The 21st Los Angeles Film Festival, produced by Film Independent, announced its complete lineup this morning. 30 films have been chosen for inclusion in their U.S. Fiction, Documentary and World Fiction competitions, 18 of which will be world premieres.

Previously they had already announced that the Opening Night Film will be Grandma and there will be Gala Screenings of the first episode of the MTV TV series Scream as well as the feature films Seoul Searching and The Final Girls (which just won an audience award at 2015 Stanley Film Festival). Additionally two pre-festival screenings will also be held: Dope will have its LA Premiere on June 8 and Inside Out will screen on June 9 and be preceded by a special Master Class with writer/director Pete Docter. It was also announced, this year’s Guest Director is Rodrigo García, Gale Anne Hurd will receive the Jaeger-Lecoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award and Lily Tomlin will receive the Spirit of Independence Award.

The Los Angeles Film Festival will be held in LA between June 10 – 18. Way Too Indie will have comprehensive coverage of the festival.

Complete LA Film Festival Lineup

(Does not include short films, Launch digital media lineup, high school competition, or music videos.)

US Fiction Competition

Original voices with distinct visions from emerging and established American independent filmmakers.

3rd Street Blackout, dir. Negin Farsad, Jeremy Redleaf, USA, World Premiere

A Country Called Home, dir. Anna Axster, USA, World Premiere

Bastards Y Diablos, dir. A.D. Freese, USA/Colombia, World Premiere

The Girl in the Book, dir. Marya Cohn, USA, World Premiere

How He Fell in Love, dir. Marc Meyers, USA, World Premiere

It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong, dir. Emily Ting, USA, World Premiere

Mekko, dir. Sterlin Harjo, USA, World Premiere

Out of My Hand, dir. Takeshi Fukunaga, USA/Liberia, N. American Premiere

Puerto Ricans in Paris, dir. Ian Edelman, USA/France/Czech Republic, World Premiere

Too Late, dir. Dennis Hauck, USA, World Premiere

Documentary Competition

Sponsored by Netflix and Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television.
Compelling, character-driven non-fiction films from the U.S. and around the world.

A New High, dir. Samuel Miron, Stephen Scarpulla, USA, World Premiere

The Babushkas of Chernobyl, dirs. Holly Morris & Anne Bogart , USA/Ukraine, World Premiere

Be Here Now (The Andy Whitfield Story), dir. Lilibet Foster, USA/Australia, World Premiere

Catching the Sun, dir. Shalini Kantayya, USA, World Premiere

In a Perfect World, dir. Daphne McWilliams, USA, World Premiere

Incorruptible, dir. Chai Vasarhelyi, Senegal/USA, International Premiere

Love Between the Covers, dir. Laurie Kahn, USA, U.S. Premiere

Maiko: Dancing Child, dir. Åse Svenheim Drivenes, Japan/Norway, World Premiere

Missing People, dir. David Shapiro, USA, U.S. Premiere

My Love, Don’t Cross That River, dir. Mo-Young Jin, South Korea, U.S. Premiere

Oriented, dir. Jake Winternitz, UK/Palestine/Israel, International Premiere

Treasure; From Tragedy to Trans Justice, Mapping a Detroit Story, dir. dream hampton, USA, World Premiere

World Fiction Competition

Unique fiction films from around the world from emerging and established filmmakers, especially curated for LA audiences.

Atomic Heart, dir. Ali Ahmadzadeh, Iran, North American Premiere

Ayanda and the Mechanic, dir. Sara Blecher, South Africa, World Premiere

Elvira, Te Daria Mi Vida Pero La Estoy Usando (Elvira, I’d Give You My Life But I’m Using It), dir. Manolo Caro, Mexico, International Premiere

Flocking (Flocken), dir. Baeta Gardeler, Sweden, North American Premiere

Las Malas Lenguas (Sweet and Vicious), dir. Juan Paolo Arias, Colombia, World Premiere

A Midsummer’s Fantasia, dir. Jang Kun-Jae, South Korea/Japan, U.S. Premiere

Sin Alas (Without Wings), dir. Ben Chace, Cuba, International Premiere

White Moss (Belyy Yagel), dir. Vladimir Tumaev, Russian Federation, International Premiere

Buzz

Los Angeles premieres of celebrated favorites from around the world.

