Like most folks who attended the last screening of Natural Selection, I was catching the film mostly due to its winning both the audience and jury awards at SXSW. I hadn’t heard of it either, but then there were a ton of films on the venue, and I stuck to the ones I probably wouldn’t get screening invites to later (read “documentaries”).

So the hype for Natural Selection was ample, foremost among its champions was/is my Chicago colleague, the great Roger Ebert. And I can see why: It’s a tender, sweet story, the performances are terrific, and it’s all-around original, funny, and (forgive the use of this word) fresh.

Rachel Harris (whose eclectic credits range from The Hangover to Stuart Little 2 to SeaQuest DSV) plays the infertile, sexually frustrated, and very Christian housewife Linda White. Since she can’t produce a child and since she and her husband Abe Abe (John Diel) are such dedicated Christians, the two haven’t had sex in about a quarter of a century.

Abe finds a loophole in the only-sex-for-procreation by making weekly donations to the local sperm bank, something Linda is unaware of (as it would only compound her frustration at not being able to likewise relieve herself) until Abe suffers a stroke during one session and subsequently reveals to her that years ago one of his donations grew into a 23-year-old son Raymond (Matt O’Leary). He tasks Linda with tracking down Raymond so he can see the lad before he dies, and, like the dutiful wife she is, Linda accepts.

However, Raymond is the polar opposite of Linda—blasphemous, crooked, and, as the opening scene discloses, a fugitive. At first he resists her request, but after spying the opportunity to run some sort of grift on this gullible, overly patient woman, he accepts.

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(Even though it’s been over for a while, there’s still some reviews to squeeze out of SXSW!)

The opening scene of Fambul Tok is as powerful as any documentary could hope for: A few dozen Sierra Leone villagers circle a campfire—the social center of their tiny community—one of them stands and accuses another, her own uncle, of slaughtering her family during the 1991 civil war. The gathering becomes a tribunal as the leader reiterates the charges and then asks the accused if they are accurate. And then, instead of handing down a sentence, the leader asks the man’s accuser if she forgives him. She does.

It’s everything an opening scene should be: engaging, tense, and a capsulation of the film.

Fambul Tok, which is Sierra Leonean for “family talk,” refers to this process, where, instead of charging one with a crime and judging him with a jury of his peers, justice is replaced with forgiveness in the hope of fostering peace. This method, its application and merits, are the focus of the film as explored by director Sara Terry and her guide John Caulker, himself a victim of the Sierra Leonean atrocities.

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It may be about a month over, but that hasn’t stopped the marketing machine for James Gunn’s Super from bringing us some great internet material to enjoy while still pimping out the film.

In this case, said marketing is in the form of both Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page (the film’s heroes) fighting crime in Austin, TX for this year’s South by Southwest film festival.

The film stars Wilson, Page, Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, Liv Tyler, and Nathan Fillion in a very dark, very hilarious look at a regular nobody who decides to take justice into his own clenched fist.

Take a look at the clip of Wilson taking to the streets of Austin after the jump, and catch Super in theaters everywhere and on demand via Comcast, Cox, Cablevision, Time Warner, and Bright House.

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Kumaré is a good documentary. It (somewhat) does what it sets out to do, does it well, takes some daring chances, scores some laughs, and is a nice-enough movie-going experience. It’s premise is ingenious: Vikram Gandhi, a 30-ish lad of Indian descent, poses as the “enlightened guru” Kumaré and amasses a following among some of the spiritually attuned (and gullible) residents of Arizona.

Dispensing platitudinal and often comically obtuse wisdom, he nevertheless ingratiates himself to his followers, who soon (and not surprisingly) take him to be their confidant, asking questions far less abstract and, personally, much deeper than the lofty spiritual conundrums he poses.

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Insidious was one film that was high on my list of priority to view at SXSW. Essentially a haunted house genre movie, the film is from writer Leigh Whannell and director James Wan, who previously worked together on Saw. No worries, this film is more carnival fun-house ride than house of horrors. I mean that in a good way.

