(We're re-posting our SXSW review of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay to coincide with the film's theatrical release this weekend.)

"Is it as good as the first one?" That's the question I've been asked most since watching Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay last night. Short answer: Yes ... and no. The HIGHly-anticipated sequel to 2004's Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle comes just how you'd expect it: raunchy, wild, disgusting and completely absurd. This isn't -- and has never been -- a real-life comedy (all that went out the window after the boys rode a cheetah in the first installment); it's a fantasy/comedy, the kind you'd dream up while stoned out of your mind on a Saturday night. I tend to think that's how writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg came up with this idea in the first place.

The Harold and Kumar films have always been about three things: drugs, sex and racial differences. Like with any sequel, all three of those are upped significantly. Instead of traveling across the state of New Jersey, Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are now traveling across the United States. The stakes are also higher; this time, the boys are mistaken for terrorists while on a plane heading for Amsterdam after Kumar rigs up a bong that holds in the smoke -- a bong that looks and sounds like "bomb." After they're taken down to Guantanamo Bay, the first ridiculous homosexual joke plays itself out and the boys manage to escape. But where do they go and how do they clear their name? And, most importantly, will we care ... at all?

During the South by Southwest Film Festival, short filmmaker Behn Zeitlin was in a terrible car accident on the way to the screening of his film, Glory at Sea. Zeitlin shattered his hip, which had to be replaced, fractured his pelvis, and sprained both ankles. The director, who did not have medical insurance, now faces over $80,000 in medical bills.

Even in the midst of transitioning into a new gig, outgoing SXSW head Matt Dentler is on the ball with this. SXSW is trying to help Zeitlin out, by hosting two benefit screenings on April 29 at everyone's favorite Austin film venue, Alamo Drafthouse. The screenings will show shorts by Zeitlin and some of his friends. Austin's a great film town, so I hope all you Austinite film buffs and filmmakers will get out there on the 29th and give some support to Zeitlin. And hey, it's at the Drafthouse, so you can enjoy some great shorts, support a filmmaker, AND get yourself a yummy dinner and one of those awesome five-dollar milkshakes or brown-sugar lemonades. Check out the screening details here.

We at Cinematical wish Zeitlin well, and hope he has a speedy recovery.

Wow, this news threw me for a loop. According to indieWIRE, our mutual friend Matt Dentler, producer of the South By Southwest Film Festival since 2004, is leaving his post (and Austin) to move to New York City, where he will head the marketing and programming operations of Cinetic Media's new digital rights management unit. Replacing Dentler as SXSW producer will be Janet Pierson, long-time independent film producer and board member of the Austin Film Society.

I've never met Pierson (well, that I know of ... you do get introduced to so many people at film fests, it's hard to keep track of everyone sometimes ... ) but I feel like I know her, from watching the documentary Reel Paradise, which she made with her husband, John. That film documented the year the Piersons and their two children spent living on a remote island in Fiji running the only movie theater on the island. I also wrote last year about John Pierson smacking down on Michael Moore, whose film Roger & Me was sold by the Piersons to Warner Brothers for the then-unheard-of sum of $3 million.

Janet Pierson has fantastic indie street cred, she's a passionate lover of independent film, and I'm sure she'll do a stellar job heading up SXSW. We at Cinematical extend our warmest welcome to her, and wish our friend Matt great luck and joy in his new endeavor. Matt is one of our favorite indie-film-world people, and we hope that he'll come back to SXSW every year to just enjoy the fest for a change, rather than running to and fro introducing films and shepherding talent around. We'll save you a seat at the Alamo, Matt, and there's a five-dollar milkshake with your name on it when we see you there.

*Update: Check out indieWIRE's well-informed piece on Cinetic's plans for Dentler and Pierson on stepping into Dentler's shoes.

(Note: We're re-posting our 21 review from SXSW to coincide with the film's theatrical release this weekend.)

In 21, an M.I.T. math whiz joins a secret cabal of card-counters who fly to Vegas on the weekends to make a killing at the blackjack tables. That's the hook, the part you may not have seen in a thousand other films. But the rest is as generic as the title (21? Really? That's the best you could come up with?), a story about a nobody who becomes a somebody, forsakes his friends, and learns What's Really Important.

Yawn is right. This is a prime example of a movie that isn't bad, per se, just unnecessary, a competently made but wholly unremarkable trifle. It trades exclusively in clichés and stock characters -- and yet, strangely, director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) seems to believe he has made something compelling and original. And I have to think, if I've seen lots of movies exactly like this one, then shouldn't Luketic have as well?

(Note: We're re-posting our Stop-Loss review from SXSW to coincide with the film's theatrical release this weekend.)

It's been almost nine years since Kimberly Peirce's breakout film Boys Don't Cry, so expectations for her new project were bound to run high. Alas, she doesn't do herself any favors with the self-serious, emotionally hollow Stop-Loss. Why would someone who's so selective about the films she makes choose something so uninspired?

