Liquorishspliz Sends In Some Austin Film Festival Reviews! UP IN THE AIR, YOUTH IN REVOLT, SERIOUS MOONLIGHT And More!

Beaks here...

The Austin Film Festival just wrapped up last Wednesday, October 28th, and while I pity the organizers for having to follow up the cinematic bacchanal that is Fantastic Fest, it sounds like they rounded up some decent titles this year. I've seen Miguel Arteta's YOUTH IN REVOLT, and can confirm that it is a very funny coming-of-age film bolstered by a great Michael Cera performance. Once you've seen him as the effete poon-hound Francois, you'll no longer have any room to knock the kid for his supposed lack of range (not that you should be knocking him in the first place). I haven't seen any of the other films reviewed below, but I'm certainly looking forward to UP IN THE AIR and THE MESSENGER. Let's see what Liquorishspliz has to say (apologies in advance for his apparent hostility to capitalization)...

'serious moonlight': opening night film. film stars, meg ryan, timothy hutton, justin long and kristen bell. knew nothing about this film except that it starred meg ryan and was directed by cheryl hines, with a script from the late 'waitress' director adrienne shelley. hines, who took her first crack at directing a feature with this film, both introduced the movie and did a q&a afterward and it was clear that this film was a tribute to shelley. due to that she wanted to stay as close to shelley's script as possible and therefore left room for little improv and little differences between the page and the screen. the film itself is about a couple who are on the last leg of their marriage. ian (hutton) is a husband leaving his wife, louise (ryan) for a younger woman, sara (bell) who works at his company. louise is not pleased with this and decides to hold ian hostage till he changes his mind and decides to love louise again. sara makes a couple of appearances while justin long comes in for a rather great supporting role that i won't ruin here. 'moonlight' never really delivers or reaches it's full potential. i attribute this to a number of things; first, meg ryan has some hilarious comedy in here playing a psycho who is pushed to her ultimate extremes. ryan's physical comedy is classic-- it's beautiful and she understands what she has to do physically to make people laugh. her speaking lines though felt weak, underdeveloped and forced. nothing feels real when she is speaking. it feels closer to a cheerleader turned bad high school actress that all the football players go see cause she's hot... though ryan has aged a bit and some might not consider her to be 'hot.' this point is probably less to blame on ryan and more on hines, which is point two. hines devotion to the script is very touching, but upon first glance it seems the script might have still needed to be polished, so not allowing any further drafts might have hurt the film-- i.e. within the film there is a lot of drama and comedy being mixed, but as it plays out on screen, it isn't really as fluid as it should be. talking with other people i understand that we can't blame the script or shelley here, but hines. the film is beautifully shot, but the emotions on screen are not fully developed, are forced and rushed-- which end up being signs of typical weakness for a first time director. hines could possibly direct a good movie, but i think she needs to work more with her actors with blending those different emotions if she approaches another film like this, or else the result will be the same. so overall, it's a mediocre forgettable movie, that could have been so much more if shelley had more time on this earth to fully bring her vision to screen-- here though, her words are somewhat wasted due to cliched acting on ryan's part and newbie directing by hines. other notes: timothy hutton and justin long are amazing in the movie-- if you see the movie, see it for them. 'youth in revolt': michael cera stars with some other great supporting roles along the way from zach galifianakis, ray liotta, fred willard, steve buscemi and justin long. i had seen the trailer for this a couple months back and thought it looked like typical michael cera fare-- and that's what it sets itself up to be, but in reality it is anything but. it's departure from typical michael cera formula, while still staying close to his roots is refreshing and hilarious all at the same time. film follows nick twisp (cera) who like most of cera's characters is a dorky outsider trying to lose his virginity. the film's open establishes the characters and find's it's comedy from it's great supporting cast and absurdest dialogue and situations. It really isn't until galifianakis character, jerry, finds himself and his family, including nick in a tough spot that things really start to pick up. they move away and meet twisp's love interest sheeni saunders (portia doubleday). twisp falls for her, but just as things heat up between them it is time for twisps family to move back. sheeni recommends that nick "be bad" in attempt for them to run away together, travel the world and live a life sheeni always felt she deserved. to "be bad" twisp conjures up an alter ego, francois dillinger, who is the polar opposite of twisp; when twisp would freeze up when presented with a sexual encounter, dillinger would dive under the covers head first and get to baby makin-- the straight laced character and the badass. things accelerate into some of the craziest situations i've seen in a long time and hilarity ensues. without giving too much more away that's the story that is presented. it sounds like typical cera, but the francois character is cera's finest acting performance to date and probably his most fun to watch. it's odd because cera is talking to himself when dillinger and twisp are on screen together, but it is probably the best buddy comedy dynamic i have seen in a long time. the film stands as a graduation for cera and his work on teen comedies. the film is all about growth, for the characters and for the actors. it's a hilarious, somewhat parody of teen comedies, particularly indie teen comedies like 'napoleon dynamite'. don't be fooled and dupped into thinking this is just another michael cera dorkfest-- it's soo much more and when you come out of the theater holding your sides because you laughed so hard and you will thank me and probably immediately go buy another ticket to 'youth in revolt'. 