The last time I saw a documentary I'd classify as a horror film in disguise, it was Stefan Forbes' Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. Similarly, Petr Lom's Letters to the President concerns itself with a man who is trying to convince everyone he's not so bad: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Whereas Forbes' film finds Atwater gradually humanized, Letters makes you really wonder what anyone (Sean Penn of all people) could possibly find humane or redeeming at all in the Ahmadinejad regime. The title of the film refers to Ahmadinejad urging all the proles to send him letters telling about their problems so that he can fix them. The film begins with Iranians approaching the documentarians at more than arm's length, saying "everything is perfect, everyone is happy, healthy, and well-fed." All of them seem to know or be related to someone who the President has "helped." Lom's film is the perfect indictment of "faith-based" government, even though it was made with Ahmadinejad's unconditional blessing. There are plenty of promises made and broken, but no one accepting responsibility for them. Those who come out openly criticizing Ahmadinejad all seem rather resigned to the fact it could only be worse with someone else, as it was with his predecessors. This is a great pre-emptive look at what life is like in Iran for those who think we need to just go in, guns a-blazin'. I'm not talking about the people who just think the entire Middle East should be wiped away in a bath of flames, but those who think that's how you affect positive change. It's a more complex situation than that, and if anything, the bungling of Iraq has finally gotten it through a bunch of W voters. The thing that struck me as the son of a Cuban expatriate was how many of these people were opening themselves and their families up for retaliation. If anything was missing from the film for me, it was any indication of what happens to someone who speaks out. The Ahmadinejadistas don't seem like the Freedom of Speech type from everything I've seen. A number of interview subjects inferred a fear of reprisal in the words they were carefully choosing coupled with the terror in their eyes. On election day, you hear someone espouse a different political view than what the ballot in his hand reflects, and you worry about him and the kid he cradles in his arms. I want to know where some of these people are a couple years later. If Lom can capture that, then he's doing better humanitarian work than the professionals. During the SXSW screening that my cohort Gy caught, he was shocked at the amount of laughter from the audience, to the point that he wondered if they thought it was all a put-on. I told him I figured the laughter came from a place of discomfort. As Ebert has said, "they laugh, that they may not cry." Most modern American audiences are allergic to the truth. They don't want to look outside the window. They want to stare at their myriad screens and dial up on-demand comfort programming. Standing up and doing something for themselves or the world around them has to meet the "hipness" quotient, or they tune out. There must be merchandising involved, or it gets too real and they freak out. I'll be in touch with the director for an interview soon, wherein I'll check on distribution plans. In an ideal world, there would be an ad-supported, streaming version of the film available for the millions of cube-dwellers across the world to watch. Surely this film will get picked up by someone in some form, as there's no better look at what's really happening inside Iran.

There's been a great deal of chatter about misanthropic humor in comedy lately, what with the impending release of Observe & Report. The Snake takes things yet further, with a premise that's pretty sociologically depraved. Adam Goldstein plays Ken, who is intent on seducing a young woman wrestling with bulimia. It's difficult to paint your way out of something like that, and they don't entirely succeed. They avoid the lion's share of micro-feature cliches, instead relying on a raw character sketch of the most repellant character you could imagine. They refuse to pull punches to the point I finished the film wondering whether I hated the movie or just the main guy, Ken. I eventually came to the conclusion that I stuck with him to see if he would go yet a step further, if that's even possible. It's hard to watch at times, because I know there are real guys out there trying to take advantage of women like Talia, Ken's bulimic prey. The movie itself doesn't fall into the category of things I could watch over and over, bu that isn't to say it doesn't work. Some things are great to re-watch, others are better to have seen just once. Yet others are great to have seen and put on for a friend, saying "you've gotta see this, it's fucked up" when you've got some laundry and housekeeping to do. Goldstein throws himself so unapologetically into playing Ken, this is a great calling card for him on that front. Even more so, this is a great reference piece for him as a co-writer along with Eric Kutner (who also co-directed). The important thing is that they know what to keep and what to cut. As fucked up as it is to say contextually, there's no fat on this movie, and that's a good thing. Gy Odom, HE's intermittent correspondent, has an interview with the filmmakers that we're in the process of editing down to include in his coverage. Watch for it late this week.

