Reviews

Marathon-length viewing of 30 Rock episodes laid the groundwork for my fandom of Second City and Saturday Night Live alum Tina Fey, but it was her witty insightful book Bossypants that set my admiration of her in stone. I was a bit conflicted about reviewing the dramedy Admission both due to my bias as well as being skeptical about an onscreen romance between Fey and co-star Paul Rudd. Although Rudd is no stranger to being a romantic lead, the combination of these actors who often portray rather quirky characters left me wondering how well they would mesh. The result is a light-hearted vehicle to explore chemistry between Fey and Rudd, with veteran comedic actress Lily Tomlin stealing scenes with her portrayal of a strong feminist.

Based on a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz and directed by Paul Weitz (About A Boy), Admission focuses on Princeton University admissions officer Portia Nathan (Fey). Portia seems to be content with her prestigious and challenging job and stable live-in relationship with English department chair Mark (Michael Sheen). However, she finds that her life is not as perfect as she has thought, having to compete with colleague Corinne (Gloria Reuben) for the coveted position of head of admissions ... and her boyfriend leaving her for his pregnant mistress.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's acting talent is no surprise to people who have followed his career as he made perhaps the smoothest-ever transition from child star to adult actor. His selection of unique and unusual roles has given him a wide body of work to showcase his talents and prevented typecasting. But Levitt is multi-dimensional -- sponsoring a collaborative art project he named HitRecord, he's drawn thousands of print and digital artists, writers and musicians into his cooperative efforts with a goal of eventually producing a crowdsourced feature film.

To that end, he has written, directed, produced and starred in his latest feature, Don Jon. Originally titled Don Jon's Addiction for its Sundance debut, he changed it before the movie's SXSW screening, because he said it gave the audience false expectations that it was entirely about porn addiction.)

Don Jon relates a kind of second coming-of-age story about Levitt's character Jon, who spends his days working out and his nights at the bar with his friends looking for a perfect "10." In spite of his success as the leader of this hunting pack, Jon finds no woman can match the sexual pleasure he receives from himself in front of a computer screen as he surfs internet pornography.

Even when Don meets his perfect girl Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) and falls completely in love, she is unable to satisfy him.  Even as she is unable to satisfy his expectations based on porn, he is finding it difficult to meet Barbara's expectations as a white knight based on the romance movies she voraciously watches every night. His situation is complicated by Esther (Julianne Moore), his night-school classmate who takes an interest in him and causes him to reconsider what he wants in a relationship.

Though Don Jon is Levitt's directorial debut, it would be a disservice to describe the film using words like "for a first-time director." Don Jon is a masterful work of writing, directing and acting, period. It is a sexy, funny, and wholly insightful expose of exactly what young people are doing wrong as they build relationships. Levitt understands cinematic language so well he can telegraph his intentions visually without the need to spell them out for the audience.

What would you do to save your family from homelessness?  How far would you go? Those are the questions Pat Healy must answer in the movie Cheap Thrills, which played at SXSW and has since been acquired for distribution by Drafthouse Films.

Scripted by David Chirchirillo and Trent Haaga and directed by E.L. Katz, Healy stars as Craig, a writer struggling to make a living for his family as an oil-change mechanic. After the worst day of his life, Craig stops by a local dive bar for a drink he can't afford and meets former high-school buddy Vince (Ethan Embry), who he has not seen in five years.

After reluctantly staying for just one more drink, Craig finds himself in the middle of an unlikely adventure when the two are invited to celebrate with the bar's only other occupants, birthday-girl Violet (Sara Paxton) and her multi-millionaire husband Colin (David Koechner).

What follows is best left for the screen, but it is a disturbing and exhilarating experience. Healy and Embry are fantastic actors and both completely believable as they portray the awkard semi-tension between friends who have grown somewhat apart. That dynamic is obliterated by Koechner. Cheap Thrills couldn't have worked without any of the three, but Koechner is a regular Mephistopheles offering the friends a deal they can't refuse, and a tour through a hell of their own making. This is the kind of easygoing passive-aggressive sadist character Koechner has spent a career perfecting.

