For a film loaded with many laughs, it’s strange that Joshy begins on quite the morbid note. Joshy (Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch) arrives home one day to find his fiancé (Alison Brie) lifeless on the floor, dead from an apparent suicide. But the film doesn’t dwell on her death for very long, instead jumping ahead four months when Joshy’s small crew of friends (Nick Kroll, Adam Pally, Alex Ross Perry, and Brett Gelman) elect to celebrate his bachelor party, just as they had intended before the incident occurred. When the boys arrive at their secluded cabin for the party, they discover Joshy saying goodbye to a girl he picked up from the local bar—a rather uncharacteristic move and one that isn’t ever addressed again. Other than this small inexplicable moment, the rest of the film plays out as a hysterical weekend bender of heavy drinking, drug consumption, and partying with hookers. In theory it’s a classic recipe for a “what could possibly go wrong?” scenario, but, oddly enough, the answer in Joshy is nothing.

Credit the amazing cast for making Joshy work as well as it does. Without them, it’s just another hangout movie with a paper-thin plot and very little character development. Granted, simply putting these hilarious actors together in a room would make for entertainment. Each character’s personality puzzle-pieces into the group as a whole. Kroll is the partier. Pally is the sensitive married guy. Perry is the geek. Gelman is the wildcard. And then there’s Middleditch, who’s stuck playing the uninteresting title character—ironically, the least developed of the bunch. There’s also a random appearance by Joe Swanberg (and his real family), who seem only to show up to get a few laughs.

Luckily, there’s enough humor found in sophomore director Jeff Baena’s (Life After Beth) film that it’s easy to forgive some of the off moments. The highlight of Joshy is watching Perry finally getting his wish to play a complicated board game with the group. That’s right, this ensemble even finds a way to make the struggle to play a board game amusing to watch.

Rating:
7/10

Go through the massive list of stars that appear in Joe Swanberg’s Digging for Fire and it might be easy to claim that one of the most prolific names in modern indie has “gone mainstream.” But actually watch Digging for Fire (or Happy Christmas or Drinking Buddies), and it’s clear that the mainstream has actually come knocking on Swanberg’s door. This is the same low-key, character-based storytelling Swanberg has been honing for years, only now with a plethora of talent and established names thrown into the mix. And, if anything, Digging for Fire shows Swanberg as a filmmaker in total control, using his ensemble and skills at creating a casual, inviting tone to make a subtle and fascinating exploration of commitment, aging and marriage.

Taking place in Los Angeles, the film opens with married couple Lee (Rosemarie Dewitt) and Tim (Jake Johnson, who co-wrote with Swanberg) taking their son Jude (Swanberg’s own son, stealing every scene he’s in) to house-sit for one of Lee’s wealthy clients. While Lee goes off working as a yoga instructor, Tim—a public school teacher—stays at home during the summer break. Soon after arriving, Tim starts poking around the house and discovers a bone and an old gun buried in a yard behind the house. Tim wants to keep digging, but Lee doesn’t want him messing up her client’s property, and a host of other small disagreements between the two (including Tim’s refusal to put Jude in a private school) leads to Lee taking Jude to spend the weekend with her parents (Sam Elliott and Judith Light).

Tim takes the opportunity to invite some of his old buddies over (Sam Rockwell, Chris Messina, Mike Birbiglia and Kent Osborne, to name a few), and before long he’s convincing all of them to help dig up whatever else might be hiding underneath the property. At this point the film forks off into two narrative strands, one profiling Tim’s weekend with his friends, and the other following Lee trying to have a girl’s night out with her sister (Melanie Lynskey). Both Lee and Tim wind up finding themselves conflicted when they each encounter an opportunity to cheat; Lee meets a British restaurant owner (Orlando Bloom), and Tim makes nice with the young, carefree Max (Brie Larson).

Anyone familiar with Swanberg’s previous work won’t be surprised to learn the film’s central mystery is a nonstarter. It’s more of an excuse for getting characters together to casually chat about the themes Swanberg and Johnson really want to explore. “When did you feel like you got back to yourself?” Lee asks her mom at one point, wondering if marriage and motherhood have removed her ability to live her own life, and Tim admits to Max that he feels like he’s not maturing, he’s just getting older. Their brief exchanges with friends, family and strangers around them reveal that both Lee and Max have hesitations about staying in for the long haul of their marriage, with the hypothetical idea of something “better” existing out there tempting them into seeking individuality over partnership.

What makes Digging for Fire such an enjoyable yet fleeting experience is how Swanberg lets these ideas flow organically into the film through his terrific cast and tight editing. Narrative doesn’t mean much here, as it’s more about how Lee and Tim’s actions reflect their concerns. Dewitt and Johnson anchor the film nicely, and there isn’t a single weak spot in a cast that’s as sprawling as LA itself. Shooting on 35mm with cinematographer Ben Richardson (who also shot Drinking Buddies and, most famously, Beasts of the Southern Wild), the film’s keen eye for composition helps give it a cinematic feel that comes across as a surprise given its dialogue-heavy approach. Swanberg has made films for over a decade now, and at a pretty quick pace too (remember when he directed six films in 2011?), but in some ways Digging for Fire feels like the start of a newer, more refined era for him. It’s exciting to watch Swanberg in complete domination of his craft, but it’ll be more exciting to see what he does next.

Now in its seventh year, BAMcinemaFest is once again kicking off the summer season with a wide variety of independent cinema from this year. While film fests happen throughout the year, there seems to be a flood of festivals in the winter/spring (Sundance, Berlin, SXSW, Cannes) and the fall (TIFF, Telluride, Venice, NYFF), leaving the summer season wide open for the most part. That’s what’s so nice about BAM; it acts as a nice bridge between the two major festival seasons, providing a nice selection of this year’s biggest highlights in independent cinema so far.

This year, the festival has gotten a hold of some big titles that we’ve all been eagerly anticipating since their premieres earlier this year. Opening the fest is James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour, with Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth getting a Centerpiece slot and Sean Baker’s Tangerine closing the fest (keep reading to see our thoughts on two of these titles). But that’s only a small portion of the 35 films playing at BAM from this week until the end of June, and some of these films might be your only shot at catching them in theaters (but let’s hope they all get distribution of some sort!). The same goes for some of their excellent retrospective programming, which includes an outdoor screening of Richard Linklater’s Slacker and a 20th anniversary screening of Larry Clark’s Kids.

While we weren’t able to catch everything playing at BAMfest this year (we’ll see you soon enough, Queen of Earth and Krisha), we did get a chance to check out more than a few films that’ll be playing over the next two weeks. Read on to see our thoughts on what’s playing, and be sure to check out the full line-up and buy tickets over at the BAMcinemaFest website.

Call Me Lucky

For the first half of Call Me Lucky, Bobcat Goldthwait’s tribute to Boston comedy legend Barry Crimmins, it feels like a boilerplate documentary portrait. Complimented by talking head interviews with David Cross, Marc Maron, Steven Wright and Goldthwait himself, the documentary’s beginning details Crimmins’ roots as a rare liberal in his conservative upstate New York town to his status among the elite Boston comics and founder of the Stitches comedy club. Catalogued clips from Crimmins’ past shows a man whose timelessly hysterical satirical stand-up was far ahead of its time. Gradually, Call Me Lucky reveals its intentions to be significantly more altruistic, as it delves into a darker aspect to Barry Crimmins’ story. By the end, the film becomes a stunning look at a survivor’s story, and how a man changed his life to settle the demons of his past. This surprisingly emotional doc is not one to overlook. [Zach]

The End of the Tour

When iconic American author David Foster Wallace committed suicide in 2008, writer David Lipsky returned to the tape recorded interviews he conducted with Wallace for a planned 1996 Rolling Stone profile. Over the course of a few days at the end of Wallace’s book tour for Infinite Jest, the writers spent many long hours together in the snowy Midwest having a conversation that Lipsky would later describe as “the best one I ever had.” Indeed, their talks, as portrayed in The End of the Tour by Jesse Eisenberg (Lipsky) and Jason Segel (Wallace) are funny, poignant, and considered. Adapted from Lipsky’s 2010 book Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, The End of the Tour continues writer/director James Ponsoldt’s (Smashed, The Spectacular Now) streak of empathetic, humanist stories that explore people struggling to cope with internal pains. This new film is like the best, most analytical late night sleepover talk. The rich, dialog-heavy The End of the Tour is completely engrossing, occasionally profound, and deeply moving. [Zach]

The Invitation

As far as horror films go, Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation is one of the best slow burns I’ve seen in years. Will (Logan Marshall-Green), still grieving after a tragic accident that destroyed his marriage 2 years ago, gets an invite out of nowhere from his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) to join her and their old friends for a dinner party. Will hasn’t seen Eden or his friends since his marriage fell apart, but he goes with his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi), hoping to reconnect and move on from the past.

