2009 South by Southwest Film Festival

Schedule is tentative, as usual — and will likely change with festival word-of-mouth, screenings starting late, sleep deprivation, etc. There will be a few reviews at Cinematical, hopefully a couple on this site, and the movies that don’t get full reviews will get some brief comments here.

Seen Pre-Festival:

American Violet (Tim Disney) – C+

The Dungeon Masters (Keven McAlester) – C
A doc about Dungeons & Dragons devotees. Seen last September at Toronto, where I didn’t write anything about it, but as I recall it got wrapped up in the unremarkable lives of its protagonists at the expense of paying attention to its purported subject.

A Film with Me in It (Ian Fitzgibbon) – C+
Also seen at Toronto. A sporadically funny black comedy with overbearing quirkiness and a lovely flair for the well-placed non sequitur competing for dominance. I think the former won, but just by a hair.

Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga) – C+
Full review to come, hopefully, but there’s not much to see here.

Friday, March 13th

I Love You, Man (John Hamburg) – B [Cinematical review]

The Snake (Adam Goldstein & Eric Kutner) – C
Patton Oswalt — not involved with the film, but a fan — introduced this as if it were the second coming. I shall no longer trust Patton Oswalt. A few funny moments, and it’s a relief that the movie’s ultimately a morality play about an asshole learning a lesson rather than just a movie about an inveterate asshole. And I guess I should say that co-writer and co-director Adam Goldstein is also pretty good at playing the said asshole, perfectly smarmy, fake-earnest, and repellent. But even with the suitably “outrageous” premise — jerk is teased (dishonestly) about liking fat chicks; jerk joins a body image support group and puts the moves on a bulimic girl — and 80-minute running time, there’s not enough to hold your attention.

Ong-Bak 2 (Tony Jaa) – B-
I’m afraid that “B-” is as high as I’ll go for something that’s essentially an unadorned, if spectacular, martial arts exhibition. To its credit, Ong-Bak 2 avoids the main pitfall of Ong Bak and The Protector, which both got bogged down in (bad) plot and hokey mysticism. That leaves a non-stop string of action scenes, which are a marvel. Jaa’s acrobatics are incredible, of course, as is (his own) fight choreography, but the camerawork and sparse editing help too: if you’re used to the chopped up mish-mash of Hollywood fight scenes, you’ll be awed by how wide-open and lucid these are. Amazing to watch, but a bit long at nearly two hours. The ending is completely inexplicable, at least to these western eyes and ears. Was he talking to us?

Saturday, March 14th

45365 (Bill Ross & Turner Ross) – C+
I like mundane slice-of-life documentaries — To Be and to Have comes to mind — but this one, a portrait of existence in lower-middle-class Sidney, OH (like a real-life Dillon, TX, for you Friday Night Lights fans), just isn’t very good; too many mournful mood-setting montages, not enough attention to character arcs and stories. Feels like crucial scenes are missing: a son steals pills from his junkie mother and informs her he’s going to go take revenge on a dude who knocks out his front teeth, but we never see it happen (he’s later arrested and we’re left to assume why); a high school girl contemplates breaking up with her boyfriend (he smokes, though so does the other guy she has her eye on) but we never see the outcome. Part of the problem was probably lack of access, which it’s hard to blame documentary filmmakers for — access is hard to get — but I guess that’s what separates the great from the good and the good from the mediocre.

Pulling John (Sevan Matossian & Bessie K. Morris) – B
Like a lot of the docs here, hugely entertaining without being much of a cinematic achievement, though it’s not bad. Having decided to make a doc about professional armwrestling, Matossian and Morris settle on a good focus: John Brzenk, the undisputed king of the sport, having reigned basically unchallenged for decades, is having a harder time mowing down competitors with age, while two up-and-coming armwrestling juggernauts rise through the ranks. There’s a nice clash of personalities, with the kindly, confident Brzenk contrasting the fiery and arrogant Travis Bagent (who still gives Brzenk his due, as does everyone else) and the thoughtful, oddly philosophical (for someone so enormous) Alexey Voyevoda. (Voyevoda, by the way, is an imposing guy, but his crazy rural Russian nationalist family is scarier than he is.) The subject is an interesting curiosity, the movie moves briskly and could have even been longer, and the inevitable “big game” is exciting.

Moon (Duncan Jones) – A-
Intelligent, thought-through science-fiction, brimming with brilliant ideas both conceptual (most of which I can’t really discuss without crucial spoilers) and cinematic: the bait-and-switch with the HAL-like robot (voiced by Kevin Spacey) is a genius move, as is his incomplete anthropomorphization — he looks like a floating X-ray machine, with a LED display that represents his “emotional state” by an emoticon. Exciting and thrillingly smart, broaching tons of moral and ethical questions without shoving them in our faces; looks fantastic on a low budget (wonderfully old-fashioned without turning kitschy), and Sam Rockwell is brilliant. Feels forced in a few spots, in ways I again can’t talk about without giving away too much, but pretty spectacular otherwise.

