SXSW 2023 Film Review: Festival Dispatch

CAPSULE REVIEWS FROM THIS YEAR’S SXSW FILM FESTIVAL

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW Film Festival. As usual, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but there are plenty of notable films in this year’s slate that I still wanted to cover. Here are the capsule reviews for 2023’s SXSW: Tetris, Furies, If You Were the Last, and Late Night With the Devil. Minor Spoilers Ahead…

Tetris

There’s something in the water at SXSW this year. With Flamin’ Hot, Air, Blackberry, and now Jon S. Baird’s Tetris, business-minded “biopics” seem to be all the rage at this year’s festival. With corporate espionage, Cold War tensions, and car chases built into the fabric of its real life story, iconic video game Tetris seems like the perfect target to translate to screen. Unfortunately, Tetris spends much of its runtime ping-ponging an ultimately dull - and repetitive - question: “Who will get the rights to Tetris?” Taron Egerton acquits himself nicely as designer-cum-rights-wrangler Henk Rodgers, but the Soviet caricature of a backdrop taints the whole deal as a tepid, good-over-evil triumph when the story of Tetris, the actual game, and its creator, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov), are sitting right there. C

Furies

Action star Veronica Ngo (Da 5 Bloods, The Old Guard) aims to solidify her filmmaking chops by stepping into the director’s chair for the blood-fueled Furies, a prequel to 2019’s revenge epic Furie. Ngo pulls double duty as the mysterious matriarch to a trio of victimized women (Dong Anh Quynh, Toc Tien, Rima Thanh Vy), heavily-trained to seek retribution against a local Saigon crime lord. Slipping from the typical trappings of your neon-soaked crime saga to deliver some of the crispest, nastiest melees in modern action, Furies finds the perfect balance between save-the-women exploitation and girls-with-guns shoot ‘em ups. Who else is willing to mash up Fallen Angels with The Villainess? Veronica Ngo is the real deal. B+

If You Were the Last

Adrift in their derelict spacecraft, two marooned astronauts (Anthony Mackie, Zoe Chao) debate if they're better off spending the rest of their days as friends or something more. Mired in a kitschy production and a too-cute by half rom-com premise, Kristian Mercado Figueroa’s If You Were the Last is sure to set off warning bells within its first few minutes. Yes, it’s quite twee, and yes, it hits every checkbox for a sci-fi romance, but it’s loaded with charm and just the right amount of introspection: Mackie and Chao do some astounding heavy-lifting with their off-the-charts chemistry, breathing charismatic - and oftentimes very funny - life into Angela Bourassa’s sharply scripted screenplay. There’s a modest, human warmth to If You Were the Last, even as it stumbles through a third act that betrays its interstellar thorniness. B-

Late Night With the Devil

The SXSW Midnight slate always has its buzzier titles - Evil Dead Rise and Talk To Me, I’m looking at you - but there’s always a dark horse crowd pleaser lurking in the shadows. This year it’s Cameron and Colin Cairnes’ Late Night With the Devil, a bloody facsimile of a talk show broadcast with a wannabe host (an excellent David Dastmalchian) that unwittingly unleashes an unspeakable evil during his Halloween special. With its Ghostwatch aesthetics and crackerjack 70s verisimilitude, Late Night With the Devil will hit the exact right buttons for certain horror fans from minute one. Tremendous, funny performances with a delicious found footage payoff. B+