Wan keeps the gore to a minimum, and the film is more campy than truly frightening. It’s still a darn fun ride, in the vein of Drag Me to Hell. The jump scares are plentiful, and had the audience squealing and screaming, but you won’t lie in bed at night pulling the covers up under your chin. It’s quickly forgotten as a fun diversion.

Young couple Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) have just moved into a big, creepy house with their three children. Josh is pretty oblivious to just how stressed out Renai is,  what with caring for three small children and settling into this huge house. You could even say she is (understandably) emotionally unstable.

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On the surface, The Beaver is the story of Walter Black’s struggle with depression and the unorthodox means with which he copes, and, finally, his desperate attempt to return to a normal life. On a deeper level, it presents a much darker problem: What if one morning you woke up to find you had lost all interest in your family?

No reason, no explanation, just disinterest and dissatisfaction with the very things you thought were supposed to make you happy. This is Walter Black, played by Mel Gibson in perhaps the best performance of his career. Walter is CEO of a successful toy company, is married to a beautiful, smart woman successful in her own right (and played by director Jodie Foster), and has two children.

However, Walter’s life is far from perfect: His son Porter (Anton Yelchin) hates him and keeps an ongoing list of post-it notes detailing each quirk of his father that he himself exhibits and needs to rectify. Hhis youngest son Henry feels so ignored that he retreats into anonymity, so much so that when his own mother picks him up from school, she needs to make several passes to find him. His wife Meredith herself struggles to keep her family together before throwing up her hands and throwing Walter out.

But serious as these family problems are (and they aren’t particularly serious—what teenage boy doesn’t resent his father? What child doesn’t feel neglected? What mother doesn’t feel she’s the family adhesive?) they’re not the cause of Walter’s depression, or at least he seems so oblivious to them that it seems unlikely.

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I caught (that verb seems appropriate) director Xavier Gens’ new film The Divide as a midnight screener at the Ritz theatre. By far the best thing I can say about the experience is that the volunteers running the show just let us in instead of making us wait in line and thus subjecting us to the depraved drunken antics of 6th Street on St. Patrick’s Day.

Of the two dozen films I saw at SXSW, this is easily the worst (beating out even the agonizing ponderousness of Silver Bullets—that at least had some laughs and exhibitionistic women). It starts out impressively enough, with a cold open that throws you straight into the onset of a nuclear apocalypse, with big, loud explosions, screaming viscera, panicking droves, and the like before slapping you in the face with the title screen.

But after that it settles in to devolving into a bargain-basement “people stuck in a shelter” psychological thriller, which is to say populated by the usual clichés—the crazy veteran (Michael Biehn), the flighty mother (Roseanna Arquette), the coward (Ivan Gonzalez), the budding psycho (Milo Ventimiglia)—and a host of others whose sole purpose is to scream and make stupid decisions—and yes, there’s a screamy child, too.

And oh, what stupid decisions they make: failing to attack the psycho when they have the chance; attacking the wrong guy when they do work up the “nerve”; neutralizing the only person who displays any sort of competence; killing the black guy first, and all other head-slapping tropes you can imagine. My father once criticized The Dark Knight because he reasoned that someone just should’ve shot the Joker.

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Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan give wonderful performances in this charming film about family and the unexpected detours that life throws our way sometimes. Director Thomas McCarthy has previously brought us the wonderfully quirky The Station Agent (2003) and the touching film The Visitor (2007). If there is one thing that he excels at, it is showing us that some of the most profound relationships blossom from the most surprising circumstances.

Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, an attorney who is barely scraping by. Rather than choose a lucrative position, he works in a dingy no-frills office protecting the elderly and indigent. His furnace is threatening to explode, and his office-mate Stephen (Jeffrey Tambor) doesn’t have any money, either.  They both volunteer time to the local high school wrestling team as coaches. To say the team is terrible is an understatement.

