Courtesy of DIFF/Prolepsis Pictures
Audio By Carbonatix
Now that life is somewhat back to normal (whatever the bar for that may have been before the pandemic), we can return to in-person film festivals.
It’s something we’ve really missed. Watching film festivals online is the same as binge-watching a bunch of movies at home: There’s no showering or proper attire required and you can’t sit in a bar until the wee hours of the morning discussing how one of the films you just watched should’ve used more Wes Anderson-esque or Kubrickian symmetrical compositions to enhance its visual elements for a viewer’s perception via one of the common perception principles of Gestalt Theory. Yeah, that’s how we talk at bars.
The Dallas International Film Festival (DIFF), which starts on Friday, April 28, and runs for a whole week, is back with a full roster of over 100 films, and it’s got everything from feature-length dramas and comedies to important documentaries about artistic and social issues. We’ve combed through the schedule and picked out some of the screenings that sound worth sitting in a darkened theater with your fellow movie buffs.
One Ranger (7 p.m. Friday, April 28, at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
It’s been a while since we’ve had a good movie about a kick-ass Texas Ranger kicking the ass of everything with an ass within “ass radius.” DIFF kicks off its screening with just such a movie on opening night with this action epic from Lionsgate. Thomas Jane plays the titular Texas Ranger who’s tracking a bank robber across the deserted Texas highway. His quarry turns out to be an international terrorist making plans to detonate a dirty bomb in the heart of London. It sounds like a great gunslinging fish out of water story as Jane’s character goes across the pond where they do justice a little differently. Also, it’s got John freakin’ Malkovich in it.
New York Yankees legend Yogi Berra is the subject of the new documentary It Ain’t Over.
Courtesy of DIFF/Five By Eight/Vanishing Angle
It Ain’t Over (12:45 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
It’s bewildering that no one has done a movie about Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees’ star catcher and Major League Baseball Hall of Famer known for coining bizarre, philosophical thoughts such as “When you come to a fork in the road, take it” and “It’s like déjÁ vu all over again.” However, there’s more to the man than his unique outlook on life, as you’ll learn in this documentary. Instead of a caricature we meet a real man who volunteered to serve his country and provided cover fire for troops on Omaha Beach during D-Day, set unbeatable baseball records and embraced his true spirit without compromising his principles.
Courtesy of DIFF
Chocolate Lizards (7 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at the Texas Theatre, 232 W. Jefferson Blvd., and 3:45 p.m. Sunday, April 30, at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
Movies about small-town life in Texas are usually so serious and stuffy – like every day is a droll, boring crawl toward death with diner coffee in between acts of drudgery. So it’s exciting to get a small-town Texas movie that’s a comedy. Thomas Haden Church plays an oil driller whose business is floundering when a Los Angeles kid played by Rudy Pankow drives through town and gets stranded because of car trouble. The two of them, and a diner waitress played by Carrie-Anne Moss, decide to pool their resources and scheme a way to strike an oil boom to solve all of their problems. It had us at “Thomas Haden Church.”
The skateboarding group Silly Girl Skateboards is the subject of director Sarah Ivy’s documentary Sk8 Girlz.
Courtesy of DIFF
Sk8 Girlz (7:15 p.m. Saturday, April 29, and 9 p.m. Sunday, April 30, at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
Professional skateboarding is still relatively new compared to other franchises and pro leagues. That means it’s still got a ways to go to be inclusive and broader for its audience. This may be a really low bar, thanks to the National Football League, but it’s still true. This documentary from Do You Dream in Color? director Sarah Ivy looks at the rise and obstacles of the Silly Girl Skateboarding group in a sport that’s still dominated by male superstars with the kind of raw, punk rock attitude that all skateboarding movies should have – as long as there’s no Simple Plan tracks on the soundtrack.
Bad City (9:30 p.m. Saturday, April 30 at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
No film festival is complete without at least one new piece of Asian action cinema, and Bad City looks like it’ll fit the bill. It takes place in a crime-riddled hamlet called Kaiko City that’s overrun by rival mobs and rampant poverty. A businessman who’s looking to take out a rival gang decides to run for mayor, and the only person who can stop him is a disgraced ex-police captain who leads a special task force to take him down by any means necessary.
