Azazel Jacobs first came to Sundance in 2008 and his film "Momma's Man" became one of the hits of the festival with its uncanny blend of the personal and the fictional. With "Terri," directed by Jacobs from a screenplay by Patrick De Witt and playing as part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition, Jacobs seems to be making a conscious bid for more mainstream acceptance, while still working entirely on his own terms.

Funny and strange, the film tells the story of an oversized teenager named Terri (Jacob Wysocki, in his feature film debut) who lives with his aging uncle (Creed Bratton). Having taken to wearing pajamas to school and all but giving up on the idea of a social life, Terri is taken under the wing of his eccentric vice-principal (John C. Reilly). Suddenly, and largely without meaning to, Terri finds himself with a sidekick best-friend (Bridger Zadina) and the interest of a girl (Olivia Crocicchia).

Following Thursday afternoon's screening to a jampacked Eccles Theater, there were huge bursts of appaulse for Jacobs, Wysocki and Crocicchia as they all took the stage with three of the film's producers. It is not unfair (and meant in a complimentary way) to say "Terri" is among the nicest films at Sundance, the most attuned to making the best of a bad situation and finding what's good-hearted in everyone. As Riley's character says at one moment by way of dispensing advice, "Life's a mess, dude."

I snagged a few moments alone with Jacobs as he walked down a long corridor alongside the theater just after the post-screening Q&A, enough time for a couple of questions about his sidelong take on the teen picture.

"I think inherently the story Pat gave me was a familiar story, and I wanted to respond to these movies that helped shape me just as much as other independent or abstract work," Jacobs said of the film's more accessible sensibility. Along the way he mentioned the films of John Hughes, "The Chocolate War," "Clueless" and the recent indie "Afterschool" as ones he looked at for inspiration and said he and Wysocki specifically watched Hal Ashby's "Being There" and Joseph Losey's "The Servant" with regard to tone.

"I felt that if I did this film from my point of view there could be something different than what we'd seen," he added. "And I still wanted to be part of that conversation."

Though he didn't write the script himself, Jacobs said he feels it comes from his sensibility.

"I had planned to co-write it and the pages were coming, like every five or six pages," Jacobs said, "and then I realized he didn't need any of my help. In a weird way, even though I didn't write it, because they were coming in bits and pieces I would help with editing and shaping and doing whatever I could. Pretty much every other day I'd get something, so instead of physically doing it, it still felt like something that was growing inside me."

-- Mark Olsen in Park City, Utah

Scene from "Terri." Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival’s "Short Program I" had no shortage of visceral kidney punches and visual shockers for the jam-packed audience at the Library Theater in Park City, Utah, on Thursday night.

Director Ariel Kleiman’s “Deeper Than Yesterday” provoked deep unease depicting the rage that lurks beneath man’s civility –- or at least the simmering hostility manifest in pasty-faced mariners deep beneath the ocean’s surface in a Russian submarine. “The Terrys” (directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Warheim) presents an extreme slice of White Trash excess (“ice” gets smoked, Zubaz pants are worn, a surprise pregnancy results in a not-quite normal baby). And “The External World” (directed by David O’Reilly) shows us a video game universe where Japanimation characters find themselves in disquieting –- but nonetheless hilarious -- predicaments that play up an almost shockingly complete list of comedic taboos: pedophilia, genocide, spontaneous combustion and gratuitous pooping.

But the short movie that a large contingent of the opening night showing had come specifically to see was “Fight for Your Right Revisited,” directed by an individual named Adam Yauch. That would be the guy better known as MCA from the seminal hip-hop trio the Beastie Boys.

Yauch’s aliases are myriad. He sometimes goes by an alter ego named Nathaniel Hornblower to direct short films and movies such as “Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot” and “Awesome I … Shot That.” And at the Indie movie distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories, he goes by the title chief executive.

Yauch directed the 20-minute movie as a kind of bizarro companion piece to the Beasties’ smash 1986 frat boy anthem “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party).”  The film follows actors impersonating the group in period-perfect costumes in the denouement to the wild party (where pies are thrown, Spanish Fly is dumped in punch and a TV is famously sledge-hammered) depicted in the video.

But not just any actors. Seth Rogen portrays the Beasties’ Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Elijah Wood embodies Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and a trash-talking Danny McBride channels '80s-era Yauch via four-day growth of beard and sleazy leather jacket.

