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The directorial debut from Tony Tost is an ode to 1970s cinema, and to desperate, hopeless dreamers everywhere

A young boy who is convinced that he is the reincarnation of Sitting Bull. A war veteran who suffers from brain damage, but is ceaselessly kind, soft-spoken, and falls in love easily. A waitress who suffers from a significant speech impediment, with dreams of becoming a singer in Nashville. A Marxist Native American revolutionary. A woman looking for her escape, already running from a troubled home life, and finally seeing an opening for her to live a new life. A criminal who specializes in trafficking stolen Native American artifacts.

These are just some of the characters in Americana, the directorial debut from writer/director Tony Tost that premiered at SXSW this week. When artifact thief Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex) discovers there is a rare Lakota ghost shirt to be taken, he sets a series of events into motion that have an explosive outcome. Americana is an intentional throwback to the cinema of the 1970s, a Western crime story that is a true ensemble piece that weaves together the plotlines of these characters against the backdrop of the South Dakota wilderness.

The layering storytelling, as well as the intersections of desperate people attempting to use the ghost shirt as their own means of escape, reminds one immediately of other filmmakers like Altman or the Coen Brothers. Unlike the Coens, who could be argued to use the West as a backdrop for broad caricatures for their looser, more broad style of fiasco-fueled filmmaking, Tost creates a more nuanced, if still outsized, vision of this landscape. There are certainly villains one longs to see undone and heroes worth rooting for, but Tost’s script and direction provide a vast landscape to paint with–creating a crime yarn that is somehow both intimate and sprawling.

It helps that Tost works with a cast that is firing on all cylinders. Stand-outs include Paul Walter Hauser as Lefty, the soft-spoken cowboy, and Sydney Sweeney as waitress Penny Jo, whom Lefty befriends and plots to steal the Ghost Shirt for themselves. Hauser and Sweeney are the leads of this ensemble, if there are any, and Sweeney especially shines as the quietly desperate Penny Jo, desperate for an escape, but perhaps a hair too shy to grab for it.

Perhaps the standout is musician Halsey in her live-action acting debut as the beleaguered Mandy, attempting to escape her psychopathic criminal boyfriend. No, clearly the stand-out is Zahn McClarnon as Ghost Eye, a revolutionist Native American who is well-versed in Marx and took his name because he loves the movie Ghost Dog. You know, actually, it has to be…

The point is that seeing an ensemble all clicked into the same vibe and direction is thrilling, as is a film that uses its whole frame to depict a vast Western landscape. Shot in New Mexico, the film fills scenes with broad skies and vast plains. We get the sense that these characters are surrounded by space on all sides, a vast terrain that simply begs for them to wander. A mixture of boredom, desperation, and dreams drives their actions more than logic and clear-headedness. The result is not only explosive, but tense. There is a body count from the very beginning, one that quickly piles up as the film hurtles toward its end. The weight of individual actions and the price paid for them creates an emotional tapestry that speaks to this restlessness, this longing for meaning and place.

It is not surprising that Tost has a history in poetry, as his script is filled with a sort of cowboy poetry that draws you into its bloody tapestry. Yet as the film itself argues, Americans are far more interested in what is possible than what actually lies before them, intrigued with ideal possibilities that lie just outside of their reach. The consequence of that reach is precisely the space that Americana lives in: people who long for more and are willing to do what they need to to get there. When the dust settles, there is a heavy price, one not always paid by who we would wish. Therein lies the poetry, as Tost weaves a violent tale that is somehow both aspirational and cautionary, one that draws the viewer into vast vistas, and sinks them deep in the world of these beautifully drawn and captured characters.

An engrossing, single-location story, driven by a superb performance from Lily Sullivan

There’s always something alluring about “bottle films,” movies that center events around a single location, either through the creative use of small budgets, or taking on the logistical challenge, where one focal character serves as a conduit to an escalating situation in the outside world. Think Locke, Pontypool, 127 Hours, or most recently The Antares Paradox. Monolith, a sci-fi thriller from director Matt Vesely and writer Lucy Campbell, embraces the bottle genre with aplomb, thanks to a compelling mystery, and an enthralling performance by Lily Sullivan (the upcoming Evil Dead Rise).

