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Ed Helms Sundance Interview: 'Cedar Rapids,' Nude Scenes and 'Office' Spoilers

By Eric D. Snider (Subscribe to Eric D. Snider's posts), Posted Jan 26th 2011 4:00PM
Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Cinematical, Festivals


The very funny Ed Helms followed in his 'Daily Show' colleague Steve Carell's footsteps by joining 'The Office,' and thereafter branched out into films. 'The Hangover' helped make his toothy face recognizable to even more people; now, in addition to 'The Hangover 2' (due May 26), Helms has 'Cedar Rapids,' in which he is not a supporting player but the star. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and Fox Searchlight will release it theatrically Feb. 11.

I met with Helms on Jan. 24 at a venue in Park City, Utah, that had been made to look like the small-town insurance office inhabited by his 'Cedar Rapids' character. As he sat down, he cautioned me that despite the setting, he didn't actually know anything about insurance. I threw away all my insurance-related questions, and here's what followed.

Cinematical: First of all, happy birthday, am I right?
Ed Helms: You're exactly right! Thank you very much!

I looked you up on the Wikipedias, and today's your birthday. You were born in 1974, right?
Correct.

So, when you were 10 years old, watching 'Ghostbusters,' did you ever imagine that one day you would have a sex scene with Sigourney Weaver?
Oh my God, that is a fabulous question. That's when the fantasy first started. Of course, I never, ever would have imagined that it could actually happen. She was ... she's just a remarkably sexy woman.
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'Homework' Sundance Review: Your Dog Wouldn't Eat It

By Eric D. Snider (Subscribe to Eric D. Snider's posts), Posted Jan 25th 2011 1:00PM
Filed under: Reviews, Sundance Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals


'Homework' would be a good film to watch if you were cramming for your Indie Films of the 2000s final and didn't have time to see everything on the syllabus. It's like a Cliff's Notes version of every teen-centered Sundance comedy of the last decade.

Precocious teenage boy who's a slacker at school because he finds the material unstimulating? Check. Calls his teachers by their first names, cuz he's quirky like that? Check. Reads philosophy, watches foreign films in repertory theaters, fixates on death and mortality? Has major potential as an artist/writer/thinker if he'd just apply himself? Falls in love with a classmate, leading to a journey of self-discovery and coming of age? Check, check, check.

The familiarity of all these elements isn't the problem; it's the unimaginative fashion in which they've been cobbled together. 'Homework' is the first feature by writer-director Gavin Wiesen, and I don't think there's a single fresh idea anywhere in it. No witty dialogue, interesting characters, or amusing scenarios, either. It should have a plain brown label and be called ' Festival Movie.'
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'Pariah' Sundance Review: Coming Out in Brooklyn

By Eric D. Snider (Subscribe to Eric D. Snider's posts), Posted Jan 23rd 2011 7:00PM
Filed under: Reviews, Sundance Film Festival, Cinematical



While coming-of-age dramas about gay teenagers are common enough (especially at film festivals), they're usually about boys, not girls. Your more lesbian-centric movies tend to be about adults. At least as far as American films go, anyway. (The Europeans are bigger on teenage lesbians.) And now that we've helped our Google rankings for the search terms "European teenage lesbians," let us discuss Dee Rees' 'Pariah,' which is indeed an American coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old girl.

Her name is Alike (that's ah-LEE-kay), she is played by Adepero Oduye, and she is a virgin, though she seeks to change that status. Her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), a bold and sexually active lesbian, regularly takes her to a dance club in their Brooklyn neighborhood that caters to African American ladies, in the hopes that Alike will meet someone. The loud, aggressive atmosphere is intimidating to a newbie, though. Alike lives with her younger sister, Sharonda (Sahra Mallesse), and their parents, and has made only tentative steps toward coming out to any of them, at least officially. There is certainly some degree of awareness -- Alike dresses "butch"; some of the neighbors gossip -- but that awareness is accompanied by denial. Alike's mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), buys her a girly blouse and tries to push her into being friends with a co-worker's wholesome daughter

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The 5 Best and 5 Worst Sundance Purchases

By Eric D. Snider (Subscribe to Eric D. Snider's posts), Posted Jan 18th 2011 10:00PM
Filed under: Features, Sundance Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals


Philosophically, the Sundance Film Festival's most important goal is to give independent films from around the world a venue in which to be seen by enthusiastic audiences, but there's no denying Sundance's other major function: to help the filmmakers sell their movies to distributors, who can then sell them to the movie-going public.

