SXSW 2010 Film Wrap-Up

After missing 2008 and 2009, I was firmly resolved to return to SXSW in 2010, and hereby swear to never miss a year again (we'll see how well that goes). It was an outstanding festival, at which I saw 20 features and 4 short films collections. Some were great, most were good, a few were slight misses, but nothing was terrible. The rundown, roughly in order from best.

FEATURES

Cold Weather A young man returns to his hometown of Portland from Chicago, trying to find where his life is going. He's living with his sister, when an old girlfriend from Chicago comes to visit and a mystery breaks out. Best described by a friend as "a mumblecore episode of Scooby Doo without the dog", it's engaging and entertaining.

Winter's Bone The Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner slowly and methodically, but never boringly, follows the story of 17-year-old Ree, who must find her father before her family gets thrown out of their home. Heartbreaking, with a constant slow-burn tension and a sense of desperation, the film lays out life in the patriarchal Ozarks.

Canal Street Madam A documentary about Jeanette Maier, who ran a multi-generational brothel on Canal Street until the FBI raided it. The film explores her relationship with her family, including her daughter who worked at the brothel, and her life since the FBI raid including concerns about what lengths high-powered clients may go to in order to keep their names quiet.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil Deliverance, thrown on its head. A group of college students go camping in the woods of West Virginia at the same time as a pair of hillbillies. Don’t watch the trailer, don’t spoil yourself, just enjoy the film.

The Taqwacores Looking through the eyes of a straight-laced Muslim college student who moves into a house where all of the residents are Muslim, “from a certain point of view”. The film explores young people coming to terms with their religion and their identify, and finding a way to make both work, as well as the conflicts that different resolutions of the issues can lead to. All set against the backdrop of the Muslim punk rock scene. While the film focuses distinctly on Muslim characters, the characters and conflicts easily carry over to other religions.

Brotherhood Centered on a fraternity prank gone wrong, and the consequences, the film opens with action and never lets up. Not your typical indie film and a little suspension of disbelief is required. The film could play well with the multiplex crowd. (Winner of the Audience Award in the narrative Competition)

Skeletons Probably best termed magical realism (not usually my fare), two gentleman work as a special type of cleaners, baring the skeletons in people’s closets, until the day they can’t complete a procedure and must look at their own skeletons.

Putty Hill The most “indie” of any film I saw during the festival (to the point of focusing the camera on two characters in one corner of the room, while playing the conversation of the two characters in a separate conversation on the other side of the room out of camera shot), the film uses mostly non-professional actors to tell the story of a community mourning over the loss of a young man to a drug overdose in working class Baltimore, and the lives of the characters making a life there (or trying to). The director uses a mixed style of narrative and documentary-style-interviewing, where most of the interviews are real interviews with the non-professional actors presented as interviews with the characters. Focus on the young man's mother seemed too slight.

Bear Nation A documentary from the director of Small Town Gay Bar looking at the subset of gay men who are most decidedly not rail-thin effeminate twinks. And are damn proud of it.

The Parking Lot Movie Documentary about the attendants and former attendants at a pay parking lot across the street from the University of Virginia. Attendants who are graduate philosophy students, artists, and future lawyers, provide a deeper look than you would expect into the social structure of a small parking lot and how (in)humanity acts when behind the wheel of a car.

Cyrus From the directors of The Puffy Chair, a quirky and often funny comedy with romance that will doubtlessly be making the rounds of theatres.

Kick-Ass Exactly what you expect and want it to be. The target audience will love it.

Skateland The closing credits end with a dedication to John Hughes, which is fitting, since this is basically a rip-off of John Hughes. You can pick much worse material to rip off though.

Saturday Night James Franco’s behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of a Saturday Night Live episode was my biggest festival letdown. The documentary doesn’t offer any real insight into the process and, for a documentary about SNL, isn’t very funny. Listening to the Q&A with the producer, it sounded like Franco’s closeness with the actors may have caused him to pull some of the footage that could have provided true insight and poignancy into life behind the scenes.

Barry Munday A womanizer loses his testicles in a bizarre attack, and then gets sued for paternity by a (homely) woman he can’t remember meetings. Self-awareness ensues.

Wake I didn’t enjoy most of this film much. Then the ending made me re-think everything and consider that maybe I really did like it. But mostly, I remember not enjoying it much for the majority of the film.

Crying With Laughter When a comedian runs into an old school buddy, his life gets quite unfunny. I didn’t buy some of the character motivation (particularly the old school chum) for some of the actions, which made it hard to buy the overall premise.

The Runaways Perhaps the story of the all-girl rock band simply isn’t that interesting, or perhaps this telling of it isn’t that good. Kristin Stewart as Joan Jett is rather good. The director “re-told” the breaking up of the band in a way that it didn’t happen, in order to have all the central characters present in the scene, which felt dishonest.

Barbershop Punk Documentary that superimposes the fight over net neutrality (specifically focusing on barbershop quarter fan Robb Topoloski who discovered that Comcast was slowing down traffic on its network) with the concept of being punk. When focusing on the net neutrality story, the film is engaging, and even a bit enraging. The punk elements don’t fit and make for an odd, uneven film overall.

Phillip The Fossil A story about a small time drug dealer and lawnmower getting past his youthful prime and trying to figure out where his life goes next.


SHORTS

As always, there were a lot of good short films Cigarette Candy, which won the narrative short award, was stellar. Other excellent shorts included Bedford Park Boulevard, The Depth of Phil and Table 7, as well as the 5-Second Films in the Midnight Shorts. I also enjoyed The Hardest Part, Petting Sharks, Better Safe Than Sorry, Girls Named Pinky, Delmer Builds A Machine, Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses, Expiration and Not Interested,


WHAT I MISSED

Films that I want to see that I could not fit in at SXSW (apparently, I don’t priority documentaries as well as I should):

Marwencol After a head injury, a man makes a miniature 1/6 scale version of a World War II town in his backyard. (Winner of the Jury Award in the Documentary Competition)

Erasing David A look at privacy via how possible it is (of isn’t) to disappear in today’s society.

Like a Pascha A look at the 12-story Pascha brothel in Cologne, Germany and the people who work there. The director does not hold back on his personal bias.

Beijing Taxi A look at the road to modernization in China, through the eyes of three Beijing taxi drivers

Monsters After a NASA probe crashes in Mexico, mutated life forms appear and half of Mexico is quarantined as an infected zone. The film tells the story of a US journalist trying to get a tourist out of the infected zone to the US border.