Another year, another SXSW

Here's the stuff I watched and dug

This year marked my thirteenth trip to Austin for the South by Southwest Film Festival. The first few years I went, I watched over thirty films. I’m older, though, and more prone to being tired and falling asleep during movies. Plus there were fewer venues and rounds at the festival this year so I only watched twenty movies this past week. More so, I didn’t even stay for the entire festival - coming home two days early so I could catch up on some work and get ready for the upcoming Werewolves Across America tour.

That said, the ratio of great movies I saw during SXSW was strong. There were a lot of really fantastic films programmed this year. Here were my favorites:

LATE BLOOMERS
Karen Gillan stars as a young woman who, in a drunken state, breaks her hip. In rehab, she meets a Polish woman who becomes an unlikely friend. A tale of hard-won personal and physical growth across a language barrier. The film features strong performances, fun banter and effective drama. It’s a very charming heart-tugger.

TALK TO ME
Wow. Fucking wow. A group of teens in Australia learn the dangers of chatting up ghosts in this extremely effective horror film from A24. Great energy, performances and - most importantly - scares. This movie really, really works and is a fantastic debut from a pair of Australian YouTube creators. The movie is going to be huge when A24 releases it later this year.

DOWN LOW
A newly-out gay man and a twink sex worker have a magical night of romance together while trying to ditch a dead body. The film oscillates wildly between tender rom-com and straight-up cartoon. Simon Rex is a lot of fun as a crack-smoking necrophiliac. Despite appearances, this is not a parody film festival synopsis.

SELF RELIANCE
An incredibly fun film written, directed and starring Jake Johnson as a man recruited to compete in a game show (on the dark web, no less!) where assassins will try and kill him. There are loopholes, though. Funny, surprising and thematically deep. There’s a Sinbad (the comedian, not the sailor) gag that had me dying.

BOTTOMS
Two queer high school students start a fight club in an attempt to get laid. More ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL or STUDENT BODIES than SUPERBAD. Crazy, silly, sharp satire smuggled into a very funny teen sex comedy. Rachel Sennott continues her comic reign.

GOING VARSITY IN MARIACHI
A vibrantly directed and edited documentary that follows students in an Edinburg, TX high school mariachi program. I was awash with nostalgia for South Texas after watching this extremely charming portrait of Rio Grande Valley culture. If you like underdog stories, great music and cultural specificity, this movie is for you.

BROOKLYN 45
A post-World War II bottle movie about a group of war veterans processing personal demons during a botched seance. The film is a dialogue and performance-driven morality tale with a few moments of extremely impressive gore. It feels like something Rod Sterling would have dug.

PROBLEMISTA
A very special movie. Julio Torres’ directorial debut reminded me of Tom Schiller’s NOTHING LASTS FOREVER. Full of magical realism, cultural and generational specificity and barbed kindness, the movie follows a Salvadoran immigrant chasing dreams, facing dragon as he attempts to break into the toy design business. First, though, he must be a personal assistant to the Ultimate Karen (played by Tilda Swinton). If you’re a fan of Michel Gondry, you’ll love this movie.

CITIZEN SLEUTH
An absolutely captivating documentary that explores the explicit and implicit dangers of true crime podcasts as a hobby. As a woman finds her podcast (about a real-life tragedy in her small Virginia community) blowing up, she goes down a dark road because of her untethered relationship with journalistic ethics.

ANOTHER BODY
This documentary explores nonconsensual sonography created using Deepfake technology. The film allows one specific victim to actually use the same technology to tell her story without exposing her identity. The film’s spotlight on a dangerous, seemingly impossible-to-control technology begs for laws to help protect its victims.

BLACKBERRY
An incredible next film from writer/director Matthew Johnson. The rise and fall of the BlackBerry device is captured with all the kinetic, vibrant energy of Johnson’s previous work. It was great seeing Glenn Howerton get a meaty role of a (checks notes) asshole to sink his teeth into.

POLITE SOCIETY
I absolutely loved this movie - a kinetic genre mash-up about a would-be teenage stuntwoman who takes it upon herself to save her sister from an arranged marriage. Funny, exhilarating and (I suspect) highly rewatchable. This movie rules and was a blast to see with a highly-engaged audience.

EVIL DEAD RISE
This sequel is the perfect recipe for the future of the franchise. Keep making self-contained nasty AF, gore-soaked possession movies under the guidance of Raimi, Campbell and Tapert and I’ll keep coming back to the theater. I’m very happy to see a new movie added to the “horror mom” cannon. Mother’s Day programming for years to come.

IF YOU WERE THE LAST
Absolutely adorable. This rom-com follows two astronauts sranded in space who begin to question whether or not they should hook up. The aesthetic has a wonderful illusion of DIY, but there’s no denying that the team behind the film pulled of something truly special.

THE HERRICANES
This documentary explores the undersung story of an all-female professional tackle football team that played four seasons in Houston during the late ‘70s. As they blazed a trail for other women athletes, their story was largely forgotten. I dug this locally-shot documentary quite a bit.

SATAN WANTS YOU
A deliciously infuriating doc about the Satanic Panic and the book that helped cause it - “Michelle Remembers.” How did an increasingly unethical relationship between a psychiatrist and his patient lead to full-blown fear of the devil? This film has answers, plus a lot of fun “Unsolved Mysteries”-esque reenactments.