#SXS VIDEO CARDS SXSW MOVIE#

Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph co-star in this 1970s-set picaresque by Alexander Payne (working from a script by David Hemingson).

#SXS VIDEO CARDS SXSW MOVIE#

A lean-in movie that rewards the undivided attention it demands. commanded the screen as Oppenheimer critic Lewis Strauss, and Emily Blunt went from blowzy to ballistic as Oppenheimer’s fiercely loyal wife Kitty. Robert Oppenheimer, portrayed with haunting verisimilitude by Cillian Murphy. What better palate cleanser than “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s technically pristine, densely layered portrait of Manhattan Project leader J. A movie about Mattel’s most cherished plastic doll had no right to be as smart, aware, hilarious and structurally ungovernable as Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” – millions of people not only ate it up, but also went back for more. What, you thought I had forgotten? When it came to cultural currency, no proof of concept was more thrilling than 2023’s most ecstatically received twofer. Still galvanizingly charismatic in her early 80s, Baez holds nothing back in this disarmingly intimate film, in which she explores her lifelong anxieties and buried traumas, as well as her early rise to stardom her relationships with men, women and family and the continuing mystery that is that sublime, still-powerful voice. The 1960s folk icon embarks on her final tour in this superbly constructed film by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle, but what starts out as a goodbye chronicle turns into something far more revealing and surprising than viewers expect. Delicate, deeply felt and beautifully calibrated, “Past Lives” left an impression all the more indelible for being made so softly. When she reconnects with her long-lost might-have-been-boyfriend (Teo Yoo), her marriage to an American writer (John Magaro) is upended. Greta Lee stars as a young woman whose family emigrated from South Korea to Canada when she was a child. Like Satter, writer-director Celine Song made a notably promising feature debut this year, with a movie that seemed built from small moments, all of which accrued to a devastating final scene. Sweeney, so adept at playing bad girls, is a revelation as a young woman who’s vulnerable and canny in fascinatingly equal measure. Unfolding in real time, as Winner is apprehended and questioned by FBI agents in her Augusta, Ga., home, the film is taut, tense, borderline tragic and often absurdly funny. Tina Satter adapted her own play for this movie about National Security Agency leaker Reality Winner, portrayed in an astonishing performance by a de-glammed Sydney Sweeney. This is the kind of movie they don’t make anymore, until they do. With “Air,” director Ben Affleck told the story of the Nike Air Jordan basketball sneaker with verve and alert intelligence, convening Matt Damon, Chris Messina and Jason Bateman in terrific supporting roles and then sending it all into the stratosphere with Viola Davis as Jordan’s mother, Deloris.

This was the year of product placement, from the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos movie to the delightful comedy-drama “ BlackBerry,” about the eponymous, still-lamented handheld device.

The result is a film that, like Wilkerson’s mission, invents a new language, combining drama and documentary to get at some of the most profound and politically complex realities of human experience with depth, emotion and raw honesty. Here’s hoping the trend continues apace.Īva DuVernay’s adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste” stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Wilkerson herself, in a story that weaves her personal story of loss and grief into her search for a theoretic construct for oppression that transcends race. Rockwell gave Teyana Taylor a dazzling showcase in the tough and tender mother-son drama “A Thousand and One” Jamie Dack created the year’s most disturbingly effective portrait of sex trafficking with “Palm Trees and Power Lines” comedian Ray Romano made an assured directing debut with the sweetly nostalgic family drama “Somewhere in Queens” Charlotte Regan and Raven Jackson made wildly different but equally poetic and powerful films about girls coming of age in “Scrapper” and “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” respectively.Īny one of those films could easily have ended up on my top 10 list this year, which was a stunner, not a bummer. Adventurous audiences found plenty to value in the independent sphere, whether it was outstanding documentaries like “The Mission,” “Kokomo City,” “The Eternal Memory,” “Sly” and “The Disappearance of Shere Hite,” or foreign-language films like “Other People’s Children,” “L’immensitá,” “Close,” “No Bears” and “Fallen Leaves.” (Save space on that list for the upcoming “Zone of Interest.”) And this was a banner year for first-time filmmakers, who brought exceptionally strong voices and visions to rivetingly original stories: A.V.

Sxs video cards sxsw