Sundance premieres: Linklater, 'Stoker' and Ashton Kutcher's Steve Jobs

Sundance premieres: Linklater, ‘Stoker’ and Ashton Kutcher’s Steve Jobs

By Steven Zeitchik

Dec. 3, 2012 12 AM PT

The final installment in Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy, Chan-wook Park’s English-language debut and Ashton Kutcher’s Steve Jobs portrayal all will be unveiled at Sundance -- and did we mention documentaries about Jeremy Lin and Dick Cheney?

Festival organizers on Monday announced this year’s narrative and documentary premieres, a total of 29 films that will play out of competition as they make their world premieres.

Highlights on the narrative list include Linklater’s “Before Midnight,” in which Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their signature lovelorn roles as Jesse and Celine, this time as angsty 40-somethings. Park’s “Stoker,” meanwhile, is a Gothic tale starring Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska and will premiere at the festival before its March 1 release from Fox Searchlight.

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And Kutcher’s “Jobs” follows the “Punk’d” impresario as he incarnates several decades in the life of the Apple founder. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern and shot earlier this year, the movie will fill the festival’s closing-night slot.

The documentaries showcase an array of subjects: Sundance veteran R.J. Cutler (“The September Issue”) and George Finton investigate George W. Bush’s polarizing vice president in “The World According to Dick Cheney,” while Evan Leong’s buzzed-about documentary about Lin’s back story, “Linsanity,” will also premiere at the festival.

Other famous figures to get the Sundance documentary treatment include Anita Hill (“Anita”), the Eagles (“History of the Eagles”) and Mariel Hemingway (Barbara Kopple’s “Running From Crazy”).

Alex Gibney’s Wikileaks movie, “We Steal Secrets,” and the directorial debut of Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl, “Sound City,” will also be unwrapped at the festival, which runs Jan. 17-27 in Park City, Utah. Programming director Trevor Groth said the premieres offer “compelling portraits of worlds and people ranging from the beloved to the misunderstood to the unknown.” The festival’s competition slate was announced last week, with half the dramatic field coming from female directors. (A full list of films can be found here.)

Elsewhere on the narrative side, notables include “Breathe In,” Drake Doremus’ follow-up to his 2011 Sundance sensation “Like Crazy.” His new work stars that film’s breakout star Felicity Jones and centers on a complicated romance.

Also stoking the curiosity factor is Joseph Gordon Levitt’s feature directing debut, “Don Jon’s Addiction,” in which he plays a Lothario looking to atone for his sins, and Shia LaBeouf’s “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman,” which sees the Witwickian one get into a dark love triangle with a Romanian hottie. Also, Rupert Grint is in it.

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And in a take-from-it-what-you-will turn, the premieres section will include several films about the world of adult content, including “Michael Winterbottom’s “The Look of Love,” about adult-magazine publisher Paul Raymond, and “Lovelace,” in which Amanda Seyfried stars as the pioneering porn star.

ALSO:

Linsanity the movie?

Before Midnight will look at Hawke and Delpy all grown up

Sundance Film Festival: Female helmers take dramatic step forward

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