One of the most intense films I've ever seen, Cheap Thrills well deserves the SXSW audience award it earned in the Midnighters category. Unlike many schlocky midnight features, this is the kind of movie that should only be shown at midnight.  It's exceptionally graphic, but Katz has mastered the art of don't-show and tell, with a single sound effect that left half the audience jumping completely out of their seats and the rest curled instantaneously into the fetal position.

The Austin-shot movie Zero Charisma may be as close as we ever get to a cinematic adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces. Scott Weidemeier, as portrayed by Sam Eidson, bears a strong resemblance to a contemporary Ignatius J. Reilly, if Ignatius were transplanted to a lesser city than New Orleans and had been introduced to role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. (Which leads me to ponder an Ignatius-approved RPG set in the time of Boethius, but I digress.)

What makes Zero Charisma so watchable is that Eidson and filmmakers Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews lead us to sympathize with a character as appalling and unlikeable as Ignatius would be, if we encountered him in real life. Scott is living with his grandmother in a glorious Fifties time capsule of a bungalow (with decor that would close Ignatius's valve), working as a delivery boy for the Donut Taco Palace, and in the rest of his spare time, creating and playing his own D&D-like role-playing game in which, naturally, he is the Game Master.

Scott's life is pretty routine until Fortuna spins her wheel and two horrible things happen: one of his regular RPG players drops out of the years-long game, and his grandmother suffers a stroke that brings Sam's mother (Cyndi Williams) and her husband back in town and invading Scott's sanctuary. He finds a new player, Miles (Garrett Graham), but Miles turns out to be a rival for the attention and perhaps allegiance of Scott's regular players.

Grow Up, Tony Phillips, the new comedy from Emily Hagins, made its world premiere at SXSW last week, in the Vimeo Theater of the Austin Convention Center. The audience was eager and excited to see the latest project by this young Austin-based director.

Tony Phillips (Hagins film regular Tony Vespe) is an easygoing senior in high school who still dresses up for Halloween and loves trick-or-treating.  He spends his fall months thinking up costume ideas, even sketching concepts in his college prep class. He tells his mom that he sees these costumes as his "legacy." 

His two closest pals are cool kid Craig (Devin Bonnee, another Hagins regular) and Elle (Katie Folger, also in Zero Charisma); both attempt to get Tony to get past this fascination with October 31. In one discussion with Tony, Elle comments, "You don't really worry about anything, do you?" They have their own reasons for worrying about Tony. Craig is falling in with the popular kids and Tony embarrasses him. Elle fears that kids at their school will laugh at her friend.

Tony also has a much younger friend/babysitting charge Mikey (Caleb Barwick, Army Wives) who looks up to him, and an older cousin Pete (AJ Bowen, You're Next) whom Tony himself esteems. As time passes in the film, we see how Tony's interactions with these four characters help him discover more about himself.

During the Q&A afterwards, Hagins said that she doesn't care to define the time or location of the movie. I easily figured out it was Austin, however, as soon as I saw a scene filmed in a familiar courtyard at my old high school (Johnston, RIP). The set design is punchy (Tony has a poster for fictitious movie Space Hipster in his room) and fully establishes us in the season of autumn starting with the cute opening credits sequence.

Some Austin character actors appear later in Grow Up, Tony Phillips to provide more laughs -- Byron Brown, especially. This saves the film from a slight dragginess. Although, honestly, the seats at the Vimeo Theater were so awfully uncomfortable that it may have just felt like the movie slowed down towards the end.

The kids in this film come off as genuine, awkward humor and all. There's not a whole lot of depth to Grow Up, Tony Phillips, but does there need to be? The film is cute and charming.  It's refreshing to see a coming-of-age story wherein teenage characters remain true to themselves. 

You take a mortal man, and put him in control. Watch him become a god, watch people's heads a’roll.

--Opening lyrics to Megadeth's "Symphony Of Destruction"

The above lyrics are the first thing that came to mind immediately after watching the unique and disturbing documentary The Act of Killing. This movie provides a terrifying glimpse into the minds of people that commit genocide.

The Act of Killing is one of the most unique documentaries ever filmed. Director Joshua Oppenheimer somehow convinced numerous gangsters, paramilitary leaders, thugs and politicians to create cinematic re-enactments of their experiences during the military coup that occurred in the country of Indonesia in 1965-66. This coup resulted in the mass execution of nearly half a million people who were members of, or accused of being members of, the Indonesian Communist Party. 