From the moment Will arrives, things seem off to him, and as the night goes on he suspects that Eden and her new boyfriend David (Michiel Huisman) have something sinister in mind for him and the other guests. Kusama thankfully doesn’t make the central mystery about whether or not Will’s suspicions are valid (this is, after all, a horror movie). This is more about how and when things will go terribly wrong, and Kusama (along with cinematographer Bobby Shore) masterfully dangles the other shoe over viewers’ heads as they wait for it to drop. Every scene leading up to the exhilarating final act—which had me so involved I started yelling at the screen any time I disagreed with a character’s actions—is meticulously composed to increase the paranoia and dread exponentially with each passing moment. And once things finally take a turn for the worse, Kusama and Shore brilliantly betray their own form from the first hour, relying on frantic, handheld camera work and jagged cuts to amplify the tension. Their method works extremely well, and turns The Invitation into one of those rare delights where the payoff works just as well as the buildup. [C.J.]

Jason and Shirley

This low-budget biographical drama focuses on the day in 1966 when Oscar-winning filmmaker Shirley Clarke invited black gay hustler and drug addict Jason Holiday into her room at the Chelsea Hotel. She filmed Holiday for several consecutive hours as he told the story of his life, and the result was Clarke’s daring documentary Portrait of Jason, which was both hailed for its uncompromising look at many of the period’s most controversial social issues, and criticized for its exploitative nature. Jason and Shirley is a recreation of this day, and it consists primarily of intensely personal interview segments between actors Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters, who play the documentary filmmaker and her subject. The film’s brief 77 minute runtime is also intercut with short skit-like portions alternating between surreal depictions of Holiday’s fragile, drug-induced mental state and interactions with his friends of the time, including a heroin dealer and a fellow male prostitute. The intimate exchanges between Schulman and Waters come across as surprisingly genuine, which can be a difficult feat for biographical films. This one manages to transport its viewers into the past, and into the minds of its characters, rather smoothly, even though the more experimental aspects of the film, such as the insert skits, don’t work quite as well. In the end, Jason and Shirley is certainly worth spending just over an hour with; it’s the graphic nature of the content, rather than the quality of the filmmaking, that may frighten off some viewers. [Eli]

Nasty Baby

Nasty Baby is a bait-and-switch kind of movie, one that offers up a perfectly adequate story, only to pull the rug out from underneath audiences at some point in the third act with a dark tonal shift. Starring writer/director Sebastián Silva as a gay Brooklyn-based multimedia artist working on an exhibit of adults as babies, Silva’s Freddy gets extremely excited about the idea of becoming a father by artificially inseminating his friend Polly (Kristen Wiig); however, when Freddy’s sperm won’t take, he and Polly attempt to convince Freddy’s boyfriend Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) to become the donor. Freddy finds himself caught between Polly’s anxieties about her ticking internal clock, and Mo’s hesitation to launch himself into fatherhood. As it develops and introduces outside unsettling elements, Nasty Baby subtly builds the tension in its subplot until a climactic moment. Silva’s film serves as an intimate portrait of a group of characters that grow into family unit just in time to face an unthinkable challenge. [Zach]

Pervert Park

“Because of its subject matter, Pervert Park is a challenging watch, but one very much worth the effort. Over the course of the film’s lean 77-minute run time, the filmmakers find success in presenting their subjects as honestly as possible. They don’t ask for sympathy, but they do ask for consideration, and they earn it.” Read our full-length review of Pervert Park from Hot Docs earlier this year.

The Russian Woodpecker

If The Russian Woodpecker doesn’t turn out to be one of the most talked about documentaries of 2015, it will be a shame. Fortunately, the fact that it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at this year’s Sundance Film Festival will likely help spread the word about this courageous and well-meaning work of nonfiction. The focus of the film is a man by the name of Fedor Alexandrovich who uncovers a terrifying theory regarding the potential true cause of Ukraine’s 1986 Chernobyl disaster. However, this is less a film about conspiracies, and more about how the notion of “conspiracies” can impact a person’s relationship with their friends, their family, their country and even themselves. Throughout the duration of its concise runtime, The Russian Woodpecker shifts from being a detailed history lesson to a political mystery to a character study of a man, his paranoia and his national pride. Crisp cinematography and sharp editing aside, this film is essential viewing for anyone interested in international politics or, as Alexandrovich himself would describe it, the ever-present ghost of the Soviet Union. [Eli]

Stinking Heaven

Taking place in 1990 and shot on Betacam video, Nathan Silver’s experimental Stinking Heaven feels like an ideal guide for showing off how improvisation can help and hurt a film. Silver’s film takes place at a New Jersey home, where married couple Jim (Keith Poulson) and Lucy (Deragh Campbell) host a group of people who, like them, are trying to overcome their battle with addiction. From the outset, the living situation is a fragile one, and with the arrival of a new member named Ann (Hannah Gross), the group dynamic turns into a toxic one.

Silver actually had his cast live together on set during the entire length of shooting, and let everything play out through improvisation. When this method works, Silver and his ensemble produce some remarkable results, giving the film a visceral energy that couldn’t be created through more conventional means. But for every sublime moment, there’s another that feels like watching an awkward actor’s workshop. It’s hard to shake the feeling that a lot of Stinking Heaven is a work in progress, as if we’re getting a glimpse into the cast beginning to explore their own characters. It’s an interesting combination of intensity (some scenes here can give Heaven Knows What a run for its money) and uncomfortable histrionics, one that works in fleeting glimpses, but it’s enough to see that Silver is working towards something special. [C.J.]

Tangerine

Filmmaker Sean Baker’s third feature Tangerine is a hilarious, raw glimpse into the lives of characters rarely depicted with a comparable level of complexity. This chaotic, colorful, vulgar adventure through the grimy streets of Hollywood follows two transgender prostitutes, Alexandra and Sin-dee (Mya Taylor and Kiki Rodriguez, respectively), as they spend their Christmas Eve tracking down Sin-dee’s cheating boyfriend and pimp, Chester (James Ransone). It’s the day after Sin-dee’s been released from jail, and as soon as Alexandra lets Chester’s infidelity slip while the two eat donuts, Sin-dee is out the door pounding the pavement in search of answers. Baker swiftly cuts from scene to scene keeping the pace of his film at a dizzying high. It’s a ridiculous amount of trashy, lurid fun to spend time in the company of these precisely drawn characters. Their sharp quips and flair for melodrama make Tangerine consistently entertaining. [Zach]

Uncle Kent 2

Remember Uncle Kent? No? That’s understandable, considering it was one of six films Joe Swanberg made back in 2011. The film was a funny, melancholy look at its title character (writer/animator Kent Osborne, playing himself) as he spends an awkward weekend with a woman he met on Chatroulette. Now, over 4 years later, Osborne wants to make a sequel, and in a meta opening sequence—directed by Swanberg, with directing duties for the rest of the film handled by Todd Rohal—Swanberg rejects Osborne’s pitch because he hates sequels. Swanberg does allow him to find someone else to make the sequel though, and in a matter of minutes the aspect ratio changes (from full-screen to widescreen) and Osborne starts jiggling his man boobs over the credits.

If you’re like me and find the idea of making a sequel to a barely seen micro-budget indie funny (a decision made even funnier by its recklessness, considering it guarantees almost no one will want to release it), Uncle Kent 2 is the film for you. The fact that this sequel owes little to the original means that Rohal and Osborne (who wrote the film) have carte blanche, and they make the most of it. Uncle Kent 2 continually makes one surreal and hilarious turn after another, starting with a weird visit to the doctor (Steve Little, who seems incapable of being unfunny) before involving Ray Kurzweil, Comic-Con, simulation theory and an apocalyptic scenario where people get datamoshed to death. It all amounts to a bunch of zany, frequently funny nonsense that will probably end up being the best sequel of this year (a specific honour befitting a film that’s all about specificity). Uncle Kent 2 is the sequel none of us knew we needed, and even though I can’t believe I’m saying this, I can’t wait for Uncle Kent 3. [C.J.]

Unexpected

After seeing the absolutely embarrassing treatment of Earl in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl—a stereotypical African-American character whose only purpose is to help the white, male protagonist become a better person—Kris Swanberg’s Unexpected feels like a breath of fresh air. The film opens with Samantha (Cobie Smulders), a Chicago high school teacher whose workplace is about to shut down, discovering she’s pregnant. It’s unplanned, but she decides to keep it, and soon finds out that Jasmine (Gail Bean), one of the best students in her class, is also expecting. Samantha decides to help Jasmine try to continue pursuing college applications, and the two strike up a bond.

It sounds like yet another mushy white saviour story that Sundance audiences eat up, but Swanberg and co-writer Megan Mercier have enough awareness to call out and avoid the pitfalls their story could fall into. Jasmine doesn’t turn out to be the poor, helpless student Samantha thinks she is, and Swanberg goes a long way to developing Jasmine into a fully-rounded character who really doesn’t need Samantha’s help. Smulders gives a fine performance (although it doesn’t match her excellent turn in Results from earlier this year), but the film’s MVP is Bean, who has an electric presence any time she’s on screen. Unexpected’s low-key nature might make it come across as slight, but it’s a surprisingly accomplished and slightly subversive take on a story that could have easily turned into something far worse. [C.J.]

