Movies
Sundance ’10: Ryan Daley Reflects Back on 6 Films of the Fest
The Sundance Film Festival is traditionally a mixed bag, but this year’s Park City at Midnight line-up was easily one of the strongest I’ve ever seen. Almost all of the movies featured were in some way entertaining, and three of the films were downright excellent. Here’s how I rank the six horror movies I saw at this year’s festival.
The audience at my midnight screening was initially enthusiastic about The Butcher Brothers’ most recent effort, but that enthusiasm soon gave way to disenchantment, and eventually scorn, as the directors took a fun sub-genre (the 70s exploitation film) and stomped all the life out of it. All but impossible to sit through.
Even high production values couldn’t save this one, a sci-fi drama that’s all over the place in terms of tone. Is it a semi-instructional film about how to raise a mutant baby? Or is it a lurid sex flick featuring human-on-mutant groin-slammin’? Hard to tell. A weird mash-up of genres that never quite congeals.
The definition of mediocrity stretched to its breaking point. A couple of amusing scenes try to carry the load, but with the majority of the movie buried under a hapless heap of “who cares?” plot developments, this is a flick that quickly wears out its welcome.
Ryan Reynolds rocks the screen hard in a singular, no-holds-barred performance. Some will question the ending (avoid all reviews if you plan on seeing it), but in the world of tightly-wound, independently financed thrillers, Buried knows no equal.
Like Martyrs, this is torture-porn for the intellectual set. Those who enjoy their cinematic brutality served up with a side of emotional realism are in for a real treat. Sometimes graphic, sometimes restrained, 7 Days is the perfect amalgam of gut-wrenching horror and high art.
After a slow and baggy set-up, director Adam Green really brings the pain for the full remaining hour of his winter extremes horror film, a truly harrowing experience that provokes hours of discussion once the credits have rolled. By the time I left the theater, my armrests were slick with hand sweat.
Movies
’28 Years Later’ – Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson Join Long Awaited Sequel
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland (Annihilation, Men), the director and writer behind 2002’s hit horror film 28 Days Later, are reteaming for the long-awaited sequel, 28 Years Later. THR reports that the sequel has cast Jodie Comer (Alone in the Dark, “Killing Eve”), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kraven the Hunter), and Ralph Fiennes (The Menu).
The plan is for Garland to write 28 Years Later and Boyle to direct, with Garland also planning on writing at least one more sequel to the franchise – director Nia DaCosta is currently in talks to helm the second installment.
No word on plot details as of this time, or who Comer, Taylor-Johnson, and Fiennes may play.
28 Days Later received a follow up in 2007 with 28 Weeks Later, which was executive produced by Boyle and Garland but directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Now, the pair hope to launch a new trilogy with 28 Years Later. The plan is for Garland to write all three entries, with Boyle helming the first installment.
Boyle and Garland will also produce alongside original producer Andrew Macdonald and Peter Rice, the former head of Fox Searchlight Pictures, the division of one-time studio Twentieth Century Fox that originally backed the British-made movie and its sequel.
The original film starred Cillian Murphy “as a man who wakes up from a coma after a bicycle accident to find England now a desolate, post-apocalyptic collapse, thanks to a virus that turned its victims into raging killers. The man then navigates the landscape, meeting a survivor played by Naomie Harris and a maniacal army major, played by Christopher Eccleston.”
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) is on board as executive producer, though the actor isn’t set to appear in the film…yet.
Talks of a third installment in the franchise have been coming and going for the last several years now – at one point, it was going to be titled 28 Months Later – but it looks like this one is finally getting off the ground here in 2024 thanks to this casting news. Stay tuned for more updates soon!
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