By Josh Dickey and Lucas Shaw
TheWrap
Kristen Stewart‘s return to Sundance with “Camp X-Ray” was looking like a success — at least initially — as festivalgoers began to tweet positive things about her starring turn in the Guantanamo Bay drama that premiered midday Friday to a partial standing ovation at the cavernous Eccles Theater in Park City.
“I think Kristen Stewart thrives in realistic material. She’s recognizable, human in Camp X-ray. Movie demanded it,” tweeted freelance film reporter and reviewer Matt Patches.
Photos: Stars at the Sundance Film Festival
The film, written by first-time feature director Peter Sattler, follows Amy (Stewart), a solider who’s assigned to prison guard duty at Guantanamo Bay, where she befriends an inmate (played by “A Separation” star Payman Maadi. Sattler has said that Stewart had a lot of input on the character and script, which was shot at a juvenile prison outside of Los Angeles.
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“Camp X-Ray” is in U.S. competition in Park City, where Stewart flew in from Los Angeles on Thursday to attend the premiere. But K-Stew is no Sundance newbie: She came to Park City in 2010 for the premiere of “The Runaways,” in which she played rocker Joan Jett, and has attended other years without a film in competition.
Stewart’s post “Twilight” career has been mixed; her performance as the moody Marylou in Walter Salles’ “On the Road” was generally well-received, but her Blockbuster followup “Snow White in the Huntsman” was less so: TheWrap critic Alonso Duralde wrote that “Even swaddled in armor and chain mail, it’s hard to imagine this blank-faced debutante stirring an army to follow her to Forever 21, much less to battle against a powerful necromancer.”
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