A Woman Like Me

“Describing A Woman Like Me to an outsider gets a little complicated. When put as simply as possible its a documentary made by director Alex Sichel, who upon receiving the news that she has metastatic breast cancer decides to process this information by directing a film about a woman facing the same diagnosis with as much positivity as she can…while simultaneously documenting this process and her own treatment for what would become this documentary. It’s not quite a movie within a movie so much as it is two movies playing out side by side with behind-the-scenes footage playing at the same time as well. Confusing? Yes. Meta? Maybe. Moving? Absolutely.” Read our full-length review of A Woman Like Me from SXSW earlier this year.

Fresh off the heels of its world début at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, The Orchard has acquired Joe Swanberg’s latest, Digging for Fire, for its North American release.

Digging for Fire looks to continue Swanberg’s recent trend of higher profile films with more notable casts. The film stars Swanberg vets Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick and Melanie Lynskey, as well as Rosemary DeWitt, Orlando Bloom, Sam Rockwell, Brie Larson and Mike Birbiglia. The film follows the discovery of a bone and a gun which sends a husband and wife—each full of doubts about their future and anxiety about the present—on separate adventures over the course of a weekend.

The Orchard is a music, video and film distribution company, founded in 1997. It previously released 2015 horror film Preservation and the upcoming documentary Point and Shoot, which has found acclaim on the festival circuit.

The release strategy and date is not immediately known.

Sounds of aggressive screaming and laughter. A father and daughter chase each other. The daughter holds a decapitated chicken, chasing her father down and smearing its blood on his shirt. They roll around on the ground before the daughter goes back into their farmhouse. The handheld camera moves around the entire time, eventually drifting out of focus as it views the surrounding area. Only the scene doesn’t end at this point, as one might expect. The daughter begins narrating about her hypothetical lover, and the camera stares down a growling dog nearby. It’s a scene that’s bold, unique, vibrant, awkward and unsettling all at once, and a good introduction of what’s to come in Thou Wast Mild and Lovely.

The farmer in the opening is Jeremiah (Robert Longstreet), and his daughter Sarah (Sophie Traub). The two have a bizarre relationship, one with heavy implications of something incestuous, although director/co-writer Josephine Decker never clears up that ambiguity. The lack of answers extends to the third major character in this story; Akin (Joe Swanberg), a new worker on the farm hired for the summer. He removes his wedding ring, hiding the existence of his wife and child from Jeremiah and Sarah, and the reason for his being there might have to do with a past tragedy. Jeremiah, acting as an intimidating, masculine force in opposition to Akin’s meek, quiet composure (something Jeremiah repeatedly brings up as an insult), immediately notices the tan line on Akin’s ring finger. He knows Akin and Sarah are attracted to each other, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

That’s because darkness lingers just under the surface of Thou Wast Mild and Lovely. When all three characters sit down for dinner one night, Jeremiah tells a story about how people have two wolves constantly fighting inside them: one representing good, and one representing evil. Before he can say which wolf ends up winning he gets cut off, the story never finishing. In Decker’s film, malevolence tends to have the upper hand. Decker’s portrayal of her characters’ dark desires is where her talents shine considerably, showcasing a truly distinct voice in modern indie filmmaking. Ashley Connor’s excellent cinematography has the camera roving from one place to another, frequently switching perspectives as well as stylistic techniques (the film’s highlight: a series of flashbacks through the POV of a cow). Editing also plays a major role in creating the unique, dreadful mood. Decker, along with co-editors David Barker and Steven Schardt, edit the film in a way that feels impulsive, tied more to emotions than logic. The style will inevitably earn comparisons to Terrence Malick, except Decker’s lyricism has a fascinating perverseness to it.

While Decker’s skills at showing intangible urges and emotions show great talent, the same can’t be said once tensions rise to the surface. The arrival of Akin’s wife, Drew (Kristin Slaysman), leads to a climax turning the film into something akin to a gothic horror. The shift is a bit of a stumble for the film, with certain characters behaving in ways feeling too drastic and bizarre compared to everything beforehand. It’s a step taken a bit too far in one direction, but that appears to be Decker’s MO. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely isn’t afraid to go further, delving into ideas and choices that can easily repel just as much as it attracts. Some moments are absurd and laughable, while others generate a sublime beauty. It’s a risky mode of filmmaking, but it’s one that delivers truly exciting results.

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 of them. Happy Christmas marks Swanberg’s 16th full-length feature in just 9 years and is his most personal film to date. Swanberg bases the script off his real life, playing a filmmaker trying to raise a child in a home where both parents are artists, which forces one of them to put their career on hold. Happy Christmas is indirectly dedicated to the one who does the sacrificing as its focus is on the hardships of leaving and re-entering the workforce.

Set around the holiday season (the only tie to Christmas really), Jeff (Joe Swanberg) and his wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) are busy raising their ridiculously cute two-year-old son (Swanberg’s actual child) in their Chicago home. The couple invite Jeff’s younger sister Jenny (Anna Kendrick) into their home after a rough break-up leaves her without a place to live. In theory, her stay means extra help in the babysitting department, allowing Kelly to focus more on her job as a writer. But on the very first night of her arrival she parties hard with her friend Carson (Lena Dunham) and is too hungover to assume any kind of babysitting responsibilities.

As one could imagine, this living arrangement causes a rift in the relationship dynamic between Jeff and Kelly. She doesn’t feel like she can trust Jenny, but Jeff believes his sister deserves another chance. However, it’s not long before they switch opinions. Jenny sells Kelly on the idea of writing “sexy mom novels” for quick cash and in return earns back some approval. Though her continuous acts of selfish behavior makes Jeff wonder if he made the right decision to stand up for her.

Happy Christmas is essentially an autobiography for Swanberg. The most obvious clue being that he plays a filmmaker living in Chicago (his home city). But it’s made pretty clear the film is personal with the use of his real-life son and shooting the film in his actual home. In an interview, the director reaffirmed the sentimentally explaining when he and his wife Kris had their child, she had to put her career on the back burner since they couldn’t afford childcare. He even has a small role for Kris as a landlord for an apartment that Jenny walks through.

There’s not a lot that happens in Happy Christmas, yet somehow the film flies by. The brisk 78 minute runtime certainly helps, but the main reason the film is so watchable are the endearing performances. The most adorable of the group is hands-down baby Swanberg, who steals every scene with his incredible cuteness. Anna Kendrick doesn’t typically play the out of control dysfunctional type, but she handles it fairly well here while still projecting her regular impossible-not -to-root for charisma. Lena Dunham seems to thrive on an improvised script, making her a perfect fit for a Swanberg film.

Happy Christmas has more meandering and less polish than his previous effort Drinking Buddies, though it does contain similar charm and a lighthearted spirit. While it lacks any sort of climactic punch at the end, the film largely serves as a tribute to his wife, which hits high marks on the ‘Awww, that’s sweet’ scale.

Happy Christmas trailer

Joe Swanberg has quietly become a very prolific filmmaker of increasing prominence. After years of churning out unscripted, low-budget naturalistic movies, last year’s slightly higher budgeted Drinking Buddies (with notable stars like Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, and the returning Anna Kendrick) was a surprise critical darling (read our review) and has lead to increased anticipation of his follow-up. Now Magnolia Pictures has released a first glimpse into the upcoming Happy Christmas featuring Kendrick and Swanberg, alongside Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, and HBO’s Girls‘ Lena Dunham.

Starring Kendrick as a Jenny, a hard partying 20-something coping from a break-up, she moves in with her film director brother (Swanberg), his novelist wife (Lynskey), and their two-year-old son. Jenny shakes up the young couple’s idillic lifestyle and forces them into some welcome, and unwelcome changes. Watch the trailer below:

Watch trailer for Happy Christmas

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 film school focused on horror films and it’s easily my favorite genre. While it’s been fun to see horror transition into new things, such as The Blair Witch Project‘s popularization of found footage films, some experiments have been outside of what I enjoy about horror, such as torture porn revitalized in part by Eli Roth with his Hostel series. Roth is one of more than a dozen producers on The Sacrament, the latest from Ti West (The Innkeepers, The House of the Devil, V/H/S), and his influence isn’t heavy-handed but is certainly evident. But what’s different about The Sacrament isn’t a new horror style, but instead its distinct use of near-reality to disguise its horror.

For most of The Sacrament you will truly believe you are watching a documentary, albeit made by naïve journalists, about an atrocious historical event. Three Vice media journalists–one a photojournalist, one a video journalist, and the third an investigative journalist–travel outside the U.S to an undisclosed location. One of them, Patrick the photojournalist, has a sister who has recently written him about how she’s joined a commune after getting clean. Patrick fears for her safety and soundness of mind, while his editors see the chance at a potentially hot story. Upon their arrival outside of Eden Parish, the community his sister has joined, they are met with armed guards, immediately giving their trip an ominous feel and the environment one of distrust. They sort things out with Patrick’s sister, Caroline, and are granted admission into the community as well as the freedom to film. Patrick goes off with his sister while the two others, Jake and Sam, wander the commune interviewing those who will talk to them. Everyone speaks highly of their new life outside the U.S. in this veritable paradise, and ALL of them refer to ‘Father’, the man who made all of this possible.

