Two great actresses, but only one good movie

Early on in Joe Carnahan's gritty survival tale The Grey, there's a moment that's so serenely peaceful, I almost didn't want it to end, especially knowing what was to come. The scene in question takes place aboard a chartered plane that's flying a crew of oil company grunts to a drilling station in the far reaches of Alaska. Before the aircraft lifted off into the friendly skies, the guys were laughing, talking and busting each other's chops, as if they were in a locker room instead of a mid-size jet. Now that the plane's at cruising altitude though, they're all nabbing some much-needed shuteye. The cabin lights are dimmed, tray tables are up and in a locked position and the passengers are quietly slumbering, their breath misting in the chilled air. It's a beautifully evocative moment -- perhaps the best single scene Carnahan has ever staged -- one that immediately establishes an aura of calm and safety.

If you only know Joe Carnahan as the director of high-octane action movies like Smokin' Aces and The A-Team, his latest film The Grey, which opens in theaters on Friday, may come as a surprise. This spare, stripped-down survival tale follows a small band of men whose plane crashes deep in the Alaskan wilderness and are forced to battle the elements -- from the harsh weather to hungry wolves -- in order to make it back to civilization. Liam Neeson plays the crew's self-appointed leader, Ottway, who is still carrying the emotional scars caused by the recent passing of his beloved wife. More in the spirit of Grizzly Man than an uplifting man vs. nature story like Alive, The Grey was Carnahan's most challenging shoot, but it resulted in one of his most fully-realized movies. The director spoke with TWoP during a recent trip to New York.

In which The Chronicles of Sundance comes to an end.

The continuing adventure of one critic's first trip to the Sundance Film Festival....

Like most movie lovers of a certain age (i.e. the '90s generation), the name "Sundance" first popped up on my radar in 1992 when a little movie called Reservoir Dogs blew the doors off Robert Redford's quiet little independent film festival nestled in the mountain town of Park City, Utah. (Yes, sex, lies and videotape was technically the film that put Sundance on the map in 1989, but Dogs was my personal gateway into indie film.) Reading all the hype about Quentin Tarantino's debut feature made me want to do two things: 1.) Watch Reservoir Dogs as soon as possible, and 2.) Go to Sundance myself. Accomplishing the first task was relatively easy once the movie hit VHS (remember that?); the second took another two decades. But 20 years after Reservoir Dogs first screened, I finally made the trek to Park City, Utah for a whirlwind three day Sundance experience. In those 72 hours, I managed to see 12 movies, spoke with a number of great people and experienced both extremes of Park City's weather, from blinding snowstorms to beautiful big blue skies. Here's how things went down:

Why is this man smiling?

I ain't afraid of no ghosts. Except in the Paranormal Activity movies.

The Oscar nominations are announced tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can register your own opinion on the best and worst of the past year in film via The Movie Without Pity Awards.

When you're dealing with a filmmaker who has had as lengthy and deliberately varied a career as Steven Soderbergh, singling out one movie to label his absolute best can be a tricky proposition. But a strong case could be made for The Limey, the 1999 thriller he made with screenwriter Lem Dobbs and star Terrence Stamp. Aside from being a terrific film, The Limey is perhaps -- out of all the entries in his filmography -- the most representative of Soderbergh's formal and narrative interests, from the way it fractures its narrative to its dry sense of humor to the morally compromised anti-hero at its center. Made right after the director's big studio breakthrough, Out of Sight, The Limey may be a less jazzy film, but it's far richer in terms of its story. One gives you a great ride, the other lingers in your memory.