‘Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free’ Film Review: Ragged Documentary Fits the Man and the Music

Dead children, democracy being crushed, senseless Nazi atrocities —there's not much happiness in this year's collection of Oscar-nominated short documentaries, unless you count the man who actually survived racism and homelessness to become a proud, successful grandpa. Each of these long "shorts" finds protagonists to root for; some contain seeds of hope; all boast polish and relevance that make them awards-ready.

Imprisonment, in many senses of the word, is at the center of each of the five nominees for this year's live-action short film Oscar, which is not to say they're a homogenous bunch: Though all have political undercurrents and speak to present-tense issues, their moods and styles vary enough that their one big (mostly) common theme —cops, and how they wield power —stands out only because we've already been thinking about it every day for what feels like forever.

A couple of truly daring visions spice up the expected fare in this year's crop of Academy-honored animated shorts — one of which would be as at home in an art gallery as in the theaters, which, pandemic be damned, will still showcase nominees as a big-screen event. Each candidate has something to offer, including those non-nominees that have been added (as "highly recommended") to stretch the program's running time to feature length.

Just in time for Easter, The Unholy offers up satanic counter-programming to sate the appetites of the religious horror faithful. Almost a decade after getting drawn into a dybbuk haunting in The Possession, Jeffrey Dean Morgan reteams with Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures, this time switching from Jewish folklore to Catholic demonology in a tale that tills the soil of Massachusetts for its history of charred witches.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“The Oxy Kingpins” is a documentary that feels like it could be a Martin Scorsese movie. It’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” meets “The Insider” — the story of a scurrilous illegal business, and one of the hotshot thrill junkies who rode it to riches, and how that business connects up to a much larger corporate racket.

On Tuesday, the 28th SXSW Film Festival revealed the winners of this year’s Audience Awards.

Also Read: How 'Somewhere You Feel Free' Director Captured Tom Petty's 'Mid-Life Crisis'Mei Makino’s “Inbetween Girl” won the audience award in the Visions category, and Kier-La Janisse’s “Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror” won the Midnighters audience award.The SXSW Film Festival went virtual this year after being canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The festival ran between March 16-20 and was available through a single ticket and online platform.

The 28th SXSW Film Festival revealed the Audience Award winners today with Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free, The Fallout and Not Going Quietly among the list of honorees. The news comes after the online edition of the fest announced its jury awards.

Also Read: 'Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free' Film Review: Ragged Documentary Fits the Man and the MusicSaviano, who wrote a 2016 book about Clark with the same title, and Whitfield use an array of techniques in the film, some of which help tell the story and some of which keep us off balance.

The vast majority of successful fiction films begin with a good script. Often in documentary the opposite is true—the creative breakthrough comes in throwing out the “script” and adjusting as reality unfolds.

With his second solo album, Tom Petty wanted to step away from the Heartbreakers, his band of musical brothers for almost 20 years at the time. The beautiful paradox is that, player by player, the people with whom he chose to record Wildflowers turned out to be those very same musicians (the exception being a new drummer, Steve Ferrone, who would go on to become a full-fledged Heartbreaker of long standing).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIn the last few years, I’ve happily watched and reviewed documentaries about Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish, both of which were presented on major streaming services (“Gaga: Five Foot Two” on Netflix, the current “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry” on Apple Plus) and made with the full cooperation of the artists in question. So it wouldn’t have been shocking if either of those films turned out to be a glorified promotional tool.

For the uninitiated, while the late American rocker Tom Petty’s 1994 album Wildflowers may not necessarily be his best record—that’s usually reserved for Full Moon Fever or Damn The Torpedoes— it was his most personal, his most beloved, and a favorite among fans (in a 2013 Rolling Stone fan poll it was ranked #1 among fan favorites).

Also Read: From Billie Eilish to the Bee Gees: Why Music Documentaries Are Booming“Wildflowers” would turn out to be one of the late musician’s most successful and acclaimed albums. Behind tracks like “You Wreck Me” and “It’s Good to Be King,” “Wildflowers” went triple platinum and notched a No.

Manori Ravindran International EditorOscar-nominated documentary “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah” is the first Academy Award nominee to be released as an NFT (non-fungible token).The film, which examines the life and work of the “Shoah” director, was a contender in the 2016 documentary short Oscar race and aired on HBO; however, it’s never been made available for public purchase, either physically or digitally.Enter the NFT: the latest fad in digital commerce.

Spoon have shared covers of two Tom Petty classics on digital streaming platforms for the first time.The Austin band initially covered the 1976 song ‘Breakdown’ for the late rock star’s 70th Birthday Bash concert last year. The original track was the first single to be taken from Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ self-titled debut album.In December, Spoon also put their own spin on ‘A Face In The Crowd’, which featured on Petty’s debut solo album ‘Full Moon Fever’ in 1989.

Jay Weissberg Eliane Raheb’s documentaries stress that stories are never black and white, and what people say may be an unconscious reflection of what they want their interlocutor to believe rather than what is factually true. With “Miguel’s War” she goes one step further, diving headfirst into the role of prodding psychologist to coax out a heap of repression from her subject, a gay Lebanese man self-exiled in Spain who’s spent his adult life keeping everything buried.

Jessica Kiang The lives portrayed in Carlos Alfonso Corral’s slim, sensitive and soulful “Dirty Feathers” are lived on several edges. There’s the edge of poverty.

Meghan Markle’s close friend Janina Gavankar has said the Duchess and her husband Prince Harry “feel free” after their explosive Oprah Winfrey interview.The Duchess of Sussex, 39, and her husband the Duke of Sussex, 36, candidly opened up on their time in the Royal Family in an interview with Oprah, which has caught the attention of the world.