SXSW – 2023 – Vol. 1 – The Films

by Movie Review •

Wrapping up my time at the 2023 SXSW film festival, I figured it would be best to split up my reviews into a few Volumes. 

The first looks at a few of the full-length features I’ve seen. 

Appendage

Director/Screenwriter: Anna Zlokovic
Cast: Hadley Robinson, Emily Hampshire, Brandon Mychal Smith, Kausar Mohammed
Synopsis: After hitting a breaking point, Hannah’s inner thoughts physically change into a monstrous creature threatening to upend her life.
Thoughts: Last October, Hulu brought two of its previous Huluween shorts to feature film life, and while the results of those efforts (Grimcutty and Matriarch) were uneven, to put it mildly, they’ll be giving it another shot this year with Appendage. Writer/director Anna Zlokovic expands her brief shocker that saw budding fashion designer Hannah hampered by self-doubt, manifesting her fears as a vile little creature who grew out of her. The premise was crazy enough to work in a blink and you missed it creep out, but how would it fare with 85 more minutes to fill? Zlokovic hasn’t gone back and reinvented her story but instead, um, fleshed it out, delving into the origins of Hannah’s issues and how it has followed her around like a curse. Hadley Robinson replaces Rachel Sennott as the lead and drafts a believably live wire bundle of nerves, pushed further to the breaking point when her hang-ups express themselves as a gooey monster that feeds on her sadness. I was sad to see Eric Roberts not stay with the film as her tyrannical boss, especially because his replacement plays the role as a sort of cross between the less successful aspects of King Herod and Miranda Priestly. Zlokovic does good work with a limited budget and brings the whole looney-tunes story to a fine wrap-up that eschews fantasy for honesty.

The Long Game

Director: Julio Quintana
Cast: Jay Hernandez, Dennis Quaid, Cheech Marin, Julian Works, Jaina Lee Ortiz, Brett Cullen, Oscar Nuñez, Richard Robichaux, Paulina Chávez
Synopsis: Banned from playing at the club where they caddied, a group of Mexican-American high schoolers form their own golf team, build a one-hole course in the fields, and win the 1957 Texas State Championship against all odds. Based on a true story.
Thoughts: It didn’t surprise me to learn after the fact that director Julio Quintana had Oscar-winning director Terrence Malick as a mentor as he began in the film industry. To look at The Long Game is to take in a serene postcard of a movie that’s a visual feast to the eyes, and it’s almost a bonus that Quintana has a compelling story to tell on top of it all. Not that he hasn’t already had some practice with an inspiring tale of underdogs mentored by Dennis Quaid defying the odds and proving their worth to a sea of doubters. He’s done that movie already, and it was called Blue Miracle, a Netflix film from 2021 that turns out to be precisely the type of movie you think it is. The same could be said about The Long Game too. It follows a time-honored formula of movie tropes that sets the audience up to dab their eyes by the end when they aren’t cheering on the <insert sports team here> to victory. Co-starring Jay Hernandez (Bad Moms) as a new superintendent and veteran in a Texas town that sees links potential in the Mexican-American boys who have only been allowed to caddy at the same country club he wants to join; what fascinated me about this one is how well it works the formula in its favor. The cast is uniformly charming, the pacing is deliberate but not slow, and the message is delivered not in a sugary deluge but in slow drops that make it easy to digest. This is one of those Sunday afternoon crowd-pleasers that come along rarely.

Periodical

Director: Lina Lyte Plioplyte
Synopsis: This an eye-opening documentary that examines science, politics, and the mystery of the menstrual cycle, through the experiences of doctors, athletes, movie stars, journalists, activists, and everyday people.
Thoughts: This striking documentary about the mystery of women’s “time of the month” (ugh, I know, it pained me to write it too) is, in my estimation, something every male (or male-identifying) person should have to see. Indeed, viewing for any politician serving in any capacity should be required. OK…I’ll fully admit that as a white male watching this film, I was embarrassed by the amount of information I didn’t know going in, not about the base facts on what is going on ‘inside’ but on the radical injustice that has been dealt toward women as it relates to laws, taxes, discrimination, and so on. Interviewing everyone from a young woman going from state to state to appeal the tax applied to tampons (classified as “luxury items” in many states) to women going through menopause (including Oscar-nominee Naomi Watts), Lina Lyte Plioplyte’s carefully organized deep dive is easy to follow and rich with informative points for those needing different levels of insight. It’s the kind of radical documentary that could, with enough push, take off significantly.