Brand: A Second Coming, dir. Ondi Timoner, UK/USA

Chuck Norris vs Communism, dir. Illinca Calugareanu, UK/Romania/Germany

The Dark Horse, dir. James Napier Robertson, New Zealand

Diary of a Teenage Girl, dir. Marielle Heller, USA

In Football We Trust, dir. Tony Vainuku, co-dir. Erika Cohn, USA

Infinitely Polar Bear, dir. Maya Forbes, USA

Jimmy’s Hall, dir. Ken Loach, UK/Ireland/France

Manson Family Vacation, dir. J. Davis, USA

The Overnight, dir. Patrick Brice, USA

People, Places, Things, dir. James C. Strouse, USA

The Vanished Elephant, dir. Javier Fuentes León, Peru/Colombia/Spain

Victoria, dir. Sebastian Schipper, Germany

Sweet Micky for President, dir. Ben Patterson, Haiti/USA

LA Muse

A competitive section of world premieres of fiction and documentary films that are quintessentially L.A.

A Beautiful Now, dir. Daniela Amavia, USA, World Premiere

Aram, Aram, dir. Christopher Chambers, USA, World Premiere

Can You Dig This, dir. Delila Vallot, USA, World Premiere

Day Out of Days, dir. Zoe R. Cassavetes, USA, World Premiere

The Drew: No Excuse, Just Produce, dir. Baron Davis, Chad Gordon, USA, World Premiere

The Escort, dir. Will Slocombe, USA, World Premiere

Flock of Dudes, dir. Bob Castrone, USA, World Premiere

French Dirty, dir. Wade Allain-Marcus & Jesse Allain-Marcus, USA, World Premiere

No Más Bebés (No More Babies), dir. Renee Tajima-Peña, USA, World Premiere

Weepah Way for Now, dir. Stephen Ringer, USA, World Premiere

Nightfall

From the bizarre to the horrifying, these are films to watch after dark. Films premiering for the first time in the U.S. are nominated for the Nightfall Award.

Caught, dir. Maggie Kiley, USA, World Premiere

The Confines, dir. Eytan Rockaway, USA, World Premiere

Crumbs, dir. Miguel Llansó, Spain/Ethiopia/Finland, North American Premiere

Crush the Skull, dir. Viet Nguyen, USA, World Premiere

Dude Bro Party Massacre III, dir. Tomm Jacobsen, Michael Rousselet, Jon Salmon, USA, World Premiere

Plan Sexenal (Six Year Plan), dir. Santiago Cendejas, Mexico, North American Premiere

Ratter, dir. Branden Kramer, USA, LA Premiere

Shut In, dir. Adam Schindler, USA, World Premiere

Zeitgeist

A competitive section of curated, World Premiere films that embody key trends in American independent filmmaking. 2015 captures hard knock, coming of age stories.

A Girl Like Grace, dir. Ty Hodges, USA, World Premiere

Band of Robbers, dir. Aaron Nee & Adam Nee, USA, World Premiere

In the Treetops, dir. Matthew Brown, USA, World Premiere

Manifest Destiny, dir. Michael Dwyer, Kaitlin McLaughlin, USA, World Premiere

Stealing Cars, dir. Bradley Kaplan, USA, World Premiere

What Lola Wants, dir. Rupert Glasson, USA, World Premiere

Visit www.lafilmfest.com for more info or to buy tickets.

Only God Forgives

Only God Forgives is director Nicholas Winding Refn’s most bizarre film yet, even more so than the inter-dimensional Viking picture Valhalla Rising. The marketing for his new film suggests an extension of the beloved Ryan Gosling fueled mayhem seen in Drive. However, that’s a trick. Refn refuses to repeat himself and that is not necessarily a bad thing. During the introduction to Only God Forgives Refn compared both films to drug experiences; that Drive is like doing really good cocaine all night and Only God Forgives is like doing acid in college.

