Jordan Hoffman

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All The Coolest (and Weirdest) Stuff We Saw at Sundance This Year

I’ve spent the week sending dispatches to io9 from a remote planet of intense cold and blood-thinning high elevation. The Sundance Film Festival, set atop a mountain in January (not very smart, come to think about it) is arguably the most important annual event in independent film. The bulk of the movies are still quirky, … Continued

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An Even Weirder Film from the Maker of that Psychic Killer Tire Movie

Quentin Dupieux’s cult hit Rubber had the good manners to open with a direct pronouncement of its philosophy: “No reason,” Stephen Spinella’s layers-deep meta impresario (Officer Chad) repeated again and again. But with Dupieux’s second film, we have to do the work ourselves. Over a crack in some asphalt, to spacey sounds on the soundtrack, … Continued

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The time-travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed worked better as an internet meme

During Hollywood’s golden era, it was common for a picture (they called ’em pictures back then) to be based on a popular stage play. It still happens, but rarely. The biggest and most visible movies are based on comic books these days (they called ’em graphic novels back then, they’ll say of us) but maybe … Continued

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Sigourney Weaver and Robert DeNiro self-destruct in this year’s biggest Sundance letdown

Here’s how I imagine Red Lights’ elevator pitch: “It’s The Prestige, but set in modern times, and instead of illusionists, it’s a psychic versus a debunker.” Not a bad notion. But if director Rodrigio Cortes was able to see the future, he’d have added that the film would have a desultory script, overblown camera work, … Continued

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Beasts of the Southern Wild is beautiful, operatic and filled with rampaging ice age creatures

The Beasts of the Southern Wild is very much one of the most buzzed films at Sundance right now. Everyone either loves it or respects it greatly. Whether or not this movie about a young girl facing a flood and terrible hog-monsters catches on with a wider audience remains to be seen — but I … Continued

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John Dies At The End is the closest thing to this generation’s Big Trouble in Little China

Based on the cult novel first serialized on the web, John Dies At The End tells the tale of two twenty-somethings who battle demons while tripping on extra-dimensional hallucinogens. The titular John, is either unstuck in time and living in multiple, parallel planes of reality, or is perhaps dead and being projected from memory by … Continued

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Robot and Frank is the next great science fiction indie

In the movies, technology is usually represented one of two ways: a hallelujah-worthy miracle or a soul-deadening trespass on the natural order of things. Robot and Frank, a film receiving near-unanimous praise at the Sundance Film Festival, is smart enough to know better. Technology, like everything in life, isn’t black and white, and is only … Continued