Sundance Movie Reviews: Adventures Of Power, Phoebe In Wonderland

I'm running way behind of Sundance reviews, so I'm going to a quick rapid-fire run down to get a couple films out of the way.

Adventures of Power

The plot synopsis for Adventures of Power is as interesting as you'll find. The film follows a former mine-worker named Power, who is ridiculed in his small town for his air-drumming "skills". But when Power discovers an underground subculture of air-drummers, he sets off to compete against a billionaire rapping cowboy named Dallas H in the air guitar world championships. Ari Gold writes, directs and stars in this dumb Napoleon Dynamite rip-off which attempts to do for the nonexistent sport of air-drumming, what the movie Dodgeball did for dodgeball. Surprisingly only a few of the gags contained within are chuckle-worthy. At the core of the story is a semi-sweet love story between Powers and a deaf woman (Shoshannah Stern). But this just isn't enough to make this film worth your nine bucks. 4/10

Phoebe In Wonderland

Pheobe in Wonderland stars Elle Fanning, the young, cuter, not as freakishly smart, sister of Dakota, who was the talk of the town at last year's festival with Hounddog (a disgusting film which explored child rape and has since never been released). Phoebe is a young girl whose obsessive compulsive behavior is getting her in trouble at school. She joins the school play and is cast as Alice, and goes further down the rabbit hole of depression into her own Wonderland. I really dug her performance in John August's The Nines at last year's fest, and we begin to see her true range in this film. Phoebe has incredible art direction, a couple nice performances, and a nice third act twist which you probably won't se coming. 7/10