Ranking the 2019 South by Southwest Film Festival, Part 3
In Part 1 of our SXSW coverage, Love, Death & Robots emerged as our early favorite. It held the top spot in Part 2 while the teen comedy Booksmart vaulted to the runner-up position. Our third and final piece of South by Southwest 2019 coverage reviews the closing-night film Pet Sematary as well as the Grand Jury Prize-winning Alice, but climbing the chart won’t be easy.
Read on, then log in and make your own list at Flickchart.com. Every time you rank a flick it helps move it up or down the global chart. Every ranking matters, especially for festival favorites that haven’t yet found a wide audience. And the more movies you rank, the more weight your opinion carries.
Aurora
Aurora is a supremely confident, artful melodrama about immigration and responsibility. Shot in Finland during deep golden sunrises and against cold light-blue skies, it follows a young Iranian widower named Darian (Amir Escandari) whose search for permanent European residency for himself and his young daughter leads him to Finnish party girl named Aurora (Mimosa Williamo). There is chemistry between them despite the uncharitable assumptions she first makes about the foreigner, but her alcohol problem and aversion to commitment means she is not marrying material, even for a desperate visa-seeker. In orbit around the central pair are comical supporting players including Aurora’s best friend with whom she plans to move to Norway, unsuitable potential partners for Darian, and some Fins who resent new arrivals to the country. The outcome may feel predictable, but getting there is no less engrossing for it. The mood of Aurora gains much from a rich and diverse soundtrack, which like the dialogue shifts effortlessly between multiple languages to tell a locally-rooted story with global significance. This is writer/director Miia Tervo’s first dramatic feature, but she harnesses all the facets of the medium for a triumph of emotional and conscientious filmmaking.
Ranking:
Aurora beats Them That Follow
Aurora beats One Man Dies a Million Times
Aurora beats Frances Ferguson
Aurora beats The Beach Bum
Aurora beats The Art of Self-Defense
Aurora beats Little Monsters
Aurora beats Vai
Aurora beats The Highwaymen
Aurora beats Booksmart
Aurora loses to Love, Death & Robots
Standings:
1. Love, Death & Robots
2. Aurora
3. Booksmart
4. The Highwaymen
5. Vai
6. Little Monsters
7. The Art of Self-Defense
8. The Beach Bum
9. Frances Ferguson
10. One Man Dies a Million Times
11. Them That Follow
Tone-Deaf
Tone-Deaf is a moderately gory home-invader slasher film whose jump scares work because of their distressing imagery as much as their timing, but its overriding purpose is to have fun. The title can be read as a satire of the recent sensory-deprivation trend in horror, as seen in the likes of Hush and A Quiet Place and Birdbox; Tone-Deaf’s protagonist (Amanda Crew), a young woman from the city, is an amateur pianist who doesn’t know that she’s terrible at piano. This fact isn’t exactly related to her odds of survival; it’s just a funny character beat that tweaks a current genre fad. Olive rents a house upstate from an aging widower named Harvey, played by a demented and quietly intense Robert Patrick, who repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to explain to the audience why he intends to kill her. Unfortunately for him, his attempts keep going awry, leading to a lot of deaths but not the death he wants. Meanwhile, actor Ray Wise pops up for more talking-to-the-camera monologues whose uplighting and low angles recall his creepy/humorous work for David Lynch in Twin Peaks. The movie rides that Lynchian line between fear and comedy while scoring points against bitter baby boomers, commune-dwelling hippies, bad boyfriends, and anyone else in need of a good hatchet job. Yes, “hatchet job” is a pun, and if you liked it — if you enjoy cringing and chuckling at the same time — Tone-Deaf just might be a flick for you!
Ranking:
Tone-Deaf beats Them That Follow
Tone-Deaf beats One Man Dies a Million Times
Tone-Deaf beats Frances Ferguson
Tone-Deaf loses to The Beach Bum
Standings:
1. Love, Death & Robots
2. Aurora
3. Booksmart
4. The Highwaymen
5. Vai
6. Little Monsters
7. The Art of Self-Defense
8. The Beach Bum
9. Tone-Deaf
10. Frances Ferguson
11. One Man Dies a Million Times
12. Them That Follow
Saint Frances
Saint Frances details the quarterlife crisis of Bridget, a rigorously unattached 34-year-old. That she refuses to acknowledge her circumstances as a crisis, and that those circumstances are of her own choosing, do not make it any easier on her. While her sister and peers settle into lives of happy domesticity and profitable careers, Bridget remains in a long post-adolescence, avoiding long-term relationships, working a babysitting gig, even dressing like a college student. Kelly O’Sullivan, who wrote and stars in Saint Frances, thoroughly conveys that Bridget is an “unimpressive person,” as the character herself admits. By setting her against a more emotionally-mature semi-boyfriend and an apparently radically-successful couple who hires her to watch their sassy daughter Frances, O’Sullivan runs the risk of making Bridget too difficult for even the audience to connect with; she is pitiable, but not quite sympathetic. Yet the movie’s theme of connection — with lovers and enemies and family and most crucially with oneself — culminates in a satisfying and tearjerking final third. Saint Frances won this year’s Special Jury Recognition for Breakthrough Voice Award.
