SXSW Movie Round Up

Flakes - Directed by the same guy who made Heathers, this Zoey Deschanel movie was a big disappointment. It felt like an advanced directing project with Zoey, Chris Lloyd, and some other douche-bag LA actors. About midway through the movie you realize it's supposed to be taking place in New Orleans, but it'd be tough to tell since no one actually spoke or acted like they were from New Orleans. It was only afterwards it I figured out it was made by the Heather's director, which came as a big surprise simply because the filmmaking seemed so amatuer.

Sisters - A remake of the Depalma film, I fell asleep. I liked the Depalma movie a lot when I saw it, but this one with Chloe Sevigny and Stephan Rea was a big disappointment. And rather gross. I couldn't give you details about how it was similar and dissimilar from the original, since both movies are so weird.

American Zombie - A "fictional documentary" about documentary filmmakers making a documentary on zombies - who are more like you and me than you think. This movie was okay. One of documentary filmmakers was pretty funny. A few of the actors were pretty good. The horror scenes late in the movie were handled pretty well. Ultimately, however, these movies about movies tend to not stay with me and feel more like exercises for the filmmakers than a real good movie experience.

Grindhouse Clips - We saw clips from the Rodriguez grindhouse movie, which looked pretty damn good. Then we saw fake grindhouse trailers made by fans which were REALLY good. The winner was called: Hobo with a Shotgun, another one was called One Eye or something like that about a violated woman who takes revenge on men, and the last one I can't remember the name, but had incredible special effects.

Hell on Wheels - A documentary about the resurrection of Roller Derby. Actually, it was more about how start up groups organize themselves and run into problems than Roller Derby itself, but the Roller Derby provided fun in-between footage. The crowd was packed with crazy Roller Derby people drinking Tecate at noon in the movie theater, so it was a pretty wild experience. Not a great film, but quite a fun film experience that can only be had a festival.

Reel Shorts 2 - Basically the best shorts program I've ever seen. The Death of the Tin Man might be the best short film I've ever seen - it won Sundance. Vineet's movie was great and won a special jury prize. The others were very strong as well.

Experimental Shorts - Naveen's thesis won the prize. Yeah! The experimental program as a whole wasn't nearly as strong as the Reel Shorts, but there was some interesting stuff. I'm borrowing some shot ideas from one of them I liked.

Smiley Face - Greg Araki makes a movie about a female stoner that all takes place in one day. Enough said - my favorite feature I watched at the festival.

I missed a slew of movies I wanted to to check out, but oh well, that's life.