For the industry, Sundance is like a big ol' bazaar, where the merchandise is of varying quality and you're free to browse before you buy. You might get something at a bargain price and turn a handsome profit when it goes to theaters later on; or you might pay through the nose for something you're sure will be a hit, only to lose your shirt when it tanks. It's always a crapshoot (often heavy on the crap), and the only way to know for sure whether the purchase was shrewd is in retrospect.

So here's some retrospect! You'll note that it has nothing to do with quality -- all 10 of these movies are good. Yet somehow, their fates ranged from the miraculous to the tragic.
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'The Dilemma' Review: Welcome to Sitcom Territory

By Eric D. Snider (Subscribe to Eric D. Snider's posts), Posted Jan 14th 2011 9:00AM
Filed under: Reviews, New Releases, Cinematical


At 118 minutes, 'The Dilemma' is easily 30 minutes too long. It's also one of the shortest films Ron Howard has ever directed, and his first comedy in over a decade. The man who grew up on sitcoms and then made agreeable diversions like 'Splash' and 'Parenthood' seems to have lost his comedic touch.

Then again, maybe it's just a bad screenplay. 'The Dilemma' was written by Allan Loeb, who's had more practice at dramas ('Things We Lost in the Fire,' '21') than comedies ('The Switch') -- which might explain why this thing is constantly uncertain of what it's supposed to be. Its premise is pure farce: a man discovers his best friend's wife is cheating on him, is blackmailed into silence, and has his own furtive behavior misinterpreted. Yet there are surprisingly few laughs in the film, and several scenes that were clearly intended to be straight-up serious, despite being built on a premise that only works if you don't take it seriously.

The stars are Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, two formerly very different actors who are now starting to look alike, at least where hairlines and waistlines are concerned. They play Ronny Valentine and Nick Brannen, best friends since college who have started an automotive design firm. Ronny is the tall, fast-talking pitch man who sells General Motors on their idea; Nick is the squat, anxious engineer who makes the cars go vroom.
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'Season of the Witch' Review: A Big Helping of Medieval Cheese

By Eric D. Snider (Subscribe to Eric D. Snider's posts), Posted Jan 6th 2011 9:00PM
Filed under: Reviews, New Releases, Cinematical


After being kicked around for a while, 'Season of the Witch' -- originally scheduled as one of 2010's dumbest cheesefests -- will now be one of 2011's. You expect that a movie starring Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as medieval knights seeking to destroy a witch would be a lively, dopey train wreck, and in that regard it does not disappoint.

This is the kind of movie that entrepreneurs had in mind when they started opening theaters that serve alcohol. It's the kind of movie that 'Mystery Science Theater' would heckle, and that the SyFy Channel would play constantly between showings of 'Mystery Science Theater.' This is how 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' would have turned out if it had been funny unintentionally instead of intentionally.

Cage and Perlman star as Behmen and Felson, two 14th-century Crusaders who cheerfully administer death to infidels (i.e., non-Catholics) while trading one-liners, 'Bad Boys'-style. After a long day of battle, the buddies like to unwind by drinking ale and cavorting with wenches. Sure, they're knights on a holy errand from God. But they're also just a couple of bros!
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10 Festival Favorites That Didn't Make It to Theaters in 2010

By Eric D. Snider (Subscribe to Eric D. Snider's posts), Posted Dec 30th 2010 12:00PM
Filed under: Features, Coming Soon, Cinematical, Best and Worst, Festivals


One of the pleasures of attending a film festival is discovering good movies that most people haven't had a chance to see yet, then raving about them to your friends. One of the frustrations, however, is when those good movies don't make it past the festival stage, and the people to whom you've been raving never get a chance to see them. (I'll go out on a limb and guess that this is more frustrating for the filmmakers than it is for me.)

It would be neither feasible nor advisable to see every movie at every festival, so this list is incomplete. But of the 80 or so festival movies I saw this year, here are 10 praiseworthy ones that have not yet been released in the United States. Keep your fingers crossed for 2011!

'American: The Bill Hicks Story' | This documentary about the subversive, dearly departed comedian got a theatrical run in the U.K. (where the filmmakers are based) but nothing yet in the United States, despite a warm reception at South By Southwest, HotDocs, Seattle, and elsewhere. You might be able to find it on a Region 2 DVD. Official website.
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