They are allowed to interview ‘Father’ at the evening’s celebration and this is where the film begins its true tension. Father (Gene Jones) is the definitive charismatic cult-leader. He answers Sam’s questions with a distinct superiority and defensiveness for his ‘family’ and the safety of their home from the outside world. It’s at this point that anyone old enough to remember or know about the Jonestown massacre will feel the hair on the back of their necks raise. Father’s words sound eerily close to ones used by Jim Jones, leader of the People’s Temple cult and mass executioner of over 900 of his followers. But the similarities don’t stop there, and the inspiration for West’s film is so obvious it suddenly makes everything uncomfortably self-conscious.

In the end the film’s make-you-watch devices are what push the film over the edge, causing too much distress by the violence to satisfy the true horror film lover’s thrill-seeking addiction. The fun of horror, at least to this fan, is the roller coaster ride of fright and calm within a story. Without that sense of safety, the thrills can’t seem quite so thrilling. But there is rarely a moment of safety within The Sacrament, so the thrill becomes painful by the end. West’s forceful editing leaves nothing to the imagination, and he knows what Thomas Edison also knew way back in 1895 with The Execution of Mary Stewart, that one of the most ghastly charms of film is its ability to show everyone exactly what death can look like. Whether you want to see it or not.

Perhaps The Sacrament is just being promoted wrong. West’s straight-forward film and its historical similarities can’t help but be taken somewhat soberly, which strangely makes what happens on the screen even more frightening. Unfortunately it’s a kind of scare that feels irreverent, albeit thought-provoking. It will surely be a divisive film among critics, but this horror film lover will probably stick with her ghouls and psychopaths and choose actual documentaries for true-crime and history.

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, improvisation, a personal cameo, and relationship struggles at the heart of the story. In this indie crime thriller, Swanberg explores the dark fetishes of voyeurism and obsession with some bold self-aware concepts. However, the director and his alumni crew have more fun presenting these concepts than actually making them effective, which makes the results of 24 Exposures far too underwhelming to make a lasting impression.

Right off the bat, Swanberg begins by playing with genre conventions. With sinister music playing in the background, the camera pans over a lake slowly revealing a pale woman lying lifeless and unclothed on the shore. Then a voice is heard, “Alright we got it,” and the woman stands up and the camera pulls overhead to expose the crew working on this photo shoot. Because the main character Billy (Adam Wingard) is a photographer who creates erotic murder scenes, it is often difficult to tell if what is happening on screen is real or just another prop for his scene. 24 Exposures keeps the audience on their toes by establishing early on that things are not quite what they seem.

Billy comes off as kind of a sketchy dude. Though considering he is a fetish photographer who is surrounded by naked women and fake crime scenes, it is understandable that he is slightly peculiar. In a scene near the beginning of the film, Billy nonchalantly has a threesome with his girlfriend and her attractive friend. Yet in the very next scene, the three of them are at a restaurant where he not-so-subtly takes interest in the waitress. The fact he has an eye for beauty is plausible given that he works with scantily clad models for a living, but the film presents him as someone who might be too devoted to his line of work.

This kind of misdirection comes pretty standard with murder mysteries, but Swanberg has fun tweaking the formula to contain an element of self-awareness which results in a plot twist ending. While these twists give a little depth to the otherwise simplistic plot, the payoff is not as compelling as it could have been. This ineffectiveness likely stems from a combination of unconvincing performances and the film’s straight-to-the-point runtime allowance (a brisk 77 minutes).

However, Swanberg succeeds in what he normally gets right, relationship dynamics. In 24 Exposures, the director explores relationship conflicts that most people can relate to, despite the main character being a nude photographer. Sexual insecurities arise when Billy’s girlfriend finds out he may be taking advantage of his work privileges and also when a jealous boyfriend suspects his partner of cheating on him. These relatable relationship quarrels help give that naturalistic quality which is typically found in Swanberg’s work.

24 Exposures has some fun with the murder mystery genre, but the film ultimately feels more like a proof of concept experiment than a fully fleshed out production. There are some nice ideas and flourishes added to standard fare, yet the film lacks the necessary substance in order to make an impactful conclusion. At the very least, Swanberg demonstrates some creative interpretation of how a low-budget erotic crime thriller can be more than just a bunch of girls taking off their tops—though the film has plenty of that as well.

24 Exposures trailer

A Field in England

Ben Wheatley’s fever dream of a film, A Field in England, will have you scraping your brain off of the floor by the time the end credits save you from the madness. Set during the English civil war, we follow four blokes as they flee the field of war and turn from soldiers to wanderers, trekking through the titular field in search of an alehouse. They inexplicably unearth an Irish alchemist (or something like that), and the dark man proceeds to abuse the sorry souls (and us) into a state of helpless insanity. Wheatley utilizes a barrage of strobing diabolical imagery, grimy black and white photography, and disorienting narrative leaps to jostle loose your grip on reality, and the effect is astonishing. As an experience, it’s truly something else. Something that must be seen to be believed. [Bernard]

Proxy

Proxy opens with a scene so disturbing it’ll be too repulsive and morally disagreeable for most (walk-outs are almost guaranteed). In the scene, our main character, Esther, walking home from a prenatal doctor’s appointment, goes from pregnant to not pregnant in the worst way possible. Let’s leave it at that. It’s an upfront declaration of the film’s wickedness, and should vex the weak of stomach and delight those with a taste for the twisted, gruesome, and psychotic. The vile tone never lets up, as the film explores the darkest corners of mental illness in graphic, sadistic fashion. Director Zack Parker’s images, despite their repulsiveness, look slick and often poetic, and his cast (including indie favorite Joe Swanberg) is solid. [Bernard]

Teenage

Teenage is an earnest examination of the teenager’s role in culture. It may not provide many new insights, but it does use an impressive array of archival footage to convey the shifting ideals and subcultures of the early 20th century. Though the film’s attempts at character-driven diversions feel a bit muddled, director Matt Wolf overall does an effective job of showing the similarities of teens through the years. Featuring narration by actors including Jena Malone and Ben Whishaw and a vibrant score by Bradford Cox (Deerhunter), Teenage feels like an elegant though somewhat on-the-nose love letter to rebellion and identity. [Colleen]

How to Be a Man

Mark (Gavin McInness) is a retired comedian faced with terminal breast cancer (hmm…) who wants to make a series of man-advice videos for his unborn son. He finds a young man (Liam Aiken) to film it for him and, predictably, they form a quick father-son bond. How to Be a Man is an Apatow-ish,  toilet-humor fueled, raunch-comedy that manages to be pretty funny despite its derivative makeup. McInness is a gifted funny man, and director Chad Harbold gives him space to strut his stuff. (A public sexual instruction scene is given ample screen time, and McInness shines.) Aiken almost gets lost completely in McInness’ shadow, however. The film isn’t as edgy as it thinks it is, but neither are most films of its ilk. A solid effort. [Bernard]

Today, Magnolia Pictures and Paramount Pictures announced that they will collaborate to bring Joe Swanberg’s Happy Christmas to theaters and home video worldwide.

The film, which premieres at Sundance this Sunday, is written and directed by Swanberg and stars Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham, and Swanberg himself.

Magnolia will be handling US theatrical and VOD distribution, while Paramount will handle US DVD and Blu-ray distribution and all international rights. Magnolia also handled Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies last year.

Here’s the synopsis, via Magnolia/Paramount:

Anna Kendrick plays Jenny, an irresponsible 20-something who comes to Chicago to live with her older brother Jeff (Swanberg), a young filmmaker living a happy existence with his novelist wife Kelly (Lynskey) and their two-year-old son. Jenny’s arrival shakes up their quiet domesticity as she and her friend Carson (Dunham) instigate an evolution in Kelly’s life and career. Meanwhile, Jenny strikes up a rocky relationship with the family’s baby sitter-cum-pot dealer (Webber).

“I’m excited to continue my relationship with the innovative people at Magnolia and to start a new relationship with Paramount,” said Swanberg. “HAPPY CHRISTMAS is a personal and important film for me and I can’t imagine better partners to help connect it with audiences around the world.”

“We’re thrilled to be in business with Joe again on this lovely gem of a film,” said Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles. “Joe’s skill with actors is formidable, and this terrific cast gives wonderful performances all around.”

“We are looking forward to bringing this original, fresh film to home viewing audiences in the U.S. and internationally,” said Syrinthia Studer Senior Vice President, Marketing and Acquisitions, Paramount Home Media Distribution. “HAPPY CHRISTMAS has broad appeal, an exceptional cast and an engaging story that we believe will be well received both here and abroad.”

Magnolia is eyeing a theatrical release in the summer of 2014.

New York independent film and music distributor Factory 25 has acquired rights to mumblecore god Joe Swanberg‘s (Drinking Buddies) All the Light in the Sky, starring Jane Adams (Hung.) Adams plays Marie, a middle-aged actress living in Malibu who’s struggling to find work in the twilight of her career. When her young niece (Sophia Takal) comes to visit her waterfront home, Marie feels compelled to confront her midlife insecurities, mostly involving trust issues with men.