The conflict begins after the elder of two psychotic brothers meets his maker for raping and murdering a young prostitute in Bangkok, where they run drugs together, and their even more psychotic mother arrives screaming for the killer’s blood. Ryan Gosling plays, Julian, the younger brother, who must deal with the complex business of revenge involving a high ranking Thai police captain.

Now that the plot has been described, forget it. Refn focuses the film on Julian’s Oedipal relationship to his mother (she mentions that he killed his own father to protect her) and police captain Chang’s sadistic stranglehold on Bangkok’s underworld. He visualizes this by obsessing over various visual metaphors for each character. Julian’s hands act as his sexual organ and his mode of violence as a boxer. Chang eventually castrates him figuratively, by severely beating him in a boxing match. This motif also makes for some very strange love scenes. Chang, Refn’s villain, rules the screen with long mesmerizing karaoke numbers that symbolize his control over Bangkok’s underworld. The Thai music during these scenes is just as enchanting as Cliff Marinez’s wonderful score. These musical driven sequences dominate most of the film’s screen time that call to mind moments in David Lynch’s early films.

Only Kristen Scott Thomas’s turn as Julian’s deranged mother disrupts the stillness of the film. She proves to be far more of a monster than Chang and steals every scene she’s in. The best moment of the film pits her against Julian who only wants to impress her with his pretty girlfriend. It is one of the few scenes with dialogue. Luckily, cinematographer Larry Smith’s images drive the film and truly establish the hallucinatory tone. If you’re not enchanted by Refn’s strange hang-ups, you’re not likely to enjoy the film, but many of the haunting images and unexpected scenes linger long after the lights come up.

RATING: 6

Lesson of Evil

Takashi Miike’s batshit crazy return to form, Lesson of Evil, will truly appease any fan of bad taste. After a droll remake of samurai classic Hara-kiri, Miike jumps back into the horror genre with his wicked sensibility intact. Lesson of Evil takes place at an average Tokyo high school where teachers grapple with the everyday problems of bullying, cell phone cheating, and teacher-student sexual assault. Super-stud English teacher Hasumi struggles to right all his school’s wrongs as he helps a student extricate herself from a blackmailed sexual relationship with the gym teacher and proposes to install cell phone jammers to eradicate cheating. But soon teachers and students become suspicious of Hasumi’s squeaky-clean persona. Miike masterfully balances a massive cast of students and teachers, while sticking closely to Hasumi’s point of view. In doing so, he establishes a high school drama while exposing subtle cracks in Hasumi’s façade. Much like his breakthrough film Audition, Miike abruptly changes directions mid-film and pulls out the rug from under audiences.

The second half of Lesson of Evil shifts into a psycho-horror comedy with an insanely un-politically correct plot twist that only could have originated from the culturally insensitive nation of Japan. Miike proves himself as a master of tone and character as he shifts from gruesome violence to side-splitting humor all within the pull of a trigger. He efficiently reintroduces peripheral characters, gives them hopes and dreams, and then kills them off with diabolical wit and gallons of gore. The dark humor Miike injects into his film hits even harder because Lesson of Evil is actually a tasteless exploitation of American headlines, but one that manages to brutally entertaining and clever.

RATING: 7

The Conjuring

A movie so scary, the MPAA rated it ‘R’ for just being way too scary. The Conjuring has amassed an impressive amount of hype as a classy horror offering from schlock director James Wan, the new master of scare of the week films Saw, Dead Silence, and Insidious. Here, he’s found a solid script from Baywatch turned thriller writers Chad and Carey Hayes that explores an unused chapter from the files of famed demonologists, The Warrens, of Amityville horror fame. Their script adapts the best elements of The Amityville Horror, a terribly overrated film ripe for an overhaul, and The Exorcist. Wan displays ample restraint in the first half of the film easing audiences into the possessed house along with the lovable and unsuspecting family parented by the excellent Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor. Cinematographer John Leonetti executes some showy, yet breathtaking shots to establish a 1970s style full of zooms and hand held camera work, while expertly shooting on digital.

