Review: 'Ski Bum: The Warren Miller Story'

‘Ski Bum: The Warren Miller Story’

★★★

Playing out of competition at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival. Running time: 85 minutes. Next screenings: Monday, Jan. 28, Ballroom, Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City.

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Anyone who lives near snow and an incline knows about Warren Miller, the one-man-band filmmaker and tireless advocate for the skiing life — which makes the revelations of the documentary “Ski Bum: The Warren Miller Story” all the more fascinating.

Director Patrick Creadon (who told the history of the New York Times crossword in the 2006 Sundance Film Festival doc “Wordplay”) got the final interview with Miller, who died Jan. 24, 2018, at the age of 92. It’s a wide-ranging interview, in which the ski-movie impresario tells more of his life story than most people have ever heard.

Miller covers the fun spots, telling stories of how he and a buddy took a teardrop trailer around the West, working odd jobs and skiing wherever they could (which, in the 1940s, wasn’t a lot). Miller started tinkering with a camera, filming himself and other skiers, and editing together the footage, to which he would provide live narration as he toured the country.

The movie hits dark chapters in Miller’s life: A first wife who died of cancer, a mother and sister who ran his production company and embezzled from him, taking his second wife and the kids on the road but later leaving them behind and missing their childhoods, and the failed attempt to make a ski movie with the same box-office pull as the surfing classic “The Endless Summer” (a movie whose style copies Miller’s format to a remarkable degree).

Creadon gathers a long list of skiers and filmmakers who worked with Miller, who augment the stories the old man tells about fun times and dangers on the slopes. But the gold here is the interview with Miller himself, getting the last word on the extreme-sports film world he pioneered and the ski industry he championed. The result is a smart tribute that isn’t just for ski nuts, but for anyone looking to be inspired to grab a camera.

Review: 'The Magic Life of V'

‘The Magic Life of V’

★★★1/2

Playing in the World Cinema Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 87 minutes; in English, and Finnish with subtitles. Next screening: Saturday, Jan. 26, 6 p.m., Salt Lake City Library Theatre, Salt Lake City; Sunday, Jan. 27, 3 p.m., Redstone Cinema 7, Park City; Thursday, Jan. 31, 9 a.m., Park Avenue Theatre, Park City; Friday, Feb. 1, noon, Holiday Village Cinemas 2, Park City.

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Demons come in all forms, and the subject of “The Magic Life of V,” Tonislav Hristov’s moving documentary, has some big ones to slay.

Hristov introduces Veera, a young Finnish woman, at a “Harry Potter”-themed role-playing event in Poland, where she dons her robes, colors her hair blue, and assumes her character, known simply as V. We soon learn that V is Veera’s all-purpose name for various live-action role-playing (or LARP) events.

LARP is not just a hobby for Veera, but an escape from her life back home in snowy Finland. She cares for her brother, Ville, who suffered brain damage as a toddler and is barely able to live independently. In conversations with Ville, and sessions with her therapist, Veera also reveals the biggest monster in her life: Her alcoholic father.

With tightly framed close-ups and an eye for minute detail, Hristov lets the audience study Veera’s face and movements as she reckons with the memories of a troubled childhood. He also shows how Veera, as V, uses LARP — ranging from military-style mutant hunting to foam-rubber swordplay — to build up the emotional armor she needs to conquer her adversity. 

Review: 'Apollo 11'

‘Apollo 11’

★★★★

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 93 minutes. Next screenings: Friday, Jan. 25, 8:30 a.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City; Friday, Jan. 25, 9 p.m., Sundance Mountain Resort Screening Room, Provo Canyon; Saturday, Jan. 26, 6:30 p.m., Grand Theatre, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, Jan. 30, noon, Temple Theatre, Park City; Thursday, Jan. 31, 9:30 p.m., Redstone Cinema 1, Park City.

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As a NASA nerd who was not quite 5 years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, the documentary “Apollo 11” made me feel cheated — not by the movie, but by history.

Watching this breathtaking movie, loaded with never-before-seen footage of that incredible mission, I wanted to know why this stuff has been hidden for most of my life.

Director Todd Douglas Miller (“Dinosaur 13,” SFF ’13) assembles a crew of space historians, NASA buffs and technicians to condense in 93 minutes what it must have felt like — in Mission Control, to civilians watching in awe on the ground, and most importantly to Armstrong, Aldrin and the mission’s commander, Michael Collins — to prepare, launch and navigate the complex maneuvers needed to get to the moon and back alive.

The pristine images, taken from long buried government storage, take us from the launch pad to splashdown. Graphics explain concisely each delicate maneuver, none more precarious than the final landing on the moon — which Armstrong had to perform manually to avoid a crater the size of a football field.