Troll 2 (Claudio Fragasso, 1990) – No Grade
I was a Troll 2 virgin, and seeing it for the first time in front of an Alamo Drafthouse/SXSW audience can only be described as a religious experience. I laughed so hard I was wiping tears from my eyes, and will be repeating quotes for months to come — and then I’ll probably watch it again. I bought a t-shirt, too. “We need time for some things to happen!”

Sunday, March 15th

The Way We Get By (Aron Gaudet) – B [Cinematical review]

My Suicide (David Lee Miller) – C
Hipster teen angst, sophomoric ruminations on death, and multimedia installation-y maximalism — file under “not my thing.” I might have taken to it better were it more formally consistent: it’s presented as the video project of a teenager who decides to commit suicide on camera, but parts are obviously not the main character’s work, which the movie conveniently ignores. “Quirky” and humorous before abruptly turning maudlin, and it plays a cynical trick in the third act that evaporated what small amount of goodwill I still had. Gabriel Sunday is impressively versatile in the lead role, and Tony Hale shows up for a couple of minutes, but that’s about it.

Modern Love is Automatic (Zach Clark) – C
Yeah whatever: this is why I stay the hell away from the “Narrative Competition” and “Emerging Visions” entries here. Beautiful-but-taciturn lead gets jaded with her existence and decides to become a professional dominatrix, all while speaking maybe a half-dozen lines throughout the 90-minute film. Meanwhile her squirrelly-but-gregarious roommate tries to further her fledgling modeling career by taking a job selling mattresses. Some funny bits, but mostly painful; there’s gotta be a way to convey that your main character is detached without making her catatonic. The whole thing has the sort of insufferable affected “cool” that I can’t stand.

Women in Trouble – C+ (Sebastian Gutierrez)
Alternately hilarious and embarrassing, this series of vignettes collects a spectacular set of actresses and parades them across the screen in their underwear. (No boobs.) A lot of slapstick and occasionally amusing sex talk; sometimes you’ll wonder why you’re watching, but it might ultimately be worth it for a few isolated moments of comic brilliance. (For a movie that the director admits was written and shot totally on a lark, it’s really not bad.) Carla Gugino’s not plausible as a porn superstar — too much class — but it’s great to see her; ditto Adrianne Palicki and Connie Britton. Make sure you stick around after the end credits.

Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi) – A-
I’m going to try to bang out a full review, but this is a thing of beauty.

Monday, March 16th

Best Worst Movie (Michael Stephenson) – B-
Entertaining enough doc about the Troll 2 phenomenon, really only useful after you’ve seen Troll 2. Fun in a “where-are-they-now” kind of way, though the answer occasionally makes you uncomfortable (Margo Prey, a.k.a. “Mom,” has gone crazy and never leaves her house, and she thinks Troll 2 was a masterpiece on a par with Casablanca); the chronicle of the cult phenomenon Troll 2 has inspired, with sold-out screenings popping up all over the country, isn’t interesting for quite as long as the movie thinks it is, and scenes of the cast popping up at conventions where no one cares about Troll 2 aren’t interesting at all. The director of Troll 2, who’s also convinced his film is a misunderstood masterpiece, is almost as funny as Troll 2 itself. (“I work with these dog actors, these actor dogs…”) If you’re a Troll 2 acolyte, you might as well.

The Slammin’ Salmon (Kevin Heffernan) – A- [Cinematical review]


Observe and Report (Jody Hill) – B
Plays like so much self-conscious fucking around for a while, with Rogen doing a more vulgar version of his usual shtick, but eventually becomes a compellingly bizarre anti-hero’s journey. Best part is that though the protagonist is kind of a repulsive individual (though, crucially, never unpleasant to watch), the movie is ultimately inspirational: live your life with ludicrous self-confidence, it tells us, and you’ll turn out okay even if the confidence isn’t justified. Rogen gets off the best joke of the festival early on (“Okay: I’m standing here with this doctor…”), and the climactic showdown is beautiful: hilarious and exciting, endowing Rogen with a totally singular mix of physical grace and chubby-guy awkwardness.

