Indie Movies
Independent movie reviews from film festivals, theaterical releases, video-on-demand, home video and streaming.
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Alive Inside
If you listen to enough random music on the radio or the internet, you are likely to hear a song you haven’t heard in a long time. The opening strains or rousing chorus of a tune that moved you...
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Rich Hill
“We’re not trash. We’re good people.” These are some of the first words we hear in Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo’s Rich Hill. The film, a Grand Jury Prize winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, focuses...
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A Five Star Life
I don’t subscribe to the notion that a film must have a destination – that it must arrive at a conclusion – but I do believe that some form of progress is necessary. Leaving a film with its characters...
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Child of God
James Franco continues his efforts of adapting classic literature into films, first with William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and now Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God. This is not a surprising choice considering Franco has a PhD in English...
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Back Issues: The Hustler Magazine Story
First-time filmmaker Michael Lee Nirenberg interviews his father, Bill Nirenberg, in his new documentary, but fuzzy sentimentality and paternal adoration plays little to no part in their on-camera conversation. Michael’s father was, after all, a “pornographer”, as he so...
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A Master Builder
At the start of A Master Builder, successful architect Halvard Solness (Wallace Shawn) is on his death bed. He looks weak, until a conversation with fellow architect Knut (André Gregory) reveals his ruthless nature. Knut wants his son Ragnar...
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West End
The mob drama may be played out, but that doesn’t stop writer/director Joe Basile from taking a crack at the all too familiar genre. West End takes place in New Jersey, a fact the film repeatedly likes to mention...
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Premature
If comedic Hollywood has anything to say about it, sex, and its pursuit, is pretty much all the average teenager has going on in life. What’s unfortunate for all those producing films for the teen comedy genre is that vulgarity envelope...
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Cinemanovels
In the world of Cinemanovels, the name John Laurentian stands next to famous directors like Bergman and Antonioni. When the film opens the fictional Quebecois filmmaker is dead, and his estranged daughter Grace (Lauren Lee Smith) is handling his...
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Boyhood
With last year’s Before Midnight being clearly one of the best of 2013 (at least in our opinion), it would seem Richard Linklater, whose films can be somewhat hit or miss (Me and Orson Welles was a bit more...
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Forev
A lighthearted romantic comedy with few surprises, Forev is the sort of film that does little more than induce a smile. The film opens with Sophie (Noël Wells of recent SNL fame) drunkenly stumbling into her neighbor Pete’s (Matt Mider)...
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Whitey: United States of America Vs. James J. Bulger
The opening to Joe Berlinger’s latest documentary is the format’s biggest staple: the talking head. Stephen Rakes, a mom-and-pop liquor storeowner and one of James Bulger’s extortion victims, recalls the night Bulger instilled the fear of death into him....
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Borgman
The unpredictable mechanics of evil have rarely been as captivating as they are in Alex Van Warmerdam’s Borgman. Premiering last year at Cannes, our very own Dustin Jansick saw it during his coverage of the festival (read his initial...
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Bad Words
Perhaps in an effort to shake his typical “good guy” role, Jason Bateman plays a foul-mouthed asshole in his directorial debut Bad Words. Most comedies can get by with a weak storyline as long as there’s enough laugh-out-loud moments....
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Me and You
Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci hadn’t made a film in about a decade before his latest movie Me and You screened out of competition at 2012 Cannes Film Festival; however, the new film is far more contained than the sweeping...
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Willow Creek
Bobcat Goldthwait makes a disappointing turn toward the cliché in Willow Creek, a noticeable departure for the comedian/filmmaker. This time Goldthwait has gone from dark comedy to horror, or more specifically the found footage subgenre dominating the genre nowadays....
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The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
Documentarian Brian Knappenberger chronologizes the tragic story of Aaron Swartz, one of the Internet’s most important figures, who spent his life fighting to make information publicly accessible. Instead of using his prodigy computer programming talents for monetary gain, Swartz...
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Happy Christmas
No one makes indie improvisational comedies fixated on placid relationship observations better than Joe Swanberg. He spent his career producing loosely outlined scripts that trade complicated plots for light storytelling with naturalistic tendencies. And he has made a lot...
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Norte, the End of History
First thing’s first: Lav Diaz’s epic Norte, the End of History is 250 minutes in length, a relatively short running time for the Philippine director (2008’s Melancholia runs 450 minutes, while 2004’s Evolution of a Filipino Family is a...
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Some Velvet Morning
Considering Neil LaBute has a theatrical background as a former playwright, it’s no surprise that Some Velvet Morning feels like a filmed stage play. The production consists of a single location with just two cast members who do little more than...
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Mommy (Cannes Review)
When discussing a new Xavier Dolan, it’s his age and not his movie that takes center stage. After all, he’s only 25-years-old He started his film making career at the same time most...
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The Dance of Reality
It’s hard to believe Alejandro Jodorowsky hasn’t released a film in almost 25 years. The cult director, whose surreal hit El Topo made him the father of midnight movies, is only increasing in popularity over the years. Now, with...
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Whiplash (Cannes Review)
Like the two previous Sundance hits, Whiplash goes through familiar emotional motions which prevent it from being the kind of sensation the Sundance buzz might make you think it is. But, there are two important ways it distances itself...
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The Toy Soldiers
Erik Peter Carlson’s début feature Transatlantic Coffee was a visually stimulating observation of one man’s story of isolation from society and his overwhelming desire to be loved. With The Toy Soldiers Erik Peter Carlson has once again conceived an...
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In Your Eyes
I’m not going to lie, the primary reason In Your Eyes caught my attention is that Joss Whedon wrote and produced the film. And I’m guessing I’m not alone. Whedon began earning fans many years ago with his high-concept...
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Ida
Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is an 18 year old orphan about to become a nun in 1960s Poland. At the insistence of her superior, Anna visits her only known family before taking her vows. Her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a...
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Gloria
It’s been over a year since Sebastian Lelio’s Gloria wowed festival goers at the 2013 Berlinale, where it picked up multiple awards and turned the switch on the electric current that’s been heating art-house circles ever since. Having done...
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U Want Me 2 Kill Him?
If you were asked to do something unthinkable and told that one act would benefit a great number of people, would you do it? If it was for the “greater good” would that make the act somewhat justifiable? That well describes...
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The Sacrament
I’m a horror aficionado. I have watched everything from Melie’s Le Manoir du Diable, Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and other early film depictions of the spectacular and creepy, to today’s special effects riddled gross-out filled shock-fests. My final thesis in...
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Blue Ruin
Blue Ruin‘s originality doesn’t lie within the story, revenge thrillers are a dime a dozen, it’s the moody presentation and powerful lead performance that sets it apart. This dark indie thriller pulls off the difficult combination of bone-chilling terror...