While a new adaptation of Emily Bronte‘s class English novel might seem to be wholly unnecessary (the book has been adapted in various ways at least thirty times), writer and director Andrea Arnold‘s gorgeous take on Wuthering Heights more than does justice to the look and feel of Bronte’s work, lending a weight and power to the story that should captivate more than just fans of the novel. Centered on the tragic story of Cathy Earnshaw and the orphan Heathcliff, the film is a stunning mediation on love, loss, memory, and pain. An orphan abandoned on the street, Heathcliff is brought as a child to the wild English moor estate known as Wuthering Heights by Cathy’s father, Mr. Earnshaw, a hardcore Christian who is convinced that it’s the right thing to do. But Earnshaw’s beliefs are not rooted in a sense of charity, but as an attempt to secure salvation, which is why the Earnshaws at large treat Heathcliff so poorly. Over time, the nearly-feral Cathy and Heathcliff develop a passion for each other that is all-consuming, though it only serves to make their already physically demanding lives that much harder emotionally.

It’s often said that believing you will spend forever with the person you fall in love with in high school is a naïve notion and, while the opening montage of Celeste and Jesse Forever seems to prove that the opposite is true, once the film begins we realize that Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) are actually separated and looking to get a divorce. The strange thing is, they still spend every second together and are only “separated” by the backyard with Jesse now living in his studio out back rather than the main house with Celeste.

As Kate said in her wrap up from yesterday, the closer you get to the end of a festival, the more likely you ending up hitting that wall where it seems like you just cannot do anything more. But you do, because it’s Sundance, and yes you’re exhausted, but you’re also almost done. The last day of the festival is also always the most bittersweet since you say goodbye to friends and colleagues you sometimes get to see but once a year while at the same time the promise of your own (warm) bed, sleep and three real meals a day is so close you can almost taste it. Luckily my first (and last) screening of the day wasn’t until noon so I was able to sleep in a bit and eat a real meal (i.e. a delicious breakfast sandwich and a carafe of coffee) before heading to the Eccels theater, one of the biggest venues at the festival, for 2 Days In New York, making my final screening feel as epic as the end of the festival itself.

Last year’s Sundance Film Festival saw an uptick in films regarding, weirdly enough, cults and cult-like sensibilities. This year’s theme has turned to an appropriate cousin to the dangers of indoctrination – the crumbling of the American dream. Characters that bought into what they thought they could (and should) get out of life have faced copious crises throughout the festival’s films, and Todd Louiso‘s lovely Hello I Must Be Going distills those big ideas and issues down to focus on just one victim of the American nightmare. Perpetual supporting standout Melanie Lynskey leads the film as directionless thirtysomething Amy Minsky. Amy’s happy (in her eyes) marriage to David (Dan Futterman) has recently ended, and she’s left with one place to go – back to her parents’ home in chi-chi suburban Connecticut. Without a job, a finished degree, friends, or most of her belongings, Amy is forced to acclimate to Ruth (Blythe Danner) and Stan (John Rubinstein) as they embark on the next step of their lives. In Louiso and screenwriter Sarah Koskoff‘s spin on a “one last job” film, Stan has one more big fish client to land before retiring – an engagement that could be ruined when Amy takes up with the client’s stepson, Jeremy (Christopher Abbott), who just happens to be only nineteen-years-old.

It is the last day of the Sundance Film Festival, so let’s send out our interview series not with a bear or a returning critic, but with a Sundance newbie. By now, critic William Goss has acclimated almost entirely to the festival, so let’s have some serious fun looking back at what he was looking forward to at the start of the fest. Critic for a bevy of outlets, currently including MSN Movies, Film.com, and The Playlist, Goss knows his festivals and his movies. A Floridian who recently moved to Austin, most of his festival experiences have been in temperate climes. That is, of course, until the ‘dance.

Your Sister’s Sister is perhaps the most high-concept movie I saw at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, but it’s also one of the funniest and most heartfelt. Sometimes, a precise, discernible pitch really does have potential. And after this film and Humpday (in which two straight male friends decide to make an amateur porn film together), writer-director Lynn Shelton is fast establishing herself as one of the independent film world’s masters of such fare. Her new picture parallels pensive shots of the pristine, misty splendor of the Pacific Northwest with the story of three lonely, likable locals who are searching for happiness. Mark Duplass stars as the directionless Jack, struggling to cope with the recent death of his brother. Emily Blunt plays Jack’s best friend Iris, who is also his brother’s former girlfriend. To clear his head, she offers him the run of her family’s vacation home on a picturesque island off the Washington coast. Iris’s half-sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) is already there, though, looking to escape a trauma of her own: the end of a seven-year relationship. A drunken night with Jack leads to hilariously awkward sex and, eventually, serious consequences when Iris unexpectedly shows up the next day.