'grown in detroit': won best documentary-- and deserved it. this film has a great pace and amazingly hopeful, positive message, about a city that is going through some real shit. it's discussion covers a lot of important topics including; teen pregnancy, urban farming, the economic situation, the education system (mostly for pregnant teenagers) and a lot of focus on detroit obviously. i've heard people say that they were disappointed that the documentary did not just focus on one thing, and didn't have just one clear cut central message, but i felt that it was going to be impossible to achieve this film's look at teenage pregnancy in detroit without looking at all these things. so specifically there is are schools that cater to teenage pregnancy-- there is one in detriot. we follow this school and these students. something that the teachers strive to educated their students with are real life business opportunities, so they can learn to contribute to society and allow their family to survive. because of detroit's residence leaving the city within the last few decades, there has become a mass amount of space that is not being utilized. because of this people have turned to urban farming, which is one of the topics the school for pregnant teenagers/teenage mothers has adopted. it's odd because you don't really follow the students as closely as you might in other documentaries. you get to know the students and the teachers, but you aren't really as intimate as you'd expect-- in reality it plays like a very real narrative, opposed to a documentary. at the same time, the reason it succeeds is because the main character is the city of detroit. this film is about moving things forward in this city, and with the film there is no way to move any other direction. the message is overwhelming and it's ideas are refreshing. 'harmony and me': this is a small austin film by bob byington. first off i will say, and bob would appreciate this, that the film that i saw did not completely represent what the film really is. the aff converted nearly all of it's theaters (save for the paramount) to digital projectors and it has caused quite a few problems. i've heard people at the fest talk about dropped frames, skipping, pixelation and your typical technical difficulties that seem to come if you scratch a disk and all these things happened during this screening. as far as the overview, it's pretty general; a man is getting over a break up with the love of his life. he doesn't know where to go, who to turn to-- his friends and family he does turn to offer little to no helpful advice, though they do offer some comic situations. he ends up going to rekindle his passion for music by taking piano lessons again, and turns to any friend or family member who care to listen. from what i did see, the film fell a little flat. byington has a peculiar sense of humor and its definitely present in some places here, but it's missing more over. he tries to play too much with drama and only sporadically with his comedy-- which is the weakest thing about the film. i think that this is due to a very real approach to byington's filmmaking. what is portrayed on screen feels very true. i feel like i've been in the positions the main character has been in and had friends who have done the same things, but it felt like to make it a successful film we needed to either laugh more or we needed to enter even further into this world of drama and commit to it. many in the audience say that we were all jipped by seeing a messed up copy of the film and byington, who did a q&a afterward refused to take questions, continuing to say that he was upset and speechless at his films presentation and was not going to sit there and try to act like it didn't happen-- especially since this was the only screening for aff. it was shocking to the audience, who all seemed to love bob, yelling that they love him and the movie, but this did not sway him as he ultimately walked off the stage from the q&a, which was the weirdest i'd ever been to. i heard afterwards from richard linklater and byington's other friends that byington was "on something", got to the theater five minutes before the film ended, saw pixelation, was so messed up he really didn't even know where he was and was pushed on stage reluctantly. i'll have to see 'harmony and me' again, but those were my initial impressions from what i saw. i do however highly recommend byington's 'registered sex offender [rso]' it is a great little austin movie and if you get a hold of it you are truly in for something special. keep an eye and ear out for byington though, cause he could quickly take off and become the next great indie director-- yeah, he's got that kind of potential. other notes: justin rice starred and performed some amazing tunes as the lead character who turns to music for comfort. beautiful music in this pic. 