This post was written by Ashley Hazlewood, who is helping me cover the vast amount of ground at SXSW Film. Every so often, a director joins the vast ranks of doc-makers who gets what it takes to really differentiate yourself and your work. I liked director Gary Hustwit's Helvetica very much, primarily because I used to work in desktop publishing and design. Objectified, his followup, is all about the concept of industrial design and how we interact with it. He touches on how much time and thought goes in to items, large and small, that we all use on a daily basis. In the process, the narrative becomes very meta-referential. At a certain point, the talking head talk evolved to a point Moises referred to as "nerd heaven." Some of the world's most legendary living designers started geeking out about their own industry, getting very meta-referential about it all. If there were a reality show that were focused on making a better toothbrush or garden rake, I'd certainly watch it sooner than Top Design or Project Runway. This should be required viewing for anyone going in to any design field.

This post was written by Ashley Hazlewood, who is helping me cover the vast amount of ground at SXSW Film. Ong Bak 2 is a magnificent disaster. Director/star Tony Jaa's on-set breakdown was extremely well-reported in East Asia. They shut down production and weren't certain the movie would be completed. After the Thai studio conceded to some of his demands, he returned to the film, but based on the ending, I don't know how much additional shooting was actually done. I can't recommend the film as a cohesive, intellectually-satisfying movie, but that isn't the reason anyone goes to a martial arts film. The original Ong Bak (same star, different director, different universe) set everyone's expectations impossibly high for whatever came after, and as a direct result of that, we have a film that tries too hard and only succeeds in parts. At the same time, those who do not have a "seen one, seen them all" opinion of the genre will enjoy the stew enough to see it and Ong Bak 3, which is currently shooting. Ong Bak 2 reuses the same two or three templates you usually see employed in these films. The story begins with Tien, an "Heir to a Throne", on the run from traitors who are trying to kill him. He ends up in a slave camp, full of snarling, bellowing "Evil Slavedrivers". One short "Destined Emancipation" later, he joins a group of "Honorable Thieves". For good measure, they throw in every staple they can to garnish the fighting sequences. the hero avenges his family's murder by learning to become a "Fearsome Warrior". Insert a couple betrayals of trust/honor and bad guys in ridiculous costumes, and there's your garden variety martial arts flick. It's like MadLibs in Thai with lots of punching and kicking. Cartoonish antagonists juxtaposed with the severely earnest Jaa and a few others in the film are the oil and water of different styles of martial arts "justice" films. It never really gels, but if you're really after killer fight choreography, just wait an hour. It feels like Jaa was trying to make three movies at once, and in doing so, create the greatest action film ever. They re-use five to ten minutes of footage from the beginning verbatim late in the film, evidence of the need to pad out the runtime. The most engaging, entertaining part for the audience seemed to be the Thai preshow advertisements that were stuck on the print. Less amusing was the Thai version of antipiracy coding, where you saw a very crudely scratched-in "E116" roughly every fifteen minutes. If you are a devoted fan of Tony Jaa or brutally violent Thai movies, you really should see this, if only to talk to your friends about how out-of-nowhere the ending is, or how ridiculous bad guys with woven baskets on their heads are. If waiting until DVD, buy a twelve pack of Singha beer and wake people up when the action starts.

In the middle of a Thursday afternoon last week, in a half-empty Paramount Theater, I saw one of the most important films to have screened at SXSW09. Soul Power is the killer B side to a doc that many already know and love, When We Were Kings. Directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, one of Kings' editors, Soul Power concerns itself with the three-day music festival that happened concurrent to the Ali-Foreman Rumble in the Jungle. Interspersed throughout the film are full single song performances by James Brown (the centerpiece of the festival), B.B. King, Bill Withers, Miriam Makemba, Celia Cruz & The Fania All-stars, and others. There's also a healthy amount of Ali spouting philosophy and observations that still ring true 35 years later. The most significant find of the film, for me, is what I consider the most stirring Bill Withers performance put to film. Most people know him for other songs, but Levy-Hinte chose "Hope She'll Be Happy" out of the hour-long set Withers played. It's only a couple minutes long, but of all the sequences in the film, it left the greatest impression on me. The raw, cathartic wail in Withers' voice really drove home how completely free of emotion or talent most modern music is. Singers used to really pour themselves into it, not just twist the corner of their mouth because it'd look good on American Idol. The film plays fine on its own, but truly is best paired with a recent viewing of When We Were Kings. I watched Kings in the middle of the night before, and this is more than just cutting room, deleted scenes stuff. You're missing a significant part of the history of this event without Soul Power. If I was left wanting in any way, it's that I want to be able to see the full twelve-hour concert. I want to be able to listen to it on my iPod. The footage is available and the sound masters are all multi-track. With today's technology, the music sounded phenomenal in the film, and Levy-Hinte promised us it was possible with the rest of the material. If there were ever a justification for taking a payday loan to buy Blu-rays of something, it would be a box set of that. The Zaire '74 concert with lossless, 16-track audio in 7.1 Digital Surround would move plenty of hardware and software. There's a fortune to be made selling high quality digital tracks of all that music on its own. At the Q&A after the film, I asked the director when or if this was planned, and he said that he hadn't gotten any interest from anyone yet. He has access and rights secured for all the masters, film and audio. This is absolutely insane. I'll start a fundraising effort, write letters, make people un-follow me on Twitter by spamming people with direct messages. Sony Pictures Classics will release Soul Power in late July in a handful of theaters and then presumably on DVD and Blu-ray. This deserves to be seen on more than just "a handful" of screens, so hopefully film societies and festivals will stage their own screenings across the country.

