SXSW Report: Frankie Go Boom, Keyhole, and The Do-Deca Pentahlon

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:

Frankie Go Boom
Frankie Go Boom is over-the-top and outlandish, but ultimately a fun ride from writer/director Jordan Roberts. Aspiring filmmaker Bruce (Chris O’Dowd) has been torturing his brother Frankie (Charlie Hunnam) from birth, enough to make Frankie live a secluded life in Death Valley. He returns home for Bruce’s graduation from rehab with hopes his sober brother will have out-grown his antics. He hasn’t. Bruce films the most
awkward one-night stand in history between Frankie and Lassie (Lizzy Caplan). What follows is a mission to find and destroy the tape as it passes from colorful character to colorful character. Hunnam and O’Dowd are unlikely brothers as each slips into their
respective British and Irish accents, but they portray a love-hate relationship any sibling could recognize. The script is cringe-worthy and at times too ludicrous to be funny, but the characters steal the show—try not to laugh when you see Ron Perlman in a dress! -Kiera Scholten

Keyhole
In the final minutes of Guy Madden’s adventure into feature-length allegorical filmmaking I began to get those “aha” moments as the story finally reached some semblance of cohesiveness. It did make up for the overlong indulgences of many of the film’s scenes, a film that can best be described as “What would happen if you inserted Homer’s Ulysses into a haunted house set in 1920’s gangland Chicago?” During those indulgences it seems that Madden wants to be sure his audience is getting the point. But then there are several other moments where belaboring would have been welcome.
-Tim Basham

The Do-Deca Pentathlon
Thank God for the Duplass brothers and what they’ve done for cinema. Part of the mumblecore movement, they continue to confirm that movies don’t need big budgets or the finest technologies to leave a mark, just the ability to communicate human experience effectively on screen. Their latest, The Do-Deca Pentathlon, proves to be another example of this niche. The comedy stars a convincing Mark Kelly and Steve Zissis as two grown brothers, Jeremy (Kelly) and Mark (Zissis), who upon reuniting for a birthday battle it out in a homemade Olympics—the do-deca pentathlon, a competition they created as teenagers. While these competitions make for hilarious moments — like a no-holds-barred foot race early on, and later a ridiculous intensity that overcomes the characters — the film cares less about the events and their outcomes and more about the relationship between the brothers. If anything, the do-deca pentathlon serves as a metaphor for the internationalizations of Jeremy and Mark as they seek to beat the snot out of each other for the mere sake of self. The result of the competition and, well, the film itself is a compelling story of family and relationship, a story of growing up—things that could be called the core of mumblecore. -David Roark