Reviews

Have you ever been stuck in an elevator? You can probably see the comedy in that, right? And the drama? Imagine five stuck-elevator scenarios, and you can imagine Austinite Jen White's award-winning feature Between Floors.

Five very different stories play out in five separate elevators. Often funny and sometimes poignant, the tales include a lone business man, a man with a video camera, a family on their way to a party, a bloodied man and someone in a bad gorilla-in-drag suit ... and one very over-capacity elevator. The stress of being trapped and blind to any efforts to rescue them, the veneer of composure breaks down in sometimes unexpected ways.

White cuts between the elevators as each of the stories in Between Floors unfolds. With the tagline of "Sometimes getting stuck is the only way to break free," each elevator contains a different dynamic forcing the occupants to let go of some harbored anger. Ironically, the most diffuse story concerns the overcapacity crowd, but with so many potential stories, it has to be. Instead of wasting time developing those stories, White focuses on group dynamics of strangers, with amusing and insightful results. The two solo occupants do not get a chance to explain their stories, but they are still interesting to watch, one with hilarious results and the other heartwrenching.

The Austin-shot feature Red White & Blue, Simon Rumley's follow-up to The Living and the Dead, is a revenge-driven thriller that could be summed up as "sin begets sin." While violent and disturbing, Rumley's story explores how wrong people can go in certain circumstances, with three people with very different backgrounds creating a perfect storm of vengeance. 

Erica's (Amanda Fuller) only occupation is trying to keep a roof over her head as she drifts from bar to bar, sleeping with any man who will have her. Spontaneous kindness from a drifter living in the same boarding house seems to bring stability and hope for something more, when one of her hook-ups discovers the cost of sleeping with her. Her history has turned her into the walking wounded, extracting a passive/aggressive Russian roulette on men who'll sleep with anyone. Nate (Noah Taylor) reveals the one trigger that will make him abandon his carefully maintained control.  Franki's (Marc Senter) aspirations and indulgences cannot hide his infantile tendencies.

Of all the SXSW films that I saw this year, two of my top-ranked films were documentaries that share a common message of overcoming odds to achieve a dream and inspire others. One was Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission, for which you can read my review. The other film that I found inspiring that shatters preconceptions is For Once in My Life, which won the Best Documentary Feature Audience Award at SXSW this year.

For Once in My Life takes viewers on a journey with several members of The Spirit of Goodwill Band, all who face a wide range of severe mental and physical challenges. The central characters of this story are on the extreme opposite of the socioeconomic scale and face much different challenges, but like Richard Garriott they want to share their story and music with the intent of inspiring others. This heartwarming film brings to light what people with disabilities can achieve when given the right opportunities and support from family as well as their work environment.

What you should do instead of reading this review is find a way to see the movie Thunder Soul; I guarantee within the first few minutes you'll be hooked. 

Perhaps you need more than an urging from me and all the other people who loved it. The best documentaries expose us to things we might not otherwise be aware, educate, motivate and entertain, and prove that fact can be wilder than fiction. The best can do all of the above. Thunder Soul, directed by Mark Landsman, is a documentary that has done all of the above, and will make you reach for your wallet to help fund music in schools and to buy high school students music. It proves just how important a music program can be to the students of your local school. 

Thunder Soul is both a profile of stage band director and composer Conrad O. Johnson and a celebration of the music he and his students created. Between 1968 and 1977, the Kashmere High School in Houston's 5th Ward had a stage band performing music that put professionals to shame. With 42 regional titles, 2 national titles, and invitations to play in Europe and Japan, the Kashmere Stage Band took the world by storm.  

I know I'm not the only one who felt a little nostalgic during the SXSW screening of Cyrus, the latest film from the filmmaking brothers Jay and Mark Duplass. The former Austinites debuted The Puffy Chair in 2005, at the first SXSW I attended, in a weeknight screening at Alamo on South Lamar. Five years later, they've made a film with Fox Searchlight that stars John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill, which premiered at Sundance in January. The question is -- is it any good? Did the studio experience "spoil" the filmmakers' style?

I think Cyrus is the best feature film the brothers have made so far -- and one that will appeal to a wider audience than, say, Baghead, which was funny if you go to a lot of film festivals but didn't quite catch on outside of that circle. However, the brothers are still able to retain their skewed sense of humor and their intimate way of shooting a scene.

Reilly plays John, a middle-age schlub whose ex-wife Jamie (Catherine Keener) is trying to encourage him to date. The scene in which Jamie strides into John's house uninvited and finds him engaged in a rather private activity speaks worlds about both characters. And then there's the party where Jamie and her fiance push John into trying to introduce himself to various women. That party may seem awfully familiar to some of us. Fortunately, John meets Molly (Marisa Tomei), in what may be is a modern-day twist on the Meet Cute scenarios of old-fashioned romantic comedies, and they hit it off fairly quickly.

