Dallas Film Now.

In the bumper before each movie begins, this year’s anniversary edition of the Dallas International Film Festival incorporates a few of the graphic design banners and clips from the previous twenty years. From its inception as the AFI Film Fest to its current iteration, this brief and nostalgic trip down memory lane is the perfect celebratory wave to its cinematic roots.

A film that also looks back into the past is Alexandre O. Philippe’s wonderful documentary, Kim Novak’s Vertigo. As one of the film’s producers tells the story, the effort was borne out of a sly quid pro quo when director Philippe went to actress Novak about being a part of his upcoming deconstructive project on the finale of Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). She agreed, but only after an agreement was made where he would helm a project telling Novak’s story- something the actress had been searching to complete for years. Philippe, a filmmaker intensely interested in the minutia of film (see his Chain Reactions from last year or 78/52, a film stretched to full length dissecting a few seconds of transcendental filmmaking in Psycho), immediately took the mantle for Novak.

But far from a project-for-hire or perfunctory telling, Philippe’s enchantment with Novak is evident from the beginning. Featuring Novak’s own voiceover narration (and voice mails that are, to this day, still being sent to members of the production), Kim Novak’s Vertigo clearly exemplifies his love for Old Hollywood and Novak’s incandescent career. Treating her talking head interviews and some of the images with a hazy, gauzy ripple around the edge of the film’s frame gives the documentary a dazzling sense of carefully curated memory. And the fact that Novak herself is such a sharp, empathetic, and open memory bank (her recollection of Jimmy Stewart’s toes is equally fascinating and kinky in the best way) only heightens the intimacy of a documentary that gives just as much weight to her reuniting with the Vertigo dress as it does her early childhood memories.

If there’s not a lot of hard history in the film (murmurs after the film derided it for not detailing exactly when Novak got fed up and left Hollywood), it more than makes up for it with its sense of the soul that goes into acting, or ‘reacting’ as Novak calls it. I personally don’t want another through-line of Hollywood fame and cosmetic burn-out. This is more of an impressionistic reflection…. something made even more clear by the artwork of Novak that’s featured throughout and all the more fascinating for it. Kim Novak’s Vertigo is overwhelmingly sharp about the feelings Novak created for so many characters in her career. And capping it off with a complex reading of the duality and obsession inherent in HItchcock’s masterwork, that type of solipsism is rare in current documentary and we need more of it. So far, this is my favorite film of the festival.

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The prostitute with a heart of gold. The young man who gets in over his head and falls in love with the roleplaying of sexual connection. It’s an idea as old as the movies, and filmmaker Julian Acosta Vera’s Noches Soliatrias (aka Lonely Nights) rides it through some common territory before shifting it towards a complex finale that comments on the hefty class difference of its couple.

Young, introverted Andres (Alex Ortiz) is finishing up his final year of high school. Unlucky with the women of his class and under constant pressure from his parents to enter a good college and make lots of money like his brother, Andres finds himself one night on a street where Lorena (Aketzaly Verastegui) is lined up in shadowy tableaux selling her body. He can’t resist and they go to a hotel room where they make love.

It’s a relationship/transaction that happens many more times. Money is exchanged, but Lorena’s tough exterior is broken down a bit by the sweet Andres. Then her pimp (Alejandro Cuetara) enters the picture and things become threatening for Lorena’s lowering defenses.

Noches Solitarias doesn’t break the mold, but Vera’s film looks amazing. Filmed mostly in nocturnal hues of fluorescent light and interior hotel rooms with a steady hand that observes their developing relationship, it’s a believable transition between innocent and impure. Of course, genre has to kick in a bit towards the end, and the film goes in some trenchant directions that also feels plausible, especially in the final moments when a decision made by one of the two is something I haven’t seen in a film before.

Noches Solitarias spends a lot of time stressing the divergence gap of class. Andres is the have and Lorena is the have-little, a woman who becomes angry when challenged on the decisions that have brought her to this lifestyle. A happy ending is a longshot and filmmaker Vera lingers on a deep moment of guilt that seems to say both Andres and Lorena will be trapped much differently in the remorse of their own makings for a long time. It’s a finale that strengthens rather than deflates everything that’s come before.

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I’ll be honest up front. Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious isn’t the type of film I usually seek out. But the pre-festival buzz was so high, I couldn’t miss it. Needless to say, fans of the genre will not be disappointed.

Basically a rush of bone-crushing fight choreography and high-octane set pieces, The Furious starts at 7 and ends at 11 as an organization who kidnap children “somewhere in Southeast Asia” meet one angry father and an undercover operative looking for his wife. There’s very little character development- besides the fact that the mute father (Xie Miao) needs to avoid bumps to the head and then spends the remainder of the film taking every possible sledgehammer swipe to the noggin. However, The Furious is all about the adrenaline, and each sequence is filmed with a (thankfully) sensible attention to the logistics of bodies and weapons. It also makes some keen stylistic lip service to the likes of John Carpenter in a deserted police station and some wry visual cues to populist manga. All in all, when it’s released later in the year, The Furious will do well with midnight audiences.

The 2026 Dallas International Film Festival continues through Thursday April 30th. Tickets and information are available at https://diffdallas.org/diff