A lot has changed in my life since my last blog post, my readers. The biggest change has been my recent move to Austin, Texas. I lived in Norfolk, Virginia for exactly 20 years, and it was time for a big change. So far, it's been all right, but the biggest highlight since moving here has been the chance to attend and volunteer for this year's South by Southwest (or SXSW) film festival.
The condition to earn my free badge into the festival was that I had to work 48 hours as a volunteer at one of the many venues that films were being screened. Not only was the experience surprisingly fun, but new friends were made and I got to fall completely in love with Alamo Drafthouse. Over the course of the festival, I managed to watch 9 movies, 8 of which were world premieres, and 2 episodic premieres. I didn't get to see everything I wanted to (we almost got into Us), but the vast majority of what I got to watch was worth the long lines and volunteer hours. Since a Facebook post would get too long plus they're harder to save, I thought I'd revive this blog to share my thoughts on each screening I was lucky enough to attend.
What We Do in the Shadows - Pilot Premiere
Starting off on opening night, after my friends and I couldn't get into Us, we went right back into line for the very next screening at the Paramount Theater: the world premiere of the long-awaited TV series spin-off of Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clements' 2014 horror comedy, What We Do in the Shadows. In attendance were Taika and Jemaine as well as the show's executive producer, one of the writers, and the entire main cast.
The original film is an absolute classic of its genre. Taika and Jemaine both did a brilliant job building this world where vampires and werewolves have issues just like the rest of us, and its matter of fact presentation of their supernatural abilities make it one of the best horror comedies of the past several years. It's a tough act to follow, so the filmmakers wisely decided to no longer follow the characters established in the movie. Instead, we now follow three vampires and a hopeless familiar living in Staten Island, New York. Both men jokingly said the reason for the change in locale was that it was being produced in America instead of New Zealand, but the new location keeps the concept fresh, especially with the running gag that these three were somehow supposed to take over the entire United States.
The show also has a much larger budget than the original film, so the effects are more ambitious. However, the story is still kept relatively small in scale, thereby keeping the charm of the concept. The new cast plays off of each other extremely well, though some of their dynamics are a bit too reminiscent of the characters in the original film. Kayvan Novak's Nandor for example is an obvious stand-in for Taika Waititi's Viago, even down to the uptight loyalty to vampiric tradition. However, I'm sure as the series progresses, these actors will make the characters completely their own, as well as through the contributions of new writers and directors into the fold. The pilot gives us a taste of new additions to the formula in a fourth vampire who doesn't get as much screentime as our leads but manages to steal the show. Mark Proksch gets the most laughs as Colin Robinson, an "energy vampire" who feeds off people's energy by boring them. It's a clever addition to the universe, and a sign that the creators are expanding the world these characters inhabit.
Not all of the jokes landed, and I noticed the humor of the series felt a lot sexually raunchier than the film, which was a bit tonally off-putting. Still, I'm looking forward to watching more of the show when it premieres not too long from now. But it was an awesome opportunity to be among the first people in the whole world to see the follow-up to a beloved cult classic.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Love, Death & Robots - World Premiere of 6 out of 18 episodes
Perhaps the coolest moment at all of SXSW for me personally was getting to see one of my favorite directors in person. David Fincher was present at the festival to present the world premiere of the animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots about a week before its Netflix premiere on March 15th. He was there alongside fellow executive producer and creator of the series, Tim Miller, best known for founding Blur Studios, which animated several episodes of this series, and directing the first Deadpool movie. Naturally, audiences asked him about why he wanted to tackle a project so radically different from anything he's ever done, and Fincher just replied that he wants to toy with new narrative mediums. Why shouldn't there be a sci-fi animated anthology aimed squarely at adults that runs for over 3 hours total? And it's answers like that why Fincher is undoubtedly one of the most exciting directors working in Hollywood today, even though he didn't personally handle any of the show's episodes.
Onto the show itself, we got to see 6 out of the 18 episodes in what will presumably be the show's first season. These episodes ranged wildly in many ways. Some were close to 20 minutes, others were less than 10. Some were comedies, others were filled with gory action. And some of the episodes kinda sucked, but others were amazing. Each episode also looked visually distinct; in animation and in setting. So it's impossible to really judge the project as a whole. However, I'm not going to drag this out and intricately break down my thoughts on each episode. This is already going to be a long read for you guys.
