Indie Movies
Independent movie reviews from film festivals, theaterical releases, video-on-demand, home video and streaming.
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Life Itself
I will never forget the day Roger Ebert passed away. As a film critic, I was left with a feeling of dreadful hopelessness as one of the most prominent film critics of all time was no longer with us....
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Hateship Loveship
2013 was the year for Saturday Night Live alums to break out of their comedic roles to star in smaller indie dramas. First there was Will Forte who set aside his MacGruber impersonations for a more serious father and...
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Oculus
Don't be fooled by Paranormal Activity and Insidious getting mentioned in the marketing for Oculus. While those films (or, more specifically, their franchises) are about big jolts and loud noises, Oculus surprisingly goes for a more subdued and unsettling...
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Mistaken for Strangers
Considering Mistaken for Strangers centers around the well-known indie rock band The National (the title of the documentary comes from one of their songs), it would be safe to assume that fans of the band will get the most...
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Hide Your Smiling Faces
The title of the film serves as a grand forewarning for what unfolds in this atmospheric indie drama about adolescent siblings questioning their own mortality as they deal with tragedy. Daniel Patrick Carbone’s coming-of-age film features a highly allusive...
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Dom Hemingway
No one likes a comedy that isn’t funny. There is some unspoken law, an unwritten edict, that it is better to make a terrible drama than it is to make a terrible comedy. In the former, you can appreciate...
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Enemy
Denis Villeneuve has been keeping himself very busy. At the Toronto International Film Festival last year, it wasn’t enough that he had the tightly wound Prisoners making its world premiere, but he managed to have another film finished in...
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Breathe In
Breathe In, Drake Doremus’s second indie romance since Like Crazy (2011), follows the story of disaffected high school music teacher and part-time concert cellist Keith Reynolds (Guy Pearce) and his family. Keith finds himself increasingly attracted to the talented...
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Finding Vivian Maier
In 2007, John Maloof bought a box of old negatives at an auction while researching for a book. When the photos turned out to be irrelevant to his research, he put the box of negatives away for several years...
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It Felt Like Love
It Felt Like Love is an indie coming-of-age story about a young girl’s sexual exploration from first-time filmmaker and writer Eliza Hittman. With the help of an incredibly talented young cast, Hittman delivers a brutally honest film that illustrates...
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In Fear
The inevitable problem that comes with a great set-up is that, at some point, questions have to be answered. Jeremy Lovering's In Fear is, as the title suggests, focused on what people do when they're overcome with fear. Lovering...
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24 Exposures
Unlike his mainstream-ish crossover Drinking Buddies, Joe Swanberg returns to his less refined style in 24 Exposures, a film that is reminiscent of his earlier work by featuring girls in various stages of undress, non-professional actors, low-budget production values,...
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Grand Piano
Every once in a while, we all see one of those special films – something that pushes the boundaries, defies expectations, breaks down the walls and makes us reconsider what is possible in the world of film making. Eugino...
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Almost Human
Writer/director Joe Begos has fashioned Almost Human, his debut feature, as a love letter to 80s horror/sci-fi schlock. The film opens with Seth (Graham Skipper) arriving at his friend Mark’s (Josh Ethier) house in a frenzy. Seth tells Mark...
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Awful Nice
If you grew up with a sibling close in age as you there is a good chance you can attest that sibling rivalry is very much a real thing. This competitiveness between family members has been depicted a lot...
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Sick Birds Die Easy
If you spent the better part of the 00s listening the emo/indie bands on the Saddle Creek record label (Bright Eyes, The Faint, Cursive, Maria Taylor) like I have, there is a good chance you have seen the work...
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My Brother the Devil
My Brother the Devil, director Sally El Hosaini’s first feature length film, takes us deep into the heart of London’s housing projects. We follow the story of two brothers, Rashid and Mo (played by James Floyd and Fady Elsayed,...
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The Pretty One
The quirky indie comedy, what was once a unique and unfiltered genre, has started to grasp onto the same devices, making for predictable whimsy. The Pretty One, the first full length feature from AFI grad Jenée LeMarque from her...
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Jeune & Jolie
Following the well-received In The House, François Ozon returns with yet another voyeuristic character study with Jeune & Jolie (French translation: Young and Beautiful). Over the course of four weather seasons, the film follows a sexually driven adolescent striving...
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Cold Comes the Night
Cold Comes the Night is the sophomore effort from indie director Tze Chun, who teams up with Nick Simon and Osgood Perkins on a screenplay about a single mother who is forced into criminal activities for the well being...
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12 O’Clock Boys
Who would have thought a documentary about some urban dirt bike riders in Baltimore could be so fascinating? Apparently Lofty Nathan did, and so will you after watching his directorial debut, 12 O’Clock Boys. This indie documentary follows a...
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The Final Member
With so many documentaries relying on the same old bag of tricks to tell their stories (talking heads, animations or re-enactments or cutesy ways of presenting statistics just to name a few of the more prevalent ones), sometimes the...
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Different Drum
In Kevin Chenault’s Different Drum (named after the Stone Poneys song), we follow two young ex-lovers as they take a road trip from South Dakota to Indiana, exploring and sampling the local flavor of 9 Midwest cities, all while learning...
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Trampoline
It is hard not to have absolute admiration for independent filmmakers for their courage, style, and ability to look beyond their production obstacles and see the bigger picture in their work. The fact that Tom Ryan’s Irish indie film...
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Interior. Leather Bar.
James Franco has been on an experimental film kick as of late with his rendition of the classic 1930 Faulkner novel As I Lay Dying and his upcoming project Child of God (another novel adaptation), so it really comes...
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Muscle Shoals
Since its birth, rock music has thrived on rumour and myth. For example, you don’t have to search too long before finding urban legends about various musicians who supposedly sold their soul to Satan in return for musical bounty....
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The Spectacular Now
Considering James Ponsoldt’s first two films (Off the Black, Smashed) deal with alcoholism, it comes as no surprise that the subject is also baked into his third film, The Spectacular Now. This time around the theme is buried underneath...
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Qwerty
Bill Sebastian’s Qwerty is a modest indie romantic comedy that does not attempt to be more than what it is—a cheerful love story about two social outcasts who were destined to be together. Although the results of the film...
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Everyday
Michael Winterbottom is a director who’s not afraid to fully commit himself to an idea that he likes. Whether he’s teaming up with actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for three diverse but equally funny films (24 Hour Party...
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The Selfish Giant
After making the incredibly devastating pseudo-documentary The Arbor, Clio Barnard has returned with her own original story for The Selfish Giant. Loosely inspired by Oscar Wilde’s short story of the same name, it takes place in the same area...