I Used To Be Funny

Director/Screenwriter: Ally Pankiw
Cast: Rachel Sennott, Olga Petsa, Jason Jones, Sabrina Jalees, Caleb Hearon, Ennis Esmer, Dani Kind
Synopsis: Sam, a stand-up comedian struggling with PTSD, weighs whether or not to join the search for Brooke, a missing teenage girl she used to nanny.
Thoughts: Bursting onto the scene with 2021’s Shiva Baby, I first caught up with Rachel Sennott in 2022 when the horror-comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies landed. Nearly walking away with the film thanks to her expert deadpan line delivery, Sennott instantly went on my list of actors to keep an eye out for, and I didn’t have to wait too long for her next project to arrive. Here at SXSW, we’re treated to a strong Sennott performance in I Used To Be Funny, a dramedy boasting a unique format built upon sequences in the present and flashbacks to the past that fill in the gaps to a mystery we reconstruct along the way. Usually, this kind of storytelling can get a bit frustrating. Still, writer/director Ally Pankiw has gifted us with Sennott’s ace leading performance and surrounded her with a solid supporting cadre of interesting Canadian actors. If it drifts off center ever so slightly near the end and doesn’t fully right itself before arriving at its destination, I can forgive it for the first 90 minutes delivered with such an effortless air of confidence. Sennott is clearly on track toward the role that will truly launch her into the next level, and we’ll be able to point to films such as I Used To Be Funny as solid examples of full-package entertainment.

Movie Review ~ Moving On

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Two old friends reconnect at a funeral and decide to get revenge on the widower who messed with them decades before.
Stars: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Malcolm McDowell, Richard Roundtree, Sarah Burns, Catherine Dent
Director: Paul Weitz
Rated: R
Running Length: 85 minutes
TMMM Score: (7/10)
Review:  When something works, you stick with it, and obviously, the chemistry between stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin hasn’t waned since they (re)joined forces in 2015 for their popular Netflix show Grace and Frankie. Not long after that show finished its run in early 2022, the two were on to 80 for Brady, bringing Oscar winners Sally Field and Rita Moreno along for the ride. That film was the low-grade hit it was intended to be, especially among its target audience (matinee crowds). Those same viewers will likely be interested in what shenanigans Tomlin and Fonda are up to now.

It should be noted that Moving On is being marketed as a much different film than it is, and that’s too bad. To look at it, a paying customer might think it’s a comedy with an edgier premise allowing the duo to play to their usual schtick when in reality, it’s more of a darker drama the women approach with a far more serious stance. Of their collaborations from the past decade, this denotes their best work together (as flimsy though it may be) and, in the case of Tomlin, some of her most resonant screen representation in decades. 

Attending the funeral of her best friend from college she hasn’t seen in years, Claire (Fonda, Peace, Love & Misunderstanding) has come to do more than grieve. She has a score to settle with Howard (Malcolm McDowell, Bombshell), the late woman’s husband, and she believes the only way to make him pay is to murder him. As she’s working out the finer details of her plan, Evelyn (Tomlin, Admission), another college friend, also appears with a revelation of her own. It’s from shared grief that Evelyn and Claire pick up where they left off years ago, alternatively planning Howard’s murder while evaluating their lives and missed opportunities.

Writer/director Paul Weitz has had quite the rollercoaster career. Starting by co-directing American Pie with his brother Chris in 1999 and recently directing Tomlin in her award-worthy performance in 2015’s Grandma, I’d be willing to bet he wrote Evelyn with her in mind. How else would it feel perfectly tailored to Tomlin’s strengths as both a wry comic and an actress able to draw deep emotion from unique line readings? Fonda’s role is a nice change of pace (but not a nice change of wig, I must say), even if it’s once again mainly centered around her relationships with men. It’s frustrating to see Fonda still playing roles that have her sitting around figuring out why her marriages don’t work out. Her scenes with an ex-husband (Richard Roundtree, Shaft) are pleasant enough but feel like distractions.

When the film takes wild shifts in tone (earning its R rating with some out-of-left-field blue dialogue), the viewer can feel like they are getting whiplash, and the last half of Moving On is hard to nail down. Weitz loses the thread when trying to tie everything together, but at least Fonda and Tomlin are there to do what they can with the pattern that’s been woven so far. It’s a nice image if overall incomplete in design.

Movie Review ~ Boston Strangler

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Loretta McLaughlin was the reporter who first connected the murders and broke the story of the Boston Strangler. She and Jean Cole challenged the sexism of the early 1960s to report on the city’s most notorious serial killer.
Stars: Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, David Dastmalchian, Morgan Spector, Bill Camp, Chris Cooper
Director: Matt Ruskin
Rated: R
Running Length: 112 minutes
TMMM Score: (7.5/10)
Review:  It will always be a mystery why 2007’s Zodiac didn’t get more recognition the year it came out. Directed by David Fincher, it was a frightening look at the killing spree between 1968 and 1985 in San Francisco from the perspective of civilian reporters and police. Epic in design and solid performance, it received no significant awards but has gone on to be a blueprint for many procedural detective shows. Its aesthetic look was copied for numerous true crime dramas.

