On this week’s show, the tag team of Bernard and CJ review Noah Baumbach’s latest, Mistress America, starring Greta Gerwig and Lola Kirke. The boys also examine the value of modern theatrical “enhancements” like 3-D glasses and 4DX theaters and whether they’re hindering or helping movies as a whole. Plus, there’s a computer program being developed called “Dramatis” that is able to detect points of suspense in a story. Could this be the beginning of a future where computers are writing Hollywood scripts? Bernard and CJ answer that question as well as share their Indie Picks of the week on this especially bromantic edition of the Way Too Indiecast.

This week’s sponsor is MUBI, a curated online cinema that brings its members a hand-picked selection of the best indie, foreign, and classic films. Try MUBI for 30 days FREE by visiting www.mubi.com/waytooindie.

Topics

• Indie Picks of the Week (1:16)
• Movie Tech Madness (15:45)
• Dramatis (36:59)
• Mistress America Review (51:43)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

Leviathan Review
Meru Interview

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Time seems to be really good at sneaking up on people, and for a lot of us here at Way Too Indie it was hard to believe that our little site has been running for five years (Happy Anniversary to us!). We weren’t sure on what the best way to celebrate our anniversary month could be, but then it suddenly hit us: Way Too Indie’s 5th anniversary just so happens to fall on the halfway point of the decade.

So we spent most of the last 2 months putting together our collective list of the best 50 films of the decade so far. After a lot of deliberating and discussing, we compiled this list of 50 films that came out between 2010 and 2014 (Note: we went by original release date, not US, meaning some films like Dogtooth and A Prophet couldn’t make the cut). These are the films we love, cherish, and will remember years and years from now. A lot has changed with film in the last 5 years, but the quality of the creative output only seems to keep getting better. Here’s to an amazing first half of the decade, and let’s hope the next five years lead to even bigger and better things.

Each day this week we will reveal ten films from our list of 50, so check back tomorrow for the next group of films.

Best 50 Movies Of The Decade So Far
(#50 – #41)

Argo

This 2012 political thriller won Ben Affleck the Oscar for Best Picture but that wouldn’t have guaranteed it a spot on this list. What really put it over the edge were a number of factors including the combined talents of Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, and John Goodman. My favorite moments of the movie were all of the ones with them in it. Though Argo has been criticized for taking some all too common Hollywood liberties with the truth, such as minimizing the role of the Canadian Embassy in the rescue, it’s success in revisiting a moment in our history whose details had only been made known to the public when the classified documents were published in 1997 made it a film worthy of note and attention for it’s portrayal of CIA exfiltration specialist Tony Mendez’s unconventional attempt to rescue members of the US Embassy in Iran taken hostage during the revolution. [Scarlet]

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild’s biggest achievement is its ability to create a world that is both fantastical and grimly realistic. Benh Zeitlin’s Hurricane Katrina parable plays as a fantasy, but doesn’t wash away the serious realities facing the people in this environment. Enhancing the world-building is the community of actors (in many cases, non-actors) who feel authentic but are never looked down on. Honestly, I have nothing in common with these characters and don’t have any contact with the real-life versions of them, but I’m able to live in this world for 90 minutes. This community is strong, happy, unwilling to be changed or catered to. Some have complained that this approach feels like a grotesque travelogue for privileged outsiders to connect with the less fortunate, but I think that is a grave exaggeration. Perhaps I could see that a little more if there wasn’t as much soul in the work. Beside its wonderful magical realism, Beasts of the Southern Wild is grounded in the relationship between Hush Puppy and Wink, with powerful performances from Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry. [Aaron]

Toy Story 3

For all of its technological greatness, Pixar Animation’s first film, 1995’s Toy Story, was also a triumph in the story it told—a story embracing nostalgia (with ample pathos) and doing so without schmaltz or contrivance. After A Bug’s Life came 1999’s Toy Story 2, which is remarkable as both a glorious stand-alone tale (this time about commodifying nostalgia) and one of those rare better-than-the-original sequels. The studio’s next seven films would offer an embarrassment of creative and original riches: Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up. But for their 11th film, the studio knew it had one more great tale to tell from the toy box, and Toy Story 3 turned out to be the best of the trilogy, continuing its path down nostalgia lane to…the lane’s end. It’s heartbreaking farewell to nostalgia—a farewell born of something as normal and natural as growing up, summoned forth the heaviest of tears in a collection of films rich with Kleenex-demanding moments. There’s now a Toy Story 4 in the works, and while my knee-jerk reaction is to scoff at the notion of another sequel, Pixar’s handling of Woody, Buzz, and friends has not let me down yet; in fact, it has only ever lifted me up. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something in my eye. [Michael]

Winter’s Bone

Debra Granik had only directed one other film when her indie Winter’s Bone came out. Starring the yet-to-be national treasure Jennifer Lawrence, then relatively unknown, the film was a sleeper. The kind that had a general buzz, though no real commercial success, following its Sundance premiere and a Grand Jury Prize win. After all, a backcountry noir taking place in the bluish bleak Ozarks following a teenager looking for her missing father among her rather sinister meth-making family, was never going to be the family-fun hit of the summer. And while we’re grateful for this film catapulting J-Law into the serious film world (and earning a first Oscar nomination), what makes Winter’s Bone deserving of this list is that Granik created an enthralling mystery propelled by the immense talent of all its performers (though, definite shout out to John Hawkes and all his cigarette smoking). Up until its last shocking moments the film captivates. Most especially by Lawrence’s Ree Dolly, a feminist heroine holding her own among bumpkins, addicts, liars, and her own evil family. Watching a man endure what she faces would surely not have been as compelling. Winter’s Bone is a film of strength and artistry, a time-tested combination. [Ananda]