The strongest of the six episodes shown was, in my opinion, Three Robots. The story follows three robots (doi) touring through a post-apocalyptic metropolis several years after humanity has successfully wiped itself out. There's so much great banter between the three leads, commenting on humanity's strange behaviors while commenting on our greatest follies. It's funny and insightful, and it looks great too.
While I'm sure everyone will be talking about The Witness for its animation (picture Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse but in the setting of Ghost in the Shell), but man, I really thought it was all style and no substance. Sure, it was the most visually stunning of the six episodes shown, but the story was threadbare and the twist could be seen a mile away. It's extremely exploitative, and it goes on forever too.
All of the other episodes ranged from "pretty good" to "just okay". When The Yogurt Took Over is ingenious and funny, but ends too abruptly. Sonnie's Edge has some amazing monster action but is bogged down by exposition. Secret War looks amazing and has a fantastic setting. Finally, Alternate Histories beats a fun idea straight into the ground like a bad SNL sketch.
Overall, the anthology is a clear love letter to Heavy Metal and the entire anthology genre. By providing an outlet for these animation studios to tell stories that don't aim to kids, these creatives get to thrive in ways that wouldn't have been possible many years ago. So even though not all of the episodes we were shown landed, thank goodness Fincher and Miller came together to give us something different. It's something we need more of. I'm excited to catch the remaining 12 episodes.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
The Art of Self-Defense
Three days into the festival, I finally got to catch an actual movie. Jesse Eisenberg, Imogen Poots, and Alessandro Nivola star in Riley Stearns's second feature film, The Art of Self-Defense, a dark comedy set in a strange world where everyone is brutally honest, technology is mixed between the 80s and 90s, and violence sometimes is the solution to one's problems because consequences just don't seem to work the way they do in our world. Not that any of this is a bad thing at all, mind you. It makes for a very...intriguing viewing.
Eisenberg was absolutely born to play the lead character, Casey. He's extremely self-conscious and shy, but far beyond what Eisenberg has played before. This guy is such a loser that he masturbates to photocopied pictures of naked breasts taken from his co-worker's adult magazine; he can't even bring himself to buy his own copy. However, as the movie goes on and Casey becomes more confident, we see a fire light in him that was always waiting to be released. He takes charge, stands up for himself, and pulls no punches. Very literally. I couldn't picture anyone else in this part (Michael Cera doesn't quite have the range that Eisenberg does), so kudos to Riley Stearns for playing to his actor's strengths.
Alessandro Nivola, however, has a brilliant performance as "Sensei", the straight-forward and hyper-masculine karate teacher who teaches Casey the ways of manhood and self-defense. Nivola is, as I like to put it, warmly intimidating in the role. You can easily see why his students are so loyal, even though there is an edge of darkness to his actions. I can't say too much about his character without giving away major plot details, but he absolutely shines with every new dimension that is added to the character.
While I found the overarching plot incredibly predictable, the minute details in the dialogue and details were what kept me guessing. Even though I knew where the story was going to go, I didn't know what the characters would say or how they'd react. That still means I believe Riley Stearns is a talented screenwriter. I had never heard of him before SXSW but now I can't wait to revisit his earlier work, including his previous feature, Faults. If it keeps me guessing in terms of execution like this film did, then I'm officially excited for this upcoming talent.
The movie does go into some pretty dark territory, though it never loses its humor. That does mean some gags are pretty off-color, so this movie is definitely not for everybody. It's not meant to be politically correct, but it does tackle the dangers of toxic masculinity and violence. Its central message gets a bit muddled by the final solution, but I think that's meant to be part of the joke too. The movie is a parody of the martial arts movie genre too, and it takes the parody element to the extreme.
I don't expect this movie to make any money in its theatrical run this summer, but I expect it to become a cult classic. It didn't win an audience award at SXSW, but I still expect it to be a favorite among the small group of people who will discover it. Right now, we definitely need more strange voices like Riley Stearns telling stories.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Adopt a Highway
Oh, Ethan Hawke. You and your underappreciated acting talents. While men like Gary Oldman and Rami Malek put on tons of prosthetics and thick accents to win themselves awards, you allow yourself to completely disappear into a role without any of that gimmicky crap. You delivered what was almost certainly one of the best performances of last year in First Reformed, rivaled only by Toni Colette in Hereditary, yet both were robbed of major award recognition. And now you take another chance on another actor-turned-director with Logan Marshall-Green's Adopt a Highway. Does the gamble pay off? For the most part, totally.