The technical challenges must have been enormous — not the least of which because, Miller told the movie’s first Sundance audience, NASA didn’t have a single bit of footage with synchronized sound. Poring through hundreds of hours of video and audio footage, Miller gives the audience the full visual and aural feeling of a moon landing.

The audio mix is especially important, and Miller has help making it pristine. The two key players are sound designer Eric Milano, who places every ping and whoosh precisely in context, and composer Matt Morton, whose haunting synthesizer score — performed on a 1968 model Moog, which would be authentic to the time of the mission — makes us feel like we’re in outer space. 

Review: 'After the Wedding'

‘After the Wedding’

★★★1/2

Playing in the Premieres section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 110 minutes. Next screening: Friday, Jan. 25, 9 a.m., Eccles Center Theatre, Park City; Friday, Jan. 25, 9:15 p.m., Grand Theatre, Salt Lake City; Saturday, Jan. 26, 9 p.m., Sundance Mountain Resort Screening Room, Provo Canyon; Wednesday, Jan. 30, 5:30 p.m., Prospector Square Theatre, Park City; Saturday, Feb. 2, 5:30 p.m., The MARC Theatre, Park City.

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If a filmmaker is going to bring a remake to Sundance, that filmmaker had better bring a fresh approach — which is what director-screenwriter Bart Freundlich does with the intense melodrama “After the Wedding.”

Isabel (Michelle Williams) is an American living in India, running a school for orphaned children. The school is desperately short of money, and Isabel’s only hope is a wealthy New York tech CEO, Theresa (Julianne Moore), who has promised a $2 million donation — but she wants to meet Isabel in person first.

Theresa puts Isabel up in a ritzy Manhattan hotel, and Isabel feels put off by the lavish treatment; her week’s stay, she tells folks back in India, could buy textbooks for a whole grade. Isabel is even more put off when Theresa delays her donation decision, citing her stress over planning the wedding of her daughter Grace (Abby Quinn). Theresa invites Isabel to the wedding, at the Long Island mansion she shares with her husband Oscar (Billy Crudup), a sculptor.

Isabel arrives just as the wedding ceremony is starting, but one look at the principals tells Isabel there are other motives at play. The way the sickening realization crosses Williams’ face is a master class in wordless acting, and it’s only the first of many performance beats — by Williams, Moore, Crudup and Quinn — that elevate the story above the level of soap opera.

Freundlich (“The Myth of Fingerprints,” SFF ’97) puts a fresh gloss on the 2006 Danish film, directed by “Bird Box’s” Susanne Bier, with a not-so-simple gender flip. (In the original, Williams’ character was played by Mads Mikkelsen.) The switch deepens Isabel’s pain and feeling of betrayal, and puts Theresa’s manipulations in a different context, adding a sharp sense of melancholy as the story builds to a shattering conclusion.

Diversity and data: Filmmakers work to change Hollywood's white-male dominance, and Sundance has the numbers to help them do it

The numbers are brutal: Among 1,200 popular films over the last 12 years, 4 percent of the directors were women, 6 percent were African-American, and 3.1 percent were Asian-American.

Filmmakers at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival talked to me about that disparity, and how they combat it by telling stories that are both specific to their setting and universal in their emotional weight. Meanwhile, the Sundance Film Festival is tallying the demographics of the filmmakers whose films will play there over the next 11 days.

Read the story at sltrib.com.

Slamdance opens its 25th festival with a look at film pioneer and ski legend Warren Miller

Warren Miller made movies, and a lot of them. Once a year, from the 1950s until his retirement in 2004, he cranked out one movie a year — shooting, editing, narrating and self-distributing — that extolled the joys of skiing.

Miller, who died Jan. 24, 2018, at the age of 92, is the subject of the new documentary “Ski Bum: The Warren Miller Story.” The movie will premiere as the opening-night screening at the 25th Slamdance Film Festival in Park City — a fitting place to celebrate a do-it-yourself film pioneer.

Read about the movie, including an interview with director Patrick Creadon, at sltrib.com.

Get ready — Sundance is coming

It’s that time of year again. The 2019 Sundance Film Festival starts Thursday, Jan. 24.

On this page, I will be posting reviews for festival movies I see. Reviews will be posted after the movie’s first festival screening.

Before then, get caught up on my coverage of the festival for The Salt Lake Tribune, all from sltrib.com:

• Here are the celebrities scheduled to appear at the festival.

• Here are tips and tricks for navigating Sundance.

• Here is the full list of 119 features playing at Sundance.

• Here is the slate of Indie Episodic, Special Events, and short films.

• Here is the rundown of New Frontier projects.