Leviathan

Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab (official site) has been home to some seriously innovative and aesthetically astute moving images since 2007. It wasn’t until 2012, however, that whispers of this wondrous Lab began to resonate wider in the film world, when Lucien Castaing-Taylor (director of SEL, and professor of Visual Arts and Anthropology at Harvard) and Véréna Paravel got together and created something wholly extraterrestrial in feel. Leviathan is a documentary (though that term is used very loosely when labeling anything that comes out of SEL) that follows a fishing trawler in the dead of night, as it goes about its unceremonious business. With freewheeling cameras strapped to the boat, at times operated by fishermen, or seemingly capsized on the murky surface of the ocean, Leviathan tethers the audience to the experience of industrial fishing, and to the beasts and humans who all play a role in the cruel theatre of unrestrained nature. It’s a viewing experience unlike any other of the decade so far, and is the furthest one could get from conventional, mainstream, filmmaking. Unforgettable, transportive, and frantically cinematic, Leviathan breathes through celluloid, drowning our senses in saltwater and the glory of filmmaking. [Nik]

Amour

Michael Haneke’s Amour might be a slow-burner, but it packs one hell of a mean emotional punch. The film features two brilliant performances from Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, who play an elderly couple madly in love with each other. The film defines what true love means, especially after the wife suffers from multiple strokes and the husband attends to her without feeling an ounce of burden. Haneke gambles by heavily implying how this will end from the opening scene, but his masterful presentation in this gorgeous foreign saga is anything but a wager. This may be Haneke’s most accessible film to date, earning the auteur the first Oscar nominations of his career. Amour is an emotionally charged love story that’s both inspirational and devastating, and if by the end you haven’t teared up at least once, you are a robot. [Dustin]

Oslo, August 31st

Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st, while not at the top of this list, is certainly one of the most devastating films of the last five years. Taking place over a day in Oslo, the film follows Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie), a 34-year-old recovering addict trying to start his life over. Anders constantly teeters right on the edge of relapse, but the things driving him back to taking drugs are the sorts of universal issues films rarely address with this much potency. It’s about trying to move on from your mistakes when everything around you serves as a reminder of your past. It’s about seeing everyone you know leaving you behind as they figure their own lives out. It’s about spending every waking minute thinking about any life but your own. Oslo, August 31st is a film about failure, and one of the only films to deal with this topic in such a nuanced, sympathetic and realistic manner. [CJ]

Stray Dogs

Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs is a cavernous picture about a family scraping through the world inch by inch, tearing themselves to the bone. Lee Kang-sheng plays a homeless man who feeds his two children by holding up advertisement placards at a busy intersection all day, rain or shine (and boy do we see it rain). He and his kids squat in a dank abandoned building by night, bathe in public restrooms, and are forced to scrounge for their dinner. There’s a woman involved, too, but it’s not clear who she is, exactly. Is she the mother? A guardian angel? What makes things even murkier is that she’s played by three separate actresses. Ming-liang has a proclivity for insanely long takes, ten minute-plus static shots that achieve a level of intimacy only found in the corner of cinema he’s dug out for himself. Stray Dogs has a few of them, and they’re astonishing (especially the film’s final shot, which crushes the heart harder with each passing second). What’s remarkable about the film is that it forces you to take a long, hard, unblinking look at the nightmare of abject poverty, an issue we’ve all been conditioned to walk away from. It’s a devastating experience, and a stunningly beautiful one, too. [Bernard]

The Babadook

Good horror movies scare you with the unreal. Great horror movies terrify with the real. Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook does both. The writer/director sets us up and wears us out with a very real, first-half study of a mother’s descent into parental madness. Amelia (Essie Davis) is a tired single mom with a thankless job, inconsiderate friends, a flatlined love life, and a hyper kid. She is also a woman whose husband was killed in a car accident six years prior while en route to deliver that kid, leaving an ever-present—and always discomforting—sense of resentment that a mother should never feel towards her child. And that child is a handful—always at full volume and always full speed, ranting and raving and railing against a monster that doesn’t exist. Yet. Then the unreal occurs and the monster manifests itself from one of the simplest joys of childhood and one of the great mother/child relationship conduits: a children’s book. No sooner does Amelia wither from tired to exhausted, she must dig deep to find indefatigable to save her son and herself. [Michael]

Moneyball

It’s rare for a sports drama to discover untouched terrain within its genre. Story after story following ragtag bunches forming bonds to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles have played out so often in movies that the entire sports genre is often discarded sight unseen. Moneyball proves the exception to this unstated rule by largely moving the action away from the baseball diamond and into the executive conference rooms. Tracking often-derided Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) at the forefront of a burgeoning sports analytics movement, the sharp dialog in Aaron Sorkin’s script communicates the intricacies of “Moneyball” without becoming lost in a haze of batting percentages or average WAR scores. Moneyball makes the story of a sports executive engaging by illustrating the relationship dynamics Beane navigates between himself and members of his organization, as well as executives outside of the Oakland A’s. Seeing Beane negotiate, and attempt to influence the sports culture within his club makes a mostly unnoticed aspect of team sports appear just as vital as it is fascinating in the film. [Zachary]

See the rest of our Best Movies Of The Decade lists!

View Other Lists of this Feature:
Best 50 Movies Of The Decade So Far (#40 – #31)
Best 50 Movies Of The Decade So Far (#30 – #21)
Best 50 Movies Of The Decade So Far (#20 – #11)
Best 50 Movies Of The Decade So Far (#10 – #1)

Today’s the day! Our first big awards show of the season. If you aren’t able to watch or are keeping score, we’ll be live updating the winners as they are announced starting at 8 EST/5 PST. Refresh your browser to see winners throughout the evening.