Saying this movie and Paul Blart: Mall Cop should be mentioned in the same breath because they're both ostensibly about rent-a-cops is like comparing Straw Dogs to Babe because they're both set on a farm. The most refreshing thing about this movie is that Warner Bros. let Jody Hill "win all the arm wrestling matches" with regard to content. Observe and Report is not a movie about a guy who becomes a hero. Rather, it's about a guy who has determined in his own mind that he is a hero, despite all evidence to the contrary. Like Jody Hill's The Foot Fist Way and Eastbound and Down, it made me think about what kids have grown up thinking a "hero" really is in the USA. Should kids look up to the soccer coach who's probably only there for the community service hours to clear his DUI charge? Should they idolize the date rapist who teaches martial arts in his "dojo" between the gun shop and XXX movie store? These aren't the same guys featured in Hill's other work, but they're very, very similar. Fred Simmons (Foot Fist) and Kenny Powers (Eastbound), as played by Danny McBride, don't give a shit what anyone believes or thinks is appropriate. Seth Rogen's Ronnie Barnhardt is cut from the same cloth, but what makes him more dangerous than the other two is that he thinks he is the avenging angel of justice. What interests me most about Hill's trio of Alpha Jerks is that he doesn't condone what they do or who they are, and at once, he didn't create them as stock antagonists. When you spend enough time with them, it's like you've been with a cult for a while, and they start making a fair amount of sense. Then, something bizarre or grotesque happens and you snap out of it. If anything, Jody's cracked open a big can of anthropological social commentary disguised as a 16oz Miller Lite. Ronnie (Seth Rogen) and shopgirl love interest Brandy (Anna Faris) have such repellant personalities that you wouldn't wish either of them on your worst enemy. His best friend, mom, allies and adversaries are all just as disgusting of creatures. They're great to laugh at, but they are frighteningly close to a bunch of the idiots surrounding us all. The modern American mall is the unholy torture shrine where all these miserable people in nowhere towns like the one in O&R congregate to be miserable together. Hill starts us out in hell and we never leave. I agree for the most part with Joe Leydon's Taxi Driver comparison. Both guys are seriously screwed up bipolar types who lamentably have jobs that require them to interact with the general public. They're both obsessed with the delusion of an imaginary, "muy macho" version of themselves that wields a great deal of power, but Ronnie comes out more sympathetic than Travis Bickle by a sliver. That isn't to say Hill cops out and turns Ronnie around. He's still a fucked-up, gun-obsessed idiot. Just when you think he's going to do the right thing, he takes another left turn every chance he gets. I have a feeling there are things they may have selectively sliced out of the theatrical cut. They'll probably add whatever it was back in to an even more depraved Unrated Cut a few months from now for DVD/Blu-ray. As I understand it, there was a grittier, darker original cut of The Foot Fist Way. It would be nice to see that made available at the same time. Observe and Report is further evidence that Warners is interested in producing non-homogenized product that conventional studio thinking would never, ever greenlight. It's nice to know that studios are taking chances on guys like Hill, whose striking, original voices are a welcome change from business as usual.

