SXSW 2011

Same as it ever was: capsules and links to reviews will hopefully appear here as the week goes on. The schedule is extremely subject — virtually certain — to change. This is my longest trip to SXSW in my five years of attendance, so who knows how exhaustion will affect me. At the very least, I’m sure I won’t be able to stand the sight of Alamo Drafthouse appetizers by the end.

Watching grim documentaries about death row inmates while slurping on a strawberry milkshake with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles will never get old, though.

Pre-Festival

The First Movie (Mark Cousins) D+
Wretchedly pretentious, phony, insufferable documentary about a dude who goes to Iraq and discovers that Iraqi children are, like, human and stuff. Saw it at Telluride and have mostly expunged it from memory.

Wasted on the Young (Ben C. Lucas) B [Drive-by review here]

Friday, March 11

Source Code (Duncan Jones) B+ [review]

Sound of My Voice (Zal Batmanglij) A
I’m not ready to write about this one at length just yet, which is just as well since the less said about it the better for those who haven’t yet seen it (which is most everyone). Suffice it to say that it is a staggering work of genre wizardry, perfectly encapsulating a certain cracked religious mentality while keeping an open mind to the possibility that said mentality may actually be onto something, contrary to the dictates of logic and better judgment. It’s beautifully done as a mystery-thriller, too, with towering performances from character actor Christopher Denham and beautiful indie ingenue Brit Marling, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Insidious (James Wan) B+ [review]

Saturday, March 12

Better This World (Katie Galloway & Kelly Duane de la Vega) B
Riveting doc about two kids from Austin who were railroaded into lengthy prison sentences by the feds for allegedly planning to throw Molotov cocktails at police during the RNC protests in 2008. Starts off seemingly political (“those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” reads a title card superimposed over footage of the near-rioting at the convention), but doesn’t head in that direction, perhaps because its subjects didn’t have much in the way of politics beyond discontent and a vaguely revolutionary bent; instead, it just tells their story in straightforward Frontline style, raising vital questions about the FBI’s increasingly aggressive use of informants and the catch-22’s inherent in our plea-bargaining system. A bit squirrelly in places (I’m skeptical that some of the late-film conversations actually happened on the spot, as depicted), but well-done and important.

Terri (Azazel Jacobs) Walk Out
Ran off with roughly 20 minutes to go; not intolerable by any means, but earnest and precious and undistinguished and not doing a lot for me (plus it started late and I had to run to catch Fightville). John C. Reilly gets a lot of mileage out of shouting random dialogue at the top of his lungs (“Cool Breeze Club! Members only!”) but otherwise meh.

Fightville (Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein) A- [Cinematical review forthcoming]

The Innkeepers (Ti West) B-
My infatuation with West’s The House of the Devil, 2009’s supreme slow-burner and Rosemary’s Baby homage, made this perhaps my most anticipated film of the festival, and as usual the expectations didn’t help. The Innkeepers is a different animal: a loose, archly amusing little ghost story that doesn’t even try to replicate House’s paralyzing terror. It’s reasonably funny, filled with charmingly personal little touches (I loved the little ongoing competition to ring the desk bell, about which not a word is ever spoken), and the two stars, Pat Healy and Sarah Paxton are terrific. (Paxton, in particular, comes out of nowhere as a gifted physical comedienne; watch for her priceless little ballet with a heavy trashbag.) There’s also the pleasure of seeing George Riddle, a.k.a. The Onion’s Joad Cressbeckler, show up briefly playing a very, very old man. But the movie ultimately doesn’t amount to much – it’s kind of shapeless, and the last half hour is spent waiting for an explanatory revelation that never comes.

Attack the Block (Joe Cornish) B+
What this is is a really amped up and fun English monster movie, with great young leads (picked from the streets of South London), brilliantly simple creature design, and none-too-subtle but effective subtext, viz. racist and maliciously skewed public perceptions of inner city realities. Contrary to the orgasmic buzz hereabouts, this isn’t the second coming, but it’s fast, clever, funny, with a great pulsating musical score.

Sunday, March 13

Natural Selection (Robbie Pickering) D
No point in slagging on a Narrative Competition misfire that no one will ever see, but this is a typical “quirky” indie bearing no relationship to any sort of reality I’m familiar with. NEXT!