All the Light in the Sky was one of our favorite films from SF Indiefest earlier this year, and we’re very glad it got picked up. The film also stars several Swanberg regulars including Simon Barrett, Kent Osborne, Larry Fassenden, Ti West, and more.

Factory 25 will release the film on VOD and iTunes on December 3rd, with a theatrical run in New York following shortly thereafter on December 20th.

Watch the trailer for All the Light in the Sky:

The Green Inferno

It seemed to be fate that I’d have a day devoted exclusively to genre films at TIFF. After the excellent reaction to Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno at its midnight screening, I caught up with it the next day. This time Roth decides to take on a subgenre of horror that hasn’t been touched in a while: cannibal horror. Fans of Cannibal Ferox or Cannibal Holocaust should know that Roth delivers and then some when it comes to the cannibal part of the subgenre’s name.

A group of activist students decide to fly from New York to the Peruvian Amazon and protest a corporation bulldozing a primitive tribe. Their plan is seemingly successful, but only because of their manipulating of a UN Ambassador’s daughter (Lorenza Izzo) to join the protest. On the way back their plane crashes in the forest, and soon enough they’re all kidnapped by the tribe they were protecting.

Roth has been known for his gory horror films, and The Green Inferno is by far his goriest one yet. The effects by KnB are too well-done, in that they can be downright disgusting at times. The second half of Inferno, where the cast tries to survive the tribe’s brutality, benefits from its focus on the nastiness. A few scenes are total howlers, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Roth made these with the midnight crowd in mind.

The ultraviolent second half can’t sustain the film though, and it’s more of a relief than anything considering how godawful everything before it is. Roth has assembled a cast of bad actors and bad accents, who all deliver bad dialogue. The inclusion of political commentary on activism is laughable too, but it’s not surprising since Roth has never been known for his depth. Fans of Cabin Fever and Hostel will love The Green Inferno as it has more unlikable characters getting brutally killed, but this proves that Roth can never live up to the hype he’s been building for himself over the years.

RATING: 5.6

The Sacrament

It was interesting to follow up The Green Inferno with The Sacrament, Ti West’s new film which was actually produced and presented by Eli Roth. Roth introduced the film at its TIFF premiere, telling audiences who saw The Green Inferno to “delete” that movie from their memory before The Sacrament began (I was way ahead of Roth long before he said that). West is one of the few American horror directors working today who can actually make something scary, and he continues to prove that with his latest film. It’s a lesser work in comparison to the rest of his filmography, but it’s still a creepy little horror film that stays consistent with West’s work up to now.

The Sacrament is framed as a documentary by VICE Magazine. Opening with a text crawl that explains the term “immersionism” and how it relates to VICE, correspondent Sam (AJ Bowen) explains how his friend Patrick (Kentucker Audley) received a letter from his sister (Amy Seimetz) talking about a religious group she joined that moved from the US into an unnamed country. Patrick accepts her invitation to visit the compound, taking Sam and a cameraman (Joe Swanberg) along without telling them.

Ti West is clearly obsessed with Jonestown, and The Sacrament essentially is a Jonestown movie. I assume that legally he couldn’t adapt the true story, but he follows the basic facts of what happened in Guyana closely. The modern setting and use of a camera crew puts a spin on it, along with a few other dramatic liberties West takes, but for anyone who has heard of Jim Jones it will be very easy to know where things will go.

Amazingly The Sacrament still worked for me despite knowing everything that would happen. This is because the events at Jonestown are so horrifying that the first two acts are filled with dread at what’s about to come. West plays into that too, periodically dropping some moments in that show something is seriously wrong with the compound. Once cult leader Father (Gene Jones) shows up to do an interview with the documentary crew, The Sacrament begins firing on all cylinders. Jones is fantastic as Father, with the interview sequence showing just how charismatic and dangerous he is as a character.

Soon after the interview things begin taking a turn for the worse, making way for the intense and disturbing final act. With The Sacrament West intelligently uses the mockumentary (calling it found footage wouldn’t be entirely accurate, as West said himself at the Q&A) format, creating a realistic what-if scenario of Jonestown if it happened today. He also stages some seriously impressive sequences, using long takes and stationary shots to pull off some truly disturbing moments. The Sacrament might not quite be a breakout for West, as the concept might not fly with mainstream audiences, but it still establishes him as one of the only consistent horror filmmakers working today.

RATING: 7.1

Canopy

Part of me wanted to describe The Sacrament as a minimalist film for its genre, but after seeing Aaron Wilson’s Canopy, Ti West’s film looks insanely busy in comparison. Running at just under 80 minutes, Canopy is a very simple feature that sometimes thrives off of its no frills approach.

In the jungles of Singapore during World War II, an Australian pilot (Khan Chittenden) crashes his plane. Waking up hanging from a tree, he stumbles around the jungle trying to avoid Japanese soldiers. He eventually runs into a Chinese resistance fighter (Tzu-Yi Mo) who is hiding in the jungle for the same reasons. From there the two of them team up by pure necessity, trying to escape without being spotted and killed.

The one thing everyone will mention about Canopy is its gorgeous technical work, and it deserves the praise. With approximately 6 or 7 words spoken in the film, the visuals and sound end up doing most of the heavy lifting. The locations are gorgeous, and cinematographer Stefan Duscio provides an abundance of gorgeous images in the jungle setting. As nice as the visuals are, the real winner here is the sound design. It’s obvious that a lot of care went into providing the soundtrack to Canopy, and the results can be heard. It’s completely immersive, and when Wilson decides to throw in a few expressionist sequences the visuals and sound work together quite well.

With all that said, Canopy‘s simplistic approach ends up being more of a detriment than a benefit to the film. As accomplished as the film is technically, the main relationship doesn’t feel natural in the slightest, and the whole thing feels very slight by the time the surprisingly abrupt ending comes around. Canopy functions as a good way for Wilson to establish himself as a talented director and craftsman, but there’s very little to go on other than his technical skills. Hopefully with a follow-up feature, Wilson can show that he can create some substance to match his style.

RATING: 6.5

Oculus

My day ended at the World Premiere of Mike Flanagan’s Oculus. It was midnight, and the crowd was rowdy and ready to go once programmer Colin Geddes introduced the film. It was a bit of a surprise then that, other than some applause for a few sequences here and there, the crowd was dead silent through most of the film. That speaks to the power of Flanagan’s film, which is a terrific horror movie and the most entertaining film I’ve seen up to this point.

Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites) are siblings who haven’t recovered from their parents deaths 11 years ago. Their father (Rory Cochrane) tortured and murdered their mother (Katee Sackhoff) before Tim shot and killed him in self-defense. The incident put Tim in a mental hospital for a decade, and the film starts with him getting released from psychiatric care at age 21. Kaylie tells him upon his release that she’s found the cause of their parents deaths: The Lasser Glass, a centuries-old mirror in their childhood home that supposedly drives its owners to harm themselves and others.

Kaylie and Tim bring the mirror back to their childhood home, with Kaylie setting up an elaborate plan to prove the mirror’s sinister influence and destroy it once and for all. Oculus, which was adapted from Flanagan’s short of the same title, ports over the same sequence from the original short almost word-for-word: A long, exposition-filled monologue explaining the mirror’s history along with all of its victims. This sequence, which is excellently done in both films, gets to the heart of what makes Mike Flanagan such a terrific horror director (Note: I’m a big fan of Flanagan’s past work, and I included his film Absentia on our Great Horror Films You Haven’t Seen feature). He knows the power of a good, well-developed backstory, and viewers will eat up the extensive history of the haunted mirror.

And for most of Oculus, the creep factor comes from discovering just how powerful the Lasser Glass mirror truly is. The mirror’s power is entirely through screwing around with people’s perception, and its manipulations are so extensive that by the end of the film it’s hard not to be freaked out.

Flanagan and Jeff Howard’s screenplay is a truly rare thing in the horror genre: It’s smart. The film crosscuts between Kaylie and Tim’s present-day battle with the Lasser glass and what happened to them as children. At first this seems like an odd choice, given that we’ve already been explained about what happened to their parents from the beginning, but by the final act it comes together in a truly effective way. Without giving away too much, the mirror’s distortion of perceptions eventually merges the two timelines in a way that’s so seamless it’s hard to notice exactly when the changes occurred. It’s an inventive way to change up the cross-cutting, and watching it in action makes for a truly admirable site. I can’t think of the last time a horror film used a single location so well, or had a structure so ambitious.

Admittedly there is a little bit of a cheese factor here, mainly with some ghosts that don’t have the same chilling impact as the scenes where people get tricked by the mirror, but it isn’t distracting enough to bring things down. Oculus is a truly rare horror film these days: one that’s truly original, with a great screenplay and some legitimately unsettling moments. It currently does not have distribution but it’s the best horror film I’ve seen this year, and I have a good feeling that it will stay on top at the end of 2013. In my write-up for Absentia I said that, with a bigger scale Flanagan might deliver something truly special. After seeing Oculus I’d say he delivered on that promise, and then some.

