Critics' Picks
Recommended at AFF
Fri., Oct. 21, 2011
Marjorie Baumgarten Recommends ...
The AFF lineup makes space for the cutting edge of a film like Pariah, the dangerous decorum of The Descendants, and a flashback to one of the greatest student films ever made, We Can't Go Home Again.
In Pariah, a black, lesbian high schooler relies on trial and error to find her authentic mode of self-expression. A budding poet who fits uncomfortably into the circumscribed roles of the bar scene, Alike (Adepero Oduye) also has trouble at home complying with her parents' conservative expectations of her. It's a coming-out story told with perception, artistry, and heart, and unlike any you've seen before.
Alexander Payne's first feature film since 2004's Sideways is The Descendants, which stars George Clooney in his most un-Clooney-like performance yet. After his wife suffers an accident that leaves her comatose in the opening moments of the film, Clooney's Matt King is left to become the primary parent of his two willful daughters. He is also a Hawaiian land baron, whose extensive inherited family estate is on the verge of being sold. But the sudden knowledge that there may have been discontentment roiling under the placid waters of his marriage sends him into a tailspin. Told with humor and grace, the film also highlights terrific supporting performances by Robert Forster, Beau Bridges, and Judy Greer.
In 1976, the maverick film director Nicholas Ray was teaching at Harpur College of Arts and Sciences at SUNY Binghamton. Rather than lecturing, Ray collaborated with his students to make the counterculture film We Can't Go Home Again. Using multiple formats, split-screen techniques, and psychedelic effects, Ray continued to tinker with the film until his death in 1979 but it was never finished. Recently completed and restored by his wife, Susan Ray, the film makes one of its first festival appearances at AFF.
'Pariah'
Marquee Screenings
Monday, Oct. 24, 7pm, Texas Spirit Theater
'The Descendants'
Marquee Screenings
Wednesday, Oct. 26, 7pm, Paramount Theatre
'We Can't Go Home Again'
AFF Presents
Friday, Oct. 21, 3:30pm, Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz
Kimberley Jones Recommends ...
Call it the Locavore Movement: AFF boasts a smorgasbord of homegrown fare this year, from the buzzy competition film Restive (made by a former UT footballer) and the sneak peek at Kyle Killen's new TV show Awake to the eight-film sidebar Texas Independents. Screening in the latter is the Austin-shot An Ordinary Family, directed by Mike Akel (who previously took the audience and jury prizes for Narrative Feature at AFF '06 for his debut feature, Chalk). The unassuming title nails the low-key, lived-in appeal of An Ordinary Family, which tracks a gay man's attempts to reconnect with his estranged siblings, including a minister hot under the collar about his little brother's surprise visit with new boyfriend in tow. Co-written by Akel and Matt Patterson, An Ordinary Family does nothing so extraordinary as articulate the garden-variety gripes and grudging love within every family dynamic – and beautifully so.
Not to be reductive, but there's a certain kind of festival film on the rise: the Geriatric Feel-Good Doc. Actually, Chris Rufo's Age of Champions – about gray-haired competitors at the National Senior Games – is feel-great. Octogenarians in swim trunks comparing pacemakers, lady ballers with perfectly beauty-parlored coifs throwing hard elbows on the court: This is infinitely inspirational stuff, funny and sweet and sure to poke a tear or two from even the most hard-hearted, curmudgeonly, and curlike. (I speak from experience.)
'An Ordinary Family'
Texas Independents
Saturday, Oct. 22, 1pm, Austin Convention Center
Monday, Oct. 24, 9:30pm, Regal Arbor Cinema
'Age of Champions'
Marquee Screenings
Friday, Oct. 21, 7:30pm, Regal Arbor Cinema
Saturday, Oct. 22, 11am, Austin Convention Center
Marc Savlov Recommends ...
Finally a film that dares to admit that "carving meat is what dancing is all about." Leave it to comedy collective Upright Citizens Brigade to hammer home the final nail in the dance-off film genre casket with Freak Dance, an unapologetically wacky (and, often, downright surrealist) parody that skewers pretty much every rump-shakin', freak-a-leak bombast-athon since Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo first rocked your Adidas, holmes. A blue-blooded babe (Megan Heyn) anxious to cast off the chains of respectability in favor of fancy, ghetto-funk footwork? Check! An urban dance explosion in a hospital ward? Hellzyeah! Utterly brilliant-cum-stupid ("stoopid fresh," that is) satirical song-and-dance numbers erupting every five minutes? Totally! Freak Dance is easily more crazy-electrifying than Krush Groove, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre combined. Word.
On the other end of the spectrum entirely is Sawdust City, a rough-and-tumble gem. When brothers Bob (played by writer/director David Nordstrom) and Pete (Carl McLaughlin) are reunited over a gray, snowy weekend in their hardscrabble Wisconsin hometown, the beer flows, as do the body blows. On leave from the Navy, younger brother Pete just wants to find his boozehound pop, while Bob, an artisanal woodworker with money woes and a child on the way, goes along despite his better judgement. Nordstrom, who also edited, has crafted a pitch-perfect portrait of both contemporary small town malaise and familial dysfunction/redemption that feels supremely true to life.
'Freak Dance'
Comedy Vanguard
Friday, Oct. 21, 10pm, Austin Convention Center
Sunday, Oct. 23, 7:45pm, Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz
'Sawdust City'
Marquee Screenings
Thursday, Oct. 20, 7:15pm, Texas Spirit Theater
Sunday, Oct. 23, 1:30pm, Austin Convention Center