 |
| By Mark Wensel |
I’m going to take a break from my usual Double Features to tell you what I saw at South By Southwest that’s worth your time. It’s more than two and even more than my not quite as usual five.
But these movies were ALL worth it and I didn’t want to cut any out just to conform to a number.
‘Cause I’m from Austin, dammit! I refuse to conform!
Until they build a condo where I stand.
After the jump check out the films that I thought were the best.
KRISHA
Written and directed by Trey Edward Shults
This is an expansion of a short that played last year. I don’t think I saw that short, but I kind of wish I had. It’s the story of a woman named Krisha (Krisha Fairchild) who comes home for Thanksgiving. She’s in her 60s, but hasn’t been able to get her life together. She’s finally to a point where she thinks she has, but sometimes family has a way of making it all come back. Her two sisters want the best for her and they want to believe that her life has gotten better. Her son is skeptical.
It’s good to see a movie where someone over the age of 25 can’t figure life out. It’s not a young person’s game. It’s EVERY person’s game. Either way, Krisha is an experience. You feel for every single character more than you ever think you could. Especially Krisha, who is really trying.
The film is shot like a horror movie, which makes it even more interesting. With some strange and effective POV shots and a gritty feel, it felt like Krisha might be a danger to her family at some point. But this is a family drama, through and through, with some of the best performances of the festival. Fairchild is perfect as the broken woman at the center of the whole drama. She reminds us that sometimes demons just won’t stay down.
TWINSTERS
Directed by Samantha Futerman/Ryan Miyamoto
Written by Samantha Futerman
A couple of years ago, a young woman in France named Anais Bordier got a strange message from a friend. She was told to watch a video made by a young woman in California named Samantha Futerman. When she finally did, she was amazed because she wondered how this person could look exactly like her!
Anais contacted Sam and the two started to put things together. They were both adopted. They were both born in the same town in Korea. They both had the same birthday. Could they possibly be twins?!
Sam put this documentary together with footage that she shot the entire time that she and Anais were getting to know each other via Facebook, Skype and, finally, in person. It’s a movie that isn’t just the story of two girls who become sisters, but about how family is who you make it. Between their adopted families, their foster mothers and their friends, they have the best family that they could ever hope for. The movie gave me a bit more faith in the human race. See it if you’re in a bad mood. It will make you feel good.
SIR DOUG AND THE GENUINE TEXAS COSMIC GROOVE
Directed by Joe Nick Patoski
Written by Joe Nick Patoski/Jason Wheling
If you’ve never heard of Doug Sahm, you’re missing out. He was Austin. All of the music. All of the eclecticism. All of the idiosyncrasies. All of the love. And all of the attitude. With his 60s beginnings with the Sir Douglas Quintet (you’ve heard She’s About A Mover, even if you don’t know the title) through his decade with The Texas Tornados, he hit every single genre: rock, psyche, country, blues, Tejano, r&b…I think he may have even done an album with a rap artist. Not sure on that. He was a pretty amazing dude with an ego as big as Texas.
With stories from his son, Shawn (who has taken his place in The Tornados) and constant organist/collaborator, Augie Meyers, this documentary will make you fall in love with this guy. His music was fun and he was fun. As soon as I got out of the movie, I looked for every bit of music that I could find with his name on it…even the stuff he did in Sweden.
See this and see why we natives will never give up on Austin. If this town could nurture a guy like Sir Doug, it still has to have something in it. Or maybe he just took it all with him when he died in 1999. (Yes, he was born in San Antonio…but he loved Austin. So, there.)
WE ARE STILL HERE
Directed by Ted Geoghegan
Written by Ted Geoghegan/Richard Griffin
Everybody’s been really pushing the whole “giallo” thing lately. With movies like Berberian Sound Studio and The Strange Colour Of Your Body’s Tears, it’s all anyone thinks about when it comes to 70s Italian horror. That means that poor ol’ Lucio Fulci, as much as people still love him, gets pushed to the side by folks like Dario Argento.
Fulci made his share of giallo films, but his true calling was pure, unadulterated, grisly, nonsensical gore. In fact, really, that was his ONLY calling. His movies tended to have no narrative flow, the acting was terrible and some of the direction was hilarious. But that gore. Oh my god, the gore. I could watch The Beyond and Zombie over and over again because, even though that girl had no reason to be laying under the vat of acid, it’s an awful bliss when it pours out all over her face.
We Are Still Here is the homage to Fulci that we’ve all been waiting for. It’s not quite as nonsensical as some of his films, but it’s close at times. (It’s also more House By The Cemetery than Beyond/Zombie, but I won’t fault it for that.) It’s about a couple who move into an old house in a small town in order to get past the death of their son. They invite the parents of their son’s former roommate over for a weekend. What none of them know is that the house has a horrible, horrible secret. But then, maybe, so does the town.
