As mentioned in my interview with Franz the Bear, this year’s Sundance Film Festival not only featured films, documentaries, shorts, and memorable performances from established talent (John Hawkes) to breakout stars (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), it also brought an interactive element to Park City, UT. Bear 71 explored the line between technology and nature by looking to not only show people a documentary, but actually bring them into the experience. This was achieved through an interactive installation at the New Frontier that ran during the festival and not only utilized film and pictures, but also combined the use of webcams and social media to bring viewers into the world of Bear 71. Bridging that gap between the standard practice of being told and shown something through a film, Bear 71 allowed viewers to actually go into the experience. Rather than just watching a documentary about a female grizzly bear (Bear 71) in her natural environment, the installation took things a step further and truly showed viewers how we coexist with wildlife in this day and age as our continued advances in technology actually allow us to distance ourselves from it. For those unable to check it out at Sundance, you can now get a virtual walk-through of the installation and what it was like by checking out the new video after the break.

If you’re the sort of person who loves conspiracy theories, hidden meanings, codes, ciphers, clues, and other mysteries that bear unraveling, then Room 237 is right up your alley. Director Rodney Ascher has put together a fascinating movie that will most likely change the way you watch Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining forever, or will at least make you search out some of the things that are discussed in this documentary. Ascher, the director of the hilarious (and creepy) short from The S From Hell about the Screen Gems logo that was shown at Sundance 2010, is behind this clever documentary that mostly uses footage from Stanley Kubrick’s films (including The Shining, of course) to tell the stories of several different interview subjects: who each have a different view of the secret meanings of The Shining.

Here’s all you really need to know – after last night’s Closing Night Party, also known as Nerd Prom, your intrepid Lady Rejects caught three hours of sleep before we had to be up, about, and on a shuttle to the Salt Lake City airport. Ugly? You can’t even imagine how ugly. But, somehow, we made it, despite chatty shuttle drivers, breakfast sandwiches from Quizno’s, yet another tiny plane, and Allison eventually resting her body on the floor of the American Airliness terminal at LAX.

Picking up a few years where her 2 Days in Paris left off, Julie Delpy‘s 2 Days in New York has moved the sometimes-messy life of Marion (Delpy) to Gotham. Marion has now taken up with Mingus (Chris Rock, playing a pitch-perfect straight man), a former co-worker who offered dry humor and personal understanding when her previous relationship crumbled. The pair now live together in a cozy and artistic apartment, joined by Marion’s young son Lulu (Owen Shipman) and Mingus’ daughter Willow (Talen Ruth Riley). As calm and lovely as their life together seems, everything is about to be tested over a two-day period, marked by the arrival of Marion’s insane family, the opening of an important gallery exhibition of Marion’s photos, and the unspoken pressure that one of Marion’s other artistic endeavors is putting her under.

Documentarian Eugene Jarecki‘s latest film, The House I Live In, ponders the implications and elements of the United States’ woefully misdirected “War on Drugs,” but Jarecki’s interest in the subject is surprisingly personal. As the film opens, Jarecki explains that his subject matter is dear to him for two reasons – because the Jarecki family as a whole believes it is their responsibility to help others who are suffering from injustice (the Jarecki parents escaped certain death under Nazi regimes) and because Jarecki’s own beloved childhood nanny, Nanny Jetter, lost a child to drugs. But while the film is of personal importance to its director, an overabundance of information often robs the film from leaving a lasting emotional mark.

It is hard enough to be a single father, but when you are trying to juggle those responsibilities along with pursuing your dream of being an actor, things are made all the more complicated. The End of Love opens with Mark (Mark Webber) and his son, Isaac (played by Webber’s real-life son), waking up. The camera focuses in on Isaac and sets up the focus of the film on the little boy in the first few frames. As Mark and Isaac start their day, the absence of a mother (or a partner) in Mark’s life becomes clear, with Mark having to take Isaac with him on a big audition. While the casting director seems understanding about Isaac’s presence in the room, the actress Mark is reading against, Amanda Seyfried (playing herself), seems less than pleased and it quickly becomes clear that Mark’s dreams of becoming an actor may be over. Losing roles no longer just means Mark may not get a good part, it means he is losing money to support himself and Isaac. Although Mark lives with two roommates (who seem more than understanding about living with a two-year-old), he is not pulling his weight in rent, which sends Mark asking one of his friends (yet another “cameo” by Jason Ritter) for help.

