Over the past few years, the Sundance Film Festival has taken on more and more importance in the motion picture industry. This year we decided to check it out, see some of the corporate video production company London movies and bring you our thoughts on some of the independent films that will be making their way to theaters near you and ultimately of course to DVD. By far my favorite film from the Sundance Film Festival was Memento. Starring Guy Pierce (who also did LA Confidential and Priscilla Queen of the Desert), Carrie Anne Moss, and Joe Pantoliano (both from The Matrix), Memento tells the masterfully crafted story of a man who loses his short term memory from an injury incurred while trying to stop the rape and murder of his wife. Now, without the ability to remember anything after the event he must stumble blindly through his life in his unending search for the man who killed his wife. Memento is a masterfully woven film that is so gripping and compelling that you’ll want to see it more than once. Guy Pierce, who is in every frame of the movie, does an amazing job playing a man with no memory. Carrie Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano both put in complex and captivating performances. Memento won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance and the writer/director Christopher Nolan is certainly one to watch. Memento is scheduled for limited theatrical release in March. Additionally the short story that Memento was based on will appear in the March edition of Esquire magazine. One of the most talked about movies at Sundance was the rock opera Hedwig and The Angry Inch. Based on the critically acclaimed Off Broadway musical, Hedwig and The Angry Inch is one of the most fun and energetic films I’ve seen in a long, long time. Quite possibly the first movie to give Rocky Horror Picture Show a run for its money, Hedwig and The Angry Inch tells the somewhat bizarre story of a castrated transsexual from East Berlin who comes to America and almost becomes a rock star. It sounds strange but it’s simply fantastic. The music for Hedwig and The Angry Inch is top quality, with many songs that harken back to some of the great Queen ballads. One of the songs actually has a sing-along and almost everyone in the Sundance theater was singing along. Hedwig and The Angry Inch will be released in a few months by New Line Cinemas and the writer/director John Cameron Mitchell is already talking about scenes which were cut from the movie and should be on the DVD. If you’re looking for an absolute blast, take a few friends and go see Hedwig. Not surprisingly Hedwig and The Angry Inch took both the Sundance Dramatic Directors Award and also the Sundance Audience Award at this year’s festival. When I saw it, everyone in the theater gave it a standing ovation. One film that took me completely off guard was Donnie Darko. Produced by Drew Barrymore’s production company, Donnie Darko looked like it was going to be a quirky teen love story, but it was so much more. Almost as difficult to describe as Hedwig, Donnie Darko is a complex film centered around a sixteen year old boy who sees an imaginary rabbit. Unlike Harvey, the film that it pays homage to, this rabbit Frank is an evil rabbit, and it tells Donnie to do terrible things. Certainly left of center, Donnie is convinced that Frank is involved with some sort of time travel and is driven to figure out why he is there. If that all isn’t complex enough, Donnie Darko is also a story about life in suburbia at the end of the eighties, about relationships between parents and their children, and is in fact an nice teen age love story. The only thing I can really say is SEE THIS FILM! Donnie Darko is so original and intriguing that you really have to see it. I was shocked to find out that Richard Kelly was a first time director and that they made the film for under 5 million dollars (it looks like it was made for 10 times that)! As of this week Donnie Darko is still looking for a distributor (hey Dreamworks are you paying attention?? You should be talking to this director) so its theatrical release is still not set. One of the films I was really looking forward to seeing at Sundance was The Road Home – directed by Yimou Zhang who also did Not One Less and Raise The Red Lantern. The Road Home tells the story of a son who returns from the city to the countryside to bury his father.