South by Southwest film kicks-off tonight down in Austin, and if you’re planning on fighting the traffic to see what this year’s film festival has to offer, here are some suggestions for your schedule.
First, a note on the picks. For this list, I tried to stay away from movies that might pop up in Dallas at some point in 2014, either because they will eventually enjoy a theatrical release, or because the Dallas Film Festival has already slated them. That includes a lot at this year’s SXSW, including movies like David Gordon Green’s Joe; Jon Favreau’s Chef; the new bio pic, Cesar Chavez; Jim Jarmusch’s bizarre and enjoyable vampire romance, Only Lovers Left Behind (pictured above); the high-octane Indonesian action flick, The Raid 2; Cat Chandler’s Hellion; and the new Veronica Mars movie. Sure, many of these films will be showing at this year’s SXSW with talent in attendance, so if that’s what you’re after, the films above represent your short list.
Below I tried to spot films that might not pop up in this area any time soon — or at all. Well, with one exception, the first film on the list. And so, here are 10 stand-outs at this year’s SXSW (with trailers where available):
Perhaps the most anticipated film at this year’s festival, Boyhood is Richard Linklater’s (Before Midnight, Dazed and Confused) 11-year film in the making, a narrative feature that follows the life of a family over the course of 12 years. It sent Sundance into hysterics. I can’t wait to see this thing.
The Austin-based filmmaking duo the Zellner brothers (Kid-Thing, Goliath) tell a story about a Japanese woman who is convinced she will find hidden treasure somewhere in the United States. But here’s the catch: the clues are buried in the details of an old movie she watches over and over on VHS, and the treasure is fictional.
The wonderful documentarian Margaret Brown (The Order of Myths, Be Here to Love Me: Townes Van Zandt) digs deeply into the aftermath of the worst oil spill in American History that resulted from the Deepwater Horizon explosion. This is a subject that’s been tackled before in films like Bryan Hopkins’ Dirty Energy. But all that film proved is that the scope and scale of the catastrophe won’t be going away any time soon, and it demands as much attention as it can get, particularly from talented filmmakers like Brown.
This documentary looks at an odd couple of scientists — one buttoned-up, the other sporting a wild Duck Dynasty beard — who are battling the establishment as they try to defeat aging and discover eternal youth. The intriguing subject almost sounds like the plot of a bizarre fiction thriller you might find among the midnight features.
Saar Klein is best known for his editing on films like Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity. Things People Do is his first directorial effort, and it sounds like a Breaking Bad riff: a man loses his job but doesn’t tell his wife, going into a life of crime to cover his tracks and keep the family afloat.
The first film by the legendary Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, The Holy Mountain) in 23 years, The Dance of Reality explores the filmmaker’s boyhood through the lens of his distinctive philosophical vision.
Houston filmmaker Darius Clark Monroe asks how a 16-year-old kid could turn into a bank robber in this Spike Lee-produced documentary.
Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Fassbender all star in this quirky comedy about a wannabe musician by the award-winning Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson (What Richard Did, Garage). IF this was made by an Austin filmmaker, I might roll my eyes. But this is a subject an Irish wit should handle with aplumb.
Shawn Christensen’s crowd-pleasing short film “Curfew” won an Academy Award in 2013, now he has expanded the story idea into a feature film about a down-and-out young man who has to take care of his estranged, 11-year-old niece for a few hours in New York.
Patrick Brice’s first feature film is a thriller starring Mark Duplass about a broke filmmaker who is suckered into filming an odd character in a remote mountain town.