Shades of HP Lovecraft invade the story as it slowly builds the tension towards a grisly finale that’s nearly as confusing and open-ended as Fulci’s films. I loved every weirdly dubbed-looking minute of it. And you know what made this even more interesting than your typical Hollywood horror film besides the homage aspect? It wasn’t about some hot, young couple! These folks where in the late 40s or early 50s. Their son was in his early 20s. These people were already world weary when they lost him and now they’re just beaten down.
If you’re a fan of horror, see this movie.
THE NIGHTMARE
Directed by Rodney Ascher
The director of Room 237 is back again to scare the hell out of us.
This time, he trains his documentary cameras on the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. The folks who experience this feel like they could actually die during their dreams. They can’t wake up. They can’t move. And they see shapes. People shaped shapes. And sometimes these shapes talk to them.
Ascher talks to some of the sufferers and films reenactments of their dreams. As silly as that sounds, it’s actually every bit as frightening as you think that it could possibly be. At first you think, “Oh. Really? They’re going to do this?” And then you realize that you’re getting freaked out.
Even scarier than that, though, is the fact that so many people, after seeing the movie, suddenly remembered that they HAVE had this happen to them. And they might even remember the shapes. But definitely the feeling of not being able to get out of a dream. Lying there. Completely helpless. While something gets closer and closer to them.
Unlike Room 237, we actually see the participants of this film, and some of them are so hollow from their sleep experiences that you just want to hug them and tell them that it’s all going to be ok. But you know that you can probably never make it ok for them. Their nightmare could possibly last for the rest of their lives because, not only is there no cure, there doesn’t seem to even be a cause for it.
And that’s the scariest thing of all.
PEACE OFFICER
Directed by Brad Barber/Scott Christopherson
Written by Brad Barber/Scott Christopherson/David Lawrence/Renny McCauley
Back in the 70s, Sheriff Dub Lawrence helped get the SWAT team established in his state. Thirty years go by and he’s retired. That same SWAT team kills his son in law and then lies about it. Then they’re caught in that lie, but they never quite tell the whole truth.
Dub has made it his life’s mission to bring out the truth in all of the wrongs that the SWAT team has done over the years. He goes from crime scene to crime scene, reconstructing the entire gun battle finding not only the truth, but evidence that they police investigators missed, whether accidentally or intentionally.
Barber and Christopherson follow Dub on his quest and find some others who support him, and even a few who don’t. He supports people who got into the job to be “peace officers,” but not people who just want to be “cops.” To him, there’s a huge difference.
Peace Officer is not only one of the best films of the festival, it’s probably the most important one. See it and learn what needs to be done to end the violence. It’s not all the fault of the police, but the militarization of the police force has certainly not helped at all.
GTFO: Get The F&#% Out
Written and directed by Shannon Sun-Higginson
“Gamergate” was not the first instance of sexual harassment ever to happen in online gaming. In fact, it wasn’t even the worst. What it was was the instance that tipped the “mainstream” off at its existence. GTFO is about everything else that happens in nerd culture. All of the harassment that women have to deal with on a daily basis if they want to relax with a game. They get called names. They get told that they’re not “real gamers,” whatever that means. They get told to leave. They get told that they’re going to get raped. All the time. Almost without fail.
It’s pretty horrific and Sun-Higginson does her best to tell the story without being too sensationalistic about it. She only brings up Gamergate once because she didn’t want to focus on just that. She wanted this to be all-encompassing and show just how much this goes on. She interviews women who have started websites and groups in order to try to point it out or even stop it. Sadly, it’s going to be a long, long haul to stop this sort of thing. The people who do it are very nearly inhuman and it’s hard to see them ever changing their ways. That, of course, doesn’t mean that we can’t try.
GTFO is a pretty important documentary. The subject matter is brought to us in an interesting way and it’s obvious that Sun-Higginson truly cares about it. I will give you a word of warning, though: This is pretty much an “Honorable Mention” choice. As important as the movie is, it’s not particularly well made. The sound is the worst part of it. Everything is audible, but it sounds like it was recorded on Skype. Unfortunately, sound can derail a movie faster than bad special effects or even bad writing. It’s much more obvious to everyone when you can hear the air conditioner during an interview.
Also, a nitpicking quibble: One person says, “I hate the word ‘gamer.’ No one says, ‘I’m a filmgoer!’”
Uh…yeah. We do. Maybe not “filmgoer,” but I definitely say that I’m a film geek! Shut your noise, you!
Other than that, this movie needs to be seen. See it with a gamer.
