Daily Screens - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

AFF Review: 'Bunnyland'

Johnny Tesar is an American eccentric. As amateur archaeologist and would-be entrepreneur, Johnny collects more than seven thousand rocks and crystals around Pigeon Forge, Tenn., exhibits them to the public in his trailer, and attempts to convince archaeological academics that his collection describes an ancient civilization. Unfortunately, Johnny also finds himself implicated in the slaughter of seventy-three rabbits at Bunnyland, a miniature golf resort he once managed, and later, in the death of a woman killed when a fire breaks out in one of the shoddily constructed cabins he has built and rented-out on his mountain property. Through these disparate misadventures, director Brett Hanover attempts to weave a story of backwoods Americana, but his film is poorly judged. While this documentary's failure to find an overriding viewpoint might be forgivable, less so is the sneering attitude of condescension the filmmaker shows to the predominantly poor, uneducated cast he enlists to tell Johnny’s story.Bunnyland screens again Thursday, Oct. 23, 8pm, at the Dobie Theater.

Miss Banks

Yesterday I went to the Paramount to check out the AFF screening of Role Models, the new big-budget comedy from director David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer). From the flash-mob parade of zombies on Congress Ave. regaling those of us waiting in line with cries for “equal rights!” and, of course, “brains!,” to the less flashy, less living-undead mob scene inside the packed theatre - where the laughs came easy, often, and loud - the mood could best be described as raucous and partisan.Role Models is about two self-involved 30-year-old men (played by co-writer Paul Rudd and perpetual Stifler Seann William Scott) forced by court order to take part in a child-mentoring program. It co-stars Superbad breakout Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Christopher Guest Company player Jane Lynch, and several of Wain’s co-conspirators from the mid-Nineties comedy troupe the State.Of course, the real star of the movie is Elizabeth Banks. I say that not because her role is the biggest or her performance is the best but rather because her appearance is the most significant. A movie star for just a few years, Miss Banks has quickly become the most ubiquitous, most sought-after, and perhaps most powerful actress of her generation. She is the rare Hollywood hinge, a performer who appears in seemingly every movie – defying the laws of time, space, and physics as she goes – who can all but guarantee box-office success with her imprimatur. She’s a predictor of a film’s success, proof of a director’s influence, a barometer of Hollywood sensibilities, an arbiter of public taste. She’s a talisman, a good-luck charm, a sorceress, warding off evil spirits and putting bodies in the seats.Was there a Hollywood before Elizabeth Banks? If so, how did it survive? And how did it recognize itself?

AFF Review: 'A Quiet Little Marriage'

The young, mildly hipster, NPR-listening couple Dax (Cy Carter) and Olive (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) are in nearly every scene of writer/director Mo Perkins' A Quiet Little Marriage, which hums along on a central conceit: When Dax discovers a grand deception being perpetrated by Olive, instead of confronting her, he embarks on an equally devious strategy. The plot is a matter, then, of waiting to see who learns the truth first. But there’s little suspense in this placid, lovely-looking movie, and not enough explained about the two main characters. Each is given one other person to talk to – an irresponsible, alcoholic brother for Dax and a near-mute elderly father for Olive. These supporting characters cause worry for Dax and Olive but don’t provide any perspective on the happy-except-for-that-huge-lie couple. As a result, the film feels claustrophobic and a bit too thin to hold interest. A Quiet Little Marriage is meant to be a study of a relationship, not a revelation, although the ending holds an unexpected development that’s pitch-perfect.A Quiet Little Marriage screens tonight at 7pm at the Rollins Theater

AFF Review: 'The Atom Smashers'

Tiny, theoretical formulae have been making huge news lately, and not only on Wall Street. Scientists in Switzerland recently turned on the CERN Hadron Collider, a massive “atom smasher” with a 14-mile circumference designed for the express purpose of discovering the sub-atomic building block of the universe, dubbed the “god particle.” Unfortunately, CERN is glitchy and currently offline, which is likely cold comfort for their American counterparts at the Fermilab in Batavia, Ill. They’re the subject of The Atom Smashers, an engaging, smart, and often wryly humorous look at the men and women (and couples) who man the front lines of scientific discovery in an America where science is not only no longer “cool” but is actively being barred from political discourse. Such is the fate of these unsung, genuinely heroic scientists, as they race against time to beat their “competitive collaborators” in Europe while funding cuts and a potential Nobel Prize keep them working around thr clock. Smart like Einstein and cool like Einstein with his tongue sticking out, Clayton Brown’s tight doc may well be the only film you ever see that makes you long to be a particle physicist.

AFF Review: 'Lost and Found'

A few personal items lost at a rural train station provide the links to connect a variety of characters that might not otherwise realize the other exists in this poetic Japanese import from writer/director Nobuyuki Miyake. Achingly sad, yet astonishingly lovely, Miyake’s tender film features many lithe performances that could have easily devolved into intransigent melancholy. Instead, the gentle pacing, the natural light, the clean images, the austere colors make you sink into every moment of this film. No image, no glance, and no movement is superfluous. Even a constantly simmering teapot kept by an aging officer at the lost and found office manages to swell with meaning and provides a centering image for the viewer to return to. If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s not the singsong adage that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met, but that the singularly human experience echoes through everyone in a thousand different ways.Lost and Found screens on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 7pm, at the Arbor.