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (Rodman Flender) B
Fly-on-the-wall documentary about Conan O’Brien’s “Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television” tour, which came together after he was unceremoniously ejected from his 11:30 Tonight Show slot. Formally unremarkable, but well-edited and candid; it’s impossible to walk away from it without being in awe of O’Brien’s talent, intelligence, tireless stamina, and grace. There is a great Anne Frank joke (!), and an amazing scene that involves one of O’Brien’s young fans busting out a racial slur while asking him for a favor.

Detention (Joseph Kahn) C-
Kind of like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World if it had been written by Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg of Date/Epic/Disaster Movie fame. Not quite as bad, of course — if nothing else, this is certainly a movie, not a disease — but it similarly believes that making a pop culture reference is the equivalent of making a joke. (After a few minutes, I started keeping a list of all the random pop culture references that this movie sent flying, and had trouble keeping track, though I did note Freejack, On Deadly Ground and Pitchfork Magazine.) Frenetic, largely unfunny, hyperactive comedy-horror from the director of Torque, which is also referenced, natch.

Hesher (Spencer Susser) B [review]

Monday, March 14

The Dish & the Spoon (Alison Bagnall) B- [Cinematical review]

Another Earth (Mike Cahill) C
I love the notion of an ordinary drama set against a spare sci-fi backdrop, but this movie is not doing it right. The sci-fi conceit, involving the discovery of a parallel Earth that, apparently, was hiding “behind the sun” all this time, is completely fucked, astronomically and otherwise; the human story, about a woman (Brit Marling) who poses as a maid to the man whose wife and child she killed in a drunk driving accident, makes no emotional and little literal sense. Marling, who co-wrote the screenplay, also co-wrote and starred in Sound of My Voice (above), which I thought was outstanding; Another Earth is misconceived enough to make me suspect the other film may be a fluke.

Win Win (Thomas McCarthy) B+ [review forthcoming]

Dragonslayer (Matthew Robbins, 1981) B+

Tuesday, March 15

Turkey Bowl (Kyle Smith) B-
A 69-minute real-time comedy about an annual Thanksgiving touch football game among a bunch of variably athletic old-time friends. So small it’s barely there, but offers a host of minor pleasures; amusing, charming, kind of remarkable in the way it limns half a lifetime of interpersonal history in just over an hour and with almost no exposition.

How to Die in Oregon (Peter D. Richardson) A-
I can’t rationally discuss the issue of assisted suicide, mostly because the extraordinary prominence of selfish, bad-faith arguments in opposition always makes me sputteringly angry. Richardson, thankfully, is not so afflicted. This is a remarkable documentary, unflinching and even-handed, bringing desperately-needed human context to an abstract debate. Entire audience was in tears; fair warning.

You Instead (David MacKenzie) B
A quick, funny, incredibly sweet, vaguely surreal romantic comedy about two musicians — a superstar and an up-and-comer — who end up handcuffed together at the real-life, world-famous T in the Park music festival in Scotland. Shot in five days during the actual festival, the movie is raggedy and chaotic — the polar opposite of most high-profile rom-coms, which are machine-tooled and polished to a homogenous sheen — but not haphazard by any means. It is also genuinely in love with music; a scene where Luke Treadaway sabotages Natalia Tena’s performance, turning her song into “Tainted Love,” is a highlight of the festival, and the concert-set finale is a wonder.

Phase 7 (Nicolas Goldbart) C

Wednesday, March 16

96 Minutes (Aimee Lagos) D+

Heaven Hell (David Calek) C

The Beaver (Jodie Foster) C

Kill List (Ben Wheatley) ?

Little Deaths (Sean Hogan, Andrew Parkinson & Simon Rumley) C

Thursday, March 17

Bellflower (Evan Glodell) B

/Kill List/ (Ben Wheatley) B+
Took me two viewings to get a handle on this brilliant, confounding, maddeningly incomplete puzzle film in the (storytelling) vein of Primer. Ultimately, Wheatley raises more questions than he answers, and there’s a niggling feeling that he is dicking with us, but the plot takes such monumentally sinister turns that I was willing to fill in my own blanks. A mind-blower; possibly a classic.

Friday, March 18

A Bag of Hammers (Brian Crano) C+

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog)

The Catechism Cataclysm (Todd Rohal)

The FP (Brandon & Jason Trost)

-- Eugene Novikov

Released:	2011
Rated:	UR