I mention Zodiac so thoroughly in my review of 20th Century Studios Boston Strangler (premiering exclusively on Hulu), not just because it skillfully focuses on reporters/police tracking a well-known serial killer throughout the ’60s but because it’s impossible not to compare the two films. It’s not disparaging writer/director Matt Ruskin’s new endeavor, produced by Ridley Scott, to say that one could imagine this being part of the “Zodiac Universe” because both movies are a systematic, even-keeled approach to the subject. And both present the violence of the crimes from an emotionally removed place. This is what happened; it was ugly, and a human committed it; you can look away if you want, but it won’t change the fact that it happened.

After two women are murdered in short succession, reporter Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley, Silent Night) asks her boss (Chris Cooper, Little Women) to be assigned to look into the deaths and see if there is a connection. Unhappy with her job writing fluff pieces and wanting more serious work, Loretta considers this an opportunity to level up and prove her worth. It takes some convincing, but she can finally dig around to see what she can find. Eventually, paired with the more experienced (but still often just as undermined) Jean Cole (Carrie Coon, Gone Girl), Loretta pieces together the pattern of a serial killer that won’t be stopped.

Facing opposition from the police and politicians who don’t want to be seen as foolish, Loretta and Jean are often forced to go the extra mile, putting their lives and reputations at risk, to prove their theory is correct before the Boston Strangler strikes again. Facing pressure from the public, who grow increasingly terrified as bodies of innocent women are routinely found viciously murdered, the reporters follow their leads and instincts to go beyond the headlines and newsprint to help take down a deadly predator.

I deliberately didn’t do my homework before watching Boston Strangler, purposely not reading up on the case’s history and passing on the chance to watch director Richard Fleischer’s 1968 film version of The Boston Strangler starring Tony Curtis. I wanted to let Ruskin’s film tell the story to me, and for the most part, it was an informative retelling of the events with the apparent glossing over of the finer particulars to bring the movie in under two hours. That gives the film a swift pace and little time to linger anywhere for very long, which is where we get the trade-off.

When you have a movie like Boston Strangler with enough details to keep you thinking and a nice gait to ensure you stay engaged, you only realize later that you didn’t learn much about the people milling about the movie. We know Loretta and Jean as crackerjack reporters. Still, their personal lives are paper thin, aside from Loretta’s husband (Nanny‘s Morgan Spector, who, ironically, plays Coon’s husband on HBO’s The Gilded Age) going from supporting his wife to a “You’re never home to make dinner!” kinda guy pretty quickly.

Nevertheless, this is a slick film made with evident skill and care. I can understand why it is better suited for a streaming debut than making a go of it in theaters; it just plays better on a smaller screen for at-home digestion. That allows for the frightening details of the case to creep their way into your brain as well. Boston Strangler is crafted nicely for a weekend watch or stormy night viewing. Don’t be shocked if you leave a light on at bedtime…and please, always check the peephole before opening the door!

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Movie Review ~ Jesus Revolution

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The Facts:

Synopsis: In the 1970s, young Greg Laurie is searching for all the right things in all the wrong places: until he meets Lonnie Frisbee, a charismatic hippie street preacher. Together with Pastor Chuck Smith, they open the doors of Smith’s languishing church to an unexpected revival of radical and newfound love.
Stars: Joel Courtney, Anna Grace Barlow, Jonathan Roumie, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Kelsey Grammer
Director: Jon Erwin, Brent McCorkle
Rated: NR
Running Length: 120 minutes
TMMM Score: (3/10)
Review: Some movies can act as Trojan horses, bringing in messages you weren’t expecting or unplanned feelings. I’ve started several films assuming one experience but receiving the opposite. Thankfully usually a pleasant surprise, these movies make me edge a little further up in my seat, wondering what could happen next. However, some films work against the good tidings they offer, becoming problematic as you delve deeper into their origins.

I’m skirting around my issue with Jesus Revolution, and not very elegantly. I’ve been attempting to write my review for a few weeks but wasn’t sure how to approach it. I suppose we should start with the good, and that’s to say that directors Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle have turned into a far more agreeable and entertaining film than I had guessed after watching the initial trailer. After I saw an old-school billboard advertising it (when was the last time I saw a billboard advertising a movie?  In MN?) I was intrigued enough to give it a spin, and I turned off the TV two hours later with a little more knowledge about a piece of history than before going in.