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker barely allows you to breathe in the very best way. Jeff's earlier contention that the protagonists are after an unconventional monster is dead-on. It doesn't come after them, but lies in wait for them to incite their own destruction, diffuse the danger, or be too little, too late. Summit is right to have waited to release the film in June this year. The Hurt Locker is the first great film of 2009, and would have been among the great of '08 had it been released then. There are transcendent film experiences, and there are the rare among those where at the end, you quietly say "Jesus" to yourself under your breath and then turn to a friend next to you who caps it with "Christ". The only reason anyone gets out of their seat during the credits is that they have to rush the line outside for a Spike Lee movie showing next in the same theater (Passing Strange). Screenwriter Mark Boal was an embedded reporter in 2004 with an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) squad, the guys who diffuse IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). It's important to note the difference, as both are mentioned in the film. Most people out there are familiar with the latter term, but not the former. The film opens with a quote that equates war to a drug. Jeremy Renner's Staff Sergeant James is the thrill junkie, the guy who "suits up" for the high. Whether he likes it or not, he's wrapped up in it so tightly that there's more of it in him than whoever he was beforehand. He's on the verge of going into malfunctioning Robocop mode. Later in the film you question how grounded any sequence he's in without his teammates is in the real world. As many classics do, there are thematic echoes (some intended, but most likely not) of other great films. The diffusion sequences demand rapt attention just as much as the robbery sequence in Rififi, sans the silence. Good guy Quint at AICN is right comparing Locker to Wages of Fear. During one sequence where US and UK soldiers are pinned down in the open with a broken down vehicle, I couldn't help but think of Zoltan Korda's Sahara (1943), starring Humphrey Bogart. The poster lie of that film was: A mighty story of adventure, courage and glory in the desert!...tender human emotion...triumphant action...matchless thrills...a memorable entertainment experience! Summit PR folks, get your copy/paste ready, because Columbia did your work for you 66 years ago. Another tagline of Sahara's, "Their story can now be told!" also rings true here. They aren't out of the woods just yet on the publicity end. From now until opening in late June, it's going to take the precision of an EOD tech to make sure Joe Public gets that this is a thrilling action powder keg. I'd recommend sneaking it in military communities...everyone chain emails everyone these days. During the post-show Q&A moderated by the audience shirt-identifying James Rocchi ("the gentleman in the checkered shirt!"), director Bigelow noted the major distinction of this conflict. "It's a war of bombs," she said, "and these guys have the most dangerous job in the world." That would almost makes a perfect tagline. I would only edit it as "the most dangerous job in the most dangerous place in the world." Looks good on a poster, looks good in white text over black. The requisite "how will your film do when so many other Iraq movies have failed" question was asked, and I almost burst out to tell the guy to go fuck himself. It was like he was set on auto-pilot to ask that regardless of the movie he'd just seen. Did he miss that The Hurt Locker hides the brussel sprouts in the macaroni and cheese? Regardless of political perspective, anyone walking in to this movie will have their perceptions of the war and those involved in it on the ground shaken. There were actual EOD techs in the audience on Tuesday night, one of whom asked, "What made you want to focus on us EOD techs?" There was a sound in his voice that said, "we've felt utterly ignored to this point, beyond forgotten." They take out the most hazardous waste in the world and are as isolated and cast away as WALL-E robots, while the rest of us Twitter it up on our Laptop-o-Loungers and order our dinner over the internet. That twinge in his voice choked me up more than a bit. I tried to grab a couple words with him, and his short review was "I didn't think anyone would ever do this or do it well. I liked how honest it was." Bigelow shot something like 200 hours of raw footage that was carved, sculpted, and scalpel-honed down to two hours that doesn't feel like 131 minutes. The Hurt Locker subtly, forcefully engages your active viewing engine and doesn't let such that frankly, I could have rolled with even more of it. I have high hopes for a big pile of extended/deleted scenes on the DVD. I also got the chance to grab a few minutes with Kathryn and Mark which you can listen to here. We talk about a couple things, but most interesting to our readership, Mark Boal tells Jeffrey Wells to stick something in his pipe and smoke it. When asked, Mark (who wrote In the Valley of Elah's story) confided that he has a third story he wants to have told. He wouldn't (couldn't, understandably) go into detail. With a one-two pedigree like this, whoever has that script on their desk: do yourself a favor and greenlight it, fund it, make this happen.