The second portion of The Conjuring introduces Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the married ghost hunters. The script gives ample time to their characters and some other supernatural cases they’ve investigated, which proves extremely interesting and provides more material for scares. Both Wilson and Farmiga are good and add a higher degree of credibility to the film as does the rest of the talented cast of knowns and unknowns. In his introduction Wan said he wanted to make a picture in the vein of classic studio horror films of the 70s, that have vanished over the years. He puts those resources to work to craft a high caliber film that truly scares.

RATING: 7

Crystal Fairy

Sebastián Silva just directed two Michael Cera features and at least one, Crystal Fairy, is bizarre and excellent. The story is rather simple, an American dick studies abroad in Chile in order to party and try the uber-psychedelic San Pedro, a cactus native to the Northern regions. Cera, his Chilian roommate, and brothers have a trip all planned out, but Cera sabotages their own intentions by trying to impress the groovy hippie chick, Crystal Fairy, at a party and drunkenly invites her along on their journey.

The beauty of Crystal Fairy evolves from the shifting group dynamic between Cera and the Chilian brothers, portrayed with honest naïveté by Silva’s three younger brothers and how it falters when Fairy joins them. Cera’s abrasive, insensitive American plays well against his established innocent persona, while feeling like a totally honest character. Gaby Hoffman’s fearless portrayal of the hypocritical hippie, Fairy, is something to behold. She literally bears all in a moving and disturbing performance.

The film weaves between a hipster comedy of manors, road trip, drug film, and honest drama but never settles long enough to get stale. Not much happens in Crystal Fairy, but its small character driven rewards feel like grand revelations. The excellent, yet sloppy cinematography and great music selection only elevate its already assured scenes. I’m eager to see this film again and to see Silva’s other Cera picture, Magic Magic, but I hear lightning doesn’t strike twice.

Monsters University

Pixar is dead. If the back-to-back of Cars 2 and Brave didn’t seal the deal, then Monsters University will. While the past two pictures were so obviously missteps, this one trips and plunges into the indiscernible Hollywood slurry. Monsters University gets under my fingernails like bamboo spikes because of its mediocrity.

Monsters University brings nothing new to the Monsters universe that was not already created in the excellent first film, yet seems fine with it as it skips along at a brisk pace. I found myself chuckling at a few of the lame jokes and was happy with the inclusion of Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s Charlie Day as a wacky new monster. People of my generation (late 20s) grew up on Pixar in a way that we were young enough to be enchanted, but old enough to appreciate the new films and analytically follow their progression. It pains me to see a studio, who used to produce only amazing films, fall so far with only varying degrees of recent success. It seems that Pixar is now fine with producing the same old recycled crap, just with newer and better animation. Pour out a little Old E on the sidewalk. A giant has fallen.

I’m very excited to attend the 2013 LA Film Festival as this year’s festival has a very solid line up with several specific films I’ve been dying to see. Upon analyzing the lineup, it seems most of the big films are the “popular kids” from more prestigious festivals like Cannes, Toronto and particularly, Sundance. Not that this is a bad thing, but Hollywood isn’t quite known for its originality and they’re basically presenting a “best of what’s played.” That’s great for me as I have not attended any other of the major festivals. Here’s what I’m chomping at the bit to see—

Most Anticipated films to play at LA Film Festival

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

I’m particularly psyched for this Badlands-esque period noir that looks gorgeous, moody, and let’s not forget violent. The film boasts an amazing cast— Casey Affleck who can do no wrong playing a psychotic creep; Rooney Mara who has proved herself a solid versatile actor and desperately needs to shrug off the lingering Goth image festering from the wretched Dragon Tattoo film; and a slew of excellent character actors who I adore, Ben Foster and Keith Carradine among them.

