SXSW Film 2007 CliffsNotes

I'll have further in-depth considerations of several films over the course of this week (I have a lot of real work to catch up on first), but here's my take on each film I saw at SXSW 2007, in Twitter-inspired blurb form.

Everything's Gone Green
dir: Paul Fox/stars: Paul Costanzo, Steph Song
Has Douglas Coupland left the house since 1996? His first screenplay recycles sub-plots and pretension from his first four novels, and not surprisingly, zeitgeist 15-years stale doesn't translate. It's visually stunning, but there's no getting around the fact it's a 45-year-old man's fantasy of late-20s angst.

The Prisoner: Or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
dir: Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker
Epperlein and Tucker make some inspired choices in telling the story of Yunis Khatayer Abbas, an Iraqi journalist who was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib for allegedly plotting to kill the British Prime Minister. The last thirty minutes of the film, in which an American Abu Ghraib guard who befriended Abbas picks up the narrative, is one of the most powerful sequences in any of the Iraq films I've seen over the past two years. Unfortunately, the film is crippled by the first 40 minutes, which consist primarily of Abbas himself, speaking directly into the camera in English, with an accent that is often unintelligible. Unless the filmmakers scramble to add subtitles before the picture opens in New York on Friday, I'm afraid The Prisoner won't be able to break through the "just another Iraq movie" malaise that has kept so many of these movies from going mainstream.

Hannah Takes the Stairs
dir: Joe Swanberg/stars: Greta Gerwig, Andrew Bujalski, Kent Osbourne, Mark Duplass
Certainly the best narrative feature I saw at the SXSW this year, Hannah's integrity, immediacy and insight is all the more impressive when seen within 24 hours of something like Everything's Gone Green, which so drastically misses the mark on each I-word front. Releasing a new, heavily-improvised digital video opus each year, Joe Swanberg is seemingly hellbent on documenting his generation in real time, making each progressive production a must-see. More on this one later.



Running with Arnold
dir: Dan Cox
An imminently watchable piece of propaganda that could only be consequential if the Governator's camp manages to change the Constitution to allow the green card-holding former action star to run for president. Even then, a new, hopefully more serious documentary will need to be made in order to put that disaster into context. Read my full review here.

King Corn
dir: Aaron Woolf
Fascinating post-Super Size Me look at the realities behind the American agricultural dream. Will have more on Netscape later this week.

Quiet City (pictured above)
dir: Aaron Katz/stars: Erin Fisher, Cris Lankenkau
Aaron Katz' follow-up to 2006 SXSW competition entry Dance Party, USA (which I blogged about here) is a more sophisticated and substantial tour through similar territory. With both films, Katz is pushing DV to unexpectedly lovely places, to tell dreamy stories about what happens just before a new relationship is consummated. More on this one later as well.

Orphans
dir: Ry Russo-Young/stars: James Katharine Flynn, Lily Wheelwright
A two person character study, buoyed by Russo-Young's smashing sense of style, but doomed by the "what is she thinking?" performance of one of the leads. After a knockout first thirty minutes, the film loses its way; I'd love to see it cut down into a short. More on the film's highpoint scene later.

Inside the Circle
dir: Marcy Garriott
The kind of niche music documentary that finds its ideal showcase at SXSW. Garriott tracks several years in the life of two Texas teenagers, former best friends turned breakdancing rivals, as their relationship to b-boy culture and one another defines their coming of age. It's a little long, but it could be a smash hit with urban teens. If VH1 doesn't pick this up, they're leaving buckets of money on the table.

Silver Jew
dir: Michael Tully
A mostly-verite look at a two-day stop in Israel on the first ever Silver Jews tour, during which the newly-religious David Berman meets fans, visits holy spots, and ruminates on his spirituality and his career. I just don't get the Silver Jews, and the drably shot performance scenes didn't change my mind on that, but Berman's an interesting character. I probably would have liked to have seen a more in-depth exploration of his life, his battles with addiction, etc, but for fans of the band, I'm sure it'll be a must see.

Kurt Cobain: About a Son
dir: A.J. Schnack
This Spirit Award nominee, which has been making the festival rounds since Toronto '06, apparently screened at SXSW in its theatrical version for the first time. Comprised almost entirely of new footage shot in Aberdeen, Seattle and Olympia set to audio interviews with Cobain conducted by Nirvana biographer Michael Azzerad, the end result is a fascinating, if at times obtuse, portrait of the personality behind the one great American rock band of the 90s. It's got a scrapbook nature to it that I like a lot - it resembles Cobain's own journals and collages. I'd like to see it again; I'd also like to hear A.J. talk about some of his visual choices, which range from literal to ironic to somewhat puzzling.

Helvetica
The surprise doc hit of the festival (who knew there were so many font geeks out there?), Helvetica is an unexpectedly academic look at the typeface that has come to dominate Western culture. I think I would have gotten more out of it if I hadn't been such a slacker in freshman year Vis Com at SAIC; ten years removed from the peak of my interest in design, I had a hard time distinguishing one Swiss master from another. Still, Helvetica allowed me to indulge my ever-present nostalgia for RAYGUN Magazine, and that's probably enough.

Does Your Soul Have a Cold?
dir: Mike Mills
A somber look at a strange chicken vs egg quandary. In 2000, Western drug companies began to advertise anti-depressants in Japan. Before that, the concept of depression really didn't exist in the culture. So did Prozac treat a problem already occurring within the populace, or did the availability of drugs help to create it? Mills doesn't provide a satisfactory answer, but his film, a super-intimate look at the lives of five youngish Japanese men and women grappling with mood disorders in different ways, is troubling and engaging nonetheless. I may write more on this on Netscape.

Manufacturing Dissent
dir: Rick Caine & Debbie Melnyk
This attempt at a Michael Moore take down pops out of the Fox News-stoked pack of anti-Moore propaganda for two reasons. First, and most obviously, it's only an attack by accident, coming from liberal Canadians whose attempts to make a pro-Moore film where frustrated by Moore's unwillingness to cede control over his own image. But second, and in my mind more interestingly, the filmmakers seem to be more interested in documentary film theory and ethics than in politics. Again, I'll definitely write more on this later, for Netscape.