From big-budget comedies like Spy and Get Hard to indie films starring Jason Schwartzman and Natasha Lyonne, the Austin-based film festival has a lot to offer.
With its laid-back, party-friendly, homegrown Austin vibe, the SXSW Film Festival — part of the larger SXSW festival that runs from March 13–March 22 — charts a distinctive path from other fests throughout the year. For one, it embraces more mainstream, audience-friendly fare from major studios (like the first film on this list), and on the opposite end of the spectrum, the film fest also supports truly outré independent movie experiments (like the second film on this list). And there's plenty in between.
Spy
Director and screenwriter: Paul Feig
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Jason Statham, Rose Byrne, Miranda Hart, Bobby Cannavale, Allison Janney, Peter Serafinowicz, Morena Baccarin, and Jude Law
Writer-director Feig's distaff comic take on the classic spy thriller stars his Bridesmaids and The Heat star Melissa McCarthy. 20th Century Fox isn't releasing Spy until June 5, so this early premiere suggests some serious confidence in the film's ability to generate some major buzz, and then sustain it for more than two months.
Larry Horricks / 20th Century Fox
Uncle Kent 2
Director: Todd Rohal
Screenwriter: Kent Osborne
Starring: Kent Osborne, Kate Herman, Lyndsay Hailey, Jennifer Prediger, Steve Little, and Joe Swanberg
In the hyper-meta follow-up to Joe Swanberg's barely seen 2011 indie Uncle Kent, Kent Osborne, who played a quasi version of himself in the first film, is so desperate to make a sequel that he goes to Comic-Con (for some reason) and ultimately down a vortex of his own psyche. (Full disclosure: I went to high school with director Todd Rohal, who was a senior when I was a freshman. He produced a film critic show for our school that I appeared on once to review Philadelphia. I haven't seen him in 20 years.)
LGray Photography
Ex Machina
Director and screenwriter: Alex Garland
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, and Alicia Vikander
After writing several high-brow sci-fi-driven features (including 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, and Dredd), Alex Garland is making his directorial feature debut with this film about a recluse tech CEO (Oscar Isaac) who invites one of his employees (Domhnall Gleeson) to his enormous estate to test a shockingly lifelike artificial intelligence (Alicia Vikander).
A24
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