RATING: 7.5

Stay tuned for an interview with Mike Flanagan

Next up:

I start the day with Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves before moving on to the follow-up from the director of Revanche and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. And oh yeah, I squeeze in some time for a little film playing here called Gravity.

It’s no wonder Adam Wingard’s indie horror flick You’re Next is so damn good—with fellow indie powerhouse filmmakers like Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, and Ti West walking around the blood-splattered set, Wingard was in good company. But take no credit away; he demonstrates he’s got a long and successful directorial career ahead of him. The film—which you can drop in the home invasion column of the horror genre—is 100% organic, pulpy, fresh-squeezed terror in a bottle. It’s an overwhelming rush of pure, insanely violent, visceral horror cinema executed with impeccable style. You’re Next is a straight-up shot of blood and guts with no chaser.

The setup is pretty straightforward—the Davison family gathers for a reunion at their gigantic forested mansion estate. It’s a comfortable cage for the unwitting prey. The knit-sweater-wearing, millionaire patriarch, Paul (Rob Moran), and his jumpy, medicated wife Aubrey (Barbara Crampton) are joined by their four adult children—Crispian (AJ Bowen), a college professor, Drake (Swanberg), an instigative bonehead, Aimee (Seimetz), a dumb, walking squeak toy, and Felix, an immature brat.

Each whiny, spoiled-rotten sibling has brought along a significant other, and at dinner, meathead Drake prods Paul about how “unprofessional” it is to be dating his former student, Erin (Sharni Vinson, who just sits and listens uncomfortably.) The argument heats up and Aimee’s boyfriend, Tariq (West) removes himself from the table, walks to a window, and WHAM! Arrow in the face! We have our first kill, just like that, and from there Wingard keeps his foot heavy on the gas pedal.

You’re Next embraces and celebrates the quick, nasty kill. The deaths are to-the-point, brutal and streamlined—no convoluted Rube Goldberg machine kills here, people. Wingard sticks to good ol’ machetes, knives, and other sharp objects being shoved into skulls. The film’s pace is unrelenting, maintaining a high level of urgency throughout. Wingard gives you no time to breathe, which makes the experience purely sensory and reactionary. There’s really nothing special or inventive about the plot’s many twists and turns, but the film’s breakneck speed makes you far less prepared for them when they come. It’s like riding a kiddie roller coaster at 200 MPH. In the immortal words of Harvey Keitel’s “The Wolf”, this film is “fast, fast, fast.”

A pleasant surprise is that the characters aren’t just lambs lining up for the slaughter—they’re interesting people and their dialogue is punchy and often hilarious. If you’re an indie film geek, Wingard throws more than a few in-jokes for you to chew on. For instance, at the dinner table before his William Tell demise, West (one of the best horror directors working) shares that he’s an independent filmmaker who screens his movies at “underground” film festivals. Swanberg (god of the mumblecore scene) snidely inquires if the festivals are literally held underground, and sarcastically proposes that TV commercials are a more sophisticated art form. Hell, the simple fact that he’s cast Swanberg as an uncultured dummy and Seimetz (known for arthouse gems like Upstream Color) as a grating airhead is funny in itself.

The killers picking off the Davison clan—a sort of animal-mask-wearing S.W.A.T. team—aren’t the most original scary movie villains you’ll find, but their imposing, violent physicality and Wingard’s excellent camerawork makes them feel formidable and frightening.

What is original, however, is Vinson, whose character unexpectedly disrupts what would otherwise be a fairly one-sided killing spree. You see, she’s just as, if not more, deadly and gifted at killing than the masked murderers. For reasons revealed halfway through the film, she’s well-versed at armed and unarmed combat and has a MacGyver/Kevin McCallister-like encyclopedic knowledge of trap-setting (a nail and a foot come to mind.) What results is an even match-up between trained predators, a thrilling turning of the tables that makes for some epic moments of delightful bad-assery. At my press screening there were multiple rounds of applause for Vinson, and one impassioned audience member even screamed “I love you!” at the screen as she repeatedly walloped of one of the invaders in the head with a meat tenderizer. It’s really, really fun to root for her, and it’s nice to have a horror movie protagonist that outshines the villains for once. She’s one to watch.

The film’s score is key in cultivating the film’s inescapable tension. It’s comprised of ominous electronic drones and synths that contrast nicely with the gritty on-screen action, and the sound design is equally effective. Wingard and DP Andrew Droz Palermo keep things visually interesting throughout. Everything, from the constantly shifting, evocative lighting, to the careful camera placement, to the neat technical tricks (most involving blurry reflections), contribute to creating a deep sense of dread.

What Wingard’s made is a horror movie for horror movie geeks. You’re Next even pays homage (intentionally or not) to classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Rear Window (in a sequence that will jolt your senses), and even Home Alone. You’re Next is an absolute beast of a horror picture that’s so fierce, barbaric, and terrifying that the guy sitting next to me in the theater started to convulse from fright and leaped over his chair and bolted out of the theater. Plus, it’s got a brain and a stellar heroine to boot. See it with friends—you’ll gasp, scream, jump, and squirm in unison, the sign of a true horror masterpiece. It’s gonna be hard to top this one.

You’re Next trailer:

Joe Swanberg is a well-known independent director who is notorious for his no budget, no script approach to filmmaking. The results tend to be very personal (he acts in most of his films) and highly realistic since the actors are not confined to reading lines off a script. Drinking Buddies is somewhat of a crossover from micro-indie films into a larger budget film for Joe Swanberg; it contains a well-known cast (Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick) and much higher production values (having a dedicated director of photography, etc.) than his previous 14 films. The Duplass brothers proved it is possible to make a big budget film still feel small and intimate a few years back with Cyrus, Swanberg solidifies the transition can be achieved with Drinking Buddies.

Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) are co-workers at a craft brewery in Chicago who get along with each other well enough that at times it would be easy to mistake them as a couple. However, they both are in existing relationships despite their personalities being much more aligned with each other than the ones that they are actually dating. In both cases, their significant others are much more grounded and would prefer to settle down. Luke has been dating Jill (Anna Kendrick) for long enough that the marriage conversation has already been brought up, though nothing has been finalized. Kate has only been seeing Chris (Ron Livingston) a short while and their relationship seems more sexually based than anything.

Blink and you will miss the conversation where the two couples agree to a weekend retreat at a lakeside cabin. Almost immediately after they arrive, the cabin acts like a pressure cooker for each of the relationships, creating drama when they divide after Kate and Luke opt to play drinking games together while their significant others both prefer to hike through the woods. So in case you did not catch the subtle hints in the beginning, the time at the cabin makes it completely obvious that the two couples seem much more comfortable with the opposite significant other. For the first time the couples are realizing the gravity of the situation as well. Sexual tensions begin to boil, yielding the perfect recipe for a relationship explosion.

The best part about Drinking Buddies is how well the unspoken tension and jealously of circumstances are articulated without directly announcing them. This means through body language and situational awareness you get a sense of what the characters are thinking without them having to verbally say it. For example, it is evident that Luke gets jealous after he gets injured while helping Kate move into her new place when she is forced to have another guy come help with the move. His first reaction is to call her out on it, but you can tell his head is spinning as he realizes there is no justification for him to do so because of his relationship with Jill.

One major element that Swanberg re-uses from his early Mumblecore films is working with a vague outline versus a detailed script. He puts a lot of trust in his cast to improvise much of the dialog in any given scene to provide a natural feeling environment. The gamble pays off in spades when the loose script works as well as it does in Drinking Buddies. The performances for some (Wilde in particular) end up being some of the best to date. Chemistry between Johnson and Wilde appears effortless, as if they have been close friends for years. Kendrick and Livingston provide the right about of counterbalance to make the equation work.

A common mistake for a film to make that is based on improvised dialog is allowing scenes to drag on and get off topic. Thankfully, this is not the case in Drinking Buddies, which is comprised of a light and breezy pace due to the magnificently concise editing. What was most gratifying about Drinking Buddies was the portrayal of emotion and inclination without coming right out and talking about them. Some people feared that a more accessible film would diminish the passion and genuine feel that often are associated with Swanberg’s work, but rest assured that the only thing he changes is how many people will see the film.

Drinking Buddies trailer

The majority of Joe Swanberg’s directorial career has been making micro-budget indie films such as Kissing on the Mouth, LOL, and Hannah Takes the Stairs, which many consider to be early pioneers of the mumblecore (yes, I said it) movement. It was just last year when Swanberg got a taste of more commercial work when he directed a segment in the horror anthology V/H/S. His latest film Drinking Buddies contains a cast of Anna Kendrick, Olivia Wilde, Jack Johnson and Ron Livinston, all of whom are much more well-known than what he has ever worked with in the past. With Swanberg at the helm and the film earning some solid buzz from it’s SXSW premiere, we should be in store for something more than just your average light romantic comedy.

