Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (dir. John Lee)
Does the world need another Pee-wee Herman movie? Does Paul Reubens? It doesn’t matter. Those who love Pee-Wee will find equal reasons to love and hate this movie, but it’s the uninitiated that should be the real focus for this film’s success. Premiering at SXSW the day before it would do the same on Netflix, the Judd Apatow-produced revamp of Reubens’ beloved (autist? Manchild? Misprogrammed cyborg?) has Pee-Wee heading out on a road movie, unfolding towards the promise of Joe Manganiello’s birthday party in New York City. Sure, why not. Whatever Pee-Wee is, he’s beloved, and while this film may not enchant a new generation of Herman-fans, it certainly doesn’t tarnish his impeccable, bow-tied image.
War On Everyone (dir. John Michael McDonagh)
The writer/director of The Guard and Calvary comes stateside for his take on the buddy-cop picture, and it is a brilliant, hilarious, and profane ride. Michael Peña and Alexander Skarsgård star as the two crooked cops who maintain some sense of ethics as they take on Theo James’ empire of pornographers and robbers. The film often dips between low and high brow with simple pratfalls one second and then discussions of feminist critique the next. And it all works! Malcolm Barrett deserves special mention as the informant they lean on, and Paul Reiser is particularly good in his role as the beleaguered captain. It’s trading in clichés of a genre that hasn’t been good for a while, but reinvents them with McDonagh’s brilliant writing and character work that will have audiences cheering and laughing hysterically.
Baby Bump (dir. Kuba Czekaj)
A delightfully stressful and fleshy film, the Polish Baby Bump initially screened at 2015’s Venice Film Festival, and contorts a relatively simple coming of age experience into a visceral confrontation with masculinity, Oedipal complexes, growth, and strength. At the center of the film is Mickey House, a boy at the precipice of puberty, and his mother, simply known as Mummy. There are crossed borders, lots of bodily fluids, and a good dosing of punkishness in the score and cinematography that enliven the film’s sometimes predictable stabs at shock value. It has a happy ending, in its way, even though everyone knows puberty definitely doesn’t.
Miss Stevens (dir. Julia Hart)
An incredible debut feature by writer/director Julia Hart, Miss Stevens sometimes falls into a too twee indie dramedy cliché but is always rescued by the strong work of its cast. In particular, Lily Rabe shines as the titular character who is a lonely teacher that appears on the verge of a severe breakdown when she chaperones three students to a drama competition one weekend. Rabe (and the other main cast members) elevate the material with their tender portrayals of people on the cusp of either falling apart or discovering who they truly are. It’s a poignant film that doesn’t offer many answers or much resolution, but instead simply visits these characters for one weekend and spies all of the cracks forming in their personas.
TOWER (dir. Keith Maitland)
A powerful and emotional film that covers a dark day that has since been repeated many times across the U.S. and a few times in other countries, TOWER is a bold documentary that looks at that fateful day 50 years ago when a man begin shooting people at the University of Texas. The filmmakers have done amazing work with this piece, first interviewing a large group of survivors and participants in the events, then casting actors to portray them 50 years ago, then rotoscoping and animating the proceedings that make the reenactment work and also lends it a real immediacy with its occasional dips into surreal expressionism. The film is sadly as relevant as ever, but focuses not on the shooter himself, but instead on those who lived through it and how they remember that day and how it has affected them many years after. In short, TOWER is visually dynamic, emotionally powerful, beautifully done, and not to be missed.
Little Sister (dir. Zach Clark)
A family drama of religious proportions, Little Sister is a lovely film spun from the unavoidable desire to assign order within chaos, and to find meaning from irrational tragedy. As the titular nun-in-training returns to the family home to see her brother, monstrously deformed from a tour in Iraq, a cascading sequence of experimentation and exploration lead the family into tragedy and absolution, through equal parts weed-cupcakes and pink Manic Panic hair dye. It sounds like an indie darling, but don’t hate it for that — it wears its black lipstick well.
Don’t Breathe (dir. Fede Alvarez)
An interesting follow-up to his Evil Dead remake, Fede Alvarez returns to the screen with this simple premise of a robbery gone wrong when three teens break into the house of a blind man… and things go horribly awry. Whereas his previous film traded in skin-crawling gore and shocking violence, this new one has its fair share of violence but mostly succeeds thanks to the excellent sense of tension that Alvarez builds within the house. The insanity of the situation keeps mounting higher and higher as the protagonists try to find some way to escape, only to find themselves with a losing hand. A good companion to Green Room with its own tale of contained violence and tension, Don’t Breathe is a badass film that constantly surprises and reveals itself to be darker, more twisted, and smarter than previously thought.
More about: SXSW
