Note: Since The Innkeepers is in limited release this weekend, we’re re-running Shannon’s original review from SXSW 2011. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Ti West struck gold with horror fans when House of the Devil came out in 2009. Devil was a fitting throwback to the horror films of the ’80s, and West proved to be a...
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(Even though it’s been over for a while, there’s still some reviews to squeeze out of SXSW!) The opening scene of Fambul Tok is as powerful as any documentary could hope for: A few dozen Sierra Leone villagers circle a campfire—the social center of their tiny community—one of them stands and accuses another, her...
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The Dish & the Spoon (directed and written by Alison Bagnall) is an uncommon character study about a young, married woman who becomes fast friends with a marooned, British teenager as she grapples with her husband’s infidelity. The circumstances which bring these two together are less significant than the tenuous bond which keeps them...
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Cousin Jane recorded her top flicks of SXSW, and I figured I’d snag her coattails (how many times has “Pancake’s Top Five Girl Crushes” been in the most viewed articles?) and offer up my favorite films of the fest. I have some reviews of these on the back-burner, but my laptop is in the...
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Kumaré is a good documentary. It (somewhat) does what it sets out to do, does it well, takes some daring chances, scores some laughs, and is a nice-enough movie-going experience. It’s premise is ingenious: Vikram Gandhi, a 30-ish lad of Indian descent, poses as the “enlightened guru” Kumaré and amasses a following among some of...
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Insidious was one film that was high on my list of priority to view at SXSW. Essentially a haunted house genre movie, the film is from writer Leigh Whannell and director James Wan, who previously worked together on Saw. No worries, this film is more carnival fun-house ride than house of horrors. I mean...
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On the surface, The Beaver is the story of Walter Black’s struggle with depression and the unorthodox means with which he copes, and, finally, his desperate attempt to return to a normal life. On a deeper level, it presents a much darker problem: What if one morning you woke up to find you had...
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It’s hard to imagine Elmo – the wildly popular, cheerful, red muppet made famous on Sesame Street – sounding like an embittered curmudgeon or a sub-literate caveman, but if you go back far enough (when he was voiced by Brian Muehl or Richard Hunt) he seemed to suffer from a personality disorder. It wasn’t...
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Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan give wonderful performances in this charming film about family and the unexpected detours that life can throw our way. Director Thomas McCarthy has previously brought us the wonderfully quirky The Station Agent (2003) and the touching film The Visitor (2007). If there is one thing that he excels at,...
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I caught (that verb seems appropriate) Xavier Gens’ (Hitman, Frontier(s)) The Divide as a midnight screener at the Ritz theatre, and by far the best thing I can say about the experience is that the volunteers running the show just let us in instead of making us wait in line and thus subjecting us to the...
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