5. “Poison” (1991)
Having already impressed with his undistributable Karen-Carpenter-with-Barbie-dolls curio “Superstar,” Todd Haynes launched his career properly with the dazzlingly inventive “Poison.” Essentially launching the New Queer Cinema in one fell swoop, the film’s made up of three wildly different segments: a tabloid docudrama about a boy who kills his father, a spoof psychedelic horror picture, and an adaptation of a trio of Genet stories set in a prison. Hugely controversial at the time (the NC-17-rated picture was funded through the National Endowment for the Arts), it was an early taste of Haynes’ formal restlessness and intellectual curiosity, but also of the beating heart and enormous empathy that lay underneath as well.
4. “You Can Count On Me” (2000)
Modest in ambition, but essentially perfect in execution, playwright Kenneth Lonergan’s directorial feature debut, “You Can Count On Me,” is a finely honed, deeply humanistic drama about a pair of estranged siblings (Laura Linney and, in an electric breakthrough turn, Mark Ruffalo) who are reunited in their hometown. It’s the premise of a dozen other Sundance movies (and even a load of sitcoms), but Lonergan’s wryly funny, punch-packing script, one of the best written this millennium, trasncends any familiarity the film might otherwise contain, while as a director, he perfectly judges the tone and mood, in large part thanks to his excellent cast (Linney was Oscar-nominated, Ruffalo should have been).
3. “Primer” (2004)
A true original, Shane Carruth’s “Primer” took a micro-budget look at one of film’s most well-worn genres, the time travel picture, and blew it wide open. Talking through the plot would take all day (in short: a pair of engineers accidentally invent a time machine and end up battling for control of it), it’s a film so dense and original that it requires your absolute concentration and at least a second and third viewing, but it’s also one that gets more and more rewarding with each go around. It’s particularly notable as a movie that rewards Sundance’s true independent spirit. Even at a time when the festival was filling up with stars and celebrities, it’s a movie made for the price of a Park City hotel suite that still wowed the crowds, though it left some of them scratching their heads.
2. “Welcome To The Dollhouse” (1995)
There have been roughly 400,000 coming-of-age movies in the 30-year history of Sundance (this is obviously a rough estimate), but Todd Solondz’s “Welcome To The Dollhouse” might be the very best of them. Following nerdy 11-year-old Dawn Wiener (Heather Matazarro) as she battles her dysfunctional family, lusts after classmates, and tries to survive junior high, it steers right into taboo subjects that other movies would keep well clear of, but as with the best of Solondz’s other pictures, there’s a deep, painful authenticity to it that makes most other films in the genre look like total phonies. More influential than it’s given credit for (it directly inspired “Freaks & Geeks,” among others), it’s also funnier and warmer than it’s given credit for. Dawn’s returning in the next year or two in the unlikely guise of Greta Gerwig for “Wiener Dog,” and we couldn’t be more excited about the prospect.
1. “Blood Simple” (1985)
The festival’s first big winner might have been somewhat unremarkable, but Sundance knocked it out of the park their second time at bat, giving the Grand Jury Prize to the debut film of the directing duo who’d go on to become two of the most important filmmakers of the last few decades of American cinema, and arguably the best. Joel & Ethan Coen’s “Blood Simple” riffs on the noir of James M. Cain and others, detailing bar owner’s Dan Hedaya’s attempt to get private detective M. Emmet Walsh to kill his cheating wife (Frances McDormand). It debuts the darkly comic, fiendishly plotted voice of the Brothers Coen that gives a fresh and idiosyncratic twist to the crime picture, one that sets the tone for everything that would follow from the pair. If the only filmmakers of note that the festival had discovered were these two (the film actually debuted at TIFF the previous year, but there was undoubtedly a boost from their Grand Jury win), we’d still be grateful for Sundance’s existence .
– Oliver Lyttelton with Jessica Kiang
