Austin Film Fest 2023 Full Coverage

Saltburn

Saltburn is an exquisitely suspenseful ride full of beauty, brutality, and homoerotic anxiety. It’s the kind of gothic horror story that could’ve been written by a Brontë, but its ultramodern flair and mid-2000s nostalgia doesn’t make it any less timeless. Saltburn cleverly conveys the prickliness of human desire, and how lost we can become in our pursuit of our deepest, darkest wants. Never in my wildest, horniest, Tumblr-era dreams could I have envisioned a film so unabashedly erotic and fantastical as Saltburn–and I eagerly await the fanfiction that will undoubtedly ensue once this film gets its wide release. 

-Read More of Lili Labens’ review here

American Fiction

I applaud the film for not just being a comedy, but instead showing all of the ups and downs of simply existing, something the director said he wanted to show. Sometimes two people share a glance and rely on each other to convey the emotion of the scene. Arguments are allowed to play out in a realistic manner. People reveal truths about themselves and instead of having a big Hollywood monologue, they sit and ponder what their life meant up until this point. This isn’t to say that the film isn’t funny and filled to the brim with longing glances. There are so many gut-bustingly hilarious lines that the viewer would probably benefit from rewatches to ensure they heard a character right. But where the film really shines is in the melancholy of existing in a world that wants to put you in a box.

-Read the rest of Blake Williams’ review here

Jonah

Writer and director Ben Van Kleek (along with co-writer Trevor Vandelac) open their story with single mother Margot (Alaina Huffman) witnessing the abduction of her young son, Jonah (Lincoln Huffman, who is Alaina’s real-life son). From what Van Kleek shows in these beginning moments, to our and to Margot’s eyes, the abduction is real: Bright white lights that shine over their lonesome property blind us and Margot as her son is seemingly snatched from her. However, once we move past the introduction we meet the film’s protagonist, Ozzie (Osric Chau), a journalist who specifically interviews people labeled as “kooks” or “crazies.” Armed with the usual sense of cynicism found in almost every other movie journalist main character, Osric and his partner Darren (Ken Kirby) find themselves assigned to the case of Margot, looking to see if what she (and the audience) saw was real or a case of a woman going crazy.

-Read more of Justin Norris’ review here

The Holdovers

Six years after his last film, Downsizing, Alexander Payne is back with what I’d argue is his most human since 2004’s Sideways. Gone are the fantastical aspects of the last movie, replaced with softer, gentler, and at times heartbreaking moments. The Holdovers (which had its Texas premiere at Austin Film Festival) reunites Payne and actor, Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Billions) to tell the story of Paul Hunham, a strict prep school history professor at Barton Academy who gets stuck with watching over five students who, for reasons their own, can’t go home during Christmas break. Over the two weeks, four of the students leave and we’re left with one student, Angus (Dominic Sessa), Hunham, and Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), a grieving mother who works in the kitchen at the school.

-Read the rest of Blake’s review here

The Bikeriders

Helping this all go down a bit easy is the fact that The Bikeriders looks and sounds good—something you can always rely on with a Jeff Nichols film. Cinematographer Adam Stone excels at putting us into the visual minds of the Vandals. Every interior is alive with activity while also coming across as constricting and claustrophobic. When we go on a ride with our crew, Stone’s canvas expands and captures the lush beauty and freedom of the farm roads and understated Midwest highways that bring so much freedom to our characters. In its best moments of visual clarity, Nichols does what Lyon’s book did: capture the feeling of being in a Midwest biker gang, dirt and all.

-Read the rest of Justin’s review here

Red Carpet Interview: The Bikeriders

Bucky F*cking Dent

In the grand tradition of American storytelling, there are certain consistent themes to be expected: life, death, and a sport of some kind. The South has football, the North has hockey, the whole world has soccer, but there is perhaps no sport more romanticized and mythologized in the American cultural consciousness than baseball. There are many films centered upon life, death, and baseball — Field of Dreams, A League of Their Own, The Natural — but no film has approached any of these topics with such sincerity and sweetness as Bucky F*cking Dent, which made its Texas premiere at Austin Film Festival last Friday. 

-Read the rest of Lili’s review here

The Highest Brasil

The beauty and power of a baby blue tracksuit gets the spotlight it deserves in director and writer Jeremy Curl’s debut feature, The Highest Brasil. This was another fest film that I went into with zero background knowledge, which may be the best way to approach it.

-Read the rest of Justin’s review here

Midnight at the Paradise

It’s difficult to capture one believable love story full of yearning, passion, and resonant ruefulness in a single film, let alone three love stories with these qualities, but Midnight at the Paradise—which made its Texas premiere last Friday—manages this effortlessly. Centering on three couples faced with dilemmas on one fateful, transformative night, Vanessa Matsui’s directorial debut is a rich and romantic tale. Within this wistful narrative full of “what if”s and wanting lies a profound appreciation for film and the way it shapes moments in our lives.

-Read the rest of Lili’s review here

Monster

Accusations, cold responses from the school board, and ever-changing testimonies begin to shape the film into something like Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, as the audience starts to second-guess the main character’s true motivations in the face of harrowing allegations. In the first two acts, Kore-eda shows a strong hand in setting up mystery and dread from a parent’s point of view, with Ando anchoring an engrossing character who’s trying to figure out what’s happened to her son, and who should pay the price.

-Read more of Justin’s review here

Red Carpet Interview: Day of the Fight

Egghead & Twinkie

I love me a road trip movie. I think a big part of it is that I just love the concept of road trips as a whole. In their own little way, these trips take on an epic feeling as you travel from one new town to another, maybe meeting new people, or maybe even facing some unseen challenges. When you add the idea of road tripping to a film, you open the gates to tons of possibilities for where the film can go, literally and metaphorically. It fits that as I glanced over the Austin Film Fest program schedule that Sarah Kambe Holland’s Egghead & Twinkie stood out as a film that I should catch, mainly because I saw the words “road” and “trip” in its brief description. During another premiere, the filmmaker labeled their film as something for Generation Z to have when it comes to the coming-of-age genre. They also revealed that this was a film pretty much crowdfunded through Generation Z-stape, TikTok. Would all of this youthful energy literally powering the production of the film burst through to the audience watching it? 

-Read the rest of Justin’s review here

Titty Boy

Titty Boy proves director Austin Culp is capable of handling comedy, and has a sense of what works and what doesn’t. This outlandish concept could have easily fallen flat on its face, but due to all of the pieces coming together, it comes off as endearing and heartwarming. If this is just the beginning, I’m interested to see what comes next from Culp with the lessons learned from this short.

-Read the rest of Blake’s review here

Shorts Block: Correspondence in a Strange Land

Check out Justin’s reviews of short films Oddities, Shitty Therapy, Beauty Visa, The Third Bedroom, (Dis)connected, Mahogany Drive, and A Conspiracy Man here