Movie Details
| Title: | The Snake | |
| Director: | Eric Kutner & Adam Goldstein | |
| Year: | 2009 | |
| Genre: | Comedy | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 03.13.09 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 03.13.09 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: SXSW 2009 Here we are, SXSW 2009. I've been coming every year since 2005, and like I've done the past few years, I'll only be doing Friday-Tuesday (since I live in Dallas and can't take the entire week off as much as I'd like to). I was really busy at work the last two days, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get enough stuff wrapped up this afternoon to get out of town in time to make the 9pm badge pickup. If I missed that deadline, it would mean that I wouldn't get to see any SXSW films tonight. Luckily, I made it here right around 8:30. Jarrette was hanging out at ACC after seeing (most of) Two Bobs, so he waited with me while I picked up my badge. (The best thing about getting in town so late is that there is zero waiting time). Then we headed over to Alamo South Lamar where both of tonight's chosen films were playing. If you aren't familiar with my SXSW coverage or my movie notes in general, here's the quick overview. I'll be posting the SXSW website's synopsis for each film I see, my quick and dirty thoughts about the film itself, and (more interestingly in my opinion) my comments and observations about the festival experience itself. So here we go, with tonight's first film, The Snake. SXSW Synopis: A no-budget romantic comedy -- without the romance. The Snake is a desperate cad who fixates on a troubled young woman, joins her support group, and enables her eating disorder. It only gets worse from there. Notes: I honestly chose this movie because I (a) wanted to be at South Lamar so I could catch the midnight screening of Ong Bak 2, (b) the trailer online looked somewhat interesting, if potentially indie-grating, and (c) the 10:00 screening time fit right into my estimated get-into-town schedule. When I got here, I found out that Jarrette and all of the AICN crew was attending the screening as well, and that there was a good buzz about the film. In addition, Patton Oswalt is the driving force behind promoting the film (like he and Ferrell did with Foot Fist Way 2 years ago) and would be introing the movie. So I was pretty psyched about my choice. So I got to Lamar around 8:30, killed time for a while, then Jarrette headed into the super special portion of the badge line. (SXSW has this new ticketing system that seems like it won't have much of a major impact on anything in practical terms... but I didn't have a special ticket for this screening). So I stood over in an unused corner of the Alamo lobby, and soon noticed that I was standing next to the main star from the film (I recognized him from the trailer) and another dude who I assumed was the director. I was about to tell them that I was looking forward to their movie when I heard "there you guys are!" I looked over to where that greeting was coming from, and saw Patton Oswald himself. I managed to not geek out and ask for a picture with him, but I did decide to pretend I was talking on my iPhone when in actuality I was taking a secret picture of the guys. Which is just as fanboyish, I agree, but what can you do? I'll post the picture on Reel Distraction tomorrow, but it's a completely shit picture, and you can totally tell that Patton knew what I was doing. Oh well. So I ended up in the theater and had a good seat thanks to Jarrette. Patton gave a funny intro and introduced us to the main character, the Snake (Adam Goldstein): "I just wanted you to meet him now and realize that he's a nice guy, because you're going to hate him in just a few minutes." Then the movie started and I and the rest of the audience laughed more or less nonstop for 90 minutes. The Snake is a completely loathesome character, but not in a Hitler sort of way. He's loathesome in the way that every young American male would be loathesome if we had zero internal censor. This guy is a shameless Lothario, and the bulk of the film is dedicated to him infiltrating a womans' body image group so that he can hook up with a super-skinny chick in the group that he thinks is hot. (He's somewhat obsessed with nailing a super-skinny chick after his friends jokingly accuse him of hooking up only with fatties.) He's got an incredible line - you can see it in the trailer - where he defends his actions by saying "I didn't *make* her bulimic, I *enabled* her bulimic. The movie is one groan-inducing moment after another, and featured the raw comedy that I found missing from Foot Fist Way. I'm sure the director of this film has good things ahead of him, and I'd love to see Goldstein in a series of likeable asshole roles. This was a really enjoyable film, and a great way to start my SXSW. If memory serves, I haven't always been as lucky with first films in previous years. |