Watch the official trailer for Drinking Buddies:

You’re Next

Throughout the first week of SFIFF, as I walked, drove, and BARTed my way around the city, there was one thing I heard more than anything else from fellow festival-goers—“You need to see You’re Next!” No other film at the festival garnered such buzz, which compelled me to check it out, though I was positive the film couldn’t live up to the hype. Just like always (ask my wife), I was wrong. Adam Wingard’s indie-horror kill-fest blew me away with its watch-through-your-fingers scares and creative kills.

The plot of You’re Next isn’t groundbreaking—a rich, sweater-wearing family is attacked in their cushy vacation home by psycho killers with crossbows wearing animal masks that look like they were bought at a Party America Halloween sale. It’s creepy stuff, but again—nothing groundbreaking. What makes this movie so effective and feel so fresh is that the bloody massacre is supported by sound, savvy filmmaking by Wingard.

Unfortunately, most horror films exchange artistry for mindless gore, but You’re Next makes no such compromise. Some of the kills (there’s a load of ‘em) have been seen before in older, more popular films, but here they feel extra violent and hit with a bone-rattling jolt. The film’s focus is on extreme, visceral violence, not gore. The sharp editing and flawless sound design are the keys to achieving such raw levels of intensity.

The cast, a tight-knit troupe of indie directors (Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Ti West), give excellent, ego-less performances (Seimetz is hilarious), and it was surely a huge asset for Wingard to have such talent on hand. Over the past few months, I’ve been touched and moved by some of the cast members’ artsy, weighty films, so it was a lot of fun to watch them run wild in such a crazy, brutal movie. It’s fantastic news that the film is finally being released (it’s been in studio-limbo since 2011), and I can’t wait for you all to see it. Time to sack up, folks.

Museum Hours

An American woman (Mary Margaret O’Hara) is called to Austria to visit an ailing friend, and while visiting the Vienna’s world famous Kunsthistorisches Museum, meets Johann (Bobby Sommer), a genial patrolman. The two quickly become friends and engage in a days-long, existential discussion that leads to endless self-discovery. The museum and the snow-blanketed city feel unstuck from the world, a sanctuary for the two to explore and mold each other through the art they ponder and the life experiences they exchange. As they make their deep connection, mortality looms in the form of Anne’s dying friend.

The brilliant works of art in Museum Hours are beautifully captured (jaw-dropping), and director Jem Cohen and DP Peter Rohsler echo the immense artistry of the art in their gorgeous cinematography. Every damn shot is breathtaking and immaculately composed. Cohen intermittently cuts in thoughtfully selected close-ups of paintings, which jogs our memory and emotions. It’s completely engaging and makes this movie not only thoughtful, but sensual. Sommer and O’Hara move effortlessly throughout the film, endearing us to them with every passing moment. Their relationship feels real and isn’t easily defined. There’s something uniquely charming about the way Sommer speaks and holds himself. His voice carries empathy and wisdom, and his monologues feel as profound as the museums’ works, though he carries no pretension. Of all the films at SFIFF, this is the prettiest I’ve seen.

Stay Tuned to Way Too Indie for our full reviews of You’re Next and Museum Hours.

The lineup at this year’s SF IndieFest was unbelievably strong; I anticipated that there would be at least a few certified duds, but that wasn’t the case. Though I didn’t love every film, each had its unique voice, ambition, and spirit. From the lowest-budget short to the most polished full-length feature, they all offered a brand new experience. This made making my list of ten favorite films very difficult. I connected with many, many films at the festival, but these ten are the ones that I felt compelled to champion the most.

Top 10 Films from SF IndieFest

#1 Simon Killer

The thing about Simon Killer is, it’s a difficult movie to digest, but in the best way possible. The teeth-grinding level of discomfort Antonio Campos and Brady Corbet are able to achieve in Simon Killer resonated with me more than anything else at the festival. Corbet finds a way to make Simon both magnetic and repulsive, and Campos captures Paris at its most deeply colorful and richly textured. Pound for pound, my favorite movie of the festival.

Remember to keep it tuned in to Way Too Indie in April for our full review of Simon Killer and our interview with director Antonio Campos.

#2 Be Good

Though not as flashy as Simon Killer, Todd Looby’s Be Good also finds its protagonist going through alarming mental transformations that surprise even him. Be Good will break your heart stealthily, little by little. Joe Swanberg’s All the Light in the Sky does the same and shares the same naturalistic tone, but when it comes to picking my personal favorites of the festival, Be Good just hits closer to home. Every moment in this movie feels earned, and Looby’s characters are handled with care. It’s the type of movie that just might teach you something about yourself by the time the credits roll.

#3 I Declare War

There were more than a few movies at this year’s festival that evoked feelings of nostalgia, but I Declare War recalls an era of movies (The Goonies, Stand by Me) that I just happened to grow up with. The kids playing their supposedly innocent ‘game’ quickly realize that their heated prepubescent emotions are too powerful to contain. The child actors’ performances are beyond impressive, and the film’s intensity and stakes are consistently high throughout the running time.

#4 The Legend of Kaspar Hauser

‘Strange’ does not begin to describe this movie. To attempt to describe what ‘happens’ in The Legend of Kaspar Hauser would be to betray it. It’s a visually and sonically stimulating film that rubs you in a way that no other film can. It will make you laugh, squirm, headbang, ponder, gag, yadda yadda yadda. You just…you just need to watch it. It’s absolutely nuts… in a good way.

#5 Antiviral

Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral serves as a showcase for its gifted lead actor, Caleb Landry Jones, much like two other films at the festival, Simon Killer and The Story of Luke. What sets Jones’ performance apart from the other two is his spine-chilling physical transformation. Cronenberg’s imaginative and haunting imagery are as arresting as his fathers’, but Jones makes use of every bit of his body to burn the images of his painful deterioration into our minds.

#6 All the Light in the Sky

Films are best when they act as a mirror, illuminating our darkest fears and forcing us to confront them. As Jane Adams, as Marie, fights internally to find her place in this gigantic world, we realize that she’s fighting something we all must all face sooner or later. Nobody has captured the 21st century adult on film quite like Joe Swanberg, and he delivers another stunning time-capsule work of art with All the Light in the Sky.

#7 The Story of Luke

Of all the characters I’ve encountered in the many films at SF Indiefest, The Story of Luke is the one I hold nearest to my heart. The attachment you feel for Luke and his quest for love is inescapable, mostly due to Lou Taylor Pucci’s spot-on performance. The powerful message of acceptance and love The Story of Luke delivers is one that fit the spirit of SF Indiefest and the great city of San Francisco like a glove.

#8 The We and the I

Leading up to the opening night screening of Michel Gondry’s The We and the I, the thing I was most looking forward to was just how innovative Gondry would get with his camera in the super-enclosed space that is a city bus. Just how many interesting camera angles could he find? The answer? It doesn’t matter. Gondry does use his camera in interesting ways, but what makes this film special are the ever-changing dynamics of the loud-mouthed, quick-witted, unfiltered characters that occupy the bus.

#9 The Ghastly Love of Johnny X

Watching this film in 35mm at The Roxie was one of the cornerstones of my incredible SF Indiefest experience. Having the director, Paul Bunnell, and the cast there, the energetic crowd, the buttery popcorn, the technical difficulties; these things all added up to an unforgettable night at the movies, which is what SF Indiefest is all about.

#10 Funeral Kings

The ultra-vulgar kids in Funeral Kings remind me of myself as an awkward teenager. I chuckled at how much of myself I saw in these characters in their pursuit of attention, validation, and sex. To see them chase after girls and sneak around their parents’ houses in the middle of the night was like a blast from the past. Like I Declare War, Funeral Kings features some incredible performances by young actors. The attitude these kids exude is authentic, and nothing about their performances feels forced.

All the Light in the Sky

Joe Swanberg’s All the Light in the Sky is a naturalistic portrait of Marie (Jane Adams), an actress whose career seems to be losing steam. Romantically, she’s gotten to the point where she no longer possesses the energy to actively pursue men, and isn’t quite sure if love is in the cards for her any longer. Marie’s niece, Faye (Sophia Takal), comes to stay at Marie’s Malibu beach house and acts as a projection of her bygone youth, reminding her that life is forever moving forward, never stopping. Marie is a woman at a crossroads, past her prime, directionless and stuck. She’s an emotional castaway, frozen by the immensity of the infinite possibilities laid out in front of her.

As in Swanberg’s previous works, All the Light in the Sky is ultra-realistic and naturalistic in every way. It’s also a snapshot of the technology of our time, as Swanberg utilizes smartphone cameras and Skype to tell his story. Though he throws things like shots from camera phones in there, the implementation is seamless and his mechanisms don’t call attention to themselves.

The dilemmas Marie wrestles with are universal ones, and it’s hard not to identify with the feeling of listlessness she is stricken with. Her friend Rusty, a useful character played by the genuinely funny Larry Fessenden, exudes a “stop and smell the roses” attitude, and being with him just might be the healthiest path for Marie to take. In fact, every character in the film represents a different path for Marie to take in life. The question of which path she chooses to go down is a heavy one. Jane Adams is sensational, creating an endearing and grounded character in Marie. She uses every muscle in her face to convey the feelings she needs to while never once abandoning the realism so essential to Swanberg’s films. The overwhelming sense of serenity makes this film stand out from the pack, as does Adams’ poignant performance.

