After two years of having to deal with online-only films, SXSW has taken over Austin once again, complete with red carpet events, panels, parties and big movie premieres. This year’s festival features 100+ films, shorts, documentaries, and pilot episodes with some being available both in person and online. It’s impossible to see all of the films over the course of 10 days of the festival, but we managed to see quite a few. Here’s a list of our favorites:
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
In what is easily the most impressive technical genre film of the festival and quite possibly of the year, Everything Everywhere All At Once delivered a satisfying emotional surprise to the festival’s opening night. Directed by the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) this story of a Chinese-American woman, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), who must do inter-dimensional multiverse battle with her own life choices while trying to finish her taxes.
THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT
“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” delivers some of the most fun and entertaining film of the festival. Cage portrays an alt-version of himself, as an established actor that’s having a hard time landing the roles he would have easily be casted for earlier in his career. When a shady super fan, played by Pedro Pascal offers him an incredible opportunity for a payday to attend his birthday party, the CIA quickly escalates the situation to a hysterical intelligence operation to take down a drug kingpin. The film is an action-packed laugh fest with a dozen Nick Cage references, but you don’t necessarily have to be a huge Cage fan to appreciate the humor of his presence in the film.
THE LOST CITY
Romance novelist Loretta (Sandra Bullock) on a book tour with her cover model (Channing Tatum) gets swept up in a kidnapping attempt that lands them both in a cutthroat jungle adventure by an eccentric villainous billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who hopes she can lead him to an ancient city’s lost treasure from her latest story. Determined to prove he can be a hero in real life and not just on the pages of her books, Alan sets off to rescue her. The Lost City isn’t quite the rom-com caper as some of the classics, Bullock’s and Tatum’s chemistry make this an overall enjoyable film to watch on Prime Video.
BODIES BODIES BODIES
When a group of 20-somethings gets stuck at a remote mansion during a hurricane, a party game gone very, very wrong ends with a dead body on the ground and fake friends at every turn as they try to find the killer among them and literal bodies start piling up. “Bodies Bodies Bodies” delivers quick and zany energy that kicks off right at the start of the film, delivering a ton of laughs and bone chilling scenes that offers an R-rated “murder mystery” vibe.
I LOVE MY DAD
A desperate father (Patton Oswalt) poses as a woman online to reconnect with his estranged son, but things get complicated when the young man wants to meet her in person.
Cha Cha Real Smooth
A man who works as a bar mitzvah party host strikes up a unique friendship with a young woman and her teenage daughter. This touching dramedy will pull a few heart strings with the established star power of Dakota Johnson, and rising star writer-director Cooper Raiff as a talent to watch.