SXSW Report: Booster, Eden, and The Hunter

For the last week, Paste has been catching you up on the films of SXSW 2012. Here are three more narrative films we caught there:

Booster
The most exciting aspect of a film festival may be the opportunity of discovery. For any critic or cinephile, there’s nothing like discovering a film—a film you’ve probably never heard of, by filmmakers you’ve probably never heard of—that hits home, a film that you connect with and appreciate on countless levels. Booster, though not without its faults and not the greatest achievement of South by Southwest, became this film for me. Writer-director-editor Matt Ruskin, who started his career with documentaries Glen of the Downs and The Hip Hop Project, has sheer talent as a filmmaker. Working with cinematographer Tim Gillis, he captures Boston’s underbelly honestly yet sensitively to draw sympathy—in place of judgment—from its criminals. The actors, of course, help make this a reality. Playing Simon, a petty thief whose incarcerated brother asks him to commit a string of armed robberies that will prove his innocence, Nico Stone holds the film together as a young man caught in moral dilemma. Stone’s deep and dark eyes speak further into his conflicted circumstances, in which he contemplates his criminal life. Channeling the early work of Martin Scorsese, it’s this introspection—the pit between crime and morality—that makes Booster so pertinent. -David Roark

Eden
The plot of Megan Griffiths’ thriller seems too far-fetched and cruel to believe — an innocent teenager is kidnapped and forced into four years of sexual slavery in a warehouse just a few miles from her own house before finally escaping. But not only does this type of thing happen in America, it did happen to Chong Kim, on whose incredible story the film is based. It doesn’t work at every moment. I found many of the scenes overdone and thought Griffiths lingered a bit too long on the many scenes of violence and humiliation. But the story is an important one, and the acting is outstanding, particularly from Special Jury Award winner Jamie Chung. This is her first real chance to show her acting chops in a big project, and she’s obviously much more talented than her previous projects (The Real World, Sucker Punch, The Hangover II, etc) have allowed her to show. -Michael Dunaway

The Hunter
From its visual scale to its calculated pace, The Hunter emerges like the work of an old hand, but surprisingly it’s only director Daniel Nettheim’s second feature film. Nettheim’s greatest feat, though, has nothing to do with his veteran sensibilities and everything to do with his decision to cast Willem Defoe in the lead role. Defoe carries the film as Martin, a mercenary who gets hired to hunt down the last Tasmanian tiger on the island of Tasmania, a stunning setting that Nettheim and cinematographer Robert Humphreys hone in on with beauty and grandeur. A loner and borderline criminal, Martin quickly realizes that the job, filled with dangers and complexities, won’t be easy. The locals threaten his life, and a mystery surrounds the family with whom he stays—a family in which the father recently disappeared. This story, adapted from Julia Leigh’s novel of the same name, moves with momentum and suspense and comes together fully in a grand and glorious finale. With a controversial subject at hand, Nettheim has an opportunity to go political, but he chooses to move beyond that and dig deeper, spinning a morality tale full of life and humanity. -David Roark