No matter how much fun a festival is, there inevitably comes a time when a festival-goer reaches a wall, a point where exhaustion and stress and bad food and frustrations all settle in and refuse to budge. I met my wall this morning, my alarm blaring away at 7:15AM as I lay slack-jawed and stunned in bed. Morning. More. More things. I did the only thing I could do. I got up.

Collette McVeigh seems to be a fairly normal little girl, creating beaded necklaces and bribing her younger brother into running a quick errand for their father that she does not want to do herself. Unfortunately, this errand ends in tragedy, with her brother getting shot and killed. As her mother weeps over his body and her father fixes in on her with a look that could kill, Collette stands frozen, devastated. Shadow Dancer focuses on the life of a now grown-up Collette (Andrea Riseborough) who has a son of her own and is tied up in the “family business” (the IRA), rooted in taking down the English government which cost their brother his life.

After throwing our annual bloggerati condo party (mainly so we can all watch MacGruber together) last night, my day got switched around a bit so I could get some much needed sleep (Festival Lesson #45: There is no point in getting up early for a screening you will end up just sleeping through) making my first screening of the day, Shadow Dancer. After helping clean up the condo a bit (the place still smells like beer, but we went through about three cases of the stuff last night so what can you do?) Eric D. Snider, William Goss, and I headed out to the screening in Snider’s car, which is truly a luxury when it means you don’t have to run for a shuttle. While I thought Shadow Dancer was a decent enough film, it was just that – decent. Clive Owen and Andrea Riseborough turned in good performances under sharp direction from James Marsh, but it left me lukewarm.

From its very first moments, Mike Birbiglia‘s Sleepwalk With Me establishes a very specific relationship with its audience - Birbiglia, playing a version of himself, turns to the camera and reassures us that what we’re about to hear is indeed true, and then he makes us laugh. Birbiglia is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actor, and Sleepwalk With Me is his directorial debut, which is loosely based on his own life. A mix of painful personal stories about a failing relationship, try-and-fail outings at his primary career, and the unraveling of his life by way of a serious medical condition (yup, sleepwalking), the film is (genuinely) both hilarious and heartfelt.

Multi-hyphenate Katie Aselton returns to Sundance with her second film, a much different outing than her gorgeous and melancholy 2010 entry, The Freebie. This time around, Aselton has ceded writing duties to her husband, Mark Duplass, and the pair have made what will likely be referred to as “Deliverance for girls” for many years to come. But Black Rock is a twisty little horror outing that perhaps shares more with The Freebie than might be obvious from first blush. Both films hinge on interpersonal relationships, the confusion of behavioral signals and perceptions, and mistakes that have far-reaching consequences. Yet, Black Rock is most certainly a thriller and a genre picture, and its wooded island setting, thumping soundtrack (with remarkably sage picks from The Kills), and grim plotline only serve to show how well Aselton can cross genres with style.

Midnight movies at Sundance can be fun, often offering up bizarre and strange experiences. In the past that has included movies like Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (loved it) and Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (wasn’t so fond of it). The real thing to take away is from this section is that you never know what you’re going to get, just like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. With Grabbers, a UK film set in Ireland, you’re getting something very enjoyable, which will hopefully get picked up and distributed somewhere, even if it’s the Syfy channel or BBC America. I’d even love to see the Alamo Drafthouse pick up this movie with their distribution arm and turn it into a midnight event film. Why? Because the premise involves Irishmen fighting monsters while drunk. If there was ever a perfect movie for a theater connected to a bar, this is it.

One of the reasons that I love going to the Sundance Film Festival is that amidst the sea of angst-ridden romances, dramas that explore feelings that have long-since been forgotten about, and documentaries, you’ll sometimes find a gem that will change the way you see movies. Beasts of the Southern Wild was that film for me this year. At face value, it’s a difficult film to fully explain. A society that lives off the grid from the mainland of a country ignores the warnings that their lives are in danger should the nearby levee break. They live in ignorant bliss, reveling in their lives and calling their home “The Bathtub” in a light-hearted mocking of the fact that a wall of water could come crashing down and destroy them all.

We have brought you perspective on the Sundance Film Festival over the past week from critics to producers to the filmmakers themselves, but there is one person that almost everyone who comes to the festival knows (or at least has walked by before) – Franz the Bear. Franz has a prime seat on Main Street and has accumulated years of observations of the goings on that happen on the street that populates most of the party venues during the ‘Dance. I sat down with Franz one snowy night on my way home from a party of my own to find out what Sundance means to him (you know, as a bear.)

Writing is a difficult task whether you must do it for school, work, or simply because you have words in you that you must get out. But even if you are a writer, those words don’t always come easily and staring at a blank Word document or page is always intimidating. Rory Jenson (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling writer who has penned his first novel – a work that is good, but not good enough to get published. Slightly disheartened and with a new bride Dora (Zoe Saldana) to support, Rory takes a job in the mailroom of a publishing house, hoping to make some contacts and advance his career. While on their honeymoon in Paris, Dora drags Rory into yet another antique shop and Rory ends up finding an old leather briefcase that is classy and sophisticated – a symbol of a true writer and a gift Dora quickly buys for her new husband. As he later starts filling it with his own work, Rory comes to find a weathered manuscript he neglected to notice when he first purchased the briefcase. Upon reading the first page (typed on the back of a handwritten letter), Rory cannot put the manuscript down and reads it from beginning to end.

We all know what it means to be sauced, but John Dies At The End shows audiences what it means to be “on the sauce” – soy sauce that is, a hallucinogenic drug that not only messes with your mind, it messes with how you perceive time. This idea could be fun, but when you know one of your best friends meets his demise somewhere in that disjointed timeline (no spoilers there, as it’s revealed in the film’s title) this time manipulation becomes both stressful and confusing. While at a party, Dave (Chase Williamson) gets into a conversation with a reggae “magician” (Tai Bennett) who Dave doesn’t believe can do real magic. But when Robert Marley (the magician’s name, of course) is able to recount, in vivid detail, a dream Dave had the night before, he gets Dave’s attention. Later that night Dave gets a call from his best friend, a panicked and confused-sounding John (Rob Mayes) who thinks he has called Dave a bunch of times already that night and needs him to come over right away.

From the film’s opening, it is clear that while LCD Soundsystem may be over, they certainly went out with one hell of a goodbye party. The decision to end the band was more than surprising to their fans and Shut Up and Play the Hits takes viewers behind-the-scenes of the moments leading up to, during, and after the band’s final show. The film takes its cue from the title and focuses on the music while directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace also lace in interviews and quiet moments with front man James Murphy off-stage. The film opens asking the question on everyone’s mind – why would a band, at the height of their career, decide to walk away from it all? During an interview with Chuck Klosterman, Murphy explains that he simply wants to lead a normal life and while he is not sure that is a good enough reason to quit, it’s the truth. Murphy sums his experience with LCD up by saying he just wanted to make a record that happened to lead to these different experiences and successes, but that was never his goal, he just wanted to make music that people could dance and have fun listening to. And whether he meant to our not, Murphy did just that, just on a much scale bigger than he could have imagined.

The brainchild of producer Brad Miska, horror anthology film V/H/S features five shorts (and one wrap-around story) from a variety of genre directors, writers, and actors handily proves that the found footage genre is far from dead and there’s plenty of new material to bleed. The film’s “wrap-around” section features a group of Jackass-inspired wankers who get their kicks by filming mayhem and destruction. Dispatched by a mysterious person to break into a house and steal something, they agree – partly for the laughs, partly for the pay-off. The item they must procure? A simple, singular VHS tape. The actual mission? Multi-level and rife with unexpected complications.

Michael Walker’s feature directorial debut, Price Check, starts off innocently enough, sort of a twist on Office Space if Lumbergh was a nice guy who wanted his unmotivated employees to succeed. Eric Mabius stars as Pete, who lost his dream job in music and is now forced to work in a regional pricing and marketing division for a failing division of a multi-brand grocery store company. Like most people these days, Pete is concerned about finances – he’s the only breadwinner in the house, and he and his wife have credit card bills to pay and a three-year-old to raise and probably a new car to get – and the recent departure of his beloved boss isn’t helping matters much. Who is going to replace him? And how is that going to affect Pete and his life? If this plotline doesn’t sound just a bit boring, that’s okay, it is. But instead of beefing up his film with great lines and performances from more than just Mabius’ co-star, Parker Posey, Walker decides to go for some cheap switcheroos that left the audience at Eccles Theatre (where the film premiered) groaning.

My first memory from this morning is turning over to find Eric D. Snider mooning at me and asking me what my plan for the day is. Then I checked my email to find a link to this story from my pal, Moviefone’s Mike Ryan (who is becoming a frequent hero of these daily wrap-ups), regarding the true story behind Compliance. When we saw the film together yesterday, he grabbed my notebook halfway through the film to scribble “Nobody is this stupid!!!” He titled his email “okay, I was wrong.” Then I ate muffins in bed. It was the best morning at Sundance yet.