Lesbian Vampire Killers (Phil Claydon) – B-
Not much to say here, except that this is perfectly tolerable, and worthwhile if you’re a fan of droll British comedy. There are bursts of inspiration — the vampires emphatically insisting that they are lesbians; a character sinisterly peeking out of the darkness to offer amiable agreement instead of the expected menace — and the two principals (James Corden and Mathew Horne of the apparently popular BBC series Gavin and Stacey) are fun, though combined they make up a poor man’s Simon Pegg. The action’s perfunctory, but the movie doesn’t belabor it, and keeps momentum. Nothing extraordinary or even notable, but short, breezy, and moderately fun.

Tuesday, March 17th

New World Order (Luke Meyer & Andrew Neel) – B+ [Cinematical review on the way]

Objectified (Gary Hustwit) – C
Everyone wanted to see this as Hustwit’s follow-up to his computer-font documentary Helvetica and I went along despite the fact that the subject matter — industrial design — holds no appeal for me. I was totally right; the movie looks great, and is moderately interesting when it addresses specifics (an Apple designer discussing the decision process behind the design of certain Apple products; a BMW engineer talking about high-end cars), but when the talking heads started blathering vaguely about design in the abstract, I lost all interest. Beautifully edited and shot — Hustwit has a flair for montage — but boring is boring. Helvetica acolytes: is that one any different?

Four Boxes (Wyatt McDill) – C-
I hit the wall during one movie at every festival, and this was it, so take the grade with a grain of salt. What I do remember is a glib and impossibly contrived meta-trick movie, with a ridiculous, heavy-handed “ironic” twist ending. All together now: Stay away from the Narrative Competition and Emerging Visions categories at SXSW.


Trust Us, This is All Made Up (Alex Karpovsky) – B+
As an improv fan, I am heavily biased in favor of this, so others may not get as much out of what is essentially an improv concert film. But take it from someone who has both seen and performed a lot of improv: these guys are incredible — supernatural. When they started playing each other’s characters, my head exploded. Nothing spectacular cinematically, though making improv work on tape is no mean feat, and the bookend sections are wistful and sweet. But TJ and Dave themselves are amazing; I know what I’m doing next time I’m in NYC.

Grace (Paul Solet) – B
Holy shit, a horror movie that’s about something — in this case, the rarely broached subject of the way that having kids can fuck people up. Can be read as a takedown of hippie granola liberal lesbians, and in this sense this is an oddly conservative film, hung up on the hypocrisy of people who obsess over their bullshit “natural” lifestyle (midwifery, soy milk, “free range” meat) but have no qualms about, say, hardcore infertility treatment. You can’t have it both ways, bitches! The zombie baby concept is actually nicely underplayed, and scarier for it. I don’t think much of the second and third acts is very psychologically credible, but the movie is consistently creepy (and, I should add, deeply unpleasant), thoughtful, even challenging.

Wednesday, March 18th

Afterschool (Antonio Campos) – B+
I won’t go as ga-ga as some, mostly because I’m not so impressed with Campos’s alleged formal prowess; one of his themes is the YouTube aesthetic, and I understand the notion of that bleeding into the movie proper, but I’m not sure his strategy of randomly placing the camera and letting people wander in and out of the shot is very productive in that regard. That said, this is a potent, and deeply disturbing, exploration of the chasm between the generation that’s currently coming into its own and its predecessors, suggesting that the cultural and technological divide is vast and intractable (and has terrifying moral implications). Difficult stuff, and not for the faint of heart, but rewarding; subtle, thought-through, frightening.

Winnebago Man (Ben Steinbauer) – B
I can see an argument that internet memes should remain internet memes. But this project, in which Steinbauer tracked down the dude behind the hilariously angry and profane Winnebago commercial outtakes, is so gasp-for-breath funny, that it’s easy to forget the disturbing notion that internet fads are now inspiring feature films. Turns out that Jack Rebney has gone mildly crazy, and now lives on a mountain and rails against Dick Cheney — not that interesting in itself, but the way Steinbauer gently brings him out of his shell is quite sweet, and Rebney’s continued propensity toward cuss-filled diatribes is absolutely hysterical. “Fuck you, Buddha!” I only laughed harder at Troll 2.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi) – B
Just about as charming and touching as everyone says, even though I never have and never will enjoy the type of heavy metal that the boys from Anvil peddle. They’re posterboys for Following Your Dreams, though you gotta figure their dreams in this case are a bit quixotic — at one point they meet with an EMI exec who gently points out that no one is really listening to this kind of music anymore (except, apparently, in Japan). “Lips” is such a unique individual that it’s a pleasure to spend 80 minutes with him; a few moments are heart-stopping (a confrontation with a club owner who refuses to pay) and a few are very funny. In the end, feels incomplete and inconclusive; what happens at the end is passed off as more of a triumph than I think it actually is. The very last shot is classic.

©2009 Eugene Novikov

-- Eugene Novikov

Released:	2009
Rated:	UR