We meet The Interviewer (Sullivan) in the midst of recording a public apology. It’s the aftermath of a retraction, after a story accusing someone of a crime had to be pulled due to her failure to properly vet a source. Her reputation tarnished, and her public information being doxxed, she has been forced to take refuge in her family’s isolated home on the Australian coast. Alone as her parents travel overseas, she decides to try her hand at rebuilding her reputation by starting an investigative journalism podcast called ‘Beyond Believable’. The Interviewer casts a wide net, looking for unusual events to dig into. She receives an anonymous tip via email that simply provides the words “Floramae King” and “brick”, along with a phone number. A phone call with Floramae (voiced by Ling Cooper Tang) leads to the panicked sharing of a story about an unusual black brick that mysteriously appeared and provoked strange feelings within her. It was a marker for a time of upheaval in the life of her family, as well as the family that she once worked for as a housekeeper. Taken from her, the brick was sold to a German art collector named Klaus (voiced by Terence Crawford), who shares that there is not just one brick, but a whole spate of these objects across the world. Many are in his possession, others with different owners, each having similar stories about the unusual arrival of the object, and an unsettling emotional response to them. Driven by public interest in the first few episodes of her podcast and sensing a shot at redemption, The Interviewer delves deeper. She uncovers a possible threat to mankind, and a secret in her own past revealing how she is part of the story she’s trying to tell.

The mystery in Monolith lies in these bricks. They’re haunting shapes, inky black in color, seemingly echoing feelings and fears, manifesting for some of their recipients haunting visions of the past. The rabbit hole The Interviewer goes down connects them to conspiracy theories, behavioural changes, government programs, and even a possible extraterrestrial origin. It’s a theory supported by volumetric scans of the brick interiors, showing them filled with unique symbols that may derive from an unknown language. The film (thankfully) doesn’t answer everything, but deftly sketches a longstanding mystery, an immediate threat, and paints an ominous portent for the future.

This sci-fi slant combines with the film’s real hook, the journey of The Interviewer. Sensing a story, grasping at an opportunity, it’s not long before we see she’s up to her old tricks, editing the order of words to fit the story she’s trying to tell–including coercing people into interviews and eventually bluntly threatening them. Even as interview subjects warn her to stop, she keeps plugging away. Part of the unease the film conveys is that sense our fate is in her hands, even as The Interviewer’s capabilities and judgment seem to become increasingly compromised as she plunges deeper into the conspiracy. Her acts, as well as the evidence she reveals, open up a broader reflection on journalistic integrity, information, disinformation, and a subtle but effective commentary on class and socioeconomic privilege. Lily Sullivan has nearly every frame of the film to herself. Our only other input, like hers, is via phone calls, home video, and audio recordings. Sullivan pours herself into this character, bringing conviction and unique physicality across an ever-intensifying gamut of emotions from downtrodden to determined towards the stark and surreal climax–a human element that is the crux of this tale.

Matt Vesely’s focused direction, the sharpness of Michael Tessari’s cinematography, Benjamin Speed’s ominous score, and an impeccably chosen location all align to channel Campbell’s writing into a genuinely engrossing mystery. A brooding tale of invasion and influence centered around Lily Sullivan, Monolith is a bottle film that revels in isolation and intrigue.

A quirky rom-com about a mismatched but meant-to-be couple in the far-flung future

The rom-com is one of the most enduring film genres. Formula and familiarity. Audiences expect some formula and familiarity, but for those features that become truly beloved, both a fresh take and palpable chemistry are needed. Writer/director Michael Lukk Litwak’s Molli and Max in the Future certainly tick the boxes in both regards. It’s a highly creative rom-com shot through an absurdist lens, which hurtles the genre into the far-flung future and shows that despite our societal and technological advances, our love lives are as complicated and messy as ever.

Fate brings two souls together when Molli (Zosia Mamet) collides with another spacecraft while navigating an asteroid belt looking for magic space crystals. Max (Aristotle Athari), the pilot of the other vessel, manages to eject; after being rescued, he cajoles Molli into giving him a ride home. A spiky introduction gives way to banter and the forging of bonds between the pair. Molli shares her aspirations to embrace spirituality and space magic. Max is more down to Earth, an inventor who has dreams of making it as a mech-fighter. Sparks are obvious, but they go their separate ways. We follow them over the next decade as their paths continue to cross, featuring reunions where they reconnect, catch up, and resume their sparring. Along the way, they learn about demi-God-led sex cults, liaisons with androids, fish people, parallel universes, and trash dimensions. Obstacles and opportunities feed into the ever-growing bond between this mismatched yet meant-to-be pair.

