Sundance veteran Drake Doremus returned to Park City this year with a very different film than 2010’s Douchebag. For his 2011 entry, Doremus brought along Like Crazy, a sensitive and romantic film that doesn’t rely on anyone taking their shirt off or ludicrous meet-cutes or casts packed with tween pop stars to make it work. I saw the film back in January at Sundance, and it is one of two romantic dramedies with a young, hip cast from the festival that has stuck in my mind these many months. The other one, the Freddie Highmore-starring The Art of Getting By (retitled from its Sundance name, Homework) has remained in my brain mainly due to how much I hated it. It’s frowned upon to spit when speaking about films, but that’s been the best way I’ve found to physically express how terrible that movie was, and how emotionally disingenuous. On the flipside, there was Doremus’s Like Crazy, which stars Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones (with co-starring appearances by Jennifer Lawrence and Charlie Bewley). Not to get emotional over here (because, you know, gross), but Like Crazy is one of the best films about long distance relationships I’ve ever seen (and I know from long distance relationships).

Another Earth isn’t a sci-fi film. It’s a drama. While this idea may disappoint some of you, the sci-fi backdrop for the film is purely there for symbolism. Blending the science-fiction element with the core drama, on a structural and tonal level, must not have been an easy task. As director and co-writer Mike Cahill discusses, it wasn’t. It’s difficult to really talk about Another Earth fully without going into spoiler territory, so the conversation I had with Cahill was a revealing one. Once you’ve seen the film, then you’ll know why the ending can’t go un-discussed. Another Earth asks a handful of questions, and the ending raises the biggest and most divisive one. So, of course, beware of Spoiler-y hints. Here’s what Mike Cahill had to say about end theories, finding a cohesive structure, and the similarities between the star and co-writer Brit Marling‘s other feature, Sound of My Voice:

Why Watch? Because existential examination goes down better with a fast food beef patty and diet soda. This short film, which was shot and edited in 36 hours, offers up the cosmic reality of an unstable atom (by placing a few trillion atoms in a fast food restaurant with cheap up-sizing). Apparently they also offer free ice cream on Thursdays, which makes me want to find this fictional fast food joint immediately. The production was obviously constrained by budget (and the location doesn’t exactly look like a fast food place (unless that’s what they look like in Spain)), but the quality of everything here is at a professional level, and there’s a lot to love. A lead who is deadpan even while dropping bits of mayo-bathed lettuce on the ground, a script that sounds so pretentious that it draws out laughs against your will, and a premise where the pedestrian meets the absurd. Also keep an eye on the camera work and editing because they’re both as sharp as a switchblade. What does it cost? Just 5 minutes of your time. Check out A Guy, Who Is Not Andy Warhol, Eats a Hamburger for yourself:

Why Watch? Because inspiration comes to those who…hold on, someone’s at the door. As the title might suggest, this short film is an absurd boundary-pusher that smashes together two pieces of culture in the messiest way possible. Richard E. Grant (who most will remember from Withnail and I) stars here as Kafka as he stands (or sits) at the precipice of writing his masterpiece. Fate doesn’t seem to be a fan. If some humor can be called dry, the deliver here is downright arid. It’s both maddeningly calm and humorously inviting, and the visual work is meant to confound at almost all times. It’s no wonder it won the BAFTA and tied for the Oscar. Questioning what the hell you just saw is perfectly fine both during the short and after it’s finished. What does it cost? Just 23 minutes of your time. Check out Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life for yourself:

There’s a Raúl Ruiz movie coming out in less than a month? Why wasn’t I informed? What did I join the Raúl Ruiz Fan Club Mailing List for if not important announcements like that? In the same year that we got fresh Godard, filmmaking legend Ruiz is releasing Mysteries of Lisbon, his period piece based on Camilo Castelo Branco’s 19th century novel of the same name. It’s time to rejoice. The film tells the story of a young bastard child who wants to learn about his family and uncovers a lustful truth involving his mother, a jealous Count,  and a forbidden love. Check out the trailer for yourself:

“Rife with honest moments, spurred by Farmiga-the-filmmaker’s keen eye for shading various relationships in loving, authentic ways, the film transcends the specificity of its setting to evoke the joys and pains of everyday life, and the proverbial search for the meaning behind it.” That’s how our very own Robert Levin describes Vera Farmiga’s directorial debut Higher Ground. Clearly he was one of the many who fell in love with it at Sundance earlier this year. Now you have a chance to fall in love with it by checking out the trailer:

Why Watch? Because killing your wife is hard work. The frustrating infantalization that takes place to Oscar Gee’s character in the beginning of the film sets up murder as a very sympathetic idea. Christopher Fischer and his crew overcome a small budget with a few tricks (which almost all work) to create a slightly funny, slightly disturbing, slightly poignant film about stuffing your spouse into the trunk of your car. Even more impressively, they do it all without words. What does it cost? Just 12 minutes of your time. Check out For Better or Worse for yourself:

Why Watch? Because everything falls away in the face of your own death. This student short film shows some of the pitfalls of student filmmaking, but it also displays a clever use of a gimmick, some impressive camerawork, and a mystery that unfolds into a greater story. Told in reverse, a young man tries to tie up all of his loose ends before shuffling off his mortal coil. The words flashing over different parts of the story are a bit unnecessary, but overall, it’s a sci-fi-feeling drama without the science fiction that asks a question about what’s important in our own lives. What does it cost? Just 4 minutes of your time. Check out Tick Tock for yourself:

Why Watch? Because the camera is a memorycatcher. It’s not easy to tell how this film was put together because the images don’t always follow in a distinguishable pattern – nor do they need to. This absolutely stunning short from Graham Burns seems to take found footage from a personal collection and edit it into a new narrative. The story focuses on a man returning from WWII only to find he’s still affected by what he’s seen and done. The structure is taken apart in hauntingly sweet segments that ultimately devolve into a projectionist’s flicker as Burns toys with the mechanisms of filmmaking and watching, exposing a part of the exposure we don’t usually get to see. All of it is backed by a thoughtful score by Radical Face that squeezes even more life out of every moment. What does it cost? Just 6 minutes of your time. Check out The Train Home for yourself:

After leaving the Bourne franchise behind, Paul Greengrass made Green Zone (which might as well have been called The Bourne Historical Rewrite) and has been attempting to get his Martin Luther King, Jr film Memphis off the ground with Scott Rudin. As it turns out, Rudin may have something different in mind. According to Deadline Mogadishu, Greengrass has been offered the directing job for the Somali pirate movie based on Richard Phillips’s memoir “A Captain’s Duty.” The book chronicles his experience as the skipper of the Maersk Alabama, which was taken by Somali pirates. Phillips was held hostage before being rescued by Navy SEALs. Tom Hanks has signed on to star. This project has been percolating at the script phase for a year and a half, and there’s an honest question about whether the subject matter is all that compelling. At the very least, it’ll be culturally fascinating to see a boom in Navy SEAL movies coming out all around the same time, and Christmas Entertainment also has a Somali pirate movie called Dawn on the Gulf of Aden in development. Otherwise, the main question is how much shakier Greengrass’s camera would be on the open ocean.

There’s nothing quite like returning to the old neighborhood to find that your childhood playground hasn’t been torn down. You run your hand along rope ladders deemed “unsafe” by modern standards, feel the crunch of pebbles beneath your feet that did more to cut than soften a fall, sit in the swing and think for a moment about jumping out at the highest point. Super 8 is the cinematic equivalent of unearthing a time capsule and finding everything inside is still impossibly shiny and new. It’s impossible to remove the film from its own nostalgia, except for its intended audience of children discovering this type of filmmaking for the first time (and maybe even seeing their first Amblin logo). That’s a pretty powerful thing. With everyone clamoring to tap a market of adults eager for their own past while simultaneously getting kids into seats, J.J. Abrams‘s latest is one of the few that actually succeeds.

Often composers fall into a groove, defining themselves with a particular style and running with it across the cinematic board. Not so with Nathan Barr, whose career is speckled with comedies, horror movies and a little of everything in-between. Barr’s eclectic resume includes True Blood; Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever; Broken Lizard’s Club Dread, Beerfest and The Slammin’ Salmon; The Last Exorcism; and Ruben Fleischer’s upcoming action comedy 30 Minutes or Less. His latest, the character-driven thriller The Ledge, was picked up by IFC Films after premiering at Sundance. The movie centers on Gavin (Charlie Hunnam) who has an affair with Shana (Liv Tyler), the wife of fanatical religious man Joe (Patrick Wilson) who forces Gavin to either jump off the ledge of a building or watch him kill his wife. It’s like that middle school game “MFK,” but real. We sat down with Barr during Sundance to talk about his process as a composer, the similarities and differences between his many projects and what how each one is its own musical challenge:

Striking a balance between humor and humility is one of the toughest things to do in any form of storytelling, but just with this trailer, director Jonathan Levine and a cast that includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anna Kendrick look like they’ve done just that. Plus, they’ve done it while mocking the big baddie of the disease world. Formerly titled I’m with Cancer, 50/50 is a title that keeps the odds of the main character living front and center (even if they basically spoil that point in the opening part of the trailer), and the rest is filled with heads being shaved with questionable trimmers, therapy sessions, and foolish attempts at cancer-based pick-up lines.