The trio rob a bodega, spray beer all over passersby on a New York-esque (read: Hollywood movie studio backlot) street and generally raise havoc wherever they go, terrorizing a Who’s Who of movie bigshots in the process: Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson and Will Arnett among them -- but also Kirsten Dunst, Rashida Jones and Orlando Bloom (wearing a vintage Def Jam jacket in homage to the group's former record label). But the Beastie party mayhem doesn’t stop there. The “Beasties” are picked up by “metal chicks” portrayed by Chloe Sevigny and Maya Rudolph with whom they ingest whippets and drop liquid acid.

Until now, Ed Helms has largely been an endearing but supporting character on both the small and big screens: as a correspondent on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," as the whipped boyfriend in "The Hangover," as a sweet but slightly pathetic salesman on "The Office."

But Helms finally gets his turn as a leading man in February's "Cedar Rapids," in which he again plays what's becoming his stock-in-trade character of the lovable loser.

In the newly-released trailer for Miguel Arteta's film, we meet Helms' character Tim Lippe, an up-the-middle, uptight Midwestern insurance agent whose company sends him to a convention in Cedar Rapids. There he meets a group of agents with a penchant for partying (played by John C. Reilly, Anne Heche and Isiah Whitlock Jr.).

The movie, which will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, seeks to augur a comeback for Arteta ("The Good Girl") after his ambivalently received "Youth In Revolt" this year.

In a way, Arteta's new film almost seems like an indie version of "The Hangover," except that the cast of zany characters here seems more square. (Helms' character is the kind of person who finds that the car he’s rented is a run-of-the-mill Chevy and seems genuinely tickled.)

The movie hinges on the idea that Tim attends the conference as a last-ditch effort to save his struggling company. Instead, he becomes distracted by his new wild cohorts and a budding romance with Heche’s character. The stakes don’t seem all that high, but there appear to be plenty of enjoyable moments.

While Reilly is as amusingly over-the-top as he was in "Step Brothers," it's Helms who shines. He's reprising the entertaining role of naive goofball , and, fortunately, this time we're getting a lot more of him.

Will 'Cedar Rapids' prove Ed Helms is leading man material?Market Research

--Amy Kaufman

Twitter.com/AmyKinLA

RECENT AND RELATED:

'Water for Elephants': Can Robert Pattinson perform under the big top? [trailer]

From a black swan, a tree grows

Preview review: Girls just wanna have fun in 'Friends With Benefits' and 'No Strings Attached.' Or do they?

Photo: Ed Helms, far right, stars in "Cedar Rapids." Credit: Fox Searchlight.

You know it's award season when the multiplexes start to brim with quality offerings for avid moviegoers. With more and more Oscar-bait films lining up for their theatrical runs in the coming weeks, let's not forget some of the great fare from earlier in the year that's just as deserving of acclaim. Here are 10 of our critics' favorites -- some of which are still playing on the big screen -- to mark the date 10/10/10.

"Animal Kingdom:" The impressive debut of Australian writer-director David Michod manages to be both laconic and operatic. Faultlessly acted by top Australian talent, including Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver, "Animal Kingdom" marries heightened emotionality with cool contemporary style to illustrate one of the oldest of genre truths: "Crooks always come undone, always, one way or another." Michod and his team use all the tools at a filmmaker's disposal to create a disturbing, malignant atmosphere in which every pause is pregnant with menace and every word could cost you your life. -- Kenneth Turan

"Cyrus:" A comedy of discomfort that walks a wonderful line between reality-based emotional honesty and engaging humor, this film demonstrates the good things that happen when the quirky independent style of the Duplass brothers combines with the acting skill of John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill. -- Kenneth Turan

It's already been a big summer for Jonah Hill, the 26-year-old funnyman whose face has been plastered on "Get Him to the Greek" posters across town for the last few weeks. In that film, he plays the sympathetic dweeb role that audiences have come to associate with him since 2007's "Superbad."

But at the L.A. Film Festival over the weekend, where Hill's latest film -- the squirm-comedy "Cyrus" -- was premiering, the actor showed off another side, as he played the unlikable, socially inept title character, a 21-year-old with an uncomfortably close relationship with his mother (Marisa Tomei). He's still a dweeb, but he's a lot less sympathetic.

"I've always thought I'd like to do something dramatic, and I have that element in my taste and just what I like in movies," Hill told us on the red carpet Friday. "I didn't see any of myself in [Cyrus], thank God." 

As for the actor's relationship with his mom?

"She's wonderful; I love her," he said, looking into the camera. "Hi, Mom. I love you."

More video interviews from the red carpet with stars Tomei, John C. Reilly and directors Mark and Jay Duplass, after the jump.