Our feature story this week aside, this year’s Lone Star Film Festival looks to have stepped up its programming compared to 2016 or 2017. Some of the big-ticket items this time around are connected to celebrity guests. Director Jeff Nichols will be on hand to receive an award and present a screening of his 2012 film Mud, while producer Michael De Luca will talk about his experience in the film industry and present both an older film (Moneyball) and a newer one (Jacques Audiard’s beautiful and brutal Western The Sisters Brothers, which played in a few multiplexes this past month). Peter Farrelly of the Farrelly brothers tries to do something a tad more serious with his dramedy Green Book, starring Viggo Mortensen acting as a bodyguard to Mahershala Ali’s concert pianist as he tours the Deep South in the 1960s. Meanwhile, Steve McQueen lightens up a bit after 12 Years a Slave with his heist film Widows, starring Viola Davis as the leader of a group of women trying to recover money stolen by their husbands.
Even more encouraging is a new direction for the festival with Cine-Más, an initiative to bring Spanish-language films to our audiences. These selections are heavy on music documentaries with Singing Our Way to Freedom and Ruben Blades Is Not My Name, but they range from the Colombian historical thriller La Sargento Matacho (about a woman who disguises herself as a man to gain revenge on her husband’s killers) to the Uruguayan mockumentary Traigan la Hierba, in which a group of comedians travel to America to transport legal cannabis back to their country, with a cameo by Uruguay’s former president.
Lone Star Film Festival runs Wed-Sun at AMC Palace, 220 E 3rd St, FW and Four Day Weekend Theater, 312 Houston St, FW. Single tickets are $15, passes are $30-255. Call 817-924-6000.
