Austin Dispatch. 2.

Either I know how to pick 'em or the bad movies at this year's SXSW Film Festival are simply too few and far between for me to find.

With 51 Birch Street (screenings), Doug Block has fashioned an engaging and at times even suspenseful mystery out of his family's story and, going by the sniffles rippling through the audience throughout the final third or so and the outpouring of personal testimonies in the Q&A that followed, something of an emotional catalyst as well. The set-up: He and his mother were always close; his father was always distant. She passes away unexpectedly. Just months later, his father goes down to Florida, meets up with the woman who'd been his secretary 35 years ago and announces: He's marrying her, selling the house in New York Doug and his sisters grew up in and moving down to the Sunshine State with his new wife.

Via understated voiceover and dexterous editing, Doug essentially takes on the role of detective. What actually happened? Had his father and the secretary had a relationship all along? What was the nature, really, of his parents' marriage? As it turns out, as the closets are sorted through, the boxes packed and family home closes down, mountains of evidence is revealed, a motherlode of evocative photographs, letters, mementos and, most telling of all, the diaries Doug's mother kept dating back to 1968. Doug expertly leads us toward one possible backstory before stumbling across another clue that radically realigns his initial, his second, then his third reading of the past. Sympathies shift among the lead players and, along the way, a social history of the American family unfolds, from the uptight 50s through the 70s (a swath of the story worthy of Updike, Cheever or Roth) to the present. I certainly won't reveal the ending, but I'll highly recommend the journey.

The first surprise to hit me at last night's screening of Darkon (screenings) were the crowds. Who were all these people who wanted to see a bunch of managers, Starbucks employees, fabric buyers and house dads dress up in no-budget homemade Lord of the Rings outfits and hit each other with foam-covered wooden sticks? I, for one, was not among them - until I saw the trailer. Curiosity piqued, I'd soon discover that this is an all-too-rare case of an already intriguing trailer actually underselling the film.

Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer have made several very smart decisions about their fundamental approach to the story they have to tell. They treat these weekend role-players with utmost respect, convincing you, by example, to do so as well (you may have a different set of fantasies and desires that have nothing to do with acting out some medieval board game in the city park, but have you actually acted on yours lately?). They switch from standard documentary mode - talking heads mixed with handheld vérité - to Peter Jackson mode each time the game fires up; that is, we, via swooping helicopter and crane shots, whatever it takes, are swept up in the game ourselves. Focusing primarily on Skip Lipman, the house dad, they tell parallel stories, one beginning in the world of the game, the other in the plain vanilla world, of how a plan to usurp the throne leads to newly forged alliances, betrayals, intrigue, triumph, disappointment - and fresh starts. As the credits rolled, the crowd thundered and whooped and whistled and if there was a distributor in the audience, s/he'll know what to do.

One of my favorites of the indieWIRE blogs has always been Michael Tully's. Those who've followed it know that he's been working on Cocaine Angel (screenings) for, well, quite a while, and that it was well-received in Rotterdam. To cut to the chase, he and cinematographer Shawn Lewallen have done a fine job, but what ultimately separates the film from all the other addiction stories out there (and I thought I'd sworn off them for good after Candy) is the performance from co-producer and writer Damian Lahey as Scott, the addict.

Scott's unique quirks, his wryly humorous excuses for one fuckup after another and his somehow winning mix of helplessness, cluelessness and a persistent drive to forge ahead regardless make watching his seemingly aimless odyssey oddly entertaining. Lahey and Tully are to be commended as well for forgoing any backstory, any contrived psychological explanation for Scott's having traded a comfortable life with his wife and daughter for the 24/7 hell of addiction; as Lahey explained in the Q&A, some addicts do drugs simply because they like them. But hell it is, unredeemed by any angel, chemical or otherwise. Cocaine Angel is hardly a landmark film, but it is a promising debut for Tully and I do hope to see Lahey in front of a camera again.

Posted by dwhudson at March 12, 2006 10:05 PM