SFIFF capsule reviews
COWBOY DRIFTER
Drama, not rated, 104 minutes, 2 chiles
“A man needs to have a vision,” a grizzled, whiskeydrunk singer says early on in Cowboy Drifter. “Without it,” he goes on, “ain’t much separatin’ him from the squirrels.”
Cowboy Drifter begins with a mournful honkytonk guitar performance (sample lyric: “Every night, every day, Lord, I’m alone”) that concludes with the performer leaping offstage to assault a man who dared to speak to his girl. What follows never strays far from that note: It’s a forlorn country song with gratuitous melancholy and misplaced rough-and-tumble machismo in roughly equal measure. In other words, it’s a country song. Whether you like it will depend almost entirely on your appetite for that genre.
The New Mexico-filmed drama, written by Chuck Carrington and directed by Michael Lange, suggests the logical endpoint of the antihero phenomenon, centered around Caskie Jones, a man so unlikable that when he emotes anything other than contempt for the first time, almost an hour into the film, it doesn’t feel like a revelation so much as a mistaken character note. The moment is when a young singer, played by the TV show Aubrey Peeples, asks Caskie to get rid of his vile dip cup — and our man’s momentary hesitation as he looks upon his trusty tobacco repository is, indeed, the first time he’s not hurling indiscriminate curses and loathing in all directions. He is human! A spit of fresh air.
Caskie is played by a shifty-eyed Carrington, sporting a Game of Thrones-worthy beard. He’s a sweaty, homophobic deadbeat whose drunk old dad, apparently, is to blame for Caskie himself becoming an alcoholic and philanderer and horrible father. He sets off in search of redemption. Will he get there? Do you want him to? Is a great soundtrack (and familiar New Mexico scenery) enough to tide you over as his frozen heart slowly thaws? If Caskie’s vision is to be a better man, it’s not clear where he got the idea. Between him and the squirrels, there ain’t much.
— Tripp Stelnicki
The Screen, 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21 FITS AND STARTS
Drama, not rated, 80 minutes, 3 chiles Jennifer (Greta Lee) has just published her second novel and is being warmly embraced by the New York literary community, with her husband, David (Wyatt Cenac), by her side. He is also a writer but has yet to complete the manuscript for his first novel. He doesn’t resent his wife’s success so much as her reaction to it — she has developed a phenomenally short temper regarding minor inconveniences and a growing resistance to reading David’s latest drafts, insisting she cannot leave the world of her own book to spend time in his. When the two are invited to a literary salon at her publisher’s house, their tensions and resentments begin to bubble to the surface. And then Jennifer goes missing in a fit of pique, leaving David to attend the salon alone.
Fits and Starts subtly explores class and racial dynamics within the absurdity of the literary and fine-art spheres while keeping the marriage plot firmly at the forefront. In this universe, David doesn’t run the risk of being shot by police officers as much as being dismissed by them when he seeks their help. Highlights of this pitch-perfect skewering of the less-than-brilliant literati and their hangers-on include a musical performance so self-consciously arty it might be an elaborate joke, a cringe-worthy reading of an unpublished novel by a white writer attempting to take on the mantle of racial oppression, and a horrifying conversation with a close-talking cosmetic dentist. Cenac plays David as a deadpan fishout-of-water, forced to interact with a mansion full of pretentious guests, including an unhinged literary agent who will stop at nothing to get him to play her games. The overall story is rather light but nonetheless satisfying in its conclusion. — Jennifer Levin
Violet Crown, 6:50 p.m., Friday, Oct. 20; 9 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 21 FREAK SHOW
Comedy/drama, not rated, 95 minutes, 3 chiles
TRAGEDY GIRLS
Comedy/horror, rated R, 98 minutes, 3.5 chiles It’s unfortunate these two movies are playing at the same time opposite each other. They are the best teen comedies in this year’s Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, but since each one is on tap for only one screening apiece, you’re going to have to make a choice beforehand to only see one of them. Fortunately, both have distributors and should quickly be in commercial release, so even if you select the wrong one, you can catch the other one soon enough. Which to choose?
My preference is Tragedy Girls, which is simultaneously darker, and more biting and violent. But if you’re looking for something a little lighter, funnier, and more frivolous, Freak Show is probably your best bet. It also boasts the better-known cast, including Bette Midler as the hard-drinking mother of the film’s outré star, Billy Bloom (Alex Lawther), an outspoken, cross-dressing gay teenager who chafes after being forced to move in with his father in a conservative red state. Billy upsets the more uptight students, especially when he mounts an outrageous campaign for homecoming queen while romancing the hero of the football team. Director Trudie Styler’s debut picture follows a predictable path — especially for those who’ve kept up with John Hughes’ comedies — but
it has a powerful and appealing draw in Lawther’s astonishingly smart and fun performance as the selfproclaimed “trans-visionary gender obliviator.”