The movie is ostensibly about a guy who has no best friend. His dad is best friends with his brother (and vice versa), and he has no immediate leads for a best man at his wedding. The premise is really just an excuse to get Paul Rudd and Jason Segel knocking banter back and forth. Then they pepper the film with sharp comedians in bit parts and it's a satisfying cheeseburger. What makes I Love You, Man work isn't the most daringly-original, envelope-pushing premise in history (which it lacks), but the improv. It also doesn't pretend to be more than what it is, and I respect that. The headliners all keep up their end. Rudd and Segal act like they've done this for years. Rashida Jones plays the straight woman to the rest of the cast, including Jon Favreau and Jaime Pressly as the break-up/make-up (in the same breath) couple. Aziz Ansari, Joe Lo Truglio, Thomas Lennon, Jay Chandrasekhar, and Lou Ferrigno all take a couple lines here and there and really make the movie work, disposable premise and all. Put enough really solid performers in a film like this, and you have a reliable fast food comedy experience. Like I did, a lot of people will look at promos for I Love You, Man determined to be a neg-head on it. "Oh great, one of these," many will say. I came out thinking it's a perfect "watch anytime" kind of thing. When I'm done with the latest depressing "end of the world"-tinged doc and want to watch something that grabs me by the gut and makes me chuckle, this is it. Watching Moon last night at the Paramount gave me a good subcategory for the movie: Aspirational Lifestyle Comedy. At one point Sam Rockwell is watching an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and that's how that show was filed in the computer None of the main characters are hurting for cash, and the biggest problems in their world are footnotes compared to the volumes of issues most people face. People want to shut out the layoffs and failing companies and just laugh. I'm going to call this one the box office champ next weekend and then some, with word of mouth doing a reverse Watchmen and pushing packed houses on Saturday and Sunday next week. It'll do good mid-week attendance too. No one is going to walk in to the movie wondering how it ends. It drags a bit in the third act, but it invests enough into getting you to stick with it that I forgave the perfunctory ending. I wouldn't label the movie disposable, but as i said before...fast food, easy to watch..which isn't a bad thing here. Sometimes a burger is a burger, but this one is cooked to order, better quality cheese and condiments. During the Q&A, Segal commented on the Muppet script he was writing a few months back, saying he's "finished writing. The studio has it now. It's an old-school, late 70's/early 80's Muppet movie They said I had to put famous people in it." Bring it on.

I had already seen I Love You, Man in December at BNAT, but wanted to be at last night's premiere to be there for Janet Pierson's debut introducing a SXSW Opening Night. As much well-deserved credit as I give Matt Dentler for the ship he steered during his tenure, Janet deserves just as much for keeping what works and continuing to make refinements so the festival runs even more smoothly. Last night's schedule for the Elsewhere crew consisted of I Love You, Man, The Snake, and Ong Bak 2. In order, they are a) an improv-driven, solid comedy, b) a pleasant, unpretentious indie surprise, and c) brilliant insanity that reflects the director/star's nervous breakdown during production. More substantive reflections on all three to come. We're at a deficit for time currently, running to the Paramount for Helvetica director Gary Hustwit's Objectified and the Sundance-lauded Moon. We'll have writeups going up tonight and tomorrow, including an interview with the directors of the conspiracy theorist doc New World Order.

IFC is bringing a selection of its features screening at this year's South by Southwest film festival to IFC On Demand starting tomorrow. This way, even if not attending, you can still "play along at home" to some extent. Earlier this year, the platform release of Che went day-and-date to On Demand, allowing millions more people the opportunity to see one of the best movies of last year, even if they don't live in the selected markets where it was available in theaters. Most average American consumers are watching their movies at home, and even a DVD/Blu-ray release isn't infallible in the era of Amazon and Netflix. Either service has to deal with shortages of physical product that can hold up shipments. VOD eliminates that barrier completely. We may come to a point in the near future where we have true "watch it now" options where your On Demand purchase contributes to a discount on your physical disc purchase. This is what will spur disc sales, not removing features from rental SKUs. IFC is getting ahead of the curve by establishing themselves as a premier VOD brand, which is smart. There's a little of something for anyone in the five films you can start watching today for between 5 and 7 bucks. The Films Alexander the Last (VOD on Saturday, 3/14) Jeff already reviewed this here. Even though i've been going to SXSW for six years now, this is the first Swanberg movie I will have seen. The screenings are always packed or up against something else, and I've never caught them. The movie is about a young married couple dealing with the temptations offered by their artistic endeavors. Anyone who's done college or community theatre in their twenties should be able to relate. Three Blind Mice (VOD Wednesday 3/18) Three Australian Navy officers have one last night before they ship out to war. The way they spend their time is unexpected, in that the movie doesn't turn into a horror film or a 'let's all pledge to get laid" film. It's the type of narrative that America, by and large, is too coarse a place to produce anymore. Zift (VOD available now) It's in Bulgarian, black and white, and set in the 1960's. The main guy was wrongly jailed for murder prior to the communist takeover in '44, and now he's out. The film follows his first night out from the slammer. He inevitably gets into trouble. Zift is Bulgarian for the tar used to fill in pavement cracks, and slang for "shit." Medicine for Melancholy (VOD available now) This movie was at SXSW last year and is screening again. Director Barry Jenkins focuses on two African American twentysomethings the morning after a one-night stand (or is it?). They spend the day together, touching on issues of race, class, and the process of San Francisco getting whiter and whiter around them. The Daily Show's Wyatt Cenac plays the guy. Paper Covers Rock (VOD available now) A young woman attempts suicide and has to fight for custody of her daughter. Another holdover from SXSW08, Jeannine Kaspar plays an authentic, troubled young mom better than other actors her age. ----------------------------- We'll be following up with reviews on these films as the festival progresses.