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"Finally, the movie that Eat Pray Love should have been."
-- Slackerwood contributor Don Clinchy, immediately after watching Machete

I feel I can't really do Machete justice without channeling Joe Bob Briggs, the drive-in movie of Grapevine, Texas, and giving you a count on decapitations, bare breasts, nine kinds of fu, and other grisly types of fighting, wounding, and death. And tattoos. But Joe Bob, I am not.

I also wish I'd seen Machete in a drive-in theater, but we don’t really have those in Texas anymore -- not the old-fashioned kind, anyway, with the crappy speakers that hook onto your cars and the scary faraway bathrooms and all that. Since drive-ins are nearly extinct, Robert Rodriguez's latest flick will flourish with a big, receptive, rowdy audience for full enjoyment. Don’t wait for DVD. You want the kind of crowd you get at an Alamo Weird Wednesday, who can respect the movie while at the same time cheering and applauding for the best lines and the most creative kills.

However, while Machete was born to be a midnight movie, the movie is happily free of too much self-awareness of this fact, and avoids an excess of camp, apart from the occasional knowing wink to the 1970s exploitation films that inspired it.

There have been worries in recent years that the romantic comedy genre is dead or dying. Going the Distance could prove that theory wrong; the amusing romantic comedy tends to stay outside the confines of the typical rom-com formula.

For starters, Drew Barrymore's Erin is a potty-mouthed broad who holds the high score on the neighborhood bar's Centipede game. She's also focused on her career track, and the film (thankfully) doesn't treat this as a negative quality.

Thirty-one and currently in grad school at Stanford, Erin is finishing up her summer internship at a fictional New York City paper when she meets affable twentysomething Garrett (Justin Long), who works for a record label. They agree after their first night together that neither of them is looking for anything serious, but they meet up often during the six weeks before Erin heads back to California. They decide to attempt a long-distance relationship.

We see the fondness between the two characters growing, while their friends and family give them unsolicited advice on how to deal with a long-distance relationship. As the professions Erin and Garrett have chosen -- working for the print media and the music industry -- are hard hit by the economy, the recession plays a role in their story. Will they ever be able to live in the same time zone when jobs are so hard to find? Should either of them give up their career to stay in the relationship?

While living in Houston over 20 years ago, I became acquainted with some of the principal and soloist male dancers from the Houston Ballet Dance Company. To me their lives were glamorous and dramatic. Their passion on stage with their pas de deux partners often extended beyond the stage to fiery romances. I also remember one young Chinese dancer who was friendly enough but more restrained than his boisterous British and American counterparts. I had no idea at the time what led to his employment with the Houston Ballet, but the less-than-glamorous circumstances were captured in Li Cunxin's 2003 autobiography adapted by Jan Sardi (Shine, The Notebook) for the screen in the biopic Mao's Last Dancer. Directed by Academy Award nominee Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Tender Mercies), this film captures the politics and drama involved in Cunxin's remarkable journey from rags to international stardom.

Mao's Last Dancer spans several decades through a series of flashbacks. At the height of China's Cultural Revolution in 1972, Jiang Qing -- also known as "Madame Mao" -- revived the Beijing Dance Academy. Mao's cultural advisors traveled through the country to select those children who not only had the physical attributes of a dancer but also devotion to serving in Chairman Mao's revolution. Li Cunxin was the sixth of seven sons born to peasants in the poverty-stricken Qingdao province, and his family welcomed the opportunity for Li to pursue a better life. At the age of 11, he left home to begin seven years of harsh training regimen at the Academy.

Opening with a silent panoramic shot of winter twilight in remote Sweden, The American quickly separates itself from typical international thrillers. Unfortunately, it also means that it won't find the audience normally drawn to such films.

Based on the Martin Booth novel A Very Private Gentleman and adapted by Rowan Joffe (28 Weeks Later), The American is the tale of Jack, an assassin (George Clooney) at the end of his career, paranoid and tense, and reluctant to take one last assignment. After Jack is targeted by a hit squad, he runs to Italy only to have his handler set up a place to lay low in a remote town.