Anyone pursuing a career in the arts will appreciate Swim Little Fish Swim, a film about the perennial battle between art and commerce, between dreams of success and the unkind reality that shatters those dreams.

An engaging and appealing movie by French filmmakers Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis, Swim Little Fish Swim is the story of Leeward (Dustin Guy Defa) and Mary (Brooke Bloom), a struggling young couple living in a tiny Chinatown apartment with their three-year-old daughter, Maggie (Olivia Costello) -- or "Rainbow," as her always creative father prefers to call her.

That Leeward and Mary cannot agree on what to call their daughter speaks volumes about their troubled relationship. A talented musician, Leeward considers himself a misunderstood artist and refuses to accept paid gigs for The Man, fearing they will stifle his creativity. (He won't even record a CD of his songs; that would be much too mainstream.) He's also a self-styled New Age visionary who opposes most forms of capitalism and consumerism, much to the annoyance of Mary, a sensible, hardworking nurse who wishes her husband would grow up, face the responsibilities of adulthood and help her pay the bills.

James Broughton's epitaph says about all you need to know about him: Adventure -- not predicament.

For those who want to know more, the splendid documentary Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton is a terrific tribute to the revered poet, writer and pioneering experimental filmmaker.

Born in 1913, Broughton overcame a difficult childhood to have a long, fulfilling career and personal life. His father died when Broughton was five, and his overbearing mother sent him to military school at age 9, hoping to break him of his effeminate tendencies. These experiences no doubt informed his work and his lust for life and love as an adult.

He began making experimental short films in New York in the 1940s and made 23 in total, all deeply personal and many featuring groundbreaking themes and copious nudity, which was largely forbidden during his early career. (One of his best-known films, the award-winning 1967 fantasy romp The Bed, is perhaps the nudest film of its era. It played in a San Francisco theater for more than a year.)

With ten albums over almost 20 years, the Austin band The Gourds has been well established on the local scene with their raucous live performances. Kevin Russell formed the band in 1994 with fellow songwriter Jimmy Smith, and Claude Bernard on accordion, guitar and keyboards -- Keith Langford later joined the band on drums. It was the viral sensation of their cover of "Gin and Juice" that garnered them national attention, and has become their band's version of "Freebird" as the most requested song. Longtime fans of the band know that the magic of The Gourds truly comes from the communal live experience, whether witnessed at a jam-packed Thursday night show at Shady Grove or the memorable SXSW 2005 free show at Auditorium Shores with a sea of over 20,000 people.

Director and editor Doug Hawes-Davis captures the beloved band in his documentary, All The Labor, which premiered last night at SXSW 2013. Founder of the annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, Hawe-Davis is no stranger to documentary filmmaking, having collaborated with editor Drury Gunn Carr on more than 30 documentaries.

They began filming The Gourds in August 2011. in an unconventional practice space -- an abandoned kitchen in a former mental institution in south Austin. The filmmaking team followed the alt-country roots rockers as they toured relentlessly in support of Old Mad Joy, their most recent album produced by longtime Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell. Interspersed is commentary with each of the members and behind-the-scenes footage in their favorite local spots and homes.

Please welcome guest contributor Brady Dial, an Austin-based film producer whose last film was the documentary Man on a Mission.

After seeing The Other Shore you'll either be inspired to pursue your most impossible dreams -- or to drop them in favor of fully appreciating your present. Either way, a win. There are many surprises in this documentary about Diana Nyad's attempt to swim the gulf between Cuba and Florida, not the least of which is this: it's not about swimming.

To be sure, the film includes plenty of training scenes, discussions of the perils of the trip and a history of Nyad's swimming career. But that's all merely icing on the dense layer cake that is Nyad herself. Her relentless pursuit of the Cuba-Florida swim is at once an inspiring story of dogged determination while also revealing the tragic costs of single-minded obsession.

At 60, after a 30-year hiatus from long-distance swimming, Nyad decides that she just can't let go of this one last goal. She starts training again for the grueling 103-mile swim from Cuba to Florida, fraught with perils including sharks, strong currents and the incredibly venomous box jellyfish. The scenes involving the latter are some the most harrowing moments of the film and a testament to Nyad's indomitable will.