Mike suffers a massive panic attack (certainly the most hilarious I’ve seen on screen) and decides something must be done. His wife has no idea how dire things are, and out of desperation, he makes a really poor decision. Mike tells the state that he will become the legal guardian of his client Leo (Burt Young) so that he can carry out the man’s wishes to remain in his own home.

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Kill List suffers from a case of schizophrenia. It tries to be a jack of all trades, but masters none of those said trades during the course of the film. Though I personally found the film gratifying, I was sorely disappointed in the disjointed quality of the final product.

The film starts out a fairly interesting character study of a semi-retired hit-man (Neil Maskell)  and his oddly complacent wife (Myanna Buring). Turns out she is quite capable, having been a member of the Swedish army. She understands the demands of his unconventional job, and encourages him to return to the lifestyle in order to keep their family afloat.

I liked the aspect of her not only knowing about, but encouraging, his amoral lifestyle. An old acquaintance shows up for dinner with his mysterious girlfriend, and just like that, he is thrust back into the hitman lifestyle.

After a heated domestic argument ruins the evening, he takes an assignment to off a few pesky people, hence the title, “Kill List”. Even though he’s been out of the biz for a while, it takes precious little time to jump back in the saddle, offing his victims so sadistically that his partner finds it disturbing.

There are hints of a pedophilia/snuff/pornography ring. When Jay watches a video featuring one of the people on the list, his reaction to what he sees upsets and enrages him to the point that he offs those responsible in horrible ways.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I had the good fortune to meet Becoming Santa’s star, Jack, on the shuttle ferrying us from the horrendous labyrinthine beast of the Austin Convention Center to the heavenly outpost that is the Alamo Drafthouse. Yes, I know I’m mixing mythologies there, so bite me.

Anyway, I met and chatted with Jack before knowing whom he was or even that he had a documentary in the festival, and for those fifteen minutes we conversed, he was just as charming and articulate fellow as he comes across in Jeff Myers’ sweet little documentary.

So I met and liked the guy and ended up watching and liking his film, too. But the two likes are separate from each other; rest assured I’d tear it apart like an eel on a horse head if it were bad (as I well some other films whose directors I likewise met).

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Of the three films I’ve been most excited to see at SXSW, two of them were documentaries, and the two documentaries that pretty much everyone else has been the most excited to see: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Errol Morris’s Tabloid.

Of the two, the one I was a little unsure of was Morris’s. I know Morris to be somewhat of an acquired taste, and I find his films to lag some, but his is a master of interview and editing: No line of dialogue, no word, uttered by a subject in a Morris documentary, is uninteresting.

And Tabloid is no exception—in fact, it may well be the best introduction to Morris and is certainly his funniest.

The story was new to me: Joyce McKinney is a former beauty queen who fell in love with a man who took up with the Mormon faith and left her to perform his required mission trip in London. Joyce tracked him down, supposedly kidnapped him, and further supposedly spirited him away to a cottage in Devon where she (even further) supposedly chained him to a bed and had her way with him.

That’s not the whole story, of course, and one of the best jokes of Tabloid is just how far the story of Joyce McKinney, the tabloid Joyce McKinney keeps going, and going, and going, and shows no intent of slowing down, right up to the now.

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It seems like only yesterday when our planes were touching down, we were packing into our roach-heavy hotels, and ordering that first pint at the Alamo Drafthouse, eager to welcome SXSW 2011, but those days are long gone, and the Film Festival’s award-winners have now been announced.

Of course, those days really aren’t long gone, because there’s still plenty more films to see…and plenty more reviews for us to write up.

But as far as the awards go, it looks like Tristan Patterson’s skater-drug-love documentary Dragonslayer and Robbie Pickering’s Natural Selection, about a housewife’s quest to reunite her husband’s illegitimate son with his father. Take a look at the full winner list in a press release, after the jump.

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