Indie Movies
Independent movie reviews from film festivals, theaterical releases, video-on-demand, home video and streaming.
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Sister
The Swiss entry into this year's Foreign Language Film race at the Academy Awards, Sister could work almost as a companion piece to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's masterful The Kid With A Bike. This one also centers itself on...
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How to Survive a Plague
Léa Pool’s documentary Pink Ribbons Inc. points out early on that the breast cancer awareness movement originally had an activist background. One of the documentary’s talking heads points out that before women were running for a cure they were...
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Ruby Sparks
From the directors of Little Miss Sunshine comes Ruby Sparks, a whimsical film about a struggling writer who falls in love with a character he makes up. The film was written by Zoe Kazan who plays the lead role...
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Dead Dad
Ken J. Adachi’s indie drama Dead Dad reiterates that it is not the destination that matters most but the journey. The destination in this case was trying to find the best place to spread their father’s ashes but how...
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Room 237
It has been over 30 years since Stanley Kubrick blessed cinema with his Stephen King adaptation of The Shining but many people are still debating what the hidden meanings behind the film are. That is where the documentary Room...
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Keep The Lights On
Ira Sachs’ Keep The Lights On is a fictional drama that has a deeply personal background to it. Sachs was in a long-term relationship with Bill Clegg, a literary agent who had a crippling drug addiction. Clegg wrote about...
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Wednesday’s Child
“Meet nine-year-old Kelly Marble. She never really meant to kill her parents.” Rocco Cataldo’s short, Wednesday’s Child is a quirky yet dark examination into the child psyche, shrouded in mystery from the beginning right through to the end of...
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Safety Not Guaranteed
Safety Not Guaranteed thankfully takes its science fiction framework and keeps it in the background, instead putting the focus on its characters and how they grow over the film’s short running time. For the most part the movie gets...
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Sound of My Voice
Sound of My Voice an intelligent slow burning indie drama that somehow fell off many people’s radar despite a relatively warm reception at Sundance. The logical answer would be that it may have been slightly overshadowed by lead Brit...
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Sleepwalk with Me
Sleepwalk With Me is an indie comedy that is based on writer-director Mike Birbiglia’s one-man standup show. Similarities can be instantly drawn to Woody Allen (in his Annie Hall days) as Birbiglia speaks to the camera about his failing...
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In Montauk
Despite the relatively short runtime of just over an hour, In Montauk is able to capture complex relationship problems that life sometimes hands us. Written and directed by Kim Cummings is an indie drama that explores difficult situations that...
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Comes a Bright Day
British filmmaker Simon Aboud makes his full length debut as a director and writer of the indie film Comes a Bright Day. The film is a bizarre blend of genres when a romantic love story unfolds during a life...
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Francine
With Academy Award winning Melissa Leo as the lead, Francine is a day in the life of a middle-aged woman who is struggling to make the adjustment from a long prison sentence to the freedoms of normal society. A...
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You Are Here
You Are Here opens with a professor (R.D. Reid) lecturing to an unseen audience while footage of waves rolling in play behind him. He tells the audience to stare at the waves and think for a minute before asking them...
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Lola Versus
Daryl Wein’s indie romantic comedy Lola Versus is just as much about finding love in yourself as it is finding love in others. The film attempts to give a unique perspective on the genre by telling it from an...
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V/H/S
V/H/S feels like a natural conclusion to the found footage subgenre that’s become increasingly popular since Paranormal Activity’s success. While Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project focused on a sense of realism to draw people in, V/H/S is...
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Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Arguably one of China’s most famous artists of today is Ai Weiwei, who is not only known for his craft of being an artist but also a political activist against the Chinese government. Alison Klayman’s documentary sets out to...
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Compliance
Based off true life events is Craig Zobel’s Compliance, a controversial yet captivating look at how people fail to know their own basic rights and how gullible people are while in the presence of authority. Partly shot in docudrama...
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Neighboring Sounds
The neighborhood watch has probably never felt as unsafe as it does in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds. The Brazilian drama, which snatched up a FIPRESCI prize at Rotterdam, is a well-done but a flawed debut feature. Filho shows...
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Detention
Joseph Kahn, who is well-known as the director of Torque, comes back to filmmaking after seven years with Detention. If anything, Detention could be seen as a second chance for Kahn to prove himself as a capable director after...
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The Incident
After finally seeing the film recently, I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t stick to my itinerary. That’s not to saying the film isn’t worth watching, I’m recommending the film for sure, but it isn’t a must see by...
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Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild is a poetic fairy tale told through the point of view of a child’s imagination who has unflinching determination to find her place in the world. The film was very well received at it’s...
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The Ambassador
Before Sacha Baron Cohen got into character for his recent comedy, The Dictator, comes an investigative journalism documentary about a man who becomes an ambassador to uncover the blood diamond trade in Africa. Nominated for Grand Jury Prize at...
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Lovely Molly
The horror genre ends up rearing its ugly head in Eduardo Sanchez’s Lovely Molly. Starting out as a psychological thriller heavily inspired by Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, its subject matter (including child abuse and drug addiction) makes for an unsettling...
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Hunger
Steve McQueen’s Hunger is based on real events on the huge battle between the Irish Republican Army and the British Government which ultimately led to a hunger strike in 1981. Michael Fassbender’s performance is easily his best to date...
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Brake
The confinement genre is on an upward trend as of late and you can add another to the list, Brake. The title of the film would have been better suited named Trunk, as the entire film takes place in...
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The Queen of Versailles
When Lauren Greenfield set out to film the Siegel family for The Queen of Versailles, she probably had a different film in mind. Jackie Siegel is the 43 year old mother of 7 (with one “inherited” as she puts...
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ATM
If I’m not watching a movie about stoners, hippies and/or it’s not directed by Michael bay, I don’t expect characters in a movie to be dumb. I absolutely hate it when characters that are seemingly bright and logical do...
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Ballplayer: Pelotero
As someone who has played some variation of baseball since the age of 6, and as someone who has compiled a single home run in their 20 year long career, I feel uniquely qualified to handle a review of...
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The Do-Deca-Pentathlon
The Duplass brothers have made quite an impact on indie cinema over the last seven years. As their budgets have increased, so have their fans. Their recent explosion in popularity with studios hindered them from taking this 4 year...