RATING: 9

The International Sign for Choking

Josh (played by writer/director Zach Weintraub) is an American sent on a mission to Buenos Aires to find inspiration for a film. Losing sight of his original objective, he finds himself aimlessly searching the city for something, somebody, to shake him from the loneliness that’s consumed him. The problem is, every time he’s close to making a connection, he (you guessed it) chokes. He meets a fellow American, Anna (Sophia Takal, again), and just as their attraction becomes undeniable, Josh pushes her away. Josh makes makes failed connection after failed connection, and the feeling of isolation grows and grows.

The International Sign for Choking feels personal, though watching Josh’s social inadequacy becomes tiresome as the film progresses, as no stakes are ever established. There are several effective moments where the characters’ relationships silently and subtly crumble before our eyes, but the consequences for the characters are mild. Watching Josh awkwardly shuffle from person to person, racking up missed connections is effective in that we feel sad for him, but ineffective in that it’s not entertaining. While the actors put forth a good effort and are clearly talented, most of the characters are uninteresting and forgettable. Weintraub shows skill in how he captures the essence of scenes by highlighting the small nuances of the actors’ performances. However, these scenes fail to become greater than the sum of their parts.

RATING: 6.7

Sun Don’t Shine

Amy Seimetz (Tiny Furniture, Be Good) delivers a soul-rattling directorial debut about two lovers, Crystal (Kate Lyn Sheil) and Leo (Kentucker Audley), who roll through the muggy wetlands of central Florida toward an unknown destination while trying to attract as little attention as possible (the unsettling plot is worth discovering on your own.) On their nightmarish road trip, their paranoia, frustration, and fatigue slowly drives them crazy as they wrestle with their demons, and one another (literally.) Crystal is a combustible open book, never hesitant to vocalize her emotions on the loudest volume possible. Leo is the opposite, constantly trying to suppress the fears that eat away at his psyche. As they fight and tumble across Florida, their love is tested, and they learn that they are forever tethered to each other, whether they like it or not.

Seimetz, Audley, and Sheil work together to create one of the most mesmerizing on-screen relationships of the year. Watching Crystal and Leo poke and tug at each others’ emotions is simply riveting. Kate Lyn Sheil puts on a spectacle of a performance, being at once psychotic and adorable, somehow. Some of Sheil’s quiet scenes are jaw-dropping. Audley perfectly balances Sheil’s openhearted performance with his wound-up, quietly violent demeanor. The tension the two create together is thick, and when it snaps, it’s explosive. There are some pacing issues, but overall, Seimetz makes a big statement in her debut, and I look forward to seeing what she serves up next.

RATING: 8.7

Funeral Kings

A coming-of-age film with a larger-than-life attitude, Kevin and Matthew McManus’ feature debut, Funeral Kings, follows a trio of 14-year-old boys who crave nothing more than to leapfrog their teenage years straight into cigarette-smoking, foul-mouthed, gun-toting, sex-filled “adulthood.” Charlie (Alex Maizus) and Andy (Dylan Hartigan) are weekday altar boys (a dream job for them, as it gets them regularly excused from class.) Late one night, their older friend Bobby drops off a large trunk at Andy’s house which he asks Andy to hold and promise never to open. Naturally, Andy, Charlie, and their new friend David (Jordan Puzzo) open the chest, and find a veritable goldmine of forbidden paraphernalia (cigarettes, pornography, a gun) to abuse. Chaos ensues as the friends fight over the coveted gear.

Funeral Kings plays out like a rough-around-the-edges, testosterone overloaded Superbad. The narrative structure is a little scattered, and some of the plot lines receive underwhelming resolutions. The story does have heart and substance, however, and the Mcmanus’ depiction of male adolescence is right on the money. The three leads carry the film well and have genuine chemistry. Maizus in particular shows a lot of range and delivers his lines with bravado beyond his years (all three leads were the age they played.) What’s most impressive about the trio is that they can handle heavy, dramatic scenes with as much confidence as they do comedic ones. The excellent hip-hop soundtrack represents the bad-ass swagger the trio aspires to attain. The film disappointingly goes out with a ‘poof’ instead of a ‘bang!’, but all in all, Funeral Kings is a hugely enjoyable film with a gifted cast and giant cajones.

RATING: 8.1

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 anything but. As an anthology film revolving around the home video format, all the pretenses and rules that come with the style are thrown out. These are six short horror films that all share the same aesthetic simply to take advantage of the visceral, exciting feeling that comes with stumbling on something one isn’t meant to see. V/H/S makes a good attempt at breathing new life into the genres it covers but, like most anthology films, the results are mixed.

“Tape 56” serves as the wraparound story for each short film. Shot on an old VHS camcorder along with a digital camera (all of the tapes have been edited together in a way that suggests someone compiled the footage after the fact), it follows a group of men who make quick money by ambushing women in public and stripping them. A fan of their work contacts them with an offer that pays well: Film themselves breaking into a house to steal an old VHS tape. They agree, but all they find in the house is a dead man and a pile of unlabelled tapes. One by one they start going through the tapes, and this is how each story is introduced.

The first tape, called “Amateur Night,” is the strongest story out of all six. The tape is made by a group of young guys who use a hidden camera on a pair of glasses. Their goal is to secretly film themselves hooking up with whoever they can pick up at the bars, and in no time they’re bringing two women back to their motel room. The only problem is that one of the girls they picked up appears to have a million red flags around her which, naturally, doesn’t end well for them. This short builds up plenty of tension thanks to the perfect casting of the girl they take back. Once things do go to hell, “Amateur Night” goes all-out with the insanity which leads to some of V/H/S‘ biggest thrills.

“Second Honeymoon” is the next tape which comes from Ti West (The Innkeepers, House of the Devil). People expecting West to change his usual slow-burn style will be disappointed here. His short, which follows a couple on vacation who encounter a creepy stranger, is the only film out of the bunch that tries to pass itself off as realistic. That means the scares are limited, but West is focused on something other than cheap thrills. “Second Honeymoon” is focused on the horror of having a person’s privacy being violated. Once West reveals the horror aspect of his segment, it’s the most unsettling moment in the entirety of V/H/S. Unfortunately the ending has a twist that doesn’t work, but conceptually Ti West’s story shows why he’s considered one of the best American horror directors working today.

The next tape, cheekily titled “Tuesday The 17th,” plays out like a slasher film in fast-forward. Four people drive out to a lake for a camping trip which expectedly plays out like any other camping trip in a horror film. The killer’s portrayal as some sort of ghostly figure that only shows up on tape as a glitch creates a neat stylistic effect, but “Tuesday” crams too much plot in its short runtime. Most of the dialogue is exposition which results in a lot of stilted lines from its cast. If the short had a little more breathing room it could have been more enjoyable and less awkward with its delivery.

Joe Swanberg (who starred in “Second Honeymoon”) directs “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger” which plays out entirely through recorded video chat sessions between a couple. Emily believes her new apartment is haunted while her boyfriend plays skeptic. Swanberg, who’s known more for his attachment to the ‘mumblecore’ genre, directs the weakest story. Part of this is because everything hinges on a twist that’s so poorly conceived it tanks the derivative first half of his short. While the video chat gimmick seems ripe with potential “Sick Thing” doesn’t capitalize on it enough to make something memorable.

The final tape, which surprisingly starts after the end of the forgettable wraparound story, ends V/H/S on a strong note. “10/31/98” follows yet another group of young men as they head out to a Halloween party. They get lost and end up at the wrong house, but they keep investigating and wind up discovering something sinister in the attic. This short, like “Amateur Night,” goes for broke with a climax that feels like a funhouse ride. It’s all silly, but the execution is so gleeful that it becomes infectious. “10/31/98” might not be the best short out of the bunch, but it makes for a hell of a fun time.

Other than the two well-done tapes that bookend the film, V/H/S is hit and miss. “Second Honeymoon” would have impressed if not for its clunky ending, and the two shorts that follow it drag things down considerably. As an anthology film it has a clever concept that links everything together (if this is successful there will definitely be more ‘tapes’ being made for a sequel), but it can’t break free from the inconsistency that plagues these kinds of movies.

Well Horror fans, we finally got a trailer for V/H/S. Premiering yesterday on Yahoo Movies, the trailer promises to be filled with kills, chills and blood spills. Bringing together some of the hottest young blood in the horror genre, the film is a POV found footage flick that is actually an anthology film. The premise involves a few people brought together by a mysterious party to ransack a house in search of peculiar VHS tape. By the looks of it they end up finding hell.

Some of the directors whose work is on display here is Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die). Wingard also directed You’re Next, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and still has no release date. David Bruckner who made the horror/comedy/drama hybrid The Signal a few years back actually wrote two of the vignettes. Also contributing is Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers), who I think is the best American filmmaker working in Horror today. The film premieres on Video on Demand August 31st while a theatrical release isn’t until October 5th.

So sit back and enjoy the red band trailer that is DEFINITELY not safe for work.

Watch V/H/S official trailer: