Sundance 2013: 12 to Keep an Eye on
Don Jon's Addiction
On paper, none of this should work: the cartoon story of a stereotype of New Jersey (he might just as well live down the street from Jersey Shore) who's addicted to porn, and weaned from his vice by the loving ministrations of a good older woman. But Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who wrote, directed, and stars, gently maneuvers around cliché, assisted by Scarlett Johansson's bubblicious comic-vavoom turn as the objectified girl of our Jon's dreams, and Julianne Moore as the Real Woman. —Lisa Schwarzbaum
jOBS
Ashton Kutcher, in an unsweetened, killer-shrewd performance, plays Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder and black-turtlenecked guru of the technocratic age. The film neatly re-enacts the eager, geek-in-the-garage intensity that is the founding image of the home-computer era, and it's easy to be riveted by what a starkly honest portrait it is. Yet jOBS lacks the volcanic humanity of The Social Network. Its fall-and-redemption narrative is fascinating, but also a tad generic and abstract. —Owen Gleiberman
Kill Your Darlings
We know Daniel Radcliffe is all grown up, but we've never seen him as maturely sexual and ready to engage as he is playing college-age Allen Ginsberg, before he was out as a gay man and before he became a Beat Poet. Radcliffe's forceful performance in John Krokidas's jazzy, high-styled film — about art and a real-life murder — is matched by fine work from Ben Foster as William Burroughs and Dane DeHaan as pre-Beat muse Lucien Carr. —Lisa Schwarzbaum
Before Midnight
To tell any plot details (in a movie that savors talk as its own drama) is to spoil the great pleasure of reuniting with that gloriously restless, self-analytical couple Jesse and Celine. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy bring middle-aged depth and soul to roles they first created 18 years ago in Before Sunrise, when love was young and the setting was Vienna. This much can be shared about Richard Linklater's third saga of Jesse and Celine: They're in Greece, and the light is beautiful. —Lisa Schwarzbaum
The Way, Way Back
Another Sundance crowd-pleaser that's basically higher-sitcom television. It's about 14-year-old Duncan (played by the scowling, cat-eyed Liam James), who's spending the summer with his divorced mom (Toni Colette) and her jerk of a boyfriend (Steve Carell) at a beachy driftwood vacation home. Then he discovers Water Wizz, an ancient water-slide park where he makes friends with Owen (Sam Rockwell), an arrested cut-up who talks in baroque put-ons. The character is a funny and knowing nod to Bill Murray's in Meatballs, but the movie is really Adventureland made with a lot less complication and flavor and pop pizazz. —Owen Gleiberman
Fruitvale
Oscar Grant was a young Bay Area black man whose death, from a white cop's bullet in the early hours of New Year's Day, 2009, sparked tremendous community outrage. Michael B. Jordan earns his star stripes playing Grant in this Sundance wow of a drama, a remarkable first feature from Bay Area filmmaker Ryan Coogler. Added smash: Octavia Spencer as Grant's mother. —Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lovelace
In a nimble and haunting porn biopic, Amanda Seyfried plays the star of Deep Throat and does something memorable: She brings Linda Lovelace to life as a human being, showing you her light as well as her sadness. The movie, which centers on her marriage to the charming/sleazo/violent reptile Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), lures us into the heady days of porno chic, then pulls the wool off of our eyes. —Owen Gleiberman
The Spectacular Now
In one of those rare soulful and authentic teen movies, Miles Teller, who's like Elvis reincarnated as a tall, brainy American high-scool dude, plays Sutter, a gangly charmer who coasts through life on charm, sweetness...and nonstop drinking. Can his relationship with Aimee (Shailene Woodley) save him? The movie has a deep, touching nostalgia for the romance of teenage life, and that, in a way, is Sutter's whole problem: He's an addict hooked on the buzzy now of youth. —Owen Gleiberman
Ain't Them Bodies Saints
Big gusts of Terrence Malick style and tailwinds from Bonnie & Clyde blow through Texas filmmaker David Lowery's handsome, myth-minded yarn about an outlaw couple. And what a couple: Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play the desperate lovers. Added bonus: Ben Foster shows up, too, as a Texas sheriff. —Lisa Schwarzbaum
Pandora's Promise
Robert Stone's amazing documentary about the myths and realities of nuclear power is built around what should be the real liberal agenda: looking at an issue not with orthodoxy, but with open eyes. Stone interviews environmentalists, scientists, and energy planners, all of whom were anti-nuclear power — and then, as they saw how much cleaner (and safer) it is than fossil fuels, began to change their minds. The film challenges the environmental movement's conflation of nuclear weapons and nuclear power into a single category of scientific evil. More than that, it looks without hysteria at what really happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. What you learn is almost spectacularly counterintuitive. —Owen Gleiberman
Computer Chess
Mumblecore pioneer Andrew Bujalski heightens his deft re-creation of 1980 computer nerd culture by shooting and framing this sweet-smart sketch — about an annual tournament of brainiacs competing to create a computer capable of beating a human chess master — with the aesthetics of a PortaPak video geek. —Lisa Schwarzbaum
Concussion
Belle du Jour meets The L Word in Montclair, N.J., in Stacie Passon's same-sex sexy drama starring the great Robin Weigert (Deadwood's Calamity Jane herself) as one half of a married-with-children lesbian couple for whom a blow to the head (from her kid's baseball) awakens sexual desire. And leads her to a very special kind of afternoon profession. —Lisa Schwarzbaum
Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum on notable newbies from Park City coming your way in months ahead