As the 18^th annual Austin Film Festival takes over our town, bringing hundreds of screenings (and more than a few late night parties) through October 27^th, CultureMap contributors are busy trying to catch as many features, documentaries, shorts and panels as possible while also keeping up with festival news to help you navigate the lines (and, of course, plenty of celebrity gossip). Every day, we’ll be recapping our AFF highlights: films we’re begging you no to miss, tips for planning your week and the you-had-to-be-there moments you may have missed.

Day Four: Sunday, October 23rd

The good:

If you describe Like Crazy to someone who hasn’t seen it, you’ll probably struggle to explain it in terms that don’t make it sound like a typical romantic comedy – and one with low stakes, at that. The plot isn’t exactly high-concept: an American boy and an English girl fall in love while attending college in California, and when visa issues force her to go back to London, they struggle to maintain their relationship across the Atlantic Ocean. But the film eschews just about every rom-com trope. In its script, in its editing and in its performances, the film blazes a much more compelling path. Like Crazy takes the basic “mumblecore” template of improvised dialogue, naturalistic performances, and avoiding plot points – but it uses those things to tell a powerful story. Call it Mumblecore 2.0 (or better yet, don’t). Director Drake Doremus takes some risky chances that could easily alienate an audience – the characters’ dilemma is the result of their own dumb choices early on, which doesn’t usually inspire sympathy – but his faith in his characters and his refusal to go for cheap melodrama pays them off. It’s a movie about love that doesn’t bother with the typical meet-cutes and plot beats, and the result is a film where the relationships actually feel lived-in. Like Crazy may well be the best film of the festival. [D.S.]

Like Crazy played out like an extended version of its trailer. Director Drake Doremus indulges throughout in sentimental montages, elegiac indie music and wistfully framed shots of his stars meaningfully separated by window panes and objects in the foreground. Anton Yelchin plays an American student that falls for a British student (newcomer Felicity Jones), who later gets banned from the United States for overstaying her student visa. The visa issue becomes basically the entire plot, separating them for years as they decide whether to weather the time apart or move on, which means fully two thirds of the film consists of the photogenic leads staring meaningfully out windows or spacing out during conversations. But if you're prone to meaningful staring yourself it can't help but hit you where it counts: Yelchin and Jones' chemistry is unmistakable and relatably complex, and the editing-as-memory of the film feels like time passing. By the end, Like Crazy is less about visa problems and these two specific people than the roads not taken, and the moments you come out of a lingering memory and realize you've been holding your breath. [D.C.]

Before Like Crazy even started this afternoon at the Paramount, director Drake Doremus admitted that it was a personal film even if unlike the main character, he doesn't make furniture. In the film, Anna (Felicity Jones in her first American film), a British college student, falls for her American classmate Jacob (Anton Yelchin) but when she overstays her student visa, she's sent home to London and banned from entering the U.S. The film follows Jacob and Anna's long distance relationship and their attempts to connect across two continents. The chemistry between the two is undeniable but according to Doremus, the actors who portrayed them didn't meet until after they were both cast. At the Q&A following the film, Doremus told the audience that “Anton was involved early in the process but Felicity was a late addition. She sent me a tape from London and I took a chance. We met on a Monday and started shooting that Saturday.” When asked about his personal connection to the film, Doremus said, “This stemmed from personal experiences – dating someone from overseas, having her visa get revoked, getting married for a visa.” Although the film takes the main plot points from his life, he stressed that Anna and Jacob are fictional characters. The actors also improvised all of the dialogue so unless Doremus was whispering lines from his own memories into their ears, Like Crazy isn't exactly recreating his own long distance romance. “Love is the antagonist. It causes [Jacob and Anna] to make decisions that aren't the best for them.” Doremus summed it all up by saying, “In the end, relationships are difficult whether you're two feet away from someone or hundreds of miles away. I hope we showed that.” [K.C.]

At the end of The Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, the audience audibly gasped, then applauded at grainy VHS footage of a man playing a video game. Ably surpassing a large debt owed to Seth Gordon's The King of Kong, Adam Cornelius's documentary follows the world's best Tetris players as the first attempt to crown a champion is mounted. It's a much more collegiate, positive narrative than Kong, but a powerfully compelling figure emerges in Thor Aackerlund, a former 14-year-old World Nintendo Champion that left the game behind years ago and has become legend to current players for his ability to vibrate the controller to move the pieces faster. There are plenty of other memorable eccentrics involved, naturally, but by the time Aackerlund makes an appearance and explains his tragic story (his family dealt with such poverty that at one point he supported them winning video game competitions and endorsements), the competition itself becomes an afterthought. [D.C.]

There’s no need to worry that Beavis and Butthead would feel dated in its return to television, even though it’s been 14 years since the animated duo stalked MTV. The show’s core concept – that MTV’s programming is stupid, and so are the people who watch it – is the sort of classic that never goes out of style, and it’s only gotten more relevant as the network’s made the switch from showing the occasional music video to being our culture’s primary purveyor of dumb reality shows. In the midst of their adventures, Butthead and his pal Beavis take on 16 And Pregnant and Jersey Shore in the first episode of the revived series, which screened Sunday night at the Paramount. Creator Mike Judge has lost none of his incisiveness as his animated idiots make fun of the shows, and it’s likely that a new generation of MTV viewers will relate to the network’s loathing of its programming. “This chick is a horrible actor,” Butthead says as they watch 16 And Pregnant, before realizing that it’s a documentary. “She’s not a bad actor, just a bad person,” Beavis clarifies. A more succinct explanation of reality television, we’ve yet to see. [D.S.]