AFF Review: Six Man, Texas

When your town’s small, so is your football team. High school football is of the same importance as breathing for Texans, and small West Texas towns with less than 100 students enrolled in high school can still get in on the fun by playing a special variant known as six man. Played on a smaller field than 11-man football, needing 15 yards for a first down, and only six players per side, it is high-scoring and offensive-oriented with bigger hits and bigger plays. In Six Man, Texas, Austinite director Alan Barber follows the 2000 Aquilla Cougars as they compete for the chance to win their first-ever six man state championship. But the real story of this locally produced doc is about the folks from these small communities who keep the rural dream alive (barely) and rally around their boys on the gridiron. The shrinking of small towns and the culture and community thereby lost is a sad result of current-day Texas in places where everybody knows everybody else, there’s no need to lock your door, and the entire town shuts down for Friday night football.Six Man, Texas screens again on Thursday, Oct. 23, 7pm, at the Arbor.

AFF: The Dopeness

AFF "Comedy Vanguard" film Who Is KK Downey? is the comedy sh*t and that is no lie, unlike J.T. Leroy, who was a total fabrication and still managed to sell about a gazillion books and one Asia Argento. Loosely based on the Leroy business (not to mention James Frey's Million Little Pieces kerfluffle), KK Downey plays out like some deranged Kids in the Hall skit if the Kids in the Hall were actually the Kids at the Beauty Bar doing clandestine rails in the bathroom stall. But, you know, in a good way.Writers Darren Curtis, Pat Kiely, and Matt Silver play a failed rocker, a failed writer, and a failed altweekly music critic with Bona Drag/Kill Uncle-era Morrissey hair, respectively, and all three inhabit their roles with such a degree of manic, leering, utterly unhinged genius that hyperbolic praise is rendered moot: you've got to see it to believe it. (Lucky for you it's screening Wed, Oct. 22, 7 pm at Dobie Theater.)Kidnapper Films has done some amazing shorts in the past -- they're available on their site -- but Who Is KK Downey?, directed by Curtis and Kiely, is nothing short of brilliant. Its vicious, hilarious savaging of the indie-hipster scene (apparently and unsurprisingly not unlike Austin's own) is deranged in the best possible sense. Ultimately, this is a film about friendship and the perils of and addiction to fame (or anything approaching it), but Who Is KK Downey? never deigns to kowtow to anything approaching the ordinary. It's surreal. It's outrageous. It's choke-on-your-soda-until-it-comes-out-your-nose hilarious.Seriously. We're going to get the director to burn us a press screener as soon as possible and then we're going to jam that sucker in our DVD player, superglue the tray shut, hit "repeat all" on the remote, and throw a "Dude, you've got to watch this!" party. Consider us blown away and doubled over, another victim of KK Downey's freakishly awesome charm attack.

AFF: The Wackness

Maybe we're spoiled, maybe we're jaded, maybe we're just coming down from our Fantastic Fest high, but we gotta say AFF "Comedy Vanguard" selection Psycho Sleepover is crazy bad. Not so-bad-it's-good bad, just, you know, the other kind. Granted, horror comedies are one of the trickiest balancing acts a filmmaker can attempt. Do it right and you have An American Werewolf in London. Do it wrong and you end up with An American Werewolf in Paris, or even worse, Vampire in Brooklyn. (Screw it up enough and you get to be the next John Landis and receive a life sentence in Hollywood jail, and who wants that?)But seriously, Psycho Sleepover – from the creative team behind last year's way better Street Team Massacre – is a horror comedy in PR only. Horrible things occur, sure, and the late-night audience that packed the Alamo Ritz to watch them did emit a few sozzled laughs, but still, Shaun of the Dead this ain't.During the post-film Q&A, director(s) Adam Deyoe and Eric Gosselin said, "This is kind of our rebuttal to [Amy Holden Jones 1982 pseudo-feminist genre entry] Slumber Party Massacre," which has got to be a real mind-warper for femme-film theorists and genre enthusiasts alike. Riven clear to the bone with wall-to-wall bad acting, bad camerawork, and just plain badness overall (but, sadly, not like this), it's hard to tell what was intentionally satirical and what was simply larkish f*ck-uppery. The story – virginal Rachel Castillo has psycho boyfriend, kills psycho boyfriend, and five years later attends an all-girl sleepover only to find herself surrounded by yet more zany cutthroats – feels as though it's trying to parody everything from the sacred to the profane but the end result is painfully unfunny and somewhat less horrifying than an episode of Shining Time Station. Now that's scary.

My AFF Friday

The Austin Film Festival’s annual barbecue on the grounds of the French Legation Friday evening was again one of the highlights of the weeklong event. It’s a lovely gathering of the out-of-towners, festival filmmakers, and members of the local film community. The beer and wine flowed freely (though I would have loved it even more if festival sponsor Absolut had participated in the event), and the cloudy residue from our once-quarterly rainfall (it’s been a little parched here in case you’re not up on Austin’s annual rainfall totals) earlier in the week cleared out and made for perfect, sunshiny BBQ weather. The schmooze was lively, but catching up with old friends and connecting with new ones got in the way of getting my feed on. The food was all gone by the time I made my way to the chow line, sending me out to my first film of the fest with a hunger in my belly.Fortunately, Robert Townsend’s Phantom Punch was a great distraction. The film is a biographical portrait of former heavyweight boxing champ Sonny Liston. Townsend is most commonly thought of as a comedy director due to his breakthrough films as a director, Hollywood Shuffle and Eddie Murphy Raw.