10 Hotly Anticipated SXSW Movies You Need To See In 2014

4. Joe

Pineapple Express director David Gordon Green's last trip to SXSW, 2013's Prince Avalanche, featured a mustachioed Paul Rudd and rustically beautiful Texas landscapes, and this year we get a grizzled, grey-bearded Nicholas Cage in the same sort of Texan outback. Joe features an "atypically controlled" Cage as the titular ex-con who discovers within himself a fierce protector upon meeting a hard-luck 15-year-old in need of saving from an alcoholic and abusive father. The film is apparently good and gritty, with Cage delivering one of his best performances in years and Tye Sheridan - who last impressed audiences in Jeff Nichols' Mud - keeps his streak of solid choices alive. Green, known in most mainstream circles as the director of Danny McBride ridiculousness (Your Highness, Eastbound & Down), has been as of late flexing those rural, indie, southern muscles of his early successes, such as George Washington (selected by Roger Ebert as one of the best 10 films of 2000) and All The Real Girls (which won the Special Jury Prize at 2003's Sundance Film Festival.) Joe hits theatres in the USA April 11 and in the UK July 25.