The notion of daddy longlegs, those comical spiders that look like they're wobbling around on stilts and are feared for a deadly bite of mythological proportions (an old wives' tale), turns out to capture the essence of the cynical charm of filmmaking brothers Benny and Josh Safdie's joint effort on "Daddy Longlegs."

The film stars a wonderful Ronald Bronstein as the dad you crave as a kid, still without a handle on "adult" responsibility, and the ex you absolutely fear, as if he might misplace the kids at any moment. At times, Lenny (Bronstein) comes close.

But mostly "Daddy Longlegs" is a heartwarmingly poignant look at the plight of a single dad trying to fill his two weeks with the kids each year with enough memories to last them through the other 50. They are his life, they complicate his life, which he has a hard time keeping up with when he's solo.

The entire film rests on the relationship between Bronstein and the kids, a real find in brothers Sage and Frey Ranaldo, who show a remarkable emotional range as Lenny's wild adventures dissolve them into giggles, and his difficulty with the basics -- like showing up on time -- turn out to be early/hard lessons they absorb with soulful eyes.

The Safdies have said "Daddy Longlegs" is loosely based on adventures with their own dad, and the film is indeed a window on how a creative life might be shaped. Lenny is about freedom and not being limited by the rules. He will make you love him and hate him, and in Bronstein's hands, you'll never forget him.

-- Film critic Betsy Sharkey

Photo: Frey Ranaldo as Frey, left, Ronald Bronstein as Lenny and Sage Ranaldo as Sage in "Daddy Longlegs." Photo credit: IFC Films

If there is a collective vision emerging out of the films in the Sundance dramatic competition it is this: The punks will save you. 

Profane, tattooed, with dark eyes and darker lives, all a little crazy, in some cases a lot crazy, living on society’s margins – in three of the festival’s contenders, these rebels come into the lives of ordinary folks and proceed to turn things upside down in ways that heal whatever ails them.

While the films work to greater and lesser degrees, it’s the narrative stream that makes it worth exploring since Sundance has a way of picking up on new creative thought streams bubbling up in the film world before they become widespread. So consider this a glimpse at the future.

Let's start with two films that premiered Saturday, “Welcome to the Rileys,” starring James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart and Melissa Leo, and Mark Ruffalo’s directing debut, “Sympathy for Delicious.”
“The Rileys” marks the feature directing debut of Jake Scott, who comes out of a creative thought stream of his own with father Ridley Scott and uncle Tony. Leo and Gandolfini play a Louisiana couple, Doug and Lois, whose teenage daughter was killed in a car accident. They have not done well with the grieving and now four years in, Leo’s character can’t leave the house and Gandolfini's is mourning another loss, this time his mistress felled by a heart attack.

A trip to New Orleans changes all that. Kristen Stewart is a teenage runaway, paying her way stripping and hooking when Doug stumbles across her. In a flash, his midlife crisis turns into a mission – if he couldn’t save his daughter, maybe he can save someone else's – and then the hard-as-nails young stripper turns out to be a catalyst for changing his.

Jake Scott has been shooting commercials (the starting point for dad and uncle as well) for a while, so he brings a polish to the work, and Gandolfini remains one of the most interesting actors to watch today. Stewart, what with the vampires and a turn as Joan Jett in "The Runaways" coming later today, is turning into a force on her own.

Meanwhile out west on the mean streets of L.A., Ruffalo is a priest ministering to the homeless and that includes a wheelchair-bound DJ dubbed Delicious, a scratcher extraordinaire now unemployed and living in his car after a freak accident left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Christopher Thornton, the film’s screenwriter and star who himself was paralyzed at 25 in a rock-climbing accident, is the film’s dark savior with Orlando Bloom and Juliette Lewis as the main rock star sinners. Turns out there’s nothing that will broaden the rocker crowds quite like spontaneous healing, even when the guy doing it looks like he could have played with Metallica. Like a lot of actors when they try their hand at directing, Ruffalo lets his actors, including himself, ramble on, but the underlying story of faith, hope and disillusionment is nevertheless a compelling one.

Finally, director Spencer Susser’s “Hesher” is the darkest of the bunch, with baby-faced Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an insane, homeless druggie with a giant finger flipping off the world tattooed on his back, Jesus hair and a messiah complex. Hesher literally moves himself in with a family so destroyed by a car accident they're not really paying attention. He sets about saving them by wreaking havoc thanks to a bad temper with a very short fuse – a sort of no pain, no gain approach with cars set on fire, noses clipped off, houses destroyed, and that’s on a good day.

