I’ve seen quite a few movies at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival over the past week, but one of the few that has stuck with me most is writer/director Drake Doremus’ devastating family drama Breathe In.  Doremus made a splash here at Sundance a couple of years ago with the debut of his young love story Like Crazy, and Breathe In marks a major leap forward for the filmmaker in every way.  The story centers on a New England couple with a high school senior daughter that decides to take in a foreign exchange student from the U.K. for the semester.  As the story progresses, the young girl (Felicity Jones) and the father (Guy Pearce, playing a music teacher) are drawn to each other, creating a rift that builds throughout the film with the kind of tense slow burn that you expect from a well-made thriller.  It’s a heartbreaking story with incredible performances (read my full review right here), and it’s definitely one you need to take the time to see once it hits theaters.

A few days ago, I had the chance to sit down with Doremus in Park City for an extended interview about Breathe In.  He talked about his goal of making something really different from Like Crazy, his atypical directorial process of having his actors improvise all the dialogue, landing Guy Pearce as his lead, his next project (a futuristic sci-fi romance story), and more.  Read on after the jump.

The family drama genre is one that’s very easy to get wrong, and it’s rare to find a film of this kind that is genuinely moving without feeling overly manipulative or sappy.  Writer/director Drake Doremus took the Sundance Film Festival by storm in 2011 with his young love drama Like Crazy, and he returns in 2013 with an intimate take on the family drama genre that marks a major step forward for the filmmaker.  In chronicling the story of a foreign exchange student who causes a deep and devastating rift in a close-knit upstate New York family, Doremus’ Breathe In completely wraps the viewer up in the emotions of its characters and doesn’t let go for 98 captivating, intense, and ultimately heartbreaking minutes.

Today, Sundance announced their stellar Premieres line-up and we have the first images from a few of the movies playing in the category:

• Big Sur – Written and directed by Michael Polish, starring Jean-Marc Barr, Kate Bosworth, Josh Lucas, Radha Mitchell, Anthony Edwards, and Henry Thomas.

• Breathe In – Written and directed by Drake Doremus, co-written by Ben York Jones, starring Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Amy Ryan, and Mackenzie Davis.

• The East – Written and directed by Zal Batmanglij, co-written by Brit Marling, starring Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgård, Ellen Page, and Patricia Clarkson.

• jOBS – Directed by Joshua Michael Stern, written by Matt Whiteley, starring Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons, and Matthew Modine.

Hit the jump for the images and synopses.  The 2013 Sundance Film Festival runs January 17 – 27.

The digital age (ie. the reign of the Internets) has proved to be both beneficial and detrimental to the art of filmmaking.  Though it’s easy to run down the list of negatives, the dawn of “crowd-sourcing” and the abundance of amateur filmmaking via YouTube have been significant—and pretty damn cool—developments.  Like Crazy director Drake Doremus has teamed up with Topher Grace, Mary-Elizabeth Winstead, Intel and Toshiba for an ambitious crowd-sourced film called The Beauty Inside.  Hit the jump for more details and a trailer, including how you can land the starring role.

In films as wide-ranging and diverse as Memento, L.A. Confidential, The Hurt Locker, Animal Kingdom, The King’s Speech, and most recently, Mildred Pierce, Guy Pearce has brought many complex characters to life in compelling roles. In his latest movie, the futuristic action thriller Lockout, he turns in another riveting performance as Agent Snow, a cynical, sarcastic guy with a scathing sense of humor who is tasked with the dangerous assignment of rescuing the daughter of the U.S. President when her humanitarian mission is derailed by an intergalactic prison break.

We sat down with Pearce at a roundtable interview to talk about what inspired him to play a serious, badass action hero that’s so completely different from his usual roles.  He told us what attracted him to the character of Snow, how he got in shape for the physically demanding role, and why he enjoyed shooting on location in Belgrade, Serbia.  He also talked about his lifelong passion for music and songwriting, the possibility of a Lockout sequel, and his upcoming projects including Prometheus, John Hillcoat’s Lawless (formerly known as The Wettest County) and an untitled Drake Doremus project.

[This is a re-print of my review from the 2011 Sundance Film Festival]

We should be able to relate to movies on an emotional level, but that connection shouldn’t be contingent solely on an individual’s personal experience. Like Crazy works, but only in a manipulative fashion that preys on the viewer’s nostalgia of young love. While lead actors Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones give solid performances, the love between their characters is left as vague as possible so that the viewer can project their own feelings onto the picture. If thoughts of your first love make your heart skip a beat, Like Crazy will likely send you reeling. If, however, you’re like me and aren’t impressed by watching other people deal with their relationship issues, Like Crazy will leave you cold.

