Year after year, I hear cinephiles issue the same complaint: “Why aren’t there more original movies?” Why, film fans wonder, is the box office landscape littered with sequels, reboots and superhero movies? The answer is simple: when original movies do hit theaters, no one sees them. Case in point: Annapurna Pictures, one of the most original motion picture companies out there today, had a whole slew of great movies last year. And guess what? Every single one of them, except one, was a box office bomb.
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Having an internal crisis, high schooler Molly turns to to her classmate and exclaims “You guys don’t care about school!” To which she snidely responds “We just don’t only care about school.”
What happens when your whole worldview shifts and you discover the choices you made for yourself were not the only viable options? For two teen girls who are quickly approaching graduation, they discover that the fun of their teenage years has almost slipped out of their hands – and they have one night to fix that. The Olivia Wilde-directed Booksmart follows these girls as they decide to finally let loose the night before graduation. Their adventure leads audiences through a hilarious, sharp, endearing, and ultimately loving film that stands out from other, seemingly similar comedies.
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(Welcome to The SXSW Diaries, where we will be chronicling every single movie we see at the Austin-based film festival.)
Welcome to SXSW 2019 day three. In this edition: The Art of Self-Defense is masterful dark comedy about masculinity gone wrong, The Highwaymen is perfectly decent dad-tainment, Booksmart redefines the high school comedy for 2019, and Snatchers can’t quite capture its tricky blend of comedy and horror.
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What happens when you spend four years of high school studying hard to make sure you get into a great college, only for your senior year to come to an end with the realization that everyone who spent all of high school partying also got into great colleges?
That’s the set-up of Booksmart, a new raunchy comedy which stars Kaitlyn Dever (Justified) and Beanie Feldstein (Lady Bird). It marks the directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde, and from all of the positive buzz this is getting from its premiere at this year’s South By Southwest, it seems like we might have a new classic on our hands. Check out the red-band trailer below. Read More »
After spending the first portion of her career acting in front of the camera, Olivia Wilde is shifting gears. She was bitten by the producing bug back in 2010, and has since shepherded movies like 2013’s Drinking Buddies (which features one of her best performances to date) and 2015’s Meadowland into existence. Now Wilde is making her feature directorial debut with Booksmart, which will star Kaitlyn Dever (Short Term 12) and Beanie Feldstein (Lady Bird) as a pair of straight-laced high schoolers who decide to party like crazy before they graduate.
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