Complete List of 2015 Golden Globe Winners

(Winners highlighted in bold font)

Best Motion Picture – Drama
Boyhood
Selma
The Imitation Game
Foxcatcher
The Theory of Everything

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
St. Vincent
Into the Woods
Pride

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything
David Oyelowo, Selma

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
Jennifer Aniston, Cake
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Michael Keaton, Birdman
Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Christoph Waltz, Big Eyes
Bill Murray, St. Vincent
Joaquin Phoenix, Inherent Vice

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Amy Adams, Big Eyes
Emily Blunt, Into the Woods
Julianne Moore, Maps to the Stars
Helen Mirren, The Hundred-Foot Journey
Quvenzhané Wallis, Annie

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
Ethan Hawke, Boyhood
J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
Robert Duvall, The Judge
Edward Norton, Birdman

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Emma Stone, Birdman
Meryl Streep, Into the Woods
Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year

Best Director – Motion Picture
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Ava DuVernay, Selma
David Fincher, Gone Girl
Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
Boyhood
Birdman
Gone Girl
The Imitation Game
The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Original Song – Motion Picture
Lana Del Ray – “Big Eyes” for Big Eyes
John Legend, Common – “Glory” for Selma
Patty Smith, Lenny Kaye – “Mercy Is” for Noah
Sia – “Opportunity” for Annie
Lorde – “Yellow Flicker Beat” for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Best Original Score – Motion Picture
Alexandre Desplat, The Imitation Game
Jóhann Jóhannsson, The Theory of Everything
Trent Reznor, Gone Girl
Antonio Sanchez, Birdman
Hans Zimmer, Interstellar

Best Animated Film
The Book of Life
The Boxtrolls
Big Hero 6
How to Train Your Dragon 2
The Lego Movie

Best Foreign Language Film
Ida
Leviathan
Force Majeure
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
Tangerines

Television Categories

Best Television Series – Drama
“Downton Abbey”
“The Good Wife”
“House of Cards”
“Game of Thrones”
“The Affair”

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy
“Girls”
“Orange Is the New Black”
“Transparent”
“Silicon Valley”
“Jane the Virgin”

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
“Olive Kitteridge”
“True Detective”
“Fargo”
“The Missing”
The Normal Heart

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama
Kevin Spacey, “House of Cards”
Liev Schreiber, “Ray Donovan”
James Spader, “The Blacklist”
Dominic West, “The Affair”
Clive Owen, “The Knick”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama
Robin Wright, “House of Cards”
Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife”
Viola Davis, “How to Get Away with Murder”
Claire Danes, “Homeland”
Ruth Wilson, “The Affair”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
Don Cheadle, “House of Lies”
Ricky Gervais, “Derek”
Jeffrey Tambor, “Transparent”
William H. Macy, “Shameless”
Louis C.K., “Louie”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
Lena Dunham, “Girls”
Edie Falco, “Nurse Jackie”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “Veep”
Taylor Schilling, “Orange Is the New Black”
Gina Rodriguez, “Jane the Virgin”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
Martin Freeman, “Fargo”
Billy Bob Thornton, “Fargo”
Matthew McConaughey, “True Detective”
Woody Harrelson, “True Detective”
Mark Ruffalo, “The Normal Heart”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
Jessica Lange, “American Horror Story”
Maggie Gyllenhaal, “The Honourable Woman”
Frances McDormand, “Olive Kitteridge”
Frances O’Connor, “The Missing”
Allison Tolman, “Fargo”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Jon Voight, “Ray Donovan”
Alan Cumming, “The Good Wife”
Bill Murray, “Olive Kitteridge”
Colin Hanks, “Fargo”
Matt Bomer, “The Normal Heart”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Allison Janney, “Mom”
Uzo Aduba, “Orange Is the New Black”
Kathy Bates, “American Horror Story”
Michelle Monaghan, “True Detective”
Joanne Froggatt, “Downton Abbey”

It feels like a lifetime since last year’s Cannes festival, but the memory will hardly ever fade. Among the photogenic scenery, beautiful venues, and a bountiful intake of mind-probing motion pictures, I had the pleasure of being one among a handful of journalist participating in a roundtable interview with Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev. My lengthy capsule review of the film will have hopefully revealed, even without a rating, just how much in awe I was after seeing the film. Indeed, it ended up topping my own personal Top 10, and was among our collective 13 Best Foreign Films of 2014.

Right now, in the midst of awards season, Leviathan is doing very well. Getting a limited theatrical release on New Years Eve, and expanding in the weeks to come, this modern Russian masterpiece has deservedly been wowing critics. In a singularly surprising and sober move, Russia has entered the film into the Best Foreign Language race, despite the film’s courageous surgical analysis of the rampant political corruption in the country. And it’s been paying off. It received a Golden Globe nomination and the Academy has it on their January shortlist, with an Oscar nom all but locked. If it were up to me, the film would pick up every award it has coming its way.

Until we find out what it may win or be nominated for, however, read on for the roundtable discussion with director Andrey Zvyagintsev from last year’s Cannes film festival. Bear in mind that this is one of the very first international interviews conducted for the film, it was done through a translator, and due to a time limit each journalist (there was about 7 of us) got to ask only one question. As such, the interview below isn’t presented in the usual Q&A format, but rather Zvyagintsev’s thoughts on the various topics covered in the questions. Also, he doesn’t shy away from a few key spoilers so take this as a warning that if you want absolutely nothing spoiled for the film, you’d best read it after you’ve seen it.

On the origin of the story in the film, how it ties in with The Book of Job, and the film’s early development.
I was told the story in the US from 2004, about this guy called Marvin John Heemeyer, who was this average guy who had a small job who lost his job and went nuts broke some official buildings and show some rebellion, his name was Killdozer, you can find it on the net if you like.

This is really the beginning of my film that’s how we started working on the scenario. I was told this story in 2008, so for 6 years I worked on that and finally got this result.

And I really had this desire of showing on the big screen that story that happened in the US, and show it on the big screen in my own words, you can say, in an artistic way.

And I didn’t want to make a documentary film about what happened, so I really had to talk about this thing but I needed to find some parallel to the subject. That’s how I found the story of Job, I wanted to tell a story of a man who loses everything he has; one by one, little by little, up to the point when he loses his health and his life.

For the room in order to build this topic, I needed some sort of mattress, to create some sort of collision and make this story eternal. And that’s why I called it Leviathan.

Some friends of mine, who teach philosophy, (they are married actually), they told me about Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Originally, the idea came from the ancient story, but when they told me about Hobbes I thought “OK, everything matches. I really have to talk about this story; this story of a powerful state.”

And just one more thing, one small detail. Once the location was confirmed, we found the house, we found the place, some local guy came to us and said, “you know, there’s a place 8 kilometres from here where you can actually see whales”, and that was like the epiphany, I knew it was a sign coming from above that we had to work here.”

Why he chose this particular project after his smaller, and more intimate, previous film Elena.
I had in my hands, or let’s say it was on my producer’s table, five screenplays. One of them was Leviathan, which actually arrived a little later. We had all kinds of projects, one of which was this huge big budget war film that happens in Kiev, and there was a Polish king in it, and I had a lot of choice.

There was one project about Ancient Greece. Which was also a huge project, for which we would have to rebuild the port of Athens.

So your question you should ask to the producer because he’s the one who really chose the Leviathan project. I was ready to work on anything.

On the representation of Russia and particularly why Putin’s portrait was so evident in the film.
This is actually the real office of the Mayor, Oleny Gorsk, so the portrait was really in the room. That’s the portrait of Putin when he’s much younger, 2003. It had to be there, because in any mayor’s office you have the portrait of the president. It’s a reality. In any office, of any big representative of power, you have representation of this power. Removing this portrait would be awkward. It belongs there.

I didn’t try to do anything with this portrait, it was just there in this room and I left it there.

[At this point one of the journalists kept insisting that he shot the film with clear intentions to represent Russia and Putin in a certain light]
They represent power, they keep saying that in the film. They have this little sign on the jacket “United Russia” which makes them loyal to the power. They have to represent it.
I can assure you if Putin saw the film, it wouldn’t be awkward for him.

Why he chose to work with composer Philip Glass again…
We worked with Philip on Elena, I used his 3rd symphony. And we were talking about the rights to his music, which is when I realized I ‘d love to work with him for my next movie. I’m really happy to know him because I think he’s a genius and very modern.

I wanted to work with him, but I didn’t say “OK, my next project I’m working with him for sure”, if I have a film that goes with his music, and once the project of this film was clear I knew I wanted to work with him. I contacted his agent, but he didn’t have time to create music, even though he had wanted to create the music for Elena.

So, I decided to go on the web and listen to every music I can find, and finally I got on to this “Acktachen” and I decided that was it.

Whether vodka was allowed on set…
[laughs, and then in English:] Good question!

I realized that those scenes where actors are drunk would be the hardest. I thought to myself “how do I do that and stay close to reality?” So I suggested to the actors: if you feel like you can control the situation and do your work, you can try [and drink real vodka]. And if something doesn’t go well, we will re-shoot.

So they were basically all a little drunk in those scenes, except one person: The mayor [played by Roman Madyanov] Absolutely clean. Only talent.

The current political status in Russia and whether the film was meant to be political in nature…
I would say that I worked on the film for 6 years. To me the film is about Man vs. State. It’s not about any political system; it could be any country, since the story I was told happened in 2008. It was man facing state. I don’t want to be appreciated as “for” or “against” any system; I like to think that this is an artistic approach to reality which could happen anywhere.

I really hope my film is perceived as more of an artistic film than a political one.

Today it’s very critical, but everyone knows about it, everyone watches TV, the news. There was a break between Europe and Russia and that’s why there are films like Maidan, or Red Army. It’s reality, it appears in films. It’s not easy for Russia because its also a moment when you have to build a future.

If Europe continues with the sanctions, Russia will just shut itself and really be a closed country and all these feelings within Russia against Europe will grow. It would be very sad to come back to those years of the Cold War when, really, we were separated from the rest of the world.

His next project will be…
I really don’t know. The producer has about 3 or 4 scripts on the table, and he’s thinking. He’s the one who decides.

With 2014 coming to a close, the tradition of an annual post-mortem begins. Was 2014 a good year? A bad year? Do the highlights outweigh the lowlights, or vice versa? While everyone will have an opinion on the quality of 2014’s output in film, one point will be hard to dispute: a lot of great foreign films came out this year.

That’s why we put together this list of the 13 Best Foreign Language Films of 2014. Three of these picks are quite obvious; they also placed on our list of the 20 Best Films of 2014 (with two placing in the top ten). The other ten are just as good in our eyes, placing on some of our individual ‘Best Of’ lists for the year, and in some cases came extremely close to placing on our main list. These 13 films make up a diverse list, but they’re all unique, challenging and thought-provoking in their own ways. Watch any film on this list, and you won’t regret it.

Way Too Indie’s 13 Best Foreign Language Films of 2014

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

There have been many movies like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night in that there have been many movies that borrow stuff from other movies. Ana Lily Amirpour’s alluring debut feature is a rarity, however, in that it gives back what it takes, honoring its inspirations (Leone, Kiarostami, various horror classics) by using their wisdom to create something wholly new and exciting rather than retreading old ground. Amirpour’s out-of-nowhere use of vampire mythology to comment on Iranian gender politics is ingenious, and if heavier things like foreign gender inequity doesn’t suit your fancy, the film operates perfectly as a vintage romance, a pulpy street drama, and a moody horror piece as well. It sounds like a hodgepodge, but it’s not; everything fits snugly in its right place. Shot in Bakersfield, California in inky black and white, the film is a vision (especially for a shoestring production) much like lead actor Sheila Vand, the vicious vampire in a chador who quickly tears apart any notions of “vulnerable females” the film’s title suggests. [Bernard]

Force Majeure

The winner of Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize has a premise so intriguing that it can be hard to see the film’s other qualities. Particularly how beautiful Force Majeure films the scenic French Alps, holding shots long enough to let its central character ski off into the snowy fog. The story here is a family takes a ski vacation and gets engulfed in the snow cloud of a controlled avalanche; however, in the panic, the father Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) briefly abandons his wife and two children. From there, Ruben Östlund’s film illustrates the damage this impulse has on the psyche of Tomas, his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), and their two young children. Force Majeure can be uncomfortable to watch but Östlund mines those moments for wonderfully honest laughs. If rumors of an upcoming American remake are true, it’s easy to imagine Jason Sudekis turning Tomas into a broadly comic role. In this highly original Swedish gem, both Kuhnke and Kongsli deliver hilariously understated performances that can demonstrate the evolving relationship dynamic with a simple glare. It’s all so good that Force Majeure took up two spots on Way Too Indie’s Best Scenes of 2014 list. [Zach]

Ida

“The brilliance of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida starts with the bleak elegance of its aesthetic: a black-and-white palate presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio that is haunting in its simplicity.” Read Michael’s take on the film in our Best Films of 2014 feature.

Leviathan

Russian cinema has historically given us some of the most aesthetically refined and formally adept films ever. From Eisenstein and Vertov, through Kalatozov and Tarkovsky, Russia was prosperous during its Soviet era. Recent times, though, haven’t been as kind, and if Andrey Zvyagintsev has anything to say about it, that’s all about to change. Of course, with his latest masterwork Leviathan, he says so much, especially since the actual state of Russia is a crucial character in itself. Nikolai (Aleksey Serebryakov, in an Oscar-worthy performance) is desperately trying to hold on to everything that makes life in his little town by the Barents Sea complete. His wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) and best friend Dmitry (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), a lawyer from Moscow, act as his support group against the town’s mayor (Roman Madyanov, in an Oscar-worthy performance) who has plans to demolish his house and build corporate property over it. The film is an incisive examination of stifled life under a labyrinthine structure of corruption, a deeply profound story with the kind of sensibilities of fragile human condition on par with the greatest Russian novelists. Zvyagintsev directs Leviathan as a man who is one hundred percent in sync with the invisible powers of the moving image, and with his fantastically talented team (both behind and in front of the camera), is raising cinematic standards for Russian cinema yet again. [Nik]

Like Father, Like Son

The “switched at birth” premise sounds far more suitable for a goofy ’80s comedy or a made-for-basic-cable tearjerker than it does a modern Japanese drama. Yet in writer/director Hirokazu Koreeda‘s skilled filmmaking hands, the sublime Like Father, Like Son uses the premise mostly as a hook, pivoting off it to take a deeper look at fatherhood, nature vs. nurture, and providing vs. participating. When two sets of parents are told their six-year-old (!) sons were accidentally switched at birth, decisions must be made. The parents decide because six years have passed, the children should be gradually integrated into the opposite family’s life, with the long-term goal being a permanent switch. The slow-play not only proves to be more difficult than originally thought, it allows a patient length of time (months in the film) for a meaningful tale to be told and considerable emotional impact to be felt. It also prevents the story from being hijacked by manufactured, panic-fueled melodrama. Everyone in the cast is excellent, but Masaharu Fukuyama shines as the financially comfortable but career-driven father who must come to terms with more about himself and his past than he was prepared to do. How do you say “Pass the Kleenex” in Japanese? [Michael]

Norte, the End of History

Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan may be this year’s closest example to the humanistic depth of a Russian novel, but Lav Diaz’s Norte, the End of History took a Russian classic and turned out a sprawling four hour re-imagining set in the Philippines almost to singlehandedly prove how quickly cultural barriers can shatter when you use art as the hammer. This is Dostoevsky’s Crimes and Punishment as seen through the glacially paced and enormously immersive world of Lav Diaz, alienating mainstream audiences since 1999. In case you haven’t read our review, we’re big fans. Norte sees Fabian (Sid Lucero, who does really brilliant work here considering the scope and the evolutions his character goes through) as the Filipino Raskolnikov, committing murder more as an attempt to reach a philosophical conclusion than out of practical reasons, and left disillusioned. Diaz’s branches away from Dostoevsky most vividly because he pays equal attention to the man Fabian accuses of the murder, and the man’s wife left to fend for herself and her children. In this way, Norte is more of an expansion than an adaptation, where the gorgeous milieu photographed with a keen sense for environment by Larry Manda leaves Diaz’s imagination to take center stage and pull you into an incredibly involved story of crushed human spirit. Here lie the fastest four hours of the year. [Nik]

Stranger by the Lake

I find it interesting to note about myself that my capacity for the audacious and erotic in a film goes up substantially when it happens to be foreign. I imagine it’s how non-Americans feel about the way their capacity for pyrotechnics and CG must increase to watch our films. Even so French film Stranger by the Lake pushed me to the edge of my extended limits. This homoerotic thriller feels like a combination of an adolescent summer outdoor romance, mixed with a Hitchcockian thriller, mixed with gay porn. But put it all together and it’s an engaging look at the extent to which lust and emotions can cloud our judgement. Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), an overly lubido-driven and naively romantic man, spends his days at the lake looking for sex and possibly love. He finds instant lust for Michel (Christophe Paou), a tall, dark and handsome man known for his hard-to-get ways. So great is his attraction, he turns a blind eye when he sees Michel unceremoniously dump a lover he’s grown weary of by drowning him in the lake. Without making any statements Alain Guiraudie’s minimalistic film explores varying levels of attraction and the very human habit of misplacing feelings. While all the sex feels absurd, its really only a backdrop to the tensions at play. And those tensions build to a harebrained ending that while thrilling, mainly serves to show the extent to which we are capable of lying to ourselves. [Ananda]

The Strange Little Cat

Ramon Zurcher’s The Strange Little Cat is fiercely non-narrative and non-mainstream. A real-time examination of a German apartment during a busy day, the film zooms at a brief 72 minutes, with its characters entering and exiting still frames, simply living their lives. While the plot rambles through conversations, the film has an uncanny attention to detail. The camera’s eye seems to wander until it catches something interesting to witness or study – in one of my favorite scenes this year, we watch an entire game of Connect Four played without any conversation or distraction. I don’t know if The Strange Little Cat has a lot of deep, hidden meaning, but it is a strangely addictive and entertaining film. And, yes, there is a cat, though it really isn’t all that strange. [Aaron]

Stray Dogs

I’ll get straight to the point: Stray Dogs is a masterpiece. Director Tsai Ming-Liang’s final feature film finds him setting his sights on a family in poverty, a topic fitting his slow, patient, and uncompromising style perfectly. With Tsai’s muse Lee Kang-Sheng playing the father, Stray Dogs follows him as he tries to support his two children with menial work, including a job as a human billboard. For these characters, time takes on a different meaning, and Tsai’s approach to cinematic duration similarly breaks conventions. These people simultaneously struggling and stagnate, and Tsai’s static camera captures a range of emotions through shots that sometimes go past the ten minute mark. I haven’t even mentioned how immaculately composed all of these shots are, making it quite easy to stare at them for what can feel like an eternity. And I haven’t said a word about the film’s baffling and incredible second half, where Tsai hits a sort of reset button that suddenly introduces one surreal and achingly gorgeous image after another. Stray Dogs may be challenging to watch, but if you’re willing to adjust to Tsai’s rhythms, the results reach a level of transcendence few other films can achieve. [C.J.]

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Isao Takahata, considered by most to be Studio Ghibli’s second fiddle, made what might be the best work of the great Japanese animation house. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya isn’t as emotionally devastating as Takahata’s The Grave of the Fireflies, but it is every bit as rich in character, theme and story. The tale of the fairy princess is both lightly entertaining and expansive, with elements of fantasy, nature, humor, tragedy, romance, quest, history, and tradition in Japanese jidaigeki. Stylistically, this is one of the most beautiful animations I have ever seen. I’m not someone that usually cries out when technological advances pushes out the old ways of movie making, but this is a prime example of the possibilities and, frankly, the necessity of hand-drawn animation. I don’t know much about the actual production, so I don’t know how much of the film is man-made vs. computer generated, but there is something intrinsic about the animation that hits on a higher level. The wispy, dreamlike movements of the characters and environments are the perfect way to tell this story. With The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Isao Takahata has capped off a stellar career with a stellar work, a wonderful tribute to animation and Japanese storytelling. As he moves on, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is surely the type of film that will inspire film artists around the globe interested in stories with emotionally complex narratives and extraordinary focus in style. [Aaron]

Two Days, One Night

“…in Two Days, One Night, [the Dardenne Brothers’] first collaboration with an A-lister proves to be terrific, and for fans, assuaging.” Read Bernard’s take on the film in our Best Films of 2014 feature.

Winter Sleep

“…there’s simply no other film that will suck you into its world faster and smoother than this opulent Turkish delight.” Read Nik’s take on the film in our Best Films of 2014 feature.

Young & Beautiful

Leave it to provocative French filmmaker François Ozon to explore adolescent sexuality with masterful style and deliberate focus. Ozon divides Young & Beautiful into four seasons, observing Isabelle (Marine Vacth in an exceptional breakout performance) as she enters her sexual discovery phase near her 17th birthday. In the beginning her actions are innocent enough, losing her virginity during a summer vacation. However, when the film jumps ahead to autumn, she’s secretly working as a high-class prostitute. With someone else behind the wheel Young & Beautiful could have easily veered into softcore porn territory, but Ozon’s skillful artistry shines through in this voyeuristic coming-of-age study. The film astutely observes teenage rebellion and self discovery without misplaced melodrama, manipulating emotions, or judging its characters. For those reasons Ozon allows the audience to draw their own conclusions, making Young & Beautiful an excellent conversation piece. [Dustin]

Honorable Mentions

We always want to spread the love at Way Too Indie, and some of us felt so passionately about certain candidates for this list that we had to give them a mention of some sort. Lukas Moodysson’s We Are The Best! is a total blast, a film combining the rebellious nature of punk with the innocence of youth perfectly; Pascale Ferran’s diptych Bird People is, by far, one of the year’s most daringly original films of the year; Yuval Adler’s Bethlehem is a taut, compelling procedural from Israel; Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan stands alongside Citizenfour as one of the year’s most vital documentaries; Sean Ellis’ Metro Manila proves that a familiar story can still feel exciting when done right; and Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman is as funny as it is baffling, turning out to be one of 2014’s true curiosities.

Sometimes a single scene can elevate a good film into a great one. Other times a moment can single-handedly redeem a film, or save it from the brink of disaster. Like last year, 2014 had plenty of terrific scenes and moments out of the many films released over the last twelve months. Before we reveal our big list of 2014’s best films, along with plenty of other year-end goodies, a few of the Way Too Indie staff put together this list of our favorite movie moments of 2014. Whether these scenes made us laugh, cry, creeped us out or got our hearts racing, they’ll certainly stay in our brains long after the year is over.

Warning: Some of these descriptions contain spoilers.

The Babadook – Reading The Book

The best horror film of the year’s scariest scene doesn’t involve a murder, a monster or a bump in the night, but a single mother reading a children’s book to her troubled son. The book that releases Mister Babadook is a brilliant piece of design. Beautifully drawn and written, the book’s pop-ups start out as delightful before becoming more elaborate and psychotic. The further along Amelia and young Samuel get, the nastier it becomes, and the the more it sucks in the viewer. Suddenly, one might realize that this isn’t just a general warning, but a true foreshadowing of events to come. The book’s narrative directly impacts our expectations up until the end, making us truly dread what’s coming. The Babadook has so much more going for it than a typical haunted house horror flick, but this quiet scene is its scary height. [Aaron]

Blue Ruin – In The Trunk

Jeremy Saulnier’s fantastic debut feature, a moody, bluesy, violent deconstruction of the revenge thriller, is at its best when it’s also darkly comedic. No scene mixes the two better than when Dwight has his second of three confrontations with the Cleland family. By this point Dwight is already established as being completely out of his element, but now he’s been introduced to a firearm by a former friend he meets in the previous scene. Once Dwight opens the trunk to come face-to-face with Teddy, it is difficult to predict what exactly will happen, but it certainly won’t be good. Dwight is trying his best to end the blood feud here, not wishing to harm Teddy but nervously willing to use deadly force. Pettiness, or perhaps some effed up fate, won’t let that happen, however, especially after Dwight is tricked and overpowered by his hostage. I won’t spoil what happens next, but the scene ends on a perfect laugh to break this tension – first, horror over the remnants of a violent act, followed by a simple, yet philosophical decree: “That’s what guns do.” [Aaron]

Enemy – Spiders!

Denis Villeneuve’s deliberately confusing Enemy, an adaptation of José Saramago’s novel “The Double,” really loves to throw spider imagery around. The opening scene has a group of men watching a woman crush a spider with her foot. A shot of streetcar cables looks awfully similar to a spider web. And to make matters worse for arachnophobes, the protagonist repeatedly has nightmares involving disturbing, Cronenbergian images of giant spiders terrorizing Toronto. A shot of the Toronto skyline goes from ominous to severely creepy once you notice the massive spider towering over the city’s skyscrapers in the background. An image of a naked woman with a spider’s head comes straight out of a Lynchian nightmare. And oh yeah, that ending. I’m not gonna spoil it (and if you don’t want it spoiled, don’t go sniffing around on Google either). People have already called it one of the scariest endings to a movie, and while I don’t agree with that declaration, I don’t blame anyone for getting freaked out by those final frames. [C.J.]

Force Majeure – The Avalanche & Arguing In Bed

If someone were to explain the plot of Force Majeure outright, they would probably give the wrong impression. A well-to-do family’s vacation in paradise quickly upended by a natural disaster sounds more like The Impossible than its internalized examination of masculinity and familial responsibility. Without nailing the pivotal avalanche scene, there is no film, no matter how great the remainder may be. As the Swedish family enjoy their casual lunch on the side of a mountain, with a view as tasty as the expensive cuisine, someone notices a controlled avalanche building on the slopes in the distance. In the course of only a few minutes, the scene twists and turns as the blinding powder hurdles toward them. Is this truly a controlled blast, or something out of control? We can see the characters working through thoughts from the serene to the horrified, leading to the ultimate actions which set the film’s second and third acts. It perfectly connects with the plot and themes of the entire film, but could stand on its own as a wonderful short film that can adequately hit on these themes all on its own. The avalanche is beautifully shot in a single long take, a perspective allowing the intense background and the entire lunch crowd to be viewed together. Shoot it any other way, and the scene just wouldn’t build as organically as it does. [Aaron]

The avalanche at the crux of Force Majeure does more than test the relationship between the film’s lead couple. Tomas and Ebba’s concerns become the subject of several conversations, including a notable one between themselves and Tom’s full-bearded friend Mats (Kristofer Hivju) and Mats’ 20-year-old date Fanni (Fanni Metelius). At the end of an awkward night together, Mats and Fanni return to their room where the night of bickering has only just begun. Mats attempts to empathize with his friend, but Fanni suggests that, were he to be caught in a similar situation, Mats would have likely ran from the avalanche rather than returned to help his children. What Fanni means as an innocuous observation leads to the couple debating in bed throughout the night. Lying next to one another, Fanni attempts to explain her thinking while Mats continues to assert his masculinity, offended at her insinuation. As the lights keep flicking on and off, with the couple finishing and reopening their argument, the uncomfortable familiarity of getting stuck in an argument headed nowhere creeps in. This scene is one of the most relatable, hilarious moments of the year. [Zachary]

Gone Girl – Consummation

A warning: Readers shouldn’t be reading this if they haven’t seen David Fincher’s Gone Girl. But assuming those of you reading are film lovers who have already seen this fantastic modern satire, please proceed. Amy (Rosamund Pike) emerges halfway into the film as the antithesis to the cool girl, but then finds herself in a bit of a pickle with her ex-stalker Desi (Neil Patrick Harris). How she gets rid of him is one of my favorite moments in 2014. Fincher, working in tandem with regular collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (music), Kirk Baxter (editing) and Jeff Cronenweth (cinematography), manages to shine a whole new light on Pike’s multifaceted performance; that of the psychotic, murderous, dangerously intelligent bitch. Luring Desi into the bedroom, Amy’s plan to “cry rape” works perfectly in the film’s highest dramatic moment when she slits Desi’s throat while he’s inside her, the blood spurting all over her body and Desi’s thousand dollar sheets, shown through slow-burning black fades and ominous chords. I’m pretty sure my irises expanded as if I had just been injected by a drug, and as shocking as it was, I couldn’t help but smile and admire all the artistry behind the creation. If I were to anatomize scenes from 2014, this would be the first. [Nik]