If that all sounds like a lot, you’re right: it is. Molli and Max absolutely brims with content and creativity. Litwak’s script looks to transplant many of our concerns and issues over the past few years into a far-flung future. Think celebrity culture, ecological disasters, a universal pandemic, and even a Trumpian politician looking to reign genocide down on the galaxy. By wrapping these elements around this burgeoning romance, Molli and Max highlights how much of our lives and surroundings fuel fears that hold us back from growth and the pursuit of happiness. Citing When Harry Met Sally as inspiration in the film’s Q&A, Molli and Max certainly evokes the warmth, sparkle, and slight screwball edge of Reiner’s classic. The rather relentless, off-beat brand of humor might not be for everyone, and there are some misfires (and pacing problems) in there. However, the jokes and visual gags come at such a fast rate, it doesn’t really matter.

This surreal, multicoloured galaxy is brought to life with a fusion of analog tech, neon-soaked skylines, and stop-motion animation–a charmingly clunky mashup of Brazil, Tron, Ghost in the Shell, and Blade Runner aesthetics. The imagination far exceeds the budget, but what is realized via green screen tech fits the tone and quirkiness of the film like a glove.

Even with the slathering of sci-fi, the focus is still on this couple. The chemistry between Mamet and Atharia is palpable, and each does sterling, expressive work to flesh out both their roles as individuals and as a couple. Crucially, they make you root for the success of this pair. Michael Lukk Litwak’s film is clearly a labor of love, with everyone involved reveling in this creative sandbox. An absurdist, offbeat, sci-fi take on current-day cultural issues, along with an ever-so-familiar tale of love, Molli and Max is a rom-com that embraces the alien, but remains ever so human.

A Filipino-British thriller rooted in themes of class, colonialism, immigration, and exploitation.

As SXSW 2023 unfolds, the U.K. is gripped in something of a crisis, as new government efforts to stem immigration are labelled as “heartless.” It’s one thing to deny help to migrants, but another level of cruelty to exploit it. Many stateside who cry for strong action to deal with immigration also bury their heads in the sand about how America was built on the back of immigrant labor and continues to be shouldered by it. Whether it be colonialism or capitalism, the rich and affluent have long exploited hardworking people.

Raging Grace, a debut feature from British-Filipino writer/director Paris Zarcilla, leverages current social commentary on this issue into genre fare. Joy (Max Eigenmann) is an undocumented Filipina immigrant and single mother to her young daughter, Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla). Joy works as a housemaid, cleaning fancy homes across London, and living a nomadic lifestyle, moving from one house to another with Grace in alignment with the respective owner’s travel plans. When they have nowhere to stay, they retreat to a storage room in a disused block of flats, a place that also serves as a depository for their few possessions. What Joy earns goes toward a fund to buy a blackmarket visa—her only hope of staying in the U.K. with her British-born daughter.

One day, Joy is offered a lifeline: a live-in position at a country home as housekeeper to the elderly Mr. Garrett (David Hayman), a man being consumed by cancer, who spends his days bed-bound and sedated. His estate and affairs are being managed by his niece Katherine (Leanne Best), whose microaggressions suggest a difficult working environment, but not one Joy hasn’t endured before. Smuggling Grace into the house, Joy gets to work, while her daughter’s exploration and exuberance sets in motion a series of events that uncover a truth behind their hosts and their entwined legacies.

Zarcilla’s debut is an intensely polished and potent affair. Production design takes full advantage of the handsome and haunting surroundings of the stately manor, impeccably brought to life by cinematographer Joel Honeywell. The place feels like a mausoleum, a shrine to past glories and trauma for the new inhabitants as well as the old. Jon Clarke’s brooding score weaves in instruments and and musicians from Filipino culture to superb effect.

The film leverages some familiar genre tropes along with a haunted house backdrop but, aside from a smattering of nightmarish sequences that speak to Joy’s traumatic past, Zarcilla smartly avoids the full embrace of horror. A layered script and measured pace immerse the viewer and drip information. Periodically, title cards appear referencing Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden,” which tells of the West’s duty to “civilise” the Filipino people, a mantra delivering native peoples not the “love” and freedom they are sold, but actually indentured servitude. The legacy of this system is further emboldened and embellished by class structure in the U.K., where the rich create and abuse systems to bring people to heel and keep them firmly underfoot.

Raging Grace brings us full circle, where echos of the past and an upper-class British family threaten to consume another generation of immigrants. Much of the Machiavellian malevolence and racial undertones comes from these aristocrats. Best’s mastery of microaggressions convey her dismissive contempt for Joy, who she feels sufficient dominion over to charge her with the care of an incapacitated family member. An excessive pour of milk into hot tea conveys a world of information about Katherine and how she views Joy. Hayman’s initial portrayal as a genial grandpa is just one aspect of his chameleonic and chilling performance.

Eigenmann brings a depth and tangible sense of dignity to her role, an exhaustion and weariness met with a sense of grit and determination. Her quietly fierce performance is met by the force of nature that is Boadilla as Grace. A vivacious and endearing debut, she represents a chaotic force bouncing around this stately home, a key to opening up its secrets. She’s also an important counter to her mother’s acceptance of the status quo, working within the system that traps her she. Grace is a disruptor, and her rebellious streak offers a chance to break the cycle and salvation for both of them. The pairing is natural, showcasing a sense of warmth and a union between the pair that goes a long way to immersing us in their plight and deeply evoking empathy for them. A human connection to the wider social commentary elevates the impact of Raging Grace as a damnation of the causes of diaspora and a celebration of the resilience of immigrants and their culture.

Writer, director, and star Julio Torres sets himself as a comedic voice worth paying attention to.

Socially conscious comedy comes in a lot of different stripes. There is a delicate balance—the comedy can fall flat if the film is simply a means to deliver a message, but the social commentary can feel limp and toothless if you put too much weight on the comedy. Luckily, we have an exciting new voice in the genre, as Julio Torres has perfectly translated his dry, absurdist sensibility to a new medium. His directorial debt Problemista, which debuted at SXSW this year, mixes his wry observational humor that casts its gaze on systemic injustices with both fury and wit.

The central premise of Problemista doesn’t suggest a hilarious comedy: Torres plays Alejandro, an El Salvadoran immigrant who lives in New York and dreams of creating toys for Hasbro. But as anyone familiar with Torres’s “Wells for Boys” sketch on Saturday Night Live might suspect, Ale’s ideas for new toys are a bit esoteric. To keep his work visa active, Ale works at a cryogenic lab as a monitor, maintaining the space for a frozen artist named Bobby (RZA) known for his oil paintings of eggs. But when Ale accidentally unplugs the back-up generator for Bobby’s cryo-pod, he is soon desperately searching for a new sponsor to keep him in the country.

Luckily he meets Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), Bobby’s wife, an art critic with a notorious reputation in the New York art scene. Alejandro attempts to get himself in Elizabeth’s good graces, hoping to work as an assistant with her to help mount a show of Bobby’s art to raise money to maintain his spot at the cryogenics lab. But Elizabeth is unpredictable, cruel, and manic, constantly berating people only to remind them not to yell at her when they calmly try to explain that they are trying their best. She seems impossible to please, especially when her every demand is inscrutable, impossible, or both.

All of this could be fairly dry and flat, but luckily Torres’s energy elevates what sounds on paper like a very flat premise into something wild and unfettered. Alejandro’s struggles with the impossible circumstances of immigration expectations in the United States are cast in visually innovative ways, including getting stuck in a seemingly endless staircase of cubicles that carry him through labyrinthian paths. He imagines his difficult conversation with Elizabeth as if he were trying to slay an exhaustingly chatty dragon. He envisions Craigslist as a hedonistic god, towering over him with increasingly unsettling demands. Alejandro is something of a cipher for Torres, soft-spoken but endlessly inventive, re-imagining the strange, frustrating world around him in increasingly ludicrous and hilarious ways.