Tragedy Girls owes less to Hughes and more to Heathers and Halloween. The mad slasher genre gets a quirky retooling in this tale of two horror-obsessed teen girls, played with cheeky gusto by Brianna Hildebrand and Alexandra Shipp, who are just dying for more attention in a rural Midwestern town. The sassy pair embark on a murder spree, inspired by a psychotic serial killer (Kevin Durand) who they keep locked up in a garage. Hard as it is to believe, you’ll find yourself rooting them on, and cheering each new gruesome, blood-splattering display. It’s all played out over social media in a grim commentary on its place in modern times. This might be the most whip-smart social-media satire yet, addressing the eternal teenage quest for fame in an age dominated by instantaneous postings. Screenwriter and director Tyler MacIntyre pays his wicked respects to everything from Clueless and Carrie to Friday the 13th. I hope it doesn’t take too long for the sequel to arrive. — Jon Bowman
“Freak Show”: Jean Cocteau Cinema, 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20 “Tragedy Girls”: Violet Crown, 8:45 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20 I DREAM IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE
Drama, not rated, 103 minutes, in Spanish with subtitles,
4 chiles
Teens frolic on the beach in a scene with a vintage air. We are in the past, captivated by the sheer joy radiating from the two boys and the girl, who are so full of life and passion it is impossible to tell who is in love with whom. In the present day, the girl, María, is dead, and the boys, Isauro ( José Manuel Poncelis) and Evaristo (Eligio Meléndez), are sworn enemies who haven’t spoken in 50 years. A linguist, Martin (Fernando Álvarez Rebeil), arrives in the village to record conversations of the local indigenous language, Zikril, which is dying out — and its last two speakers are Isauro and Evaristo. It is up to Martín and Isauro’s granddaughter, Lluvia (Fátima Molina), to bring the men together despite their longstanding feud.
Performances, scenery, tone, and story come together as a total package in I Dream in Another
Language. The movie rests in a comfortable valley between predictable and utterly surprising, incorporating comedy, melodrama, and magical realism in an offbeat story that hinges on real-world issues surrounding the preservation of disappearing languages. Secrets both personal and spiritual that should not fall into the wrong hands are shared in Zikril. For Isauro and Evaristo, Zikril is a both a refuge and a prison; for Lluvia and Martin, it serves as an ideological and ethical battleground around privacy, family loyalty, and the lure of urbanization and Americanization. They embark on their own romance; and the movie explores the passage of time, changing attitudes around personal freedom, and what it would mean to set down burdens imposed by the past.
Center for Contemporary Arts, 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21 ON A KNIFE EDGE
Documentary, not rated, 90 minutes, 3 chiles George Dull Knife can trace his family history back hundreds of years. For generations, the Dull Knifes have offered support and strength to other Lakota people — and in modern history, that has meant being active as members of the American Indian Movement (AIM). George’s father, Guy, is a painter, Vietnam veteran, and warrior who saw action during AIM’s 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, site of the 1890 massacre. The occupation began as a protest of living conditions on the Pine Ridge reservation. George grew up at Pine Ridge, in a tiny town called Kyle, where he says there is nothing for young people except drugs, alcohol, violence, and gangs. Though there is an overwhelming high-school dropout rate in his community, George is dedicated to his studies and to political activism. He believes he was raised to do right by his father, but he sees the struggles of family and friends, and wrestles with how difficult it can be to stay afloat, mentally and financially, and remain at Pine Ridge.
The filmmakers follow George for several years, and much of the movie’s action focuses on an AIM effort to end alcohol sales in the communities surrounding the reservation. The documentary is anchored by Guy’s paintings, animated and narrated to convey the Dull Knife and Lakota legacy, and by George’s intelligence, resilience, and anger.
Jean Cocteau Cinema, 12 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, and Sunday, Oct. 22. PINSKY
Drama, not rated, 73 minutes, 2.5 chiles After her grandfather dies and her girlfriend takes off, Sophia Pinsky (Rebecca Karpovsky, who also co-wrote the film) moves back into the family home. The Pinskys are an unhappy lot, Russian Jews who emigrated to Boston in the early 1980s and never thrived in the new world. Sophia’s father is clinically depressed, her lovelorn older brother drinks too much, and her judgmental grandmother does not approve of her sexuality. Sophia enters the world of amateur stand-up comedy on a whim, and finds a community of overt oddballs that she admires. Though there is a warmth suffusing this movie, it is difficult to tell if we are supposed to root for anyone in it, including Sophia, because they are, as a group, actively unpleasant.
Pinsky sometimes strikes a slightly surreal tone, with the characters operating more as amusing specimens under glass than real people to relate to. But this approach is inconsistent, and other times we are expected to empathize with them — a difficult task, given how cursorily they are drawn. The movie is often laugh-out-loud funny, but the storytelling in
Pinsky is unfocused, with too much of its short running time wasted on inessential voice-overs and stabs at graphic novel-style narrative and bits of animation that would have been better spent on plot and character development. Promising supporting characters might have been lifted out of stereotype or functioned as more than projections for Sophia’s self-pity.
Jean Cocteau Cinema, 5 p.m., Friday, Oct. 20; 2 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 21