HuffPost Entertainment’s stint at the Sundance Film Festival has come to a close. After squeezing in as many titles as we could on Monday and Tuesday, we still weren’t able to catch everything this year’s impressive lineup had to offer. We’ve already championed the buzzy “Dope,” praised Jason Segel’s turn as David Foster Wallace and caught Kristen Wiig, Lena Dunham, Mindy Kaling and Jenji Kohan in a panel about women in comedy. Sleep deprivation didn’t keep editors Sasha Bronner and Matthew Jacobs from two jam-packed final days at the fest. Look out for upcoming interviews with the festival’s stars, including James Franco, Adam Scott and Jason Schwartzman, “Sleeping with Other People” director Leslye Headland, Blythe Danner, Ewan McGregor and more. For now, here are the last few films they saw:
“Digging for Fire”
Directed by Joe Swanberg
Written by Jake Johnson and Joe Swanberg
Starring Rosemarie DeWitt, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Mike Birbiglia, Orlando Bloom, Brie Larson, Ron Livingston, Sam Rockwell, Chris Messina, Melanie Lynskey, Steve Berg, Judith Light, Sam Elliott, Jenny Slate and Timothy Simons
There’s a certain cogency to Apatow-esque stories of 30- and 40-somethings longing to retain their youth, but “Digging for Fire” hits so many wrong notes that, frankly, it’s an embarrassment to the genre. Joe Swanberg, an indie icon who has pushed toward the mainstream in the past two years with “Drinking Buddies” and “Happy Christmas,” has made a movie that culls the most vapid and aimless aspects of this post-Millennial film trend. Its characters are under-defined, its plot is uninvolving and its conclusion is a mess of needless self-realizations that fail to jell.
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Heineman directs the movie so that it almost doesn’t feel like a documentary, largely thanks its beautiful cinematography. Sweeping shots of the borderline give way to sniper-like action that tracks the Autodefensas, a paramilitary group that hunts down the Knights Templar Cartel, and the Arizona Border Recon, a group of former military members and law-enforcement officials dedicated to stamping out their presence on the American side. The movie needs some trimming, but it’s a frightening look at an intense crisis that amplifies the global drug contagion. Heineman has a solid grasp on the affected territories and the people who inhabit them, casting characters whose commitment to axing organized crime when the Mexican government will not. The access he attained is a true feat: We see cartel peons cooking meth in the dead of night, Autodefensas members raiding Knights Templar homes for shootouts, even a young girl who begs for her cartel-affiliated father not to be killed when the vigilantes arrive at her home. As an investigation, “Cartel Land” is daring; as a film, its third act lacks some adrenaline, particularly in the American portions. Heineman has an eye for truth-telling that serves the haunting tale well, though. — MJ
