After he kills Julie’s (Teresa Palmer) boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco), taking Perry’s brains to go, he saves Julie and leads her to his “home” inside an airplane.

Now R is keeping Julie safe until the others forget she was there. But M can’t help but wonder what’s going on inside the airplane thanks to the lights being on and sappy ’80s music blaring. Somehow, over the course of a few days, Julie begins to see that R is not like the other zombies. There’s still something special inside him. Julie also starts to make R’s heart beat, setting in motion a string of events that will change everything not just for the zombies, but for all mankind as well. Even if it goes against every bone in Julie’s father Grigio’s (John Malkovich) body.

People may balk over the fact that a zombie movie is only rated PG-13. But like Marion did with his novel, there’s more to it than a bunch of humans simply trying to survive another zombie apocalypse. There are some moments of gore, and yes, some brains are eaten which actually enables R to begin dreaming — something zombies never do, for obvious reasons. Writer/director Levine has set out to make the first zombie movie to make girls cry and has succeeded immensely. The sounds of ahhs were heard during the finale proving a job well done.

Hoult plays the soulful zombie fantastically and Palmer gives Julie more depth than other directors would have allowed, and most probably would have wanted to spend more time splattering the film with special effects. Corddry nearly steals the movie, which should come as no surprise, and AnaLeigh Lipton continues to show she’s more than just an America’s Next Top Model between her hilarious turns here and in Crazy, Stupid, Love. So while Warm Bodies may be getting released two weeks prior to Valentine’s Day, make sure you check it out this weekend and join R in taking a bite out of love.

Photos courtesy Summit Entertainment