The title refers to the U.S. Army's policy of renewing soldiers' enlistments against their wishes, a necessary step when new recruits are in short supply and there's a war going on. Technically, the war in Iraq ended years ago, but this hasn't stopped the military from hanging on to thousands of soldiers who were supposed to have gone home when their time was up.

Stop-Loss is a fictional story about a real crisis, written by Peirce and Mark Richard and starring Ryan Phillippe as the soldier who gets stop-lossed. His name is Brandon King, and he has just returned to his hometown of Brazos, Texas, after a firefight in Tikrit that left some of his men dead or wounded. Brandon is a model soldier and staff sergeant, even to the point that his saintliness strains credulity, but he snaps when he learns he's being sent back. He tells his commanding officer (Timothy Olyphant) that he refuses to go, then flees the Army base.

The recent U.S. involvement in Iraq has become one of the biggest subjects for documentaries in the past few years, and it's hard not to feel weary of watching the variety of movies on this topic, no matter how varied and original they might be. Phil Donahue has contributed to the genre with Body of War, a documentary he co-directed with Austin filmmaker Ellen Spiro (Troop 1500). The movie focuses on the effect that the U.S. conflict in Iraq has had on a single soldier.

Body of War combines two threads of narrative. The first thread follows Tomas Young, who enlisted in the U.S. Army on Sept. 13, 2001 as a reaction to the events of Sept. 11. He ends up being deployed to Iraq, and after only a few days in combat is injured -- a spinal injury. He's paralyzed below the chest and is confined to a wheelchair. Tomas, his bride-to-be and his mom all have to get used to dealing with his range of physical problems as a result of this injury: not only can't he walk, but he's on an ever-changing variety of medications, he can't control his body temperature, he vomits frequently, and experiences sexual difficulties. Meanwhile, his experiences have made him passionately anti-war, and he visits Cindy Sheehan's compound in Crawford, Texas, travels to the offices of several politicians, and speaks out frequently in public.

One of the more livelier, spirited and good-natured docs at this year's SXSW film festival, Some Assembly Required features teams of middle school kids from around the country competing in the National Toy Competition (founded by executive producer and former astronaut Sally Ride). Think Spellbound, but with a little less of a personal connection to the kids involved. Basically, schools all over the United States gather up a set of kids who break into teams and brainstorm ideas for new toys or games. Those ideas are then fleshed out and pitched to the toy competition. Roughly, we're looking at around 400 teams to start out with; a number which is eventually cut down to 50 -- and it's those 50 teams who must build their toy or game (for no more than $150) before flying to San Diego to present their baby to a group of judges.

The film follows six teams from schools in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, Brighton, Michigan, Harlem, New York, West Hartford, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. Early on, we watch as each class breaks up into teams to conceptualize different ideas. If it's a board game, what kind of board game? What color? How big are the pieces? What's the shape of the board? The fascinating part of this process was in watching these kids try to dissect what other kids (of the same age) enjoy. Not only is it a wicked fun activity for kids, but it also teaches them to think outside the box at a very young age. But this isn't some birthday party activity -- it's a national competition, and it doesn't take long for the drama to kick in.

What were the big films at SXSW? What buzzword's rapidly becoming synonymous with lazy film journalism? And what happens when an alternative to the Oscars documentary nomination process follows close in the Academy's wake? Joining us this week on The Rocchi Review to talk abot SXSW and the Cinema Eye Honors is Karina Longworth of SpoutBlog (and Cinematical's founding Editor) to answer all those questions and more, after the jump. ...

If you weren't in Austin for South by Southwest -- or even if you were, and your schedule, like mine, was so incredibly packed with films and parties, that you missed out on catching some of the many panels there, you're in luck. For your listening convenience, the SXSW website has podcasts of the panels up. There were panels on just about every topic imaginable at the fest, from "Animation and Digital Effects on a Budget," to "The Porn Police: Know the Rules" (that one featured the never-shy-about-baring-his-all Joe Swanberg), to journalist Sarah Lacy's "controversial" interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's, which just about descended into all-out chaos.

I've heard the entire interview, watched parts of it on YouTube, and read heaps of blog comments ripping Lacy to shreds, and I gotta say, I don't see what people were so riled up about in that room, or why the audience turned on her so harshly there toward the end. Yes, it was a conversational-style interview, not a hard-hitting smackdown.

Up With Me is proof that you can make a good film out of old ideas. All it takes is a different approach, some reinvention to give the familiar themes a new twist. In fact, the only real shortcomings in "Up With Me" occur when the film tries too hard to be creative. As backward as it may sound, the film is at its best when it sticks to the situation that we've seen a thousand times before, for the simple reason that its technique gives it new life.

