{"id":22967,"date":"2024-03-13T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-13T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=22967"},"modified":"2024-03-14T17:50:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T00:50:45","slug":"sxsw-dispatch-delightful-and-disturbing-documentaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/sxsw-dispatch-delightful-and-disturbing-documentaries\/","title":{"rendered":"SXSW Dispatch: Delightful and Disturbing Documentaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Road House<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, the big opening night selection for this year\u2019s SXSW FIlm & TV Festival, concluded, I fled the centerpiece venue of the Paramount Theatre \u2014 not the typical move, as they\u2019re usually showing something buzzy in all of the evening slots. And they were doing just that, but the item in question was the first two episodes of the Three-Body Problem<\/em>, the new series from the Game of Thrones<\/em> team, and as a general rule, I try steer clear of such events at festivals. I\u2019m not here to watch TV<\/em>, I sneer, sometimes out loud, so I went to the theater next door to see the documentary Black Twitter: A People\u2019s History<\/em><\/strong>, which turned out to be the first two episodes of a three-part docu-series. Womp womp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turned out to be an instructive experience, not just about the subject at hand (though it\u2019s certainly that), but this odd moment we\u2019re at in non-fiction, when it\u2019s more lucrative for filmmakers and attractive for viewers to view such stories in episodic rather than one-shot form, no matter how much more appropriate they might be for the latter. The project itself also offers a challenge to what several of my colleagues have dubbed the \u201cmagazine article\u201d rule \u2014 am I gaining anything from this documentary that I wouldn\u2019t get from a good magazine article on the subject? \u2014 since it was based on one (a three-parter, actually) for Wired<\/em>. Director Prentice Penny insightfully analyzes the appeal, utility, and longevity of the subset of Twitter populated by Black writers, critics, comedians, and weirdos, and not in a surface way (Amiri Baraka is invoked early on). It was first a space primarily for clownin\u2019, bonding over shared obsessions and reference points, before becoming a fertile space for protest, accountability, and social change. Penny juices the visual with memes, clips, and jokes, just like on Twitter itself, and the result is informative and satisfying. But unless episode three goes really off the grid, this would\u2019ve been just fine as an (awfully good!) documentary film.\u00a0Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hilariously, I made the exact same mistake<\/em> two days later, marching into the exact same venue<\/em> to watch what turned out to be the first two episodes of HBO\u2019s docu-series STAX: Soulsville, U.S.A.<\/em><\/strong>. There are two episodes to go, however, and this is a rare case of a docu-series earning its duration, since there\u2019s clearly enough material to fill those hours \u2014 and more besides. Director Jamila Wignot dives deep into the rich history of the Memphis, Tennessee R&B label, from its false start making country records to how its musicians found their groundbreaking sound to the contrast between the white-friendly, pop-oriented Motown sound and the down and dirty Southern soul of Stax. She puts all the pieces in place; it wasn\u2019t just about making and manufacturing records, but promoting them to the DJs that would make them hits, and no detail is left unexplored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, many of the house musicians were teenagers when the label started, so several (Booker T., Steve Cropper, David Porter, Carla Thomas) show up to share their memories, not only of the studio but of the ever-changing social environment that impacted it. My favorite (at least of what was screened) is Booker T. at the piano, walking us through exactly how he came up with \u201cGreen Onions.\u201d When he finds the chord progression, it\u2019ll give you goosebumps \u2014 that\u2019s music magic, turned into movie magic. Grade: A-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thanks to its music festival component, there are always a fair number of decent music documentaries at SXSW, and as a fan of the group, I was excited to check out This is a Film About the Black Keys<\/em><\/strong>. <\/strong>It\u2019s a bit of a mixed bag, and your mileage may vary based on what exactly you want from such a doc. It\u2019s an excellent history of their \u201cbasement, hopped-up country blues sound,\u201d and how it evolved and developed as their growth in popularity required adjustment of the kind of music they made; the details of life as a working musician, whether as a bar band gigging endlessly out of a minivan or as the focal points of a well-staffed arena tour, are similarly compelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trouble is that we never really<\/em> get a sense of who these guys are. Part of the explanation is that they\u2019re midwestern guys who just Don\u2019t Talk About Stuff, and that\u2019s all well and good and understandable, but not enough effort is made to extrapolate that information from those who know them well. And director Jeff Dupree\u2019s focus is inconsistent; much attention is paid to their first marriages, but then their subsequent relationships barely merit a passing mention (and at least one of them is, well, noteworthy). There\u2019s a lot of good music, and some terrific road footage, and for some fans, that\u2019ll be enough. But it\u2019s not, not quite.\u00a0Grade: B-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cheech & Chong\u2019s Last Movie<\/em><\/strong>, on the other hand, does not shy away from conflict \u2014 if anything, it leans into it. Director David Bushell wisely chose to make both a bio-doc and a Cheech & Chong comedy (\u201cSo is this a documentary or a movie?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know, man!