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Jenni Miller

Jenni Miller

Jenni Miller has been writing for fun and profit since the age of six and can be found bathing in the glow of the silver screen, playing video games, inhaling books, and examining pop culture with a savvy, feminist eye. She writes for Film.com, BUST Magazine, Hollywood.com, and a variety of other publications.

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11 Things We Learned at Sundance 2011 (or, Kevin Smith + 10 Other Things)

By Jenni Miller (Subscribe to Jenni Miller's posts), Posted Jan 31st 2011 11:43PM
Filed under: Features, Sundance Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals
Sundance

It's the Monday after Sundance's big closing night awards ceremony and after-party, and, like New Year's morning, it's the perfect time to cast a bleary eye back on what we learned in Park City this year. From red-eye flights and altitude sickness to cramming as many films, interviews, reviews, tweets, vlogs and parties into 10 days as possible, Sundance is like film nerd prom crossed with summer camp crossed with a mental breakdown waiting to happen. That said, it's also very educational! From the utterly absurd to the downright inspiring, here are the top stories from this year's Sundance Film Festival.

1. Audience Q&As fall into two categories: terribly boring or batsh*t crazy.

Two very different movie premieres had two equally different audience reactions during their Q&A's. Lucky McKee's 'The Woman' received the most volatile by far. During the screening, numerous people walked out because of the intensity of the subject matter, and one person even slipped and fell, hitting her head. That was only the beginning, though. Drew McWeeny at HitFix describes in detail a colorful conflagration between one irate viewer who decided to lecture McKee at top volume about his, erm, objections to the film. You can get to know Drew better in our five-minute video interview with the writer here.
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Emma Roberts on Favorite Horror Movies and Being the New Female Badass in 'Scream 4'

By Jenni Miller (Subscribe to Jenni Miller's posts), Posted Jan 31st 2011 8:00PM
Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Sundance Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals
Homework

In 'Homework,' Emma Roberts stars as Sally, a popular teen at an uptown Manhattan prep school who becomes friends with the senior class outsider George. George, played by Freddie Highmore, is a boyish nihilist who won't be graduating if he doesn't complete an entire year's worth of homework in the last few weeks leading up to graduation. Sally's got her own problems, of course, and the two find their unlikely friendship a source of inspiration and strength -- until things get complicated. (Read our review of 'Homework')

Cinematical: Let's talk about filming in New York -- what did you discover about New York that you hadn't known before?

Emma Roberts: I was staying in the West Village, which is my favorite area now, and I would just go outside everyday and just walk around and wander and sit at little outdoor restaurants and read and hang out and meet up with friends, and it was just the perfect time to be in New York, in April, and I had so much fun. Shooting in New York is just always fun because the second you're off work, there's so many things you can go and do.
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Miranda July on 'The Future,' Sundance and Talking Cats

By Jenni Miller (Subscribe to Jenni Miller's posts), Posted Jan 29th 2011 2:00PM
Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Sundance Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals


Miranda July is one of those terribly aggravating people who is exquisitely talented in a variety of mediums but too awesome not to want to be best friends with, if that makes any sense. Her first film, 'Me and You and Everyone We Know,' won four awards at Cannes and the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2005. Since then, she's written an award-winning collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, created the online project "learningtoloveyoumore," a storytelling website that remains online as part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and made an interactive sculpture garden for the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Her new movie 'The Future' began as a performance piece called Things We Don't Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About, where she'd pull members from the audience onstage to perform. The final result premiered at Sundance earlier this week and will also play at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
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'Becoming Chaz' Sundance Review: Candidly Chaz Bono

By Jenni Miller (Subscribe to Jenni Miller's posts), Posted Jan 28th 2011 1:00PM
Filed under: Documentaries, Reviews, Sundance Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals


The excellent documentary 'Becoming Chaz' is an engaging and educational look at one person's journey to make his outsides match his inside. The public eye has been on Chaz (née Chastity) Bono since he was a blond moppet on his parents' variety show, 'The Sonny and Cher Show.' Although Chaz officially came out as a lesbian in '95, it took him much longer to come to terms with his transgender identity. Despite his shyness and a lifetime of discomfort (to say the least) in his own body, Chaz opens up his life, his home and his history for this warm, moving and funny documentary.