Director Anton Corbijn leans heavily on moody imagery and panoramic shots to set the mood. Corbijn, whose background is in music videos and documentaries, relies more on imagery than dialogue to drive the story. The frequent wide shots set a tone of increasing isolation and sense of entanglement in Jack/Edward's life, whether he's talking to his handler, a client, or the people who insist on getting involved with him.

I'm so tired. But I'm a bit tense. only two days left, and I can feel the start of Post-Fest Depression wanting to rear its ugly head. But there's two full days left...

That's how one of my 2009 Fantastic Fest Daily Dispatches started. It brings me right back to the fest. This is it, the final entry in our Fantastic Fest Flashbacks (we've already covered 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008). How the fest has grown. I'm looking at the screening schedule and it's now two columns of small fonts filling the page. So much to do and not enough hours to do it. The 2009 lineup ranged fromhorror-lite targeted to a younger audience like The Vampire's Assistant and Under the Mountain to the shocking Antichrist, and every possibility in between and around them. Literally something for everyone, Fantastic Fest 2009 seemed about as big as it can get, although we already know this year will be even bigger.

The opening-night film, Gentlemen Broncos, may not have been an audience favorite, but everyone seemed to enjoy the opening-night Party with cast and crew at the newly opened and not quite finished Highball, another venture by the intrepid Tim and Karrie League. The Battle Stag from the film could be seen in the Highball throughout the fest, and post-fest everyone was sad to see it leave. Other gala films screening at the Paramount had a stronger response, including Zombieland, which made everyone happy with a particular cameo from a 2008 Fantastic Fest alum, not to mention the Austin mention. I'm still regretting missing Survival of the Dead, but with so much to cover, and knowing how crazy downtown was with a UT home game and the Pecan Street Festival over the weekend, the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar was the place to stay for me. And guess what? Same thing is going to happen this year on Saturday; there's a UT home game and the Old Pecan Street Festival again on Saturday night.

The Texas Filmmakers Production Fund (TFPF) recipients for 2010 have just been announced, and without even looking anything up, I can spot a number of Austin filmmakers among the lucky winners this year. Twenty-four projects received a total of $104,000 in cash, film stock and services. Selected filmmakers and projects are from all over the state of Texas, but it looks like more than half have ties to Austin this year.

One great benefit about the TFPF announcement for Austin film lovers is that it's a sneak peek into the projects that some local filmmakers have been working on. Hopefully we'll see some of the following movies in 2011 or beyond ... although one is actually screening in Austin tonight, and another will screen here (at least in part) within the month.

The largest single grant, $9,000, went to Austin artist and photographer Patrick Xavier Bresnan (Otis Ike) for post-production costs on Vietnam Appreciation Day, a documentary feature.

Chris Eska's feature August Evening won an Independent Spirit Award in 2008. Now Eska has received a $7,000 TFPF award for production on September Morning, a Western set during the Civil War about a teenage boy sent to retrieve a wanted man.

Former Austinite (he just left us for Chicago) Kyle Henry received $7,000 for post-production on Fourplay, the collection of four short films about sexual adventures in different U.S. cities. The first short, San Francisco, premiered at Outfest earlier this year and will be playing in Austin as part of aGLIFF in a couple of weeks.

Bob Byington also got a $7,000 grant for production costs on a narrative feature film called Seven Chinese Brothers. Byington's previous films, Harmony and Me and [RSO] Registered Sex Offender, have just become available on Netflix Watch Instantly.

So happy to see Get Low expand to more theaters this week, and Winnebago Man is getting another week at both Alamo Drafthouse Ritz and South Lamar. As a matter of fact, Austin theaters don't have a lot of changes in their arthouse film offerings this week, other than one new movie, and good for them. I was surprised to see Avatar coming back to theaters. Guess it hasn't been such a great summer for big movies if they have to pull that back out, huh? Last week there were a lot of new releases -- this week, not so much.