Set in the 80s, Skateland is a coming-of-age drama in a small East Texas town. The lead characters deal in different ways with pivotal moments and decisions in their lives. Writer/director Anthony Burns and co-writers Brandon and Heath Freeman deliver a solid production through cinematography and editing that allows the ensemble cast to really shine in this film, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The central story revolves around charismatic Ritchie Wheeler (Shiloh Fernandez), who is needing to deal with life after high school but he doesn't have a plan -- he's content working as a manager at the local skating rink, Skateland, but it's closing its doors soon. Ritchie's childhood buddy Brent Burkham (Heath Freeman) moves back home after he's dropped from the motorcross racing circuit and begins working on an oil drilling site with his dad. Ritchie also spends a lot of time hanging out with Brent's sister Michelle (Ashley Greene), who is eager to take the next step in both life and their relationship. Ritchie doesn't seem to concerned about moving on with his life, which is frustrating to his younger sister Mary (Haley Ramm), who is eager to see her older brother make something of himself.

What do you do if it turns out your very existence is a lie? Clay Liford's feature film Earthling explores identity, relationship and the meaning of home in his follow-up to his Sundance selection short My Mom Smokes Weed.

After a mysterious "atmospheric event," teacher Judith (Rebecca Spence) finds herself at odds with her life, and haunted by an enigmatic student, Abby (Amelia Turner). Judith realizes that the life she thought she had has been a pretense, and after Abby's insistence they are connected, Judith's life starts falling apart.

Clay Liford defies current science-fiction convention, eschewing rockets, robots and rayguns (the "r-cubed" he mentions in our earlier interview) to employ a low-budget indie style that emphasizes the story. Earthling employs an old-school, pre-Star Wars science-fiction style, when the story was more important than the dressings, such as Tarkovsky's Solyaris (or even Soderbergh's remake Solaris). It's more like The Quiet Earth or Shane Carruth's Primer, a 2004 indie time traveller sleeper that shook up the indie/sci-fi world a bit.  Primer was also filmed in Texas (Addison, to be exact; Earthling was filmed in Dallas).

Just when we thought SXSW movies had left Austin, here comes a movie with two actors very familiar to SXSW festgoers: Greta Gerwig (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Baghead) and Mark Duplass (Mars, Humpday), although Duplass is only onscreen for a few minutes in this one. Greenberg, however, is a studio-produced film (Focus Features) from writer/director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale), and stars someone better known these days for Hollywood blockbusters than indies, Ben Stiller.

Stiller plays the title character, Roger Greenberg, although the movie begins by focusing on another character. Florence Marr (Gerwig) works as a personal assistant to hotel developer Philip Greenberg and his family living in suburban LA. They're traveling abroad for awhile and ask her to keep an eye on their dog Mahler and their house, even though Philip's brother Roger will be staying there while they're gone.

I am a big fan of the 80s -- not as a retro fan, I still own all of the Duran Duran, the Smiths, and U2 vinyl albums I bought on their release dates. I was 22 years old in 1986, and would go "clubbing" dressed like Madonna in "Lucky Star." I loved John Hughes films, but my first film crush was on John Cusack as Walter "Gib" Gibson in The Sure Thing (1985). What could be better than a trip back to my favorite era than Hot Tub Time Machine starring and produced by Cusack himself, especially with Steve Pink (Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity) as director?

Hot Tub Time Machine begans with three buddies dealing with their own personal misery in their early forties, and wistful for the dreams of their youth in the 1980s. Adam (John Cusack) comes home to find that his girlfriend has moved out. Nick (Craig Robinson) is married, but his job at a dog-grooming salon is far from the musical career he had desired when he was young. Adam and Nick's friend Lou (Rob Corddry) is at rock-bottom -- he's a divorced alcoholic who is on a path to self-destruction.

The movie Fantastic Mr. Fox is director Wes Anderson's first animated film, and Anderson's uniquely skewed sensibilities work well in the film's stop-action animated universe. From its snarky dialogue to its catchy vintage pop soundtrack, the film shares many Anderson hallmarks with the director's much-loved other films such as Bottle Rocket and The Royal Tenenbaums.

Based on the Roald Dahl children's novel, Fantastic Mr. Fox -- now available on DVD and Blu-ray -- is not a complicated story. Mr. Fox (George Clooney), who has a penchant for daring squab thefts and other nocturnal adventures, promises to give up his reckless ways when his wife, Felicity (Meryl Streep), announces that she's pregnant. He keeps his promise for a couple of years, settling into a life of responsible parenthood with Mrs. Fox and their growing son, Ash (Jason Schwartzman).

All is mostly well until the Foxes move from their cozy den into a better home in the base of a tree near land owned by notoriously mean farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, (Robin Hurlstone, Hugo Guinness and Michael Gambon, respectively). The Foxes' smart and athletically talented nephew Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) moves in with the family, creating tension with a very jealous Ash. And tempted by the many treasures on the nearby farms, Mr. Fox soon is back to his thieving ways, making daring raids with help from his building superintendent, a somewhat dense opossum named Kylie (Wallace Wolodarsky).