Ten Films I Can’t Wait To See [SXSW 2010]

There are over 115 feature-length movies being showcased at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival, dozens of short subjects, a stout slate of filmmaker panels, and a couple of “TBA” holes on the schedule that I’ve been told not to miss under any circumstances. These are some of the movies I won’t leave Austin without seeing, and this list isn’t anywhere close to being complete.

• Kick-Ass
  We’ve been hot on the trail of Matthew Vaughn’s heroes-without-powers flick for a year, following red-band trailers and audience sneaks with an enthusiasm that borders on slavic. Now, not only will I get to finally find out if the devotion was worth it, but will get to grill Vaughn and the other principles on the movie’s creation.

• American: The Bill Hicks Story
  The world needs Bill Hicks right now. Hicks was a comedian that deserves to be uttered in the same breath as Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and George Carlin. He’s not as much of a household name due to his death at age 32 from pancreatic cancer, just as he was gaining national acclaim as a phenomenally talented writer. “American” is an animated film that tells Hicks’ story from the perspective of the ten people who knew him best.

• Elektra Luxx
  Last year, Sebastian Gutierrez gave us “Women In Trouble,” a sharp ensemble comedy with the intertwined lives of eight women on the edge. Part of that killer cast of characters was porn star Elektra Luxx (Carla Gugino), who gets stuck in an elevator after her doctor has told her she’s pregnant. Now, Elektra’s back, teaching housewives how to have better sex at a community center. Gutierrez is a sharp writer with a great character worthy of her own showcase, and Gugino deserves the showcase.

• American Grindhouse
  I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for grindhouse films since I was a kid, and far too young to be seen in theaters that showed the films. See, my grandfather (the man who taught me the best toast I’ll ever know) dropped me off at a local theater that specialized in grindhouse one every couple of weeks while he would go sit in on a card game closeby. He knew I wouldn’t get into any trouble, and my folks would be none-the-wiser that my brain was being warped beyond all hope of therapy opened up to the subculture of killer movies. Elijah Drenner’s new documentary looks at the legacy of grindhouse in American film, and digs deep to show its “shocking origins.”

• Saturday Night
  I absorbed Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, a warts-and-all account of the television pioneer’s creation and constant reinvention. I’m just as eager to see James Franco’s all-access pass into a week where John Malkovich hosted the show, which looks inside the writer’s room, rehearsal stages and behind-the-camera tension of live television. While Will Forte’s “MacGruber” may get the majority of SNL-related headlines at SXSW, Franco’s doc has my rapt attention.

• Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil
  Eli Craig writes and directs this glorious inversion of “cabin in the woods” horror movies: what if the creepy hillbillies the teens run into are just well-meaning simpletons, and the deaths they suffer are all accidental? This is part of the Midnighters screening slate at the Alamo Ritz, and I’m almost as gleeful to see this movie as I am “Kick-Ass.”

• The People vs. George Lucas
  If there’s a more polarizing figure in film fandom, I’m hard-pressed to name them. “Star Wars” fans grew up idolizing Lucas, then either found themselves pillorying him for his writing and direction on the Prequels or defending him for his overarching vision. Alexandre O. Phillipe has structured a film that takes a courtroom approach to the whole “love him or hate him” argument.

• The Runaways
  Critics dismissed The Runaways as a gimmick group, but Joan Jett, Cherrie Currie, Lita Ford and a plethora of bassists wound up being a highly influential group at the crossroads of punk and rock. Sundance audiences loved this movie, saying Kristen Stewart channels Jett and Dakota Fanning steals the movie as Currie. My hope is that we get a good dose of Lita Ford in the movie, as she had no input in the production (it was co-produced by Jett).

• Greenlit
  When SXSW sent out the first batch of Feature-Length films that would be included in the festival, “Greenlit” had a one-line description: “It ain’t easy being green.” Producer Miranda Bailey found out the hard way that Kermit might have been right after all, when she oversaw the production of “The River Why,” an indie film that attempted to be a “green production.” This means the cast and crew were aiming to drastically reduce the amount of waste and rubbish that film productions generally produce. The crew found out the hard way that environmentalism is more than lip service.

• The happy mistake
  There’s so many films at a festival like this – hundreds of features, documentaries, shorts – that even with the nifty iPhone schedule app I’ve been putting through paces, I have no idea how many movies I’m going to be able to see. That said, there’s always one movie you stumble into at festivals of this calibre that you take on as a hunch. Those are the wonderful miracles of a film festival, and I’m damned excited to find out what this year’s miracle will be.