The central issue though is the same, that we the people have lost our way and are in search of someone to guide us out of the morass and the mess. And the message running through all three films is the same too, that the rebels, the misfits, the outcasts will be the ones to save a desperately floundering mainstream America. It feels like the surface-scratching beginnings of a significant conversation, still raw and evolving, but a beginning, one we're likely to look back on years from now and say it all started at Sundance 2010.

-- Film critic Betsy Sharkey

Photo: Kristen Stewart in "Welcome to the Rileys." Credit: Argonaut Pictures.

What’s better than a movie featuring Catherine Keener, whose performances tend to feel as if they’ve been sculpted out of clay -- so earthy, so authentic, you forget you’re not just eavesdropping on whatever life she happens to be occupying at the moment?

That would have to be “Please Give,” a little gem of a movie from writer/director Nicole Holofcener, which pairs Keener with the equally exceptional Oliver Platt, who can make nothing much look like something special without even trying.

Here he doesn’t have to, because Holofcener, whose film premiered to a packed and appreciative crowd Friday night at Sundance, has created a funny, poignant observation on their lives as part of a circle of ordinary people who would never spend a moment together if a hallway in a New York apartment house didn’t force shared space on its occupants.

The acting collective of this film, beyond Keener and Platt’s liberal and conflicted couple Kate and Alex, includes Sarah Steele as daughter Abby, who is not going gently through the teen years; Amanda Peet, as beautiful as ever, as a serial tanner, very brown and very seductive to Platt; and the truly under-appreciated Rebecca Hall, who always gives more than she is asked, and that is usually to play the recessive gene. You might remember her as uptight Vicky to Scarlett Johansson’s lush Cristina and Penelope Cruz’s crazed Maria Elena in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” In “Please Give,” she’s Rebecca, the dutiful granddaughter and the patient sister to Peet’s Mary.

The film takes only a small slice of time in their lives -- just long enough for Mary and Alex to have an affair, Rebecca to fall in love, Kate to fall apart and Abby to grow up, a little -- but it is enough. "Please Give" is a lovely bit of humanity that Holofcener has given us, suffused with humor, irony, love, disappointments and tears -- kind of like life.

-- Betsy Sharkey, film critic

Photo: Catherine Keener. Credit: Peter Kramer / Associated Press

We’re not even 24 hours into Sundance John Cooper-style and you can already hear the banshee wail of disaster that lifted into the snowy night air after “Howl’s” screening Thursday on the festival’s opening night.

It’s the Greek chorus effect, all those voices scrambling over each other to be the first to call for a suppression of the rebellion Cooper promised, and I would argue, delivered with a Mike Tyson gut punch, which left people winded, then windy.

Last year they were chanting that Sundance had become too commercial, had gotten away from its indie roots. So you might think when the festival sets the table with a tough, challenging, artistically experimental film, it would not be hit with a tidal wave of criticism.  But it has been.

Are the Greeks and the banshees right? In a word, no.

In “Howl”, writer/directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have taken on the inherently esoteric task of examining the Allen Ginsberg poem that became a force field of controversy in the country’s ‘50s-era obscenity debates and tried to shape it into a cinematic tale.

Not an easy subject and far from perfect in its execution. But there are moments of soaring brilliance, with an elegant performance by James Franco as Ginsberg that should redefine his career. The filmmakers use an unusual narrative form, circling back through complex passages of Howl again and again as they unravel its meaning, create context.

We hear snatches of the poem in the smoky clubs where Ginsberg first read it, set like music to animation with Franco’s voice-over providing the melody, and again in the courtroom as attorneys – Jon Hamm for the defense, David Strathairn for the prosecution -- battle it out.

There is no small irony in the fact that the discussion on the screen is the same developing off-screen – does Howl/”Howl” have artistic merit? It seems many in the crowd would have agreed with Strathairn, who found Ginsberg’s approach bothersome, tedious. Was this word really necessary? he kept asking.

“Howl” is not easy, and not commercial, but is it necessary? Absolutely. It is a tiny tributary of a movie, far from those churning mainstream waters, and quintessentially so, which seems exactly the creative stream that Sundance in its 26th year is supposed to be fording.

--Betsy Sharkey, film critic

Caption: James Franco in a scene from "Howl." Credit: JoJo Whilden/AP           

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While it's easy to be mesmerized by all the effects and the sheer beauty to be found in Pandora, the altered reality that filmmaker James Cameron has created in the 3-D marvel that is "Avatar," what he's also slipped in is a wonderfully hopeful, old-fashioned romance with its very futuristic couple.

