Sundance 2009: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS, Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere

Damon Wise in the London Times:

"Written by the team responsible for the similarly dark Bad Santa and based on a true story, I Love You Phillip Morris is an extraordinary film that serves as a reminder of just how good [Jim] Carrey [above, with Ewan McGregor] can be when he's not tied into a generic Hollywood crowd-pleaser. His comic timing remains as exquisite as ever, but this is not a loveable rubber-faced rogue. One could argue that, like The Truman Show, this is another film about a lost naif, but when it plays its final hand, I Love You Phillip Morris is really much, much stranger."

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Steven Zeitchik in The Hollywood Reporter:

"One of the most talked-about movies of the festival is 500 Days of Summer, Marc Webb's meditation on the emotions of a man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who falls in love with, but eventually splits from, an ethereal beauty named Summer (Zooey Deschanel).

"These new comedy-dramas — in some cases focusing as much on the breakup as the coupling — vary in tone, era and characters. But they share several important traits: They're sometimes funny or melancholy, frequently musical and rarely simple — much, in fact, like relationships themselves."

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Scott Foundas in The Village Voice:

"While the characters on Sundance's screens were gripped by such life-altering conundrums, Sundance audiences wrestled with an even greater one: Will Susan Sarandon stop playing grief-stricken mothers before this once-great actress becomes a one-trick caricature of her former self? Having fretted over a son feared missing in Desert Storm in Safe Passage, mourned the death of her son's fiancée in Moonlight Mile, and most recently grieved for a son killed upon returning from Iraq in In the Valley of Elah, Sarandon makes it a four-peat with director Shana Feste's dubiously titled The Greatest, in which her 18-year-old son dies in a car crash and his surviving girlfriend (newcomer Carey Mulligan [above]) subsequently announces that she's pregnant. Seemingly included by the festival only because of its shameless plagiarism of Sundance founder Robert Redford's Ordinary People, The Greatest is a mourning-family turkey with all the trimmings: a father (Pierce Brosnan) who can't bring himself to grieve; a mother who refuses to alter so much as one dust mite in the dead boy's room; a recovering-addict brother (Johnny Simmons) forever in the shadow of his golden-boy sibling; and an incessant love-songs-with-Delilah soundtrack meant to wring tears from even the stoniest of viewers. No movie at Sundance this year has depressed me more — not because of the story it tells, but because of the creative bankruptcy it embodies."

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Scott Weinberg at Cinematical:

"What I found most appealing about Black Dynamite is that, while it will certainly strike a chord with the old-school blaxploitation fans, the flick also works on its own as a very broad, very goofy, and (yep) very clever little satire. Even if you wouldn't know Hammer from Blacula, there's a good deal of straightforward silliness to be found in Black Dynamite — and it also feels like one of those eminently quotable comedies that frat guys and movie geeks will come back to time and again. Black Dynamite is to blaxploitation what Austin Powers is to '60s spy flicks — and really, how many young comedy fans know anything about In Like Flint, Sweet Charity, or Modesty Blaise? Very few, I'd wager, but that didn't prevent Austin Powers from becoming a mega-popular franchise."

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Jeremy Kay in The Guardian:

"Senator Distribution, a new kid on what is, these days, a slightly less populated speciality block, paid a little over $3m for North American rights to the film [Brooklyn's Finest]. It's an absorbing if slightly unwieldy tale that stars Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke and Don Cheadle as conflicted New York police officers whose paths cross in a grand, violent finale on a crime-infested housing project.

"But the ending is sheer lunacy and won't work with audiences, which is why Senator will work with [director Antoine] Fuqua [above, directing Gere] to change it. The partners have to put together a new soundtrack, too, because Fuqua assembled one in a rush for Sundance and it won't make it on to the final product. Senator plans a November release in the US and will mount an Oscar campaign for Hawke, who turns in one of his better performances."