SXSW '25: ASCO

ASCO: Without Permission centers the revolutionary art collective and its cultural impact.

Reviews, SXSWGabrielle SanchezApril 14, 2025Comment

The Rivals of Amziah King is one of the most strangely-paced films and thematically-incohesive films I’ve ever seen. That’s both to its benefit and its greatest flaw.

Reviews, SXSWZiah GraceApril 14, 2025SXSW, Matthew McConaughey, The Rivals of Amziah King, Angelina LookingGlass, Andrew PattersonComment

SXSW '25: Snake wrangling and mans’ folly collide in The Python Hunt

The Python Hunt expertly delivers on its promises of humor and human interest.

Reviews, SXSWGabrielle SanchezApril 14, 2025Xander Robin, The Python Hunt, SXSW, Florida, everglades, documentaryComment

SXSW ‘25: Shuffle

Shuffle adeptly straddles the line between documentarian and subject while uncovering a deep web of fraud and scams at the heart of addiction treatment.

Reviews, SXSWAlix MamminaApril 14, 2025SXSW, Shuffle, Benjamin Flaherty, addictionComment

SXSW ‘25: Surviving Earth

Where some stories of addiction slip into melodrama and misery, Surviving Earth shows the reality of sobriety as a choice that’s made every single day.

Reviews, SXSWAlix MamminaApril 14, 2025Surviving Earth, Slavko Sobin, Thea Gajić, Olive Gray, SXSW, addictionComment

SXSW '25: O’Dessa signifies nothing, and doesn’t even offer sound or fury

With due respect paid, O’Dessa is awful.

Reviews, SXSWJustin HarrisonApril 11, 2025O'Dessa, musical, Murray Bartlett, Regina Hall, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Sadie Sink, Geremy JasperComment

SXSW '25: LifeHack

LifeHack is a good heist film, a good coming-of-age film, and a skillful deployment of screenlife as a storytelling technique.

This Week in Screenings 4/11-4/17

This week in Austin screenings, 4/11-4/17.

Community ScreeningsJames McDonaldApril 11, 2025Comment

SXSW '25: The Infinite Husk: A sci-fi feature too cynical for its own good

The Infinite Husk falters under the weight of its big philosophical ambitions, leaning too far into the pessimism of the human condition without actually exploring what it means to live and move through the world’s structures.

Reviews, SXSWGabrielle SanchezApril 10, 2025Aaron Silverstein, SXSW, The Infinite Husk, science fiction, Peace Ikediuba, Circus-SzalewskiComment

SXSW '25: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, or, the Millennial's Ishtar (Complimentary)

Following its first screening, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie proved itself as the SXSW breakout of the year, with the word-of-mouth buzz resulting in a frenzy around the film’s second showtime.

Reviews, SXSWGabrielle SanchezApril 10, 2025Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, SXSW, Matt Johnson, Jay JaredComment

SXSW ‘25: Tim Robinson brings his off-kilter kookiness to the big screen in Friendship

Friendship, which had its Texas Premiere at SXSW in 2025, is all about the strange amorphous heartbreak when a (mostly) heterosexual male friendship is ended. It’s also about star Tim Robinson continuing his streak of ego-less humiliation comedy in which half the joke is that he’s willing to act like that.

SXSW, ReviewsZiah GraceApril 9, 2025Friendship, SXSW, Paul Rudd, Tim RobinsonComment

SXSW '25: Slanted

Slanted does well to avoid the pitfall of many modern satires by avoiding an explicit morality tale or an ending that ties everything up with a bow and a preachy monologue.

Reviews, SXSWAlix MamminaApril 9, 2025Slanted, Amy Wang, SXSW, Shirley Chen, Amelie Zilber, McKenna Grace, racial identityComment

SXSW '25: Arrest the Midwife is a Vibrant and Necessary Call to Action

Arrest The Midwife is a powerful reminder that we are all we have, that our similarities are more striking than our differences, and that the people we’ve helped can and will go on to help others.

Reviews, Film FestsZiah GraceApril 8, 2025Elaine EpsteinComment

The 7 Best Springtime Movies to Stream

Happy spring! We’re celebrating the equinox with 7 springtime movies, from The Secret Garden to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Trip: Most Trips Have Highs and Lows

The Trip can be enjoyed because we should be able to enjoy a film for exactly what films are at their core: visually stimulating moving pictures that we resonate with.

Reviews, AnalysisLola GarzaApril 7, 2025The Trip, Roger Corman, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Susan StrabergComment

This Week in Screenings 4/4-4/10

This week in Austin screenings, 4/4-4/10.

Community ScreeningsJames McDonaldApril 4, 2025Comment

HFC @ HLFF - Interview with Writer/Director of Proverbs Timoteo Cortez

Today we caught up with Houston based filmmaker Timoteo Cortez to talk about his newest short film Proverbs.

InterviewsEli FischerApril 3, 2025Timoteo Cortez, Proverbs, HLFF, Houston Latino Film FestivalComment

Eyes Of Fire’s American Nightmare

Before Eyes of Fire almost became a forgotten piece of occult Vestron Video ephemera, some of the Southern U.S. populace got their minds fried in a theater by what has since become recognized as a cornerstone in the nature-is-out-to-kill-us genre.

ReviewsAdam GandersonApril 2, 2025Eyes of Fire, Avery CrounseComment

Weird Wednesdays: Eastern Condors

A classic riff on The Dirty Dozen, the film follows a ragtag group of undocumented Chinese-Americans who are offered US citizenship in exchange for dropping into the jungle to destroy a cache of American weapons before the Viet Cong can find them.

Alamo Weird Wednesday, ReviewsMatthew SeidelApril 1, 2025Sammo HungComment

Freedom Flight: The Brother from Another Planet

The Brother from Another Planet is John Sayles’ socially-conscious science fiction tale of immigration and citizenship status.

Hyperreal Film Journal