Something bothered me about it, though, and I couldn’t put my finger on precisely what. It wasn’t the performances, as earnest and eager-to-please as they all were. High-schooler Greg Laurie is desperate to find his place in the world, and Joel Courtney (The Empty Man) makes Laurie an engaging presence. Watching his journey from lost soul to identifying his purpose is one many can embrace and, I think, relate to. I didn’t even mind Kelsey Grammar (The God Committee) playing Chuck Smith, a pastor that teams with a hitchhiking hippie named Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie) to form a movement that would revitalize not just his failing church but make religion more welcoming to a younger generation that felt alienated during a time of war and crisis.

Eventually, I found out what was gnawing at me. The film wasn’t telling the full facts of the story that was allegedly about finding the truth. 

I have to take a deep breath and move past some obvious personal (and fundamental) issues I have supporting a film about a church that evangelizes against certain minority groups and look away from the actors that participated in making the film. (Or should we? Maybe we shouldn’t.)  Personal issues aside, to keep it professional, let’s point out that Erwin’s script is based on Laurie’s novel and omits essential details about the life (and death) of Lonnie Frisbee that could change how audiences (particularly the target audience for these faith-based films) viewed one of the first leaders of this revolutionary movement. By hiding these essential facts, the result is a skewed picture scrubbed clean of what the church deems dirty when Laurie and Smith both became enormously successful, even with the unfortunate downfall of Frisbee.

Look, I know these religion-positive films do big business at the box office (made for $15 million, Jesus Revolution has, as of this writing, grossed $41.5). Still, there’s something to be said about presenting the facts and letting intelligent audiences decide if the material suits them. Sanitizing history doesn’t change anything; it only hides it in some shady spot when time has shown it’s best to come clean from the start. Jesus Revolution isn’t a poorly made film, just an ill-advised one hiding under the guise of truth.   

Movie Review ~ Swallowed

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The Facts:

Synopsis: After a drug run goes bad, two friends must survive a nightmarish ordeal of drugs, bugs, and horrific intimacy in this backwoods body-horror thriller.
Stars: Jena Malone, Cooper Koch, Mark Patton, Jose Colon
Director: Carter Smith
Rated: R
Running Length: 92 minutes
TMMM Score: (4/10)
Review:  The one good thing about getting COVID and being isolated from my partner was that it allowed me time to binge a few random shows I’d been lining up to watch on my own. One was Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Stories for FX on Hulu. I missed the entire first season, and the second season was beginning as I was in the deepest part of the corona-mania, so, not wanting to venture into a whole AHS season (I’m so behind), I thought these little one-off episodes would be fun. While not all winners, there were enough of the typically over-the-top Ryan Murphy and Ryan Murphy adjacent stylings to keep me entertained as I coughed and radiated heat from my fever.

While watching the new horror film Swallowed, I wondered what an excellent episode of American Horror Stories it would have made. It’s campy and creepy to be in alignment with the mission of this weekly horror anthology, filled with enough toned boys in various states of undress to be the non-threatening eye candy for young women and objects of lust for horror queens. It preys on some fairly abject terror of eating the wrong thing and paying a deadly price. Perfect, right?

The problem with Swallowed being a television episode is that at 92 minutes, Carter Smith’s feature film is unfathomably long and can’t justify taking up so much of your time after a critical turn of events around the sixty-minute mark. Until then, though, Smith has let the film cast an awesome skin-crawling vibe over the viewer. Friends Dom (Jose Colon) and Benjamin (Cooper Koch, They/Them) enjoy a last night out together before Benjamin heads out West to begin an adult film career. Dom wants to send his friend off with a little bit of money, so he agrees to assist in transporting what he thinks are drugs, which turns out to be far more trippy.

Delivered by Alice (Jena Malone, Consecration), the little packets must be muled (swallowed and excreted) to safety, and when Dom can’t take them all, Benjamin is forced at gunpoint to take one as well. All would likely have worked out fine, except the men make a pit stop at a rest area, where they get into an altercation, and Dom is injured, causing one of the packets to break inside him. What has been released into his stomach is more than your usual illegal substance and is more than he, Benjamin, Alice, or the demented head smuggler (Mark Patton, Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street) bargained for.

Swallowed is a complex film, not just for its subject matter but for its general griminess. You get the sense that everything in the movie has a greasy feel, so there’s no way ever to feel settled. That’s likely Smith’s intention, and the effect makes that first hour genuinely electric. Unfortunately, the power gets turned off during the last thirty minutes when Swallowed shifts into an all-together different gear, more languid and seedy, skirting on the edge of exploitative. It’s not particularly well-performed or well-filmed either, adding to its growing inertia as the minutes slowly tick away. The lasting result is more than a bad taste in your mouth and a sour stomach…the film gets to be a real pain in your butt as it grasps its way to a crude finale.