The film was created by the East Harlem Tutorial Program, with non-actors filling the roles and a do-it-yourself mentality governing every aspect of it. Written by Maeve McQuillan and Greg Takoudes (with help from some of the kids) and directed by Takoudes, it's about a kid from Spanish Harlem named Francisco (Francisco Vicioso) whose academic excellence has earned him a scholarship to a fancy upstate prep school. His girlfriend, Erika (Erika Rivera), misses him, knows it will be good for him, and frets that they will be divided by his new education. His best friend, Brandon (Brandon Thorpe), on the other hand, is openly bitter about Francisco's departure, seeing it as a betrayal in the immature way that teenagers see everything as a betrayal.

I can't believe I saw two movies about racial politics in Alabama at SXSW this year -- not what I would have expected. Both approached the issues in different ways, and both films were good. While The Order of Myths (which I reviewed already) focused on Mardi Gras in the Gulf Coast city of Mobile, the documentary Bama Girl takes us further north to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to examine a tradition popular at many American universities: the selection and crowning of the Homecoming Queen.

Bama Girl focuses primarily on Jessica Thomas, a senior at the university who is determined to win Homecoming Queen. The problem is that a number of the white fraternities and sororities plus other unnamed organizations have formed a covert group known on campus as The Machine. The way in which the Homecoming Queen is elected on campus favors The Machine, which is why no African-American woman has won the crown since the rules change. This all sounds like paranoid fantasy and crazy student rumors, but when you see a staff member in the Dean of Students office talking seriously about The Machine, you start to wonder. Anyway, Jessica isn't going to let any secret society keep her from what she wants. She and her sorority sisters get to work to get her elected.

On the subject of the death penalty, there are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides. But even those who support capital punishment in theory must concede that it's perilously difficult to administer it in practice. It's only defensible if there isn't the slightest doubt whatsoever that the person is unequivocally guilty -- and how many cases are that clear?

The documentary At the Death House Door doesn't take a firm stance against the death penalty altogether, but it sure makes a strong case for exercising caution. It does this through the poignant, heart-rending story of Rev. Carroll Pickett, a soft-spoken Texas man who served for 13 years as chaplain at the notoriously execution-happy Huntsville Prison. Here he counseled with 95 prisoners during their final hours, and the experience changed his life.

It's risky to make a film with only three characters. If the audience dislikes even one of them, that's 33 percent of the ensemble gone. In the case of Yeast, a three-person mumblecore debacle by Mary Bronstein, I hate all three of them. How am I supposed to enjoy a film when I dislike 100 percent of the characters?

Something tells me Bronstein would be pleased by this reaction, and part of me admires the chutzpah required to make a film so blatantly cringe-inducing. The wife of Ronald Bronstein, whose similarly aggravating Frownland is currently making the rounds, Mary Bronstein has achieved something notable with Yeast. It's a sort of litmus test: Whichever character you hate the most says something about you.

From surface appearances, Intimidad is an exceedingly modest affair. Filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, who also made the well-received Kamp Katrina, followed a young married couple for four years as they diligently worked to save up enough money to make a down payment on a piece of land they could call their own. If they lived in the United States, Camilo and Cecy might be described as living the American dream. Their story is more universal, however; like people everywhere, they simply want to provide for themselves while maintaining their personal dignity.

Camilo and Cecy are both 21 years of age and have an infant daughter named Loida. They are living in Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Texas. Reynosa is primarily a factory town with a population of half a million people, and both Camilo and Cecy are gainfully employed. Camilo works assembling fire hydrants for Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls, while Cecy makes bras for Victoria's Secret. (She gets paid about 18 cents per bra.) Together, they bring in about $500 per month, but expenses eat up most of that, leaving only $15 that they can put aside for their future home. It's not like they're splurging on anything -- they don't even have electricity, spending their evenings and early mornings illuminated only by the dim flames of candles.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad, which had its US premiere at SXSW, follows Acrassicauda, Iraq's only (yes, only) heavy metal band, as they try to stay alive and keep making music through the fall of Saddam Hussein and the growing insurgency in the aftermath of the Iraq war. This is the kind of film that makes me tremendously grateful to live in a country where I can freely write about film, or pick up a camera and make one. I can pick up a bass and start a rock band, and I can dress how I like and wear my hair how I like without fear of being shot or arrested.

The members of Acrassicauda, before they moved out of Iraq to Syria and then Turkey, did not have those priveliges. For them, the mere wearing of at Metallica t-shirt, or growing their hair long, or even wearing a goatee, could mark them for harrasment, imprisonment, or death. Filmmakers Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi follow the band from 2003-2006, capturing the band's hopes, dreams, and attempts to keep the band together amidst mortar fire, car bombs, and the ever-growing threat of persecution for embodying Western ideals through their music.