The lovers in question are, of course, Sam Worthington's Jake Sully, the paraplegic Marine who's come to infiltrate the Na'vi people, a lean, long-limbed, bluish race that is disrupting U.S. efforts to strip-mine their exotic tropical paradise into rubble, and Zoe Saldana's Neytiri, a young warrior princess of one of the Na'vi tribes.

Using all the classic romantic tropes, Cameron lays out their story:

* It is not love at first sight -- Think "When Harry Met Sally" but in a galaxy far, far away. Instead of the college coed road trip where the bickering begins, in "Avatar" Jake ruins Neytiri's day when he comes face to face with some of Pandora's wildlife and finds himself in desperate need of rescue; for him, Neytiri, is not exactly his type; he's a fan of blonds, or brunettes, and she's, well, blue for starters

* There is a major obstacle keeping them apart -- In "Sleepless in Seattle" it was the country that separated Tom Hanks' widowed single father not sleeping in Seattle from Meg Ryan's Baltimore-based dreamer, and the fact that they'd never met. Here it is a species thing -- she's Na'vi, he's not. Never has being human been such a problem

* There are other rivals for Neytiri's affection -- For Sandra Bullock in "The Proposal," Ryan Reynolds' old flame was Malin Akerman, the sweetheart he'd known since they were in diapers who still had a piece of his heart. Here, Laz Alonso's Tsy'tey is the blue warrior with a major crush -- really angry about the whole "let's teach Jake our Na'vi ways" assignment that's been handed Neytiri by her father

* Families always complicate things -- Sure there was no blood spilled in "Meet the Parents," "Father of the Bride" or "The In-Laws," but conflict and fireworks? You bet. Still there's nothing like doing damage control with the honey after your Marine buddies (the only family Jake's got left) torch a big swath of Na'vi-land. Just doesn't put a girl in a good mood.

But I guess I should have expected "Avatar" to have a romantic side since Cameron was, after all, the filmmaker who gave us the mushiest romance of our cinematic times in "Titanic." In Cameron's worlds -- yes, I mean worlds -- a kiss is worth a thousand words and at least a couple million more dollars.

-- Betsy Sharkey, Film Critic

Photo: Zoe Saldana's Neytiri and Sam Worthington's Jake Sully in "Avatar." Credit: WETA/20th Century Fox.

The freedom to choose is not only overwhelming -- it's overrated. So don't strain your brain. When it comes to picking the best movies to see each week, let Times critics Kenneth Turan and Betsy Sharkey do the thinking for you. Honestly. We're all better off this way.

KENNETH TURAN: It’s hard to believe, but if Elvis Presley were still alive, Friday would be his 75th birthday. Equally hard to credit is the fact that the King made 31 movies during his time in Hollywood. To celebrate both facts, the American Cinematheque is hosting an Elvis birthday extravaganza Sunday with a 7:30 p.m. double bill at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. First up is “Elvis ’56,” a documentary on the year  Presley went through the roof, followed by one of his most memorable features, 1957’s “Jailhouse Rock.” Francine York," an Elvis costar in “Tickle Me,” is scheduled to make an appearance, and Elvis-related food will be available in the courtyard from 5:30 p.m.

BETSY SHARKEY: If you’re in the mood for a fight of the familial sort, there is no better squabble to be had than the faceoff between Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn at the searing core of 1968’s “The Lion in Winter.” It’s never been lonelier at the top than it is for O’Toole’s Henry II, and the little woman has never loomed larger than Hepburn’s hellcat, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Watching, it’s a wonder the screen doesn’t combust right in front of you. The role would win Hepburn her third lead actress Oscar and earn O’Toole his third lead actor nomination. If it’s King Henry who intrigues you, stick around for the second half of the Egyptian Theatre’s Friday night double bill, “Becket,” with O’Toole’s Henry tangling with Richard Burton and religion. Powerful and potent too, but really nothing beats the wrath of Kate.

For all you Franco-philes out there...

Caught James Franco hosting "Saturday Night Live" over the weekend and it put me in a Sundance frame of mind. Why, you ask? Simple. His movie "Howl" hits on the first day of the film festival, Jan. 21. Franco stars as famed cultural provocateur Allen Ginsberg, whose poem "Howl" was at the center of an obscenity trial years ago.

"Howl's" writer-directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, have long made hot topics and history their mainline as the creative team on 1995's "The Celluloid Closet," about cinema's portrayal of gays, and as the producers of "Sex in '69," a documentary about the sexual revolution, among others.

Now back to "Howl" and the subject of obscenity. Just wondering what the film will be rated...

But until then, here's Franco's monologue from "SNL."

  -- Betsy Sharkey

Photo of James Franco from the trailer for "Pineapple Express" from Columbia Pictures