'love and tambourines': i wanted to see 'an education,' but didn't get in, so i had some time to waste and checked out this local austin film and i was happy i did. this was my favorite film of the festival. though i have not seen 'paper heart' the premise of this film seems to be similar to 'heart'; a pseudo-documentary-ish female driven exploration about love... but here they also cover music and tambourines. this is all about genre mixing. two friends who are alone on valentines day decide to spend the day together in a platonic, non-romantic way. there are interviews edited with the narrative and then beautiful experimental, art clips that move the film along as well, then there's some concert shots that are beautifully photographed -- which make it part music video as well. speaking of music, similar to 'harmony and me' the main character, friday night lights' stephanie hunt, is a very talented musician who contributes a lot of beautiful music to this film. there is a strong passion for godard here, both through direct references and a french film style also incorporated to the film, adding to its genre blending uniqueness. and if you're really searching for something unique this film has the best portrayal of arnold schwarzenegger by an indian actor-- yeah an indian dude doing an 'ahnold' impression. it sounds so odd, so weird and when you see it on screen it is, but in this film it works! jeremy cohen, the director of this pic deserves all the good things that come his way. just three years out of film school at ut, the guy was able to capture some of the most beautiful, lush shots i saw out of any film in the festival. there wasn't a moment of this film that was weak. it was pure joy to watch the film and the biggest surprise i had at the fest. hopefully distributors, even if it's just independent distributors (i'm predicting foreign fare would be great-- especially in france) see the potential in the film and the people involved, because it is a bliss that should be shared with all. 'little fish, strange pond': every once in a while a film comes a long where everyone involved is just so passionate about the project, but the finished product, what we see on screen doesn't fully represent what was going through the minds of the filmmakers. that's the sense i get with 'little fish, strange pond.' the writer of the film, robert dean klein was at a q&a and pretty much described this as the film he always wanted to make, but never got around to it; his passion project. 'strange' is used in the title and it should be used to describe the film as well. the film boasts acting potential with zach galifianakis, adam baldwin (not related to the baldwin brothers) and matthew modine, but the script and the directing seem to be going in ambiguous circles and the points that they are touching on are only brief, too little to fully grasp what's going on and to describe the plot is next to impossible. there's a lot of unnecessary violence in the film, that i'm not sure really has a point either. ultimately it's a muddled mess that tries to encompass religious views, fate, the afterlife, violence, sexual violence, a murder mystery, a little comedy and a lot of drama. overall the film is passable, but will probably find a cult market very easily. it's funny because klein mentioned he wrote the film in 1994 or 5 and it feels like it. it really has that overall feel of the nineties, think of post 'pulp fiction' films like 'boondock saints' and that's the closest i could describe it with, but it's much stranger, much more ambiguous, just as pretentious and likely to find just as big of a cult following. we shall see what happens with it, but unless galifianakis is able to use his recent cred that he's established to really pull this thing out of the toiled, i'd expect this thing to hit a few more fests, some indie theaters and then find a home video distributor. other notes: galifianakis plays a porn shop owner, which is the best part of the film. he has two signs in the porn shop that generate the most laughter; "if your not 18, we can't help you cream" and "don't fuck around"-- best parts of the film right there. 'the messenger': centerpiece film. this film is going to be huge and probably pull in a bunch of oscar noms. follows will montgomery (ben foster, in an amazingly powerful performance) who, as the film opens gets back from the middle east and is only a few months out of ending his time as an enlistee solider for the us army. his last mission is to team with tony stone (woody harrelson-- who is outstanding) and deliver news to families of deceased soldiers. there are i believe five to six families they deliver news too and each is unique and heartbreaking in it's own regard. there was a sense that it could get redundant, but each feels like a small story within a larger framework. because of these small stories within there are a few great cameos within the film, that boost powerful performances. along the way we meet olivia (samantha morton) whose husband has just been killed. will continues to come back to her though, offering her help and assistance when she needs it and eventually falling for her. again there isn't a weak moment in the film and harrelson provides a lot of great comedy relief for such a serious subject matter. i'm not sure i know what else to say about the film. it's not one of those films that has a lot of memorable quotes, or is going to rock the box office, but the film only gets better and better as it proceeds through the story. all actors do a marvelous job and this thing feels very real. oren moverman breaks through with one of the best directorial debuts maybe this decade. beautifully shot, you just have to see the film for all its amazing elements coming together-- it's a powerful script and definitely a performance piece to the bone. 'floored': documentary film that follows the chicago stock exchange, but more over is about the move from trading on the floors to trading on the screen (online trading). director, james allen smith was there to introduce the film and for a q&a and he discussed how the pre-prod/working title for the film was 'the way of the carriage maker' because the change that traders were going through with technological advances was reminiscent of when automobiles started popping up and carriage makers had to make a decision to either make the switch to automobiles or be the best damn carriage maker they could be. that's what this film is about. the traders smith chooses to follow are those that are having trouble adapting to the technological trading sphere. we do get the perspective of online traders and those that have made the switch, but there is a sense that the passion that was there is gone. the documentary does a great job not only giving an overview of what floor trading was like, how it was established and it's rise, which at it's peak is closer to a scene from a rock