Directors and executive producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ('The Eyes of Tammy Faye,' 'Party Monster,' 'Inside Deep Throat') have done an excellent job with the massive amount of information, footage and photos at their disposal. The documentary juxtaposes everyday shots of Chaz and his partner Jennifer Elia with black-and-white studio-set interviews with Jennifer and Chaz, scenes from the Sonny and Cher show and interviews with family and friends to create a fully three-dimensional, unflinching portrait of Chaz's transition. Chaz and Jennifer talk openly about Chaz's disconnection from his breasts, noting they were off-limits during sex or even cuddling. Jennifer grapples openly with the change in her lover and his "testosterone energy" and "manness." We're even treated to the intimacy of Chaz post-surgery and the eventual unveiling of his new chest and all the after-care that entails. From Chaz's struggle with an addiction to painkillers after his girlfriend Joan's death to the couple's everyday squabbles, nothing is too sacred.
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'Submarine' Sundance Review: Coming of Age ... Weirdly

By Jenni Miller (Subscribe to Jenni Miller's posts), Posted Jan 27th 2011 11:30AM
Filed under: Reviews, Sundance Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals

'Submarine' takes place in a world that's at once totally familiar and timeless -- you'll find hand-written notes in place of Facebook wall posts, thank you -- and slightly, delightfully bizarre. Protagonist Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is a strange young man who slumps along in his black Paddington Bear–like coat, reading the dictionary on the beach near his house in Wales, monitoring his parents' sex life based on scientific measurements of their bedroom light dimmer, wooing the rebellious firebug Jordana, and spying on his strange neighbor whom he figures for a ninja. He is, in short, Coming of Age.

Based on the book Joe Dunthorne and adapted by director Richard Ayoade, 'Submarine''s whimsy is grounded by its characters' very real concerns. Oliver is truly worried about his parents' marriage; it just so happens that the rival for his mother's affections is a New Age, wannabe guru named Graham (Paddy Considine) with an amazing mullet and a fantastically airbrushed van. Oliver's lady friend Jordana (Yasmin Paige) is stalwartly anti-romantic and enjoys burning Oliver's leg hair off, but she never tumbles over into the world of Manic Pixiedom. While she is the catalyst for Oliver's emotional maturation, she also grows and changes through the movie and is a wholly interesting character in her own right. Oliver's mother Jill (Sally Hawkins) is restless and frustrated with her mournful husband Lloyd (Noah Taylor); it's just that instead of fighting like a normal couple, she makes him watch Graham's ludicrous self-help tapes.
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Sundance Interview: 'Perfect Sense''s Eva Green

By Jenni Miller (Subscribe to Jenni Miller's posts), Posted Jan 26th 2011 1:30PM
Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Sundance Film Festival, Sci-Fi, Cinematical, Festivals
Eva GreenElegant Eva Green sat down with Cinematical during Sundance to discuss her new movie 'Perfect Sense,' an intense love story with a sci-fi bent. Green plays Susan, a successful epidemiologist who's falling in love with a caddish chef named Michael (Ewan McGregor) just as a bizarre disease begins spreading around the world. Known for her star turns in movies like Bernardo Bertolucci's 'The Dreamers,' 'Kingdom of Heaven' and 'Casino Royale,' Green's intensity and intelligence is matched perfectly with McGregor in David Mackenzie's affecting Sundance standout. (Read the review here.)

Cinematical: In researching your career in 'Perfect Sense' as an epidemiologist, did you learn anything that you didn't want to know?
Eva Green: I went to a biologist's office and the lab ... She started talking about all the viruses around and it was so complicated and I was really bad in biology in school, so I didn't understand everything, but what was amazing was the sense of humor that they have. They joke about death and diseases all the time, and it's kind of [a] very dry sense of humor, and that was very interesting.

It would make me paranoid to learn more about viruses and things happening like that.
No, I think [because] they're more aware of what's going on, the less paranoid they may be than [we are]. But it's just their sense of humor that struck me a lot.
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'Perfect Sense' Sundance Review: An Apocalyptic Love Story

By Jenni Miller (Subscribe to Jenni Miller's posts), Posted Jan 25th 2011 4:00PM
Filed under: Reviews, Sundance Film Festival, Sci-Fi, Cinematical, Festivals


In 'Perfect Sense,' a love story between two damaged people is set against the backdrop of a mysterious epidemic that affects the emotions and the senses. It works like an epileptic fit: The first wave is a great outpouring of grief and loss, with memories returning of everything you ever loved and every person you ever hurt -- the things that haunt you when you're alone at night in the dark. And then you lose your sense of smell, effectively severing that most direct tie between sense and memory forever.

This, in a way, is how Susan (Eva Green) and Michael (Ewan McGregor) fall in love. He's a cad, and she's been hurt too much to let her guard down. Instead, she focuses on her work as an epidemiologist. She's just begun seeing cases of this new syndrome, but she and her colleagues decide there's no real cause for alarm ... yet. One night after work, Michael convinces Susan to let him cook her dinner -- he's a chef at the restaurant whose back door faces her apartment building -- and midway through the meal, Susan is overcome with grief. Michael hurries her home, and they spend the night together; almost by osmosis or suggestion, Michael also experiences the first wave of this syndrome, and the next morning neither of them can smell their coffee.
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