A mad scientist reanimates the body of a grieving mother’s child in Birth/Rebirth.
Courtesy of DIFF/Shudder
Birth/Rebirth (9:45 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
What if the good doctor in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein tried tor reanimate a corpse because he wanted a child? That’s a very loose premise of this modern take on a Frankenstein story. Directed by Laura Moss, it’s even got a little H.P. Lovecraft sprinkled in. A single mother who works as a midwife discovers that a rogue hospital morgue tech has reanimated the body of her deceased daughter and must work with him in all sorts of sordid ways to keep her daughter alive as he perfects his death-defying serum.
Medusa Deluxe (10 pm Friday, April 28 at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
Hairdressing competitions can get as fierce and hard-edged as the Super Bowl. So what happens when the competition gets so crazy that someone is willing to murder another human being to stay ahead of their rival? This murder mystery features some interesting characters who can easily let their passion and competitiveness get the better of them, and it comes out in all sorts of ways as the audience tries to find the killer.
Blackberry (7 p.m. Friday, May 5 at the Texas Theatre, 231 W. Jefferson Blvd.)
There’s been a new resurgence of true stories behind retro tech thanks to hits such as Apple+ TV’s Tetris and Pinball. The latest in this genre comes from IFC Films and tells the crazy story of the Blackberry, the smartphone that became a must-have for CEOs and people who spend way too much time with their email. Jay Baruchel plays tech innovator Mike Lazaridis, the designer of the first Blackberry, who teams up with a hard-edged corporate salesman named Jim Balsillie (played by Glenn Howerton) to bring their creation to the masses. The film follows the rise and fall of the Blackberry empire as smartphones became way smarter than anyone thought possible.
University of North Texas professor and artist Vernon Fisher with his 1987 work Bikini.
Courtesy of DIFF/Prolepsis Pictures
Breaking the Code (5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 29 and 5 p.m. Thursday, May 4, at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
The emotion in this documentary about visionary artist and University of North Texas professor Vernon Fisher will be truly palpable because, sadly, Fisher died just a few days before the documentary about his life was scheduled to premiere at DIFF. Fisher was one of the art world’s most famous and influential figures. His works, which appeared in the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Biennial, embraced silly imagery with serious subjects. The documentary explores his life from his idyllic childhood in Granbury to the cartoonish conceptualism that filled his collection.
The infamous Star Wars Holiday Special that aired on CBS starred famous names who probably regret signing on to the project such as (from left to right) Kris Kristofferson, Marie Osmond, R2-D2, Donnie Osmond and Anthony Daniels as the voice of C3P0.
Courtesy of DIFF/ABC
A Disturbance in the Force: How The Star Wars Holiday Special Happened (10 p.m. Wednesday, May 5, and 7 p.m. Thursday, May 6, at the Violet Crown, 3699 McKinney Ave.)
Few franchises have faced as much criticism from fans as the Star Wars universe, but the undisputed winner of the worst Star Wars movie, TV show or any other medium has to be The Star Wars Holiday Special that aired on CBS in 1978. This infamous television bomb came along at the height of the first Star Wars movie’s blockbuster success – which would go on to launch at least 10 more movies, TV series such as The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian and a merchandising empire that could choke an Amazon warehouse. The special is filled with celebrity cameos – Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur, Bob Hope and Jefferson Starship – as well as performances by some Star Wars stars. How big of a mess was this thing? Three words: “virtual Wookie porn.” And that’s just one of many, much bigger problems with the production. Now there’s a documentary that finally explains how in the hell this thing got green-lit. It has interviews with writer Bruce Vilanch, who worked on the special’s script, newly discovered interview footage of Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew and commentary from famous Star Wars nerds such as Robot Chicken creator Seth Green, “Weird Al” Yankovic and filmmaker Kevin Smith.
