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SXSW 2013 Movie Review: William and The Windmill
![William and the Windmill William and the Windmill](https://i0.wp.com/www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/03/2013-03-15-william_windmill.jpg?resize=533%2C299&ssl=1)
William and the Windmill
Director: Ben Nabors
Cast: William Kamkwamba, Tom Rielly, Trywell Kamkwamba, Agnes Kamkwamba, Andrea Barthello, Bryan Mealer
Following the award-winning short film Moving Windmills, the feature-length documentary William and the Windmill tells the story of Malawian William Kamkwamba, who teaches himself to build a power-generating windmill from bicycle parts, blue gum trees, and scrapyard materials, saving his family from poverty and famine.
After being forced to drop out of school due to his family not being able to afford the tuition, William decided to educate himself by going to his village’s library. There, he found Using Energy, a textbook that explained how windmills generate power. Using only that book and a few pictures, William constructed a working model, becoming an icon for the developing world.
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SXSW 2013 Movie Review: ‘Medora’
![Medora Film Medora Film](https://i0.wp.com/www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/03/2013-03-15-medora_film-533x338.jpg?resize=533%2C338&ssl=1)
Medora
Director: Andrew Cohn, Davy Rothbart
Cast: Dylan McSoley, Rusty Rogers, Robby Armstrong, Chaz Cowles, Justin Gilbert, Corey Hansen, Logan Farmer, Josh Deering, Rudie Crane, Dennis Pace
In the small town of Medora, Indiana, life revolves around high school basketball – but what happens to a community when their beloved team can’t win a single game?
Decades ago, Medora was a booming rural community with a thriving middle class, but the factories and farms have since closed and the population has dwindled. Medora has become something of a ghost town, riddled with trailer parks and abandoned businesses and one of the smallest schools in the nation.
Directed by Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart, Medora follows the down-but-not-out Medora Hornets, capturing the players’ stories on and off the court as they seek to avoid another winless season.
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SXSW 2013 Movie Review: ‘Holy Ghost People’
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![Holy Ghost People Holy Ghost People](https://i0.wp.com/www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/03/2013-03-15-holy_ghost_people.jpg?resize=533%2C355&ssl=1)
Holy Ghost People
Director: Mitchell Altieri
Screenwriter: Kevin Artigue & Joe Egender, Mitchell Altieri & Phil Flores
Cast: Emma Greenwell, Brendan McCarthy, Joe Egender, Cameron Richardson, Roger Aaron Brown, Don Harvey, Buffy Charlet, James Lowe, Jayne Entwistle, Jalen Camp
Directed by Mitchell Altieri, Holy Ghost People follows 19-year-old Charlotte (Emma Greenwell) as she infiltrates a snake-handling Pentecostal church in the depths of the Appalachian mountains to find her missing sister with the help of Wayne (Brendan McCarthy), an alcoholic ex-Marine.
Holy Ghost People is no doubt inspired by the 1967 documentary of the same name by Peter Adair. Throughout his film, Altieri uses clips from Adair’s film, which explored the behaviors of a small Pentecostal church in Scrabble Creek, West Virginia, including faith healing, snake handling, and speaking (and singing) in tongues.
Altieri’s narrative, however, fails to be the disturbing, unsettling account that Adair presents in his documentary. This “psychological thriller” takes a pretty great premise and confounds it with subpar performances, and a script that often feels like a first draft.
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SXSW 2013 Movie Review: David Gordon Green’s ‘Prince Avalanche’
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![Prince Avalanche Prince Avalanche](https://i0.wp.com/www.geeksofdoom.com/GoD/img/2013/03/2013-03-18-prince_avalanche.jpg?resize=533%2C355&ssl=1)
Prince Avalanche
Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch, Lance LeGault, Joyce Payne
1988. Meditative and pertinacious Alvin (Paul Rudd) and his girlfriend’s half-baked brother, Lance (Emile Hirsch), leave the city behind to spend the summer in solitude repainting traffic lines down the center of an old country highway in Garland, Texas. As the two road workers traverse the remarkable landscape (scourged by wildfires), an unlikely bond develops through humor and nasty exchanges.
David Gordon Green made his feature film debut in 2000 with the critically acclaimed George Washington, which he wrote and directed. In 2003, All the Real Girls cemented Green as an indie filmmaker in the Southern Gothic tradition, telling coming-of-age stories set in small rural towns.
From there, Green moved from the country to the big city, where he was quickly caught up in a maelstrom of bizarre mainstream comedies: 2008’s Pineapple Express, HBO’s Eastbound & Down), 2011’s disasterous stoner-fantasy, Your Highness, and the Adventures in Babysitting remake with Jonah Hill, The Sitter.
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