\u201d), with copious scenes of our now-aged heroes driving through the desert, discussing their careers, and (of course) making dope jokes. Bushell has some fun with the form, having observers and collaborators show up along the ride, and uses cute animations to both fill in gaps and get laughs in the biographical sections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of that material is fun, and funny, but the film is at its best and most poignant when things start to fall apart; the duo\u2019s observations and understanding of their shifting dynamics are astute, and Bushell intermingles and interrogates them skillfully. (At one point, Tommy observes ruefully, \u201cWow, people do have different memories.\u201d) These are age-old arguments and resentments, but they still feel like open wounds, and that kind of honesty and pain is often in short supply in hagiographies like this so easily could have been. Grade: B<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There\u2019s a house style developing, over at HBO, of fast-paced, entertaining documentaries that are, in one way or another, about hustlers. Muta’Ali Muhammad\u2019s <\/strong>MoviePass, MovieCrash<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>falls snugly within those parameters, telling the story of the steady rise and spectacular fall of the company, which provided a \u201cNetflix for the movie theater\u201d that seemed too good to be true for consumers, and, it turned out, definitely was. Muhammad\u2019s masterstroke is structuring the story in much the same way it was initially presented to the news media \u2014 as the brainchild of Netflix and Redbox alum Mitch Lowe and venture capitalist Ted Farnsworth, both white dudes of a certain age \u2014 before revealing how that duo basically ripped the company from the hands of Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt, the two young, Black entrepreneurs who actually<\/em> founded it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MovieCrash <\/em>does what we expect \u2014 the postmortem analysis of the unsustainable logistics, the irresponsible spending, the rapidly-increasing shell game \u2014 with skill, and digs into the specifics of stock growth vs. profitability in detail without alienating the casual viewer. But it\u2019s the film\u2019s understanding of the identity politics in play, of the shockingly cavalier manner in which this company was stolen from its creators and run into the ground (burning through $250 million in less than a year<\/em>), that it really hits, and hits hard. Grade: A-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve seen few fictional<\/em> movies that are as terrifying as the opening sections of Jenny Carchman\u2019s Whatever It Takes<\/em><\/strong>, in which a Massachusetts couple that publishes a niche e-commerce trade blog are subjected to threatening Twitter DMs which quickly escalate into genuine harassment and stalking. It\u2019s genuinely creepy because it\u2019s entirely plausible, something much more plausible, to most of us, then being hacked up by a masked killer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of Ina and David Steiner was one I\u2019d somehow missed when it happened a few years back, and if you\u2019re similarly in the dark, I\u2019ll leave you there \u2014 the twists and turns of Carchman\u2019s film, which twists from home-invasion horror into cyber-thriller, are worth preserving. Suffice it to say that she strikes the right balance of shock, indignation, and bemusement, amazed that this insane story happened at all, alarmed that it stopped where it did. It\u2019s a terrific documentary, maybe the best of the fest.\u00a0Grade: A<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a hunger, since the beginning of time, to play.\u201d So says the bushy-bearded historian who opens Simon Ennis\u2019s documentary The Hobby<\/em><\/strong>, walking us through the ancient history of board games, and setting this stage for this easygoing portrait of the board game scene, as experienced by a handful of game enthusiasts, designers, and influencers. As with any good documentary of a scene, success here is all about finding good characters; they\u2019re all super-likable, which helps, and Ennis finds a good organizing event in the first annual World Series of Board Games, and the suspense that competition entails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tackles perhaps a few too many characters (or introduces a few too late), but that\u2019s not a big problem. These folks are easy to mock, but they\u2019re approached with genuine affection and empathy, particularly those who are more candid and vulnerable about the least comfortable aspects of their own personalities, and how this world helps them overcome them.\u00a0Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faders Up: The John Aielli Experience<\/em><\/strong> played less like a documentary, at least at SXSW, than a home movie \u2014 in the best way. It\u2019s a biographical profile of John Aielli, an Austin institution, a radio host who broadcasted for nearly 60 years, most of them on the local public radio station, KUTX. His show, \u201cEklektikos,\u201d was an anything-goes mismash of contrasting (or even clashing) musical styles, along with his own (sometimes rambling) musings about life in general and life in Austin in particular. \u201cI just love to talk,\u201d he explains early on, and it\u2019s simple but true; directors David Hartstein and Sam Wainwright Douglas give some screen time to his quirks and the criticism they attracted, but Faders Up <\/em>functions primarily as a valentine to \u201cone of the last bastions of old, weird Austin.\u201d\u00a0Grade: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first report spotlights the wide range of quality non-fiction film (and television) screening in Austin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":22970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416,340],"tags":[1419,1436,1803],"class_list":["post-22967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews","tag-film-fests","tag-reviews","tag-sxsw-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22971,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22967\/revisions\/22971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}