But as skilled as Torres is as a performer, his skills as a director are really what inspires. His playfulness with visually inventive scene dressing adds a kinetic sense of mayhem to scenes that nominally show maddeningly dull drudgery, down to having a conversation with the bank about overdraft fees. Perhaps more exciting is Torres’s work with actors, as his scene work with Swinton brings out a side of the legendary actor rarely seen before. As Elizabeth, Swinton locks into a manic energy that allows her to cut loose; when she berates a waiter for simply doing what she asked him to, it is both infuriating and captivating, as she exists at only one speed. When she does have quieter moments later in the film, it reveals a depth to Elizabeth previously believed impossible. She would easily be perceived as the villain of the movie, a less self-aware version of Miranda Priestley, but Swinton uses Torres’s script to depict a more complicated character, someone who is desperate for some sense of power in the world and demands it through pure force of will. She is terrifying and horrifying, but time and again, Ale finds himself admiring her despite how cruelly she treats him.

The closest thing that Problemista reminds me of is Boots Riley’s wildly imaginative Sorry to Bother You. But while Riley’s sense of humor and social commentary leans more on righteous anger and fury, Problemista takes a slightly lighter touch. Its observations of society’s uneven structures is no less angry, but Problemista also takes time to bask in the absurdity, to acknowledge that while things can drive us crazy, there is a spark of humor to be found and some fun to be had. It is an ethos that suggests that sometimes when something that makes you want to scream, the best you can do is laugh in its face.

Writer and director Sophie Jarvis helms a beguiling debut feature.

Until Branches Bend is a restrained, largely internalized drama that unfolds in Montague, a town lying in a verdant region of British Columbia. This place and its people are inextricably linked to the local peach crop, a lifeblood to the town. The community toils away with a sense of wariness, as an infection of the invasive burrow-moth several years earlier nearly resulted in the collapse of their ecosystem and economy.

Robin (Grace Glowicki) works as a grader at the local processing plant. During one shift, she finds a peach with signs of a worm hole. Breaking it open, she finds a beetle within, and immediately brings it to her boss, Dennis (Lochlyn Munro). Dennis dismisses it: The harvesting and processing will continue. But the discovery nags at Robin’s conscience, who continues to investigate in the face of pushback from her community, outright denial by her employers, and possible forced closure of the plant.

Further clouding Robin’s thoughts is the discovery that she is 10 weeks pregnant, the result of a short-lived affair with her married boss. Robin must try to do the right thing in the face of small-town politics and prejudice, a capitalist pushback against her, and a looming ecological disaster.

Until Branches Bend is expansive in its exploration of themes such as societal pressure, community conflicts, environmental concerns, conservative principles, and corporate interests. But these are peripheral to the focus on Robin’s plight. Obvious parallels come between her two plotlines, each encircling life and its potential impact growing just beneath the surface. The emotional conflict of dealing with her pregnancy might be what drives some of the more obsessive qualities of Robin’s investigation, as she looks to make a difference in a situation that feels more under her control than that of the peaches. The film is a pretty damning commentary on reproductive choice in Canada, illustrated by the time and distance Robin is forced to endure for abortion access, as well as the state-mandated diatribe on the potentially harmful effects of having an abortion.

Immersion in Robin’s headspace through Glowicki’s performance, pensive scenes, dynamic cuts, and emotive framing all tilt the drama into a psychological thriller. Cinematography by Jeremy Cox gives the film an rustic, lived-in quality. Shot in 16mm, the grain-infused edge is well leveraged into crafting a frontier feeling, fueling Robin’s isolation and hinting at the threat just on the horizon. Kieran Jarvis’s score veers from effective to intrusive, with an an overly liberal use of flutes piercing through the crafted tone. Other missteps are largely limited to the suspension of belief required to accept the isolation of Robin as the only one clued into the emerging infestation in the town, as well as a thin sketching of some of the antagonistic characters.

Glowicki’s performance is quietly compelling, portraying a timid, idealistic woman who seems set on clinging to hope in the face of rejection, castigation, misrepresentation, and outright gaslighting. Alexandra Roberts plays her younger sister Laney as a wonderful counterpoint, a rebellious soul more concerned with escaping the town than preserving it. The pair endure a coming-of-age experience that strengthens their bonds of sisterhood and forms a strong emotional core for the entire story.

Until Branches Bend is a beguiling debut feature from writer/director Sophie Jarvis, one with a distinct aesthetic and scope, deftly centered around the psyche of one woman who has the past, present, and future swirling around her mind.