Sundance Quick Takes: Ten Thousand Saints, Results, Experimenter

Michael C with a roundup of three Sundance titles we haven't discussed yet.

Ten Thousand Saints
Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s Ten Thousand Saints makes the mistake of thinking that merely by placing their characters adjacent to interesting times, interest will rub off them. Saints does a beautiful job evoking Manhattan in the 1980’s touching on the Tompkin’s Square Park riots, the CBGB music scene and more. The problem is that foreground is populated with a singularly uninteresting cast of characters working through a coming-of-age formula we’ve seen executed with more spirit and vitality in countless better films. The lead actors do what they can with their thin wisps of character, none too successfully. There is Hugo’s Asa Butterfield, True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld, and Emile Hirsch as the front man for a hardcore straight edge band. Together they deal with unintended pregnancy, drug overdoses, and confused sexuality, except the characters are too underdeveloped to carry any but the slightest dramatic weight and the material never feels connected to the time and place in any meaningful way. The final impression is that the film could turn the camera in any direction and happen upon a more compelling story. The big exception to this is Ethan Hawke’s riotous supporting performance as Butterfield’s pot-growing absentee father. It’s not quite enough to save the movie but he certainly saves a fair amount of scenes. It’s another career high point for Hawke, who has been on a roll of late. He’s not enough to recommend Ten Thousand Saints alone, but those who do see the film will be grateful for his every second of screen time. It's a nice reminder that Hawke has a surprisingly robust range and can deliver in films not directed by Richard Linklater.   Grade: C

Results
Andrew Bujalski’s Results gives Kevin Corrigan’s off-kilter energy a terrific showcase as Danny, a middle-aged schlub still wallowing in misery following a divorce, with no clue how to spend the millions he has unexpectedly inherited. When an offhand impulse to get in shape brings Danny into the orbit of the Power 4 Life Gym a very laid back romantic triangle forms between Danny, Guy Pearce’s self-improvement mantra spouting gym owner, and Colbie Smulders’ intense type-A personal trainer, whose toned figure interests Danny way more than the prospect of his own potential fitness. After Bujalksi ingenious, bizarre Computer Chess a detour into rom-com land might seem like an odd career move but Results is less interested in running its characters through a formula, than it is with loitering in the spaces between plot points, riffing on the idea of self-improvement while letting the actors’ clashing energies ricochet off one another. Smulders is an ideal romantic lead, with a brightness and intelligence that brings a jolt of life to the material even when it’s idling in place. Pearce is the least engaging corner of the triangle, but it is nice to see him in a role that requires a light touch and its consistently entertaining to watch his hyper-efficient persona clash with the zonked-out messiness of Corrigan. One could tell Results to take the advice of its characters and tighten up, but sometimes it’s satisfying enough to watch three lonely people take the concept of self-improvement to heart and make baby steps towards happiness. Grade: B

Peter & Winona star in ExperimenterExperimenter
The centerpiece of Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter is the infamous Milgram Obedience Experiments, recreated here with a series of famous faces playing the unsuspecting subjects. The experiment was an attempt to delve into people’s willingness to defy authority if it conflicts with their conscience, and to put it mildly, the study’s findings were alarming. The vast majority of subjects were willing to suppress their moral concerns to extreme degrees, administering  what they believed to be a series of painful electric shocks to an actor pretending to yowl in pain, just because they were instructed to do so by a man in a lab coat. It is inherently fascinating material. The question is, “What illumination does Almereyda’s film add that you couldn’t get from, say, watching footage of the experiments on YouTube?” I'm afraid the answer is "not much". Experimenter takes on the structure of a biography. We watch Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard, limited to one note of academic detachment) get married to Winona Ryder, carry out unrelated experiments, deal with the ensuing controversy from the obedience test. Almereyda tries to liven things up with bold theatrical touches, breaking reality to stage a dinner party to look like a play and parading an elephant through one scene (which I believe symbolically represents the holocaust). But despite the effort this material still comes off as filler placed in a film that has nowhere to go once it makes its initial points. In the end the film informs us the Milgram Obedience Experiment is still taught to first year psychology students, still causes controversy, still referenced when discussing atrocities. Unfortunately, these are things most of us interested in seeing Experimenter will know going in. Grade: C-