Sundance 2010: Howl, Frozen, Twelve, The Extra Man, The Romantics

ONE FESTIVAL DARLING
I wanted to like the much-hyped Howl (pictured), but though I was dazzled by James Franco's great and very plausible portrayal of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, I think this experimental docudrama went in a few too many different directions. Primarily, it's an account of the 1957 trial in which San Francisco bookshop owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was taken to court for publishing and selling obscene material, namely Ginsberg's 1955 poem Howl, a semi-autobiographical tribute to his peers. The courtroom scenes were funny and quite insightful, but the filmmakers chose to weave in three extra elements: a faux 'interview', in which Ginsberg talks to an unseen journalist; a recreation of the poem's first ever public reading in 1955; and, most mystifying of all, some animated sections seeking to replicate the poem's jazzy, freeform imagery. Beat aficionados will find elements to enjoy, but, personally, I think this won't serve the experts, and casual viewers may well find themselves baffled.

ONE MIDNIGHT MOVIE
Sundance wouldn't be Sundance without a horror film that puts you off doing something you wouldn't normally do. This year's Open Water is Frozen, in which three kids get stranded on a ski lift after blagging into a resort and dodging the usual admissions system. It takes a little while to get started, but the tension ratchets up when the power stops and the lights go down: do they jump (it's way too far) or climb the overhead wires (which are razor-sharp)? To say more would rob the film of the few surprises it has, and though it's technically a very impressive achievement, there wasn't enough peril to keep me going, and where the film should have been at its bloodiest and scariest, it was at its talkiest and worthiest.

ONE BY JOEL SCHUMACHER
Twelve, by Joel Schumacher, was an odd inclusion in this year's line-up. not being mainstream enough to work as a more commercial complement to main the selection and being a bit too serious for the OC-style world it seeks to lift the lid on. The title refers to a made-up drug – a fortuitous mix of cocaine and ecstasy – that has Manhattan in a whirl, and causes the death of a fanatical user when he pulls a gun on his dealer (50 Cent). The dead kid's cousin is a more scrupulous drug merchant named White Mike (Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford), who sells weed to rich kids, and what unfolds is a sort of junior Bret Easton Ellis story as an unnamed, omniscient narrator (Keifer Sutherland) recounts several fateful days in their lives. As usual in a Schumacher film, the cast is drop-dead gorgeous – which is handy, since quite a few of them do eventually drop dead. But while it was entertaining enough, the narration felt overdone and intrusive, even if the ghastly milieu was very deftly sketched.

TWO STARRING KATIE HOLMES
The Extra Man proved to be a bit of white elephant in the long run; while I laughed frequently, and thoroughly enjoyed it, I couldn't help thinking that this was a film that had been helped along by the high altitude. A sort of bohemian comedy that mixes elements of The Producers with Withnail & I, it starts with a nerdy, cross-dressing fixated schoolteacher (Paul Dano) being made redundant from a high-class school and moving to New York, where he lodges with a down-and-out dandy (Kevin Kline). Dano and Kline are great, with Kline giving an energetic and infectious performance. Ultimately, though, it felt just a little too fragmented and undernourished, especially in scenes that posited Katie Holmes as the love interest that never does anything much of interest. To balance this, Katie takes the lead in The Romantics, a film about a yuppie wedding that made me want to set fire to my eyes. Holmes plays a successful writer who attends the wedding of an old friend as her maid of honour, which is pretty weird to start with as it soon turns out that the groom is her ex-boyfriend (Josh Duhamel). There is a lot of soul-searching, truths are faced, and old romances may or may not be rekindled. “I want to die of excitement,” yells Holmes. Sadly, I had no such luck.