When Amy Berg‘s West of Memphis held its first Sundance screening on only the second day of the festival, audience members walked out stunned – not just because of the film’s emotional material, its often graphic crime scenes and autopsy photos and videos, or even because of how it squarely points to a singular perpetrator (one who is, of course, not part of the West Memphis 3), but because the film was undeniably fresh. So fresh, in fact, that two interviews that pop up in the film’s final third both came complete with a time stamp that indicated that they had been conducted the week before the film bowed at the fest – eight days before its opening. While the West Memphis 3 (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley) were freed in August of last year, their nearly twenty-year ordeal remains almost frighteningly of the moment.

What starts off as a seemingly innocent conversation between two people in a hotel restaurant quickly devolves into those people (played by Chris Messina and Marin Ireland) falling into bed together. It is not a new idea – two people, away from home, deciding to vacate their real lives for a night of anonymous pleasure, but director/screenwriter Matt Ross’ 28 Hotel Rooms begins to paint two characters who are a bit more interesting and become increasingly so as their relationship twists and turns. After their first night together, Ireland’s character is revealed to be a newlywed and while Messina’s character does not seem thrown by that fact, it also makes you wonder why someone so new to her marriage would be willing to cheat on it. It is revealed that Ireland is less than comfortable with the indiscretion she just gave in to and one would think things would end here, but despite her tears and seeming regret, this does not end up being the last time these two reach out to each other.

Documentary director Lauren Greenfield (Thin) returned to Sundance with another fascinating slice of American life – the winner of this year’s U.S. Directing Award for Documentary features, The Queen of Versailles is an unexpectedly amusing tale of delusion and disgusting wealth, toplined by a couple of American originals who prove to be wackily riveting. The film chronicles Jackie and David Siegel, incredibly wealthy Floridians best known for their attempt to build the United States’ largest single family residence, one they modeled after equal parts the Palace of Versailles and the top three floors of the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. There is perhaps no other sentence that could so accurately describe what kind of people the Siegels are.

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.

The notion that nobody walks places in Los Angeles is one of the biggest L.A. clichés, right up there with the belief that Southern California is populated by beautiful sunglasses-wearing people who spend most of their time doing cocaine when they’re not driving around in their convertibles, loudly yammering about the biz. Still, based on my limited experience there (and City of Angels dwellers, feel free to correct me), the aversion to walking is actually kind of true. At the very least, the idea provides an interesting way into the cross-coastal, gender-driven culture clash at the center of Nobody Walks, a film from New Yorkers Ry Russo-Young (director and co-writer) and Lena Dunham (co-writer), about a New York filmmaker named Martine (Olivia Thirlby) who arrives in L.A. to work on a movie with married sound designer Peter (John Krasinski) and to stay with his family at their home in Silver Lake, in part because she doesn’t drive.

Ellis (Graham Phillips) has grown up in a less-than-average household. Ellis lives in Tuscan, Arizona with his mother Wendy (Vera Farmiga) who is a free spirit and relies on Ellis to make sure their bills are paid on time while she seems to still be “finding herself.” Add to this Goat Man (David Duchovny) who tends to their pool and garden (as well as his own “garden”) and lives on the property with, you guessed it, his goats. Despite this rather unusual upbringing, Ellis seems more than well adjusted and the film focuses on his recent decision to attend an East Coast Prep School, Gates Academy, which his father Frank (Ty Burrell) also attended. Considering Wendy refers to Frank as “Fucker Frank,” it is clear this decision is not one she is happy about.

Brook (Dominic Bogart) is not a hipster – he may wear deep V-neck t-shirts, plaid and have an overwhelmingly self-deprecating attitude, but a hipster he is not (or so the title of this film claims.) Brook is an aspiring musician and while he is having a good amount of success on the San Diego indie music scene, he seems bitter and angry. Brook hates compliments and recognition, which is slightly ironic considering his best friend, Clarke (Alvaro Orlando), is his biggest fan (a fact he announces daily.) While doing a local radio interview Brook seems incredibly disinterested, almost laughing at himself for even being there, but this feeling quickly devolves into combative when the host (Brad William Henke) asks him about his mother (who passed away two years earlier.) Brook flips out and leaves the studio and it is in this moment that we begin to realize what may be the real root of Brook’s behavior.