Turkey Bowl

Every year, old college friends gather for a touch-football game dubbed the Turkey Bowl. (The poultrycentric name is left unexplained.) Over the course of one of the gang's gridiron get-together-cum-group-therapy-sessions, a long history of personal grudges, missed romantic connections and repressed rage is rehashed; when two outsider alpha males (Villarreal and Buchanan) join the party, things get even more toxic. A favorite at this year's SXSW, Kyle Smith's real-time look at curdled relationships is a modest take on indie psychodramatics---and little else. He may have a knack for coordinating loose ensemble work, but claims that Smith is a poor man's Robert Altman are as unfair to the filmmaker as they are delusional.