Animal Kingdom (pictured above) -- Tourism Australia won't be endorsing this gritty, depressing crime family drama about a young man caught between his estranged family and the law co-starring Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton. Written and directed by David Michod,  who wrote the short film Spider that played with The Square earlier this year and at SXSW in 2009. Read my review for more. (Arbor)

The Last Exorcism -- Nearly brilliant thriller with strong horror themes, but ultimately dimished by eventual use of cliched devices, the director of SXSW 2008 selection A Necessary Death brings us another documentary style drama that is sure to get people talking. Read my review for more. (wide)

Fantastic Fest has just announced another batch of films in its 2010 lineup, including another gala screening with special guests, a few sequels and remakes, and a variety of genre films from around the world. The fun starts in less than a month.

The gala screening -- which means it plays at the Paramount and has a red carpet beforehand -- is the U.S. premiere of Stone, which stars Edward Norton, Robert De Niro and Milla Jovovich. It's a drama about a parole officer trying to decide whether a murderer has truly reformed. Edward Norton will be here in Austin for the Friday, Sept. 24 screening as well as director John Curran.

The world premiere of 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, the sequel to 30 Days of Night, heads up an impressive list of other movies slated for next month's festival. There are films from Argentina, Hong Kong, Spain, Korea, Thailand, Japan, Mexico and of course the United States. Ong Bak 3, the remake of I Spit on Your Grave, the 1960 South Korean film The Housemaid and its 2010 remake, Adam Green's Hatchet II ... there's a lot of interesting stuff here. A full list of the announced films with descriptions, including which filmmakers will be at the fest, is available after the jump.

Fantastic Fest runs from September 23-30 this year, right here in Austin, primarily at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar but with gala screenings at the Paramount, and a few screenings and events in other venues around town. The fest has already announced its opening-night film, Let Me In, to be followed by a gala screening of Buried.

When it comes to contemporary scary tales, most films resort to fantastic gorefests and extremism to provoke reactions from the audience. Thankfully, The Last Exorcism rarely resorts to such cliched convention.

Shot in documentary style, the subject is Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a reforming evangelist who's out to prove how believers can be convinced that demonic possessions and exorcisms are faked to exploit them. Cotton is arrogantly charming, fully aware of his power to persuade, and how that factors into his ability to hoodwink the faithful. When he randomly selects a request to perform an exorcism to expose the trickery behind them, he and the documentary crew are off to rural Louisiana to answer a desperate farmer's pleas. Unfortunately for Cotton, he is asked by a desperate father to perform an exorcism he never wants to do; one on a child.

The acting in The Last Exorcism is outstanding, starting with Fabian (Big Love) as Cotton, whose glee at revealing his tricks could have been annoying, if it wasn't clear his goal is to help people. Ashley Bell, Caleb Landry Jones and Louis Herthum as the Sweetzers all seem straight off the farm, with homespun earnestness and love for their family that expresses itself in different ways for each character.

When a teenager suddenly finds himself reunited with his estranged criminal family, his life spins out of control until he's forced to decide his place within the Animal Kingdom.

"J" Cody (James Frecheville) has no memory of his dysfunctional extended family, whose criminal background keeps them under surveillance. A sullen and quiet young man, J has no clear place in their world or any power in it. His grandmother Janine (Jacki Weaver) is cheerfully indulgent and prone to barely appropriate displays of affection with her unstable sons (Luke Ford, Ben Mendelsohn, Sullivan Stapleton). When rogue police take action against one of their own, J is pressured to choose between his family and the law.

Few of the characters in Animal Kingdom have any redeeming qualities, and what few there are usually mask a darker purpose. Director and writer David Michod made sure every character had a dark side. Animal Kingdom may bring to mind the Nash Edgerton feature The Square and Spider, the short that played with it, and for good reason: Spider and Animal Kingdom were both written by Michod. But unlike those films, there's not even any redeeming circumstances.