The 17th annual RiverRun International Film Festival ends today, but before it draws to a close, I caught two final films on Saturday before prepping to make the trip back to Charlotte. Yesterday began, however, with a hot beverage and conversation.

To be more specific, Duane Byrge, senior film critic for The Hollywood Reporter, and I led a Coffee Talk for a handful of students at Wake Forest University. As we discussed film criticism, viable career paths and filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, I appreciated how invigorating it was to talk to kids whose knowledge of cinema extends far beyond Adam Sandler comedies and Transformers sequels. It was a nice reminder that people of all ages still appreciate movies as an art form unto itself and not just a way to pass a Saturday night.

• One of the book covers seen in Sex(Ed): The Movie

SEX(ED): THE MOVIE — “What if I want to have sex before I’m married?” asks the young high school boy. Replies the teacher, “Then you better be prepared to die!” And thus goes the helpful advice seen in one of the vintage clips shown in Sex(Ed): The Movie, a humorous if truncated look at the manner in which sex education has been taught in the United States over the past century. As she revealed in a post-screening Q&A session, writer-director-producer Brenda Goodman spent eight years on this project, culling snippets from hundreds of sex-ed films from 1916 through the present day and landing interviews with various talking heads ready to discuss the taboo topic at hand. What emerges is hardly revelatory — this is a puritanical nation that has always had trouble engaging in worthy conversations when it comes to the birds and bees — but thanks to well-selected clips and some insights from the engaging participants, the film is well worth the time. Goodman employs the clips not only to illustrate the evolution (or lack thereof) of cinematic representations of sexual behavior but also to show how they fit into larger national discussions involving reproductive rights, homosexuality, the women’s movement, birth control and more. The movie could stand being longer — at 77 minutes, there’s simply too much material to adequately cover — but the vintage clips are fascinating to watch, especially the early ones that lay the blame for venereal diseases entirely on women. More than one interviewee also points outs how the sex-ed films aimed at males tended on balance to be more jovial, often with an air of “boys will be boys” insouciance, while the ones geared toward females tended to be more shrill as well as less informative. One would think that the passage of time into more progressive eras would help, but nope: Between President Clinton’s cowardly and hypocritical dismissal of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for speaking positively and honestly about masturbation to the money- and time-wasting abstinence programs in high schools, the film illustrates that the U.S. remains as frigid as ever.

• Sundance Selects
• David Thorpe and Dan Savage in Do I Sound Gay?

DO I SOUND GAY? — David Thorpe is over 40 and under the impression that his voice is one of the reasons he’s having trouble finding true love. Nursing his wounds from a relationship that just ended, Thorpe fears that his elevated, effeminate manner of speaking will prevent him from landing any suitable boyfriends in the future. Hence we have Do I Sound Gay?, Thorpe’s entertaining documentary in which he interviews various people (many famous, some not) about the subject while also seeing vocal coaches to assist him in lowering his own speech. A scattershot feature that nevertheless remains consistently watchable, this succeeds less when it focuses on Thorpe’s attempts to deepen his own voice — despite what he thinks, he does not sound less gay by the end of the film — and more when it offers insights from Thorpe’s family members as well as numerous celebrities. Nationally syndicated columnist Dan Savage (read him here in CL!) speaks briefly about how both misogyny and internalized homophobia play large roles in why homosexuals don’t like other gay men who sound feminine (one of the important discussions sadly underserved by the film), while author David Sedaris admits that he takes it as a compliment whenever someone in person tells him he doesn’t sound gay. Fashion designer and Project Runway co-host Tim Gunn and Star Trek actor and Internet icon George Takei also contribute soundbites, mostly about the importance of owning one’s homosexuality, and there’s a touching look at Zach King, the headstrong Ohio teenager who in 2011 was savagely beaten by a bigoted classmate (the thrashing was caught on video) just because he was different. The film also recalls the great documentary The Celluloid Closet in one segment as it traces the character of the homosexual male through film history, beginning as a know-it-all sissy before being reinvented as a hissing, debonair villain (the Disney animated features are especially fond of the latter interpretation, as repped by Scar in The Lion King, Professor Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective, and many more). And because Thorpe originally hails from the Carolinas (Columbus, SC, to be exact), there’s also footage of two of the most loathsome figures to ever emerge from these states, degenerate right-wing politicians (and raging homophobes) Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. The audience boos and hisses that greeted their appearances proved to be music to the ears.

The 17th annual RiverRun International Film Festival is sprinting toward the finish line and, for the fifth year in a row, I'm in Winston-Salem to cover its final few days.

• A24
• Michael Fassbender (standing) and Kodi Smit-McPhee in Slow West

The fest began Thursday, April 16, with a pair of evening screenings and will conclude Sunday, April 26, with an awards ceremony and one final nighttime showing. Already, there have been approximately 120 screenings — mostly new films but also a few classics (e.g. Shaft, The Wild Bunch) — as well as filmmaker panels, cocktail receptions, and a joint Q&A session with Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) and Robert Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle). (On a side note, I was told by a staffer that Townsend has shown himself to be quite the movie aficionado, remaining for the length of the festival and catching as many screenings as humanly possible.) Still to come is a Q&A session with Emmy Award-winning writer-director-producer Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders), a chat with Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (co-directors and producers of the Oscar-nominated documentary Jesus Camp), and over 50 more screenings.

And now, on with the reviewed shows.