Trailer for Ain’t Them Bodies Saints:

Only God Forgives

I’m a huge fan of Nicolas Winding Refn from back to his Pusher days and I obviously loved Drive. His new Gosling project appears to be a continuation of the hyper-cool neon noir aesthetic established in Drive, but this time he’s tackled a new action sub-genre— the Muay Thai Boxing film. The love it or hate it (mostly hate) reaction from Cannes only makes me want to see it more, although my expectations are probably so high that I’m bound to be let down.

Trailer for Only God Forgives:

Short Term 12

I heard this was the best film at Sundance this year and I like Brie Larson from United States of Tara and 21 Jumpstreet. While I do take that label with a gain of salt as I’ve found that the best of Sundance often means mediocre when plopped into theaters. However, the trailer displays the elements of a moving and unsentimental drama, which Hollywood studios have become incapable of producing. I want Short Term 12 to make me cry.

Trailer for Short Term 12:

Fruitvale Station

Again, Fruitvale Station is coasting on some nice Sundance buzz. Weinstein has picked up the film for distribution and they usually have a knack for picking fine films. While I do think this one could veer into clichéd white-guilt Hollywood territory, I’ve heard an excellent performance from Chronicle star Michael B. Jordan carries the film. I’m open to have my cynicism proved wrong.

Trailer for Fruitvale Station:

Crystal Fairy

Director Sebastián Silva has two films at the fest, Crystal Fairy and Magic Magic. Both films star Michael Cera, but I’ve vaguely heard that Crystal Fairy is both weirder and better. I don’t know much about the story other than Cera travels somewhere in Central America and gets into some insanity. I’m waiting to find Cera in a role that allows him to break through his thick type-cast and my gut tells me this could be the one.

The Act of Killing

I’m not as knowledgeable about documentaries as I should be but the offbeat ones often catch my attention. This image alone urged me to put The Act of Killing on my schedule. Reading about this meta-bomb of history, interviews, reenactments, musical numbers and Asian film history exploring Indonesian death squads sounds too weird not to see. Plus it will likely be fascinating piece of history

Trailer for The Act of Killing:

You’re Next

Any mention of the possibility of a great new Horror film peaks my interest, especially one that wowed Toronto’s midnight lineup. All I know about the story is that it manages a sly twist on the sadistic home-invasion subgenre. Also, modern horror icon Ti West acts in it, which is both strange and enticing. Hopefully it’s not another Cabin Fever.

Trailer for You’re Next:

David O. Russell

David O. Russell is receiving the spirit of independence award at this year’s LA Film Festival. He’s been one of my favorite directors since high school and he’s managed not to become stale. He’s bounced back from I Heart Huckabees (while I adore) and an unreleased/failed film project with two excellent studio films that display a newly reinvigorated artist. I greatly enjoy hearing directors talk and I certainly won’t miss one of my favorites, who I’m sure has a lot to say. A screening of Three Kings precedes the discussion!

Spike Jonze

Not to sound redundant, but Spike Jonze, another excellent director who will be there to talk about his career. He’s reportedly showing a sizzle-reel for his upcoming film Her, about a man who falls in love with a computer, and I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to see that or hear this oddball director speak about how he made it. His feature film career has its up and downs but each film has been intriguing and his important contribution to modern society.

Other Stuff

The festival is holding a pre-screening of Superman (Man of Steel). Zach Synder has not made a good film since his debut, Dawn of the Dead, but between the internet buzz and a brutal studio marketing campaign I can’t help but be a little swept up in the excitement. There’s a chance I won’t make it into the packed screening though.

I recently attended a press screening of the indie sci-fi film, Europa Report, which is playing at the festival. I was very excited for this documentary-style take on a manned space flight to Jupiter’s ice moon Europa. But unfortunately it’s pretty lame (I’ll post a review).

I’m also excited to see Johnnie To’s Drug War, the documentary Our Nixon, Winter in the Blood and Lesson of Evil.

Stay tuned as we bring you coverage of the LA Film Festival which starts tomorrow through June 23rd