Ranking:
Saint Frances beats Them That Follow
Saint Frances beats One Man Dies a Million Times
Saint Frances beats Frances Ferguson
Saint Frances beats Tone-Deaf
Saint Frances beats The Beach Bum
Saint Frances beats The Art of Self-Defense
Saint Frances loses to Little Monsters
Standings:
1. Love, Death & Robots
2. Aurora
3. Booksmart
4. The Highwaymen
5. Vai
6. Little Monsters
7. Saint Frances
8. The Art of Self-Defense
9. The Beach Bum
10. Tone-Deaf
11. Frances Ferguson
12. One Man Dies a Million Times
13. Them That Follow
Alice
Alice gets to the point early, then makes that point repeatedly and bluntly for the rest of its runtime. It is a simple, familiar point about society’s unfair double-standards towards prostitutes and their clients. The kind of prostitution involved, a very exclusive Parisian escort service, gives the film some of the flavor of the 1967 classic Belle de jour, but Alice‘s messaging is much showier. The film is well-acted, from the expressively doe-eyed Emelie Piponnier’s titular role to Martin Swabey’s two-faced performance as her husband and Chloé Boreham’s nuanced portrayal of an experienced young escort. It is well-shot, too, with gauzy white interiors and hazy exteriors along the Seine that feel both pleasant and sad. Yet the narrative is thin, the pacing and shot/reverse-shot patterns are uninspired and tedious, and a late attempt to ramp up the emotional stakes hinges on implausible decisions and unearned expressions of feeling. Alice won South by Southwest’s Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Features in a result that feels eerily similar to the Academy’s recent decision to award its top prize to Green Book.
Ranking:
Alice beats Them That Follow
Alice beats One Man Dies a Million Times
Alice beats Frances Ferguson
Alice loses to Tone-Deaf
Standings:
1. Love, Death & Robots
2. Aurora
3. Booksmart
4. The Highwaymen
5. Vai
6. Little Monsters
7. Saint Frances
8. The Art of Self-Defense
9. The Beach Bum
10. Tone-Deaf
11. Alice
12. Frances Ferguson
13. One Man Dies a Million Times
14. Them That Follow
Pet Sematary
The phrase “Pet Sematary,” with its conjuring of dead cats and dogs and its cutesy misspelling, neatly encapsulates childhood innocence lost too soon. Yet the book and movies of that name aim for something more visceral than precious, attempting to tell frightening tales about departed family members who come back from the other side, but changed. After several attempts, the story has never attained anything more enduring than camp value and ironic quotability. The 1989 original, whose most memorable moments involved classic TV comedy actor Fred Gwynne, is emblematic of the goofiness of most Stephen King adaptations. This 2019 remake settles for an even more fleeting goofiness, a goofiness without aspirations to catchy one-liners or crowd-pleasing hooks. A new classic TV comedy actor, John Lithgow, assumes the Fred Gwynne role with a diminished sense of authenticity, and though he is likable he fails to sell the character’s arbitrary decisions to warn against, then advocate, then once more warn against the horror in his neighbors’ backyard. Unblushingly corny lightning flashes as Lithgow’s old-timer leads out-of-towner Louis (Jason Clarke) into the archetypical Indian burial ground, a trope used here with neither wink nor gravity, and one marvels at co-director Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s lack of tonal awareness. Leaning heavily on lazy horror logic of the “Why would you go into that dark room?” variety, the directors and screenwriter Jeff Buhler are content with banal tropes where they might easily have pursued something fresher, like dark comedy. There are latent laughs in the observations that Louis bought hallowed ground without a clue where his property lines were and without noticing that long-haul trucks screamed past just yards from his new front door, but you’ll have to smuggle your own sense of humor into the theater; this movie has none. It has none of the pathos or fear suggested by King’s neat title, either, with bland characterizations and tame undead that differ from the original’s only in trivial ways. Oh well, there’s always next remake.
Ranking:
Pet Sematary loses to Them That Follow
Final Standings:
1. Love, Death & Robots
2. Aurora
3. Booksmart
4. The Highwaymen
5. Vai
6. Little Monsters
7. Saint Frances
8. The Art of Self-Defense
9. The Beach Bum
10. Tone-Deaf
11. Alice
12. Frances Ferguson
13. One Man Dies a Million Times
14. Them That Follow
15. Pet Sematary
Wait, what about Us?
Unlike the closing night horror film, opening night’s was something special and original. You wouldn’t want us to spoil it by saying any more, would you?