Some movies are able to make you feel like what you’re watching is real.  On the other hand, there are plenty of movies that really want to make you feel something, but as you watch the events unfold, everything looks phony and all you see are actors delivering their lines.  Which brings me to director Drake Doremus’s Like Crazy.  Led by fantastic performances from  Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones, Like Crazy absolutely captures what young love is all about and what it will make you do when you love someone with your soul.  While Matt wasn’t enamored with Like Crazy when he saw it at Sundance, I’ll admit to being charmed by its honest and real take on love and I completely bought into the relationships and the heartache Doremus captured on screen.

Anyway, at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, I sat down with Doremus for an extended interview.  During our wide ranging conversation, Doremus talked about how he made Like Crazy, including the unique process of having the actors improvise all of their dialogue in every single scene.  He also talked about the way they filmed the movie, the rehearsals, and so much more.  In addition, he talked about his next untitled film, which he’s already shot, and said that it’s the story of an older man and a younger woman finding love at the wrong time. His new film stars Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Amy Ryan, and Kyle MacLachlan.  Hit the jump for more.

We’ve got a couple of casting stories for you this evening. First up, Adam Scott is set to star in the indie comedy A.C.O.D. Deadline reports that Stuart Zicherman is making his directorial debut on the project, which he co-wrote with Ben Carlin (The Daily Show). The titular acronym stands for “Adult Children of Divorce,” and the film centers on a thirty-ish man whose parents split bitterly. Scott plays the lead who is forced to play the adult and get his parents back together, all while dealing with his brother who unexpectedly gets married. Scott steals scenes in pretty much every film he appears in, so it’s nice to see him get a leading role. Filming will begin next March, and Scott will work the schedule around filming on NBC’s stellar comedy Parks and Recreation.

Hit the jump for the casting of Matthew Daddario and Elise Eberle in Drake Doremus’ follow-up to Like Crazy.

Drake Doremus has spent the last couple years building capital at Sundance, with Douchebag in 2010 and Like Crazy in 2011.  Like Crazy was the breakout hit of the festival–even before it won the Grand Jury Prize, Paramount picked up the romantic drama right after the premiere for an October release.  Doremus has parlayed the buzz into two new features: an adaptation of the sci-fi romance novel Through to You and an untitled drama.  The untitled project is up first with an impressive cast in tow.  Guy Pearce stars as a high school teacher who is tempted to cheat on his wife (Amy Ryan) with one of his students (played by Like Crazy star Felicity Jones).  Variety reports two more have joined the cast.  Newcomer Mackenzie Davis will maker her feature debut as Pearce and Ryan’s daughter.  Nico Tortorella (Scream 4) will play a swim team jock/misogynist who sleeps around.

I haven’t seen a frame shot by Doremus, but I will always root for a fresh young voice in the filmmaking community.  Doremus is working on both this script and the adaptation of Through to You with his Like Crazy writing partner Ben York Jones.  I think of that as a promising sign unless you, like Matt, didn’t fall head over heels for Like Crazy.

The gentlemen responsible for this year’s Sundance hit Like Crazy are joining forces with Paramount Pictures (specifically, their Montecito Picture Co. arm) once again to adapt Emily Hainsworth’s forthcoming science fiction romance novel Through to You. According to 24 Frames, while their deals are still being negotiated, Drake Doremus will helm the youth-skewing property, with Ben York Jones writing, and Jonathan Schwartz producing. Per the report, Hainsworth’s novel focuses on a grief-stricken teen who “discovers a parallel world in which his girlfriend is still alive.” It is due out on book shelves in 2012.

The trio’s aforementioned film, Like Crazy, will be released by Paramount later this year. Starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones, the nostalgic trip down teen romance lane garnered Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) and a Special Jury Prize for Jones. Awards and recognition aside, as he expresses in his review, Matt was less than impressed with his Sundance screening of the film.

We should be able to relate to movies on an emotional level, but that connection shouldn’t be contingent solely on an individual’s personal experience.  Like Crazy works, but only in a manipulative fashion that preys on the viewer’s nostalgia of young love.  While lead actors Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones give solid performances, the love between their characters is left as vague as possible so that the viewer can project their own feelings onto the picture.  If thoughts of your first love make your heart skip a beat, Like Crazy will likely send you reeling.  If, however, you’re like me and aren’t impressed by watching other people deal with their relationship issues, Like Crazy will leave you cold.

Continuing our coverage of images from films that will be featured at January’s Sundance Film Festival, we bring you images from two of the higher profile dramas that will be screened in-competition at the festival: The Ledge and Like Crazy. The Ledge stars Liv Tyler, Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Patrick Wilson, and Terrence Howard. The film centers on a man (Hunnam) threatening to jump from the ledge of a building by noon, and the people down below who are trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on.

Like Crazy tells the story of a long distance relationship between a young American guy and a young British girl. The film features Anton Yelchin (Star Trek), Felicity Jones (The Tempest), and Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone).  Hit the jump to check out images and a brief synopsis for each films. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 20 -30th.