Would it be cooler to say that you father died in 9/11 or of a heart attack in your driveway? What will the kids at your middle school think? These are the pressing questions that will hopefully get answers in the first feature film written and directed by Emmy nominee Michael J. Weithorn. There’s no telling what kind of tone A Little Help is going to strike because, from the trailer, it looks like a happy-go-lucky comedy shoved into a drama that’s unafraid to get dark and tell jokes that will leave some uneasy. This very well might be a sunshinier version of World’s Greatest Dad or it could be an animal all its own. An animal that annoyingly repeats everything you say. Either way, you get to see what Chris O’Donnell’s been doing (and you get to see what Jenna Fischer‘s been doing on her nights off from The Office).

Aptly, one of the most talked-about movies of Cannes 2011 was We Need to Talk About Kevin, which had a stronger impact on our reviewer than Tree of Life did. The film from director Lynne Ramsay stars Tilda Swinton as the mother of a son who commits a grand atrocity. Through alinear storytelling, more and more of her life is shared as she copes with motherhood, aftermath, and responsibility. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oscilloscope head Adam Yauch was one of the audience members affected, and the group has bought rights to distribute the film in North America. Great news for movie fans hoping to see this in a theater near them. It’s also generally good news for anyone who loves seeing that Oscilloscope logo and assuming they’re about to see a science fiction B-movie from 1954. It’s no surprise that the goal is a winter release. Be on the lookout for plenty of awards season push for this one alongside Best Actress prediction headlines entitled “We Need To Talk About Tilda Swinton.”

Today’s trailer is a public service announcement for anyone out there who feels like their family is dysfunctional. Here’s the message: it’s not. Or at least, the royal family of The Lion in Winter would give it a run for its money. Some of the harshest things ever said by familial characters take place in this flick (when Katharine Hepburn talks about peeling her husband like a pear? Messed up.), and it’s all done to bombastic trumpet blasts. Hepburn and Peter O’Toole own this movie, of course, but it was also the filmic debut of Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton who tear up the screen, keeping pace with the veterans. It’s good to know that even though he broke his arm during his first film, Hopkins kept acting. Plus, legend has it that Hepburn and O’Toole would drink wine and smoke cigarettes everyday after wrapping, and it’s not a stretch to imagine that after yelling at your co-stars for hours on end, you’d need a bonding break. As proof, even this trailer gets the blood boiling.

Nicolas Winding Refn just won Best Director at Cannes, but apparently he won’t be going to Disneyland to celebrate. Maybe not surprising for a director who once told me that “art is an act of violence.” That’s also when he began talking about Only God Forgives, a western-style drama that he’d like to shoot in Asia. Why Asia? Because they have the best toys, and Refn is an avid toy collector. I’m not making that up. Read the interview for confirmation. Fortunately, Twitch has gotten a hold of a synopsis for the film, and it’s chock-full of all sorts of genre goodness:

Why Watch? Because finding love might be a matter of reaching out through the personal ads. Andrew Blubaugh creates a touching drama here of one man’s experience reaching out and touching someone through the ads. Honestly, it’s sometimes tough to tell whether this is a documentary or simply shot as one, but no matter what genre you want to shove it into, it’s good. Yes, it’s about a gay man trying to find love, but it goes far beyond simple sexuality and nails down 1) something we’re all deeply invested in and 2) the only reason anyone ever creates any piece of art. What Will It Cost? Just 7 minutes of your time. Check out Hello, Thanks for yourself:

What happened to Joe Clay? Blake Edwards might not be the first name that springs to mind when talking about the story of an alcoholic, status-obsessed ass who tries to get the love of his life just as addicted to the sauce, but he may have been the only director to really capture the humor and humanism of the movie. Jack Lemmon threw himself into this role (and into his straightjacket), delivering a monumental performance. In fact, he was so dedicated to this film and to the way it needed to be presented that he left the country after wrapping so that they couldn’t order reshoots.

When the city is out of gasoline, it’d be a good idea to be the man with a truckload of the stuff. It would be, but if you had to steal it from a man who doesn’t mind coming after his merchandise with thugs and guns, it’s not as bright after all. It also might not be a great idea to try to steal away the most powerful man in the city’s girlfriend. Unless you just love murdering men of power coming after you all the time. Viva Riva! is the first narrative feature film to come out of the Democratic Republic of Congo in almost three decades, and it’s got all the sex, drugs and violence you could want piled high on a truckload of gasoline. The new trailer stands right next to that truck smoking a cigar. Check it out for yourself: