SXSW 2024 Festival Diary Day 4: Trauma Dumpin', Joint Rollin', and Ryan Goslin'

Day 4 - exhaustion is becoming perpetual and delirium is setting in, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Halfway through the festival and I am reminded that this is what I live for. Yes, I am beginning to see unicorns but at least they are good company. Movies are my life and I would not trade in what I do for anything else. But enough about unicorns, I started the day with a movie titled Bob Trevino Likes It. Admittedly I went into the film ice cold, the only aspect that attracted me to the film was the fact that John Leguizamo was in it. Leguizamo is a bit of an icon to me, he had a big impact on my childhood with movies like The Pest and Spawn. This film was absolutely nothing like those, it is about familial trauma and recovering your own mental agency and I was not ready for it. There is something special about beginning your day with a good cry at 11:30 am on a Tuesday. At first I was thrown off by the performances of the characters as they felt overly comedic which clashed with the sentimental vibe of the production. However, as I sat with the characters and experienced this story unfold about unlikely friendships I was sucked in by the comedic nature of the characters which knocked my walls down. From there, when the trauma was addressed and explored I was a lump of clay to be molded by the gentle hands of director Tracie Laymon. It takes a whole lot of emotion for me to shed a tear and they managed to get several out of me. Bob Trevino Likes It is a beautiful film that genuinely earns its moments of sentimentality and drama and deserves to be recognized for the poignant film that it is.

My second film is another 180 degree swing from the first as I attended the documentary Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie. One truth about life is that at some point in adolescence there is a moment when you become aware of Cheech & Chong and for many young souls that moment is now when Cheech & Chong drove through the streets of downtown Austin in a car carrying a ten foot joint. The documentary encompassed both of their childhoods through their golden years and concluded after their rocky times and eventual reconciliation. The film did not shy away from the tougher subjects such as Tommy Chong’s infidelity or Cheech Marin’s solo outing and included incredible insight and details from the legends themselves. In terms of production, the film is one of the more cinematic documentaries at the festival due in large to a great framing device that ties in every major figure in their lives and gets slightly meta in the end. The Q&A following the film was just as entertaining with the duo proving that they are just as sharp and funny as they have been for their entire careers, albeit at a slower pace. Not only is this a great film for fans, it is great for anyone who loves a good career retrospective. Now comes time for the dual headliners for the night.

The first headliner is the stunt-tacular love story The Fall Guy directed by former stuntman David Leitch and starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The full review will be on FilmSpeak in the future but briefly, the film is a love letter to stunt performers by stunt performers. There are cannon rolls, fight sequences, guys on fire, canyon jumps, and explosions. Oh so many explosions. I cannot stress how many explosions there are in the film. Big ones, small ones, dusty ones, fiery ones… I digress. The cast is charming and funny and remind you in every scene why each and every single one of them is ruling Hollywood at the moment. The film doesn’t break any new ground, nor will it win any major rewards but that was not the film’s purpose. The film aimed to do two things: 1. To place the spotlight on the men and women who put their bodies through literal and metaphorical hellfire to entertain us and 2. To entertain the hell out of you. It succeeds on both fronts and is the most popcorn worthy film of the festival.

The second headliner and final film of the day was the Sydney Sweeney horror film Immaculate. Directed by Michael Mohan, the religious horror film is good, not great. The full review will be featured on FilmSpeak. Nothing about the production of the film was bad, to be clear. The cinematography was beautiful, sound design was at its crunchiest, and overall direction was a great showcase for Mohan. There are two aspects of the film that act as a weight around it’s neck that keep it from being a better film. First was the story. During the Q&A the writer mentioned that film was easy to write because it became what it wanted to be and almost wrote itself. That is because there isn’t anything really new in the plot. A quick Google and word association of the word immaculate clues you into the main aspect of the plot. From there it assembles various tropes and plot points from other similar films to fill out the story. Every moment in the film has a feel of familiarity to it that puts a damper of the enjoyment of those moments. The other aspect is how Sweeney’s character is pieced together in the film. I will go on record and say that Sydney Sweeney has proven to be a good actress. Despite one major career misstep, she is proving herself to have range and major box-office draw. The problem here is not her acting but the direction of her acting. She doesn’t necessarily display an emotional range. Instead she displays two major emotional states: stoic confusion and explosive distress. Sweeney displays both states well, very well actually. But the lack of an in-between leaves the character feeling like a basic switch, quiet or loud. The film will be a hit. The average success of horror films and Sweeney’s rising stardom will drive audiences to the theaters and the relatively low budget of the film almost guarantees large returns. Honestly, the film deserves to be seen but only time will tell if it lives on in the annals of iconic horror.