Naturally, the highlight of the film is Hawke himself. Here, he plays Russell Millings, an ex-convict recently released from prison after serving time for marijuana possession when he was a teenager back in the '90s, when California used to have the controversial "three strikes" law. With his parents now dead, no knowledge of the internet, and the world a completely different place than when he left it, Russell tries to live day by day living in a cheap motel and surviving off junk food until he chances upon a baby abandoned in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant he works at. Russell decides to take care of the baby, knowing that doing so might violate his parole and land him back in prison.
Ethan plays the role with absolute sincerity. He adds small mannerisms that make Russell all the more human, like drinking the last drops out of ketchup packets or stammering in his speech to relay the character's vulnerability. When Russell comes close to breaking down in intense situations, it's easy to relate because this is a character who had his developing years stripped away from him. In many ways, he's still a kid. Ethan's performance and Logan Marshall-Green's strikingly confident direction add up to probably the best acting I saw during the entire festival. While this movie will likely also draw no awards buzz, it's further proof Ethan Hawke is probably the best male actor in Hollywood right now.
However, the movie is so central to Ethan Hawke's performance and character that there isn't much else to it besides him. The supporting cast are nothing more than ancillary to his journey. The only other character with any real agency in the picture is a drifter played by Elaine Hendrix who appears late in the film, and she comes dangerously close to manic pixie dream girl territory. But her character leaves the story as suddenly as she enters it, leaving us to wonder what effect this encounter has on Russell. We never really see it, but the ending does leave us guessing for various reasons I won't go into.
The movie also falls into some indie-film traps along the way. We get our requisite "character spreads his arms like he's flying" shot, the aforementioned manic girl, dialogue is drowned out by overwhelming noise, and so on. Despite these cliches, Logan Marshall-Green does a magnificent job considering this is his first time in the director's chair. This was obviously a story that hit close to home for him, and he handles it with the respect the subject matter deserves. He doesn't spend the entire runtime beating Russell down, he focuses on showing Russell obtaining his second chance. He screws up, but he keeps going. And in a world that seems hellbent on watching people suffer, it's nice to see a film that says there's nothing wrong with watching someone rebuild.
Rating: 4 out of 5
The Mountain
Do I really want to revisit this movie? I already went into pretty... explicit detail on how much I hated this movie on Facebook. I will say that I want to make an amendment to an earlier statement. Someone asked me if I'd rather have watched the director actually masturbate than sit through this 106-minute self-indulgent garbage heap of nonsensical dialogue and vapid imagery. Honestly, I will say now that the answer would be yes. Because then at least it'd be 105 minutes and 30 seconds shorter.
Fuck.
This.
Movie.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Salvage
Okay, I'm going to wrap up this part with the first documentary I got to catch at the festival. Salvage is an hour-long look into the lives of the people of Yellowknife, Canada and their open dump. The movie chronicles roughly a five year period as the dump transitions from being open to salvage whatever people may find, into a more closed off, heavily regulated dump and the effects the change has on the townsfolk.
This is a premise that must have started off as a documentary short meant to chronicle the salvaging lifestyle, but the scope changed as the dump was forced to close as the result of a massive fire. The story becomes a microcosm of the changes every town goes through when politicians with ambition get into power. The price of living goes up, the people become jaded, and the what made the city unique vanishes forever. Though I'm new to Austin, I've already heard all the stories of how yuppies came in and transformed this weird capital into just another overpriced corporate hub. So I'm sure this movie resonated with long-time Austinites in attendance.
Salvage is honest, it has a strong message about environmentalism and culture and how they go hand in hand. The subjects are fun and endearing, and watching them change gradually as the years passed was rewarding. During one of the film's segments, one of the main subjects has his arm in a sling. We never find out why, but it's gone in the next segment set a few months later. Life goes on. Things change, for better and for worse.
For what it was trying to say and how it executed it, Salvage absolutely nails it. The structure works to its advantage, and the points made are concise. It tells an engaging story, and reminds us that culture can be found in the strangest places. And once that's gone, there's no getting it back.
Rating: 5 out of 5
I'll be back in a few days with the second part of my SXSW review, including a work in progress screening of a Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista buddy cop comedy, more documentaries, and a surefire cult classic in the same vein as Shawn of the Dead and Attack the Block that will hopefully launch as many careers as those two films did,
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