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters is a magnificent documentary about the world's most played videogame. The film briefly covers the history of the game, discusses some basic and advanced strategies, and covers milestones in the world of Tetris score keeping (like the breakthrough "max out" score of 999,999 being reached and documented for the first time). The central focus, though, is the quest to find the world's greatest Tetris player by holding the first ever Classic Tetris World Championship. The audience is introduced to players from across the country who are hoping to win the title, each obsessive person is profiled lovingly and without any hint of mockery making it almost impossible to choose a single person to root for in the inevitable third act showdowns. There's a great underlying tension in the first half regarding whether or not former Nintendo World Champion Thor Aackerlund will come back into the spotlight after years of near-silence. Full of delightful characters, fascinating Tetris insider tidbits, and nail-biting competitions, Ecstasy of Order is a tremendously entertaining documentary that will please anyone who has or hasn't played Tetris. Sadly, the film has had its final screening at AFF but keep your eyes out for this one in the future. [B.K.]

James Franco introduced his new film at the Paramount Sunday at noon. Sal documents Sal Mineo's last day before being murdered in 1976. Mineo rose to acting prominence as an Oscar-nominated teenager in Exodus and Rebel without a Cause, where he became friends with James Dean. Franco describes the film following Mineo as kind of an "angel on his shoulder"style; it's shot tight, almost uncomfortably so. Franco uses extreme close-ups and a slow pace to lead the audience through a regular day in the life of a washed up movie star, who is in many ways on the edge of succeeding in getting his career going again. While we know what will happen in the end, Franco manages to manipulate the audience and you will find yourself getting anxious as the sun goes down on Mineo's day as we know a murder is about to happen—we just don't know when. Franco brilliantly adds real television news coverage to add context to the film. Sal will never get wide distribution, it's just not that kind of film, but it is well worth watching as Franco uses original and emotional ways to tell a story in which the entire audience already knows the outcome, and star Val Lauren is spectacular bringing Mineo to the screen. [K.B.]

The bad:

We loved everything we saw on Sunday!

The behind-the-scenes:

Hopefully MTV didn’t miscalculate when choosing to revive Beavis and Butthead. While the show’s very funny in its first episode, they sure seemed to have a hard time packing the house at the Paramount. Passersby on Congress were shouted at by people in bright blue Beavis and Butthead t-shirts offering them free entrance into the theater like the barkers on 6^th Street advertising jello shots, ostensibly to pack the house after a lack of interest among festival attendees. In the end, it worked – the lower level of the Paramount was pretty full when the screening started, and the room erupted when Mike Judge came out to introduce the screening. Maybe festival attendees just didn’t want to skip the other screenings to see something that they’ll be able to watch at home in a few days? [D.S.]

Standing in the pass line at AFF can be a roller coaster of hope, desperation, despair and joy. Pass holders angrily eye those wearing badges only a few feet away and converse in hushed, angry tones when volunteers don't enforce the “everyone must be in line 25 minutes before the screening time” rule. In the half hour before at least three different screenings over the weekend, a pass holder asked in an indignant tone, “Why are those people going in first?” while gesturing at the director, producer and/or cast members as they filed into the theater before everyone else. The response, “They made the film,” barely soothed ruffled feathers as people tried to calculate their odds of getting in v. the number of badge holders v. the number of seats in the theater v. that guy just got here why is he going in ahead of me I've been here for over an hour! “No cutting in line” is the one of the first rules of childhood, so tiered admissions highlight the inherent unfairness of festivals. As long as someone can buy their way to the front, the lesser-thans will continue to grumble while wishing that they too were being whisked into choice seats. Until an Occupy the Festival movement occurs, organizers will continue to favor those who put down the large amounts of money that ultimately sustain the programming. [K.C.]

The free parking on Sunday was a welcome respite from paying $3.00 an hour until midnight on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. But this correspondent instead found himself walking several blocks here and there, after parking so many times in the same vague capitol area, unable to remember where he parked in the first place.[D.C.]

In another instance of demand exceeding supply, every square inch of usable space was utilized at the Alamo Ritz on Sunday for the second screening of Beneath the Darkness. Badge and pass holders took what looked to be every seat available while there was still a large line of individuals in the lobby hoping to purchase tickets. The resourceful Alamo staff along with AFF volunteers brought some chairs in and lined them against the back wall behind some couches. Someone was even spotted pulling office chairs out of the Alamo backroom and placing them in front of the first row under the screen. It's hard to say if everyone who was waiting eventually go in, but certainly every attempt was made. [B.K.]

The Austin Film festival obviously targets folks who love movies and, based on the lines outside theaters this weekend, those fans showed up. But a vastly overlooked benefit of attending AFF is the networking and introductions you can enjoy at the social events. If you spend time talking to people you don't know, you will meet a lot of very interesting folks. In less than 30 minutes Sunday morning at the Hair of the Dog brunch, we heard two fascinating pitches for independent films.The Hair of the Dog Brunch has become a can't-miss event—mostly because of the spectacular food and tequila drinks coming from Kevin Williamson and his Ranch 616 restaurant. We met Shayan Bayat, who wrote an incredible screenplay about an Afghan-American soldier and is pitching it around the festival, and we met Bora Ercan, a Turkish-American filmmaker who came to AFF looking for a director and main crew for his 9/11 love story. He is right now vetting an Austin director he thinks might be right for the job. [K.B.]