n' roll movie than the stock exchange. at the climax of floor trading that's how these guys were treated, they were getting all the girls, bringing in all the money, drugs, alcohol, etc. of course that's not the primary focus of the film, that just happens to be part of the history. we see all these great traders who made a name for themselves by making fortunes within minutes, and possibly losing fortunes even quicker make the transition, struggle to continue trading on the floor or get out entirely. the characters are marvelous. smith chooses the right people to follow, because it's the perfect mix of sad sappy people trying to adapt, angry at technology people refusing to adapt, online traders and absolute fucki ng psycho's in the biz. smith was very modest about his film, but we had a few former floor traders in the crowd and they were very proud of what they just saw. a gentleman sitting in front of me had stepped out of the business at the tail end of the nineties (coinciding with the rise of the internet) and you could tell he had seen shit on the floor. his voice was very raspy and sounded like it was permanently hoarse from all the years of shouting out trades. the man said that the film was an accurate portrayal of his former business venture and passion. i know next to nothing about trading in general, but i enjoyed the hell out of the film and thought it was very well spoken, so to hear that those who have been on the floor appreciate is a good sign. in addition to smith's modesty he was accepting that he was not winning any audience awards for the film, especially sense 'grown in detroit' had won over everyone already, so instead to go online and vote for his film so it has the chance to play at other fests. i did just that and i hope that this review finds other audiences and film fests because it is a docu film that needs to be shown and get as wide of a release as possible. it's very strong, and seemingly very accurate and definitely a film that james allen smith is personally vested in. smith is a director that not only has potential, but flexes his muscles with this film, showing his talent and strengths is linking these real people and situations together to create a well versed characters and a strong story line. 'up in the air': closing night film. reitman directed. clooney stars with a bunch of supporting roles from jason bateman, vera farmiga, anna kendrick and danny mcbride with cameos from j.k. simmons, zach galifianakis and sam the fucking man elliott. film follows ryan bingham (clooney) who makes a living of firing people for a living. it's the perfect role for clooney because the guy is the ultimate bachelor, who doesn't want to or can't commit-- he sees no logic in it and is on the road traveling for like 90% of the year. he describes the forty something days he spent at home as miserable. he thrives being a lone wolf, constantly on the move. he is somewhat disengaged with his siblings, and ultimately, at his heart, looks to reconnect with them. all of this is upset when natalie (kendrick), a fresh out of college business/psychology whiz kid rolls in with a new way of firing people-- over the Internet, via conference calls. binghams supposedly last traveling assignment will be to show natalie the ropes, before she commits to the whole firing over a computer screen. and thus the journey begins, while bingham tries to reach his ultimate goal for travel miles. throughout reitman utilizes the economic situation in order to really put bingham's life in perspective. some people who look like they were being interviewed were real people who got laid off in those cities and are actually getting interviewed (reitman said they put out an ad asking for people who had been laid off to do some interviews for a documentary. whatever wasn't captured in the documentary he told them to improv either what they did say, or what they would have said at the time they were getting fired). in addition there is a nice little tune at the end of the film from a gentleman who got laid off-- reitman said it came from a 'fifty year old guy who handed him a cassette tape.' reitman and friends were ready to make fun of the man and his music, but instead were moved by it and it found its way into the film. it's ironic because this film actually has a lot in common with 'floored'. clonney's bingham is in a similar position than the floor traders, or if you will, carriage makers and now he must conform to technology or get off the pot all together. clooney brings his usual sense of suave with him and like i said, he's pretty much playing himself, but reitman's voice is definitely present. bingham is written very similarly to nick naylor from 'thank you for smoking'-- they are both very articulate and elegant, business gentleman who know how to use their words appropriately. there are a lot of funny situations to be found here and the film runs very smooth, the problems it hits are within it's last 20-30 minutes. reitman decides to let bingham pull a big dramatic change of plans that we see a lot in most bull shit romantic comedies-- you know guy realizes he messed up and that he's about to let the girl of the story get away. the only difference is that reitman is smart enough to know what he's doing with those kind of situations and pulls a major non-conventional twist out, to bring reality back to the situation. the flow though is interrupted and it really isn't till the last minute or so that things straighten back out. this is another one that given the people involved and all things consider will be in the middle of the oscar season. reitman said it's his most personal film-- maybe ever and i believe him. there is a surprising amount of heart and honesty in the film and while it's maybe not the most memorable of reitman's films thus far, it may very well end up being his best and most polished work. check it out. well that's all i got. feel free to use whatever you want from here, but it's understandable it you don't want to use them all. thanks, and have a happy halloween -liquorishspliz