The Grand Budapest Hotel – Lobby Boy Interview

There are many, many wonderfully spiffy and affably hilarious moments to choose from in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. I equally love loads, but the one I’d like to signal out here is Zero’s (Tony Revolori) interview with M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes)—centered around the cornerstone of the film’s marketing question, “Why do you want to be a lobby boy?” After shouting out various demands and instructions, Gustave realizes that he has no clue who this little earnest boy following him around is. “You’re now going to be officially interviewed” “Should I go and light the candles first, Sir?” “What? No.” This tit-for-tat between Revolori and Fiennes in the first of their many brilliant exchanges, mostly dominated by Fiennes’ spectacular comic timing. Not only do we get why Zero is called Zero (“Education. Zero”), but this moment also shows how well Anderson balances funny with poignant. When asked about his family and the young boy replies, “…zero,” it’s poignant enough to produce a lump in one’s throat. Anderson does that well throughout The Grand Budapest Hotel, but this early-on interview, which turns out to be the beginning of a wonderful bond between Gustave and Zero, is as good an example as any. [Nik]

Honeymoon – “Take it out”

In a year full of exciting horror debuts, many of which come from first-time female directors, Leigh Janiak’s debut feature Honeymoon has been somewhat overlooked. Perhaps this partially stems from the film’s minimalist approach to the actual scares. The movie largely confines its disturbing imagery and spilt blood to one intense, prolonged scene near the story’s end (Warning: Spoilers ahead). As the newlyweds lose their trust in one another, Paul (Harry Treadaway) decides he’s had enough of Bea’s (Rose Leslie) unexplained weirdness, tying her down to the bed until she reveals what’s really happening. Bea pleads with Paul, thrashes around, and attempts to break free, eventually falling silent instead of saying the words Paul needs to hear. As an audience member, Honeymoon makes you think that Paul has gone crazy as well, but when Bea finally begs for Paul to “take it out,” the real horror emerges. Paul sticks his hand deep inside Bea and pulls out a slimy, alien organ that has burrowed inside her. The “retrieval” is hard to watch, and harder to listen to with disgusting noises and Bea’s pained exhales. It’s a wonderfully gross reveal of what Honeymoon was hiding all along: a body snatching. [Zachary]

Interstellar – Tesseract

The “docking moment,” with its visual effects paired with Hans Zimmer’s ear-melting score halfway through Christopher Nolan’s arresting direction, is considered the ultimate highlight by many Interstellar fans. But, what personally took my breath away at the cinemas, and will end up being very high on my year-end list of awestruck theatre moments, was something that happens towards the end, “the big reveal” as it were. Obviously, if you have managed to still not see Interstellar, definitely stop reading this right now. But, if you have, then this should be familiar. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) detaches from the main ship as a last attempt to collect the data from the black hole and save the human race. All his prayers made, his death an impending inevitability, he instead surprisingly finds himself in a multi-dimensional, time-warped “tesseract” (a.k.a. that colorful cube thingy) and realizes that he brought about his own future as his daughter Murphy’s (Mackenzie Foy) mysterious “ghost.” This moment of revelation should go down as one of the most unforgettable plot twists of the 21st century. The emotion, McConaughey’s performance, the visual effects, how it ties into the core of what Nolan’s sci-fi is truly about—the word ”awesome” can’t even do it justice. [Nik]

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons – The Fish Demon

Stephen Chow, the director of Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, knows how to create grand visual comedy, combining lowbrow humour with pure, inventive spectacle. He’s credited as a co-director on Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, but the opening sequence feels like it could only come directly from his brain. A fish demon terrorizes a small, ramshackle fishing village (think Waterworld), gobbling up anyone foolish enough to get near the water. Amateur demon hunter Xuan decides to take a crack at defeating the evil creature, resulting in one of the year’s best action sequences. The elaborately staged scene, including a bit with giant seesaws that feels straight out of silent-era comedy, shows the immense talent and precision on display, while the use of cheesy CGI and a fat suit as a punchline makes it hard not to burst out laughing at the lunacy on-screen. Journey to the West marks Chow’s first time back in the director’s chair since 2008, and it’s a reminder of how much his zany imagination has been missed. [C.J.]

Leviathan – Appeal Denied

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan is a cinematic goliath, and it feels almost wrong to single out just one scene, when part of power the film holds is how gracefully it weaves all of its scenes together into one knockout punch. That said, I want to climb every mountain top and scream the praises of this wondrous film, so I’m grabbing every chance I get to talk about it. A standout scene is Nikolai (Aleskey Serebryakov) visiting the court, after hearing that the Mayor’s (Roman Madyanov) plans of demolishing his house are moving forward, and listening to the judge deny his appeal by reading out a litany of rules and clauses, loopholes upon loopholes which Nikolai gravely realizes he’ll never be able to jump through. The speed at which she spits his virtual sentence out, Serebryakov’s powerhouse subtlety, Zvyagintsev’s choice to slowly track towards her in a shot that is unexpectedly long. It’s but one masterstroke in a film satiated in them, and the first moment that makes one realize how cinematically rich this film is. [Nik]

Nightcrawler – The Car Chase

There have been plenty of car chases in the history of film, so at first glance it might seem unnecessary to single out this one, but the climactic chase in Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler is an exception. Why does this one stand out from the rest? Because of Lou Bloom’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) escalating obsession with capturing carnage on film to sell to the news. Bloom becomes more fanatical in his quest to capture great footage at blood-filled crime scenes, even going so far as to move a body so he can get a better angle. In the final act, Bloom deliberately creates a showdown between two dangerous criminals and police, and once the battle starts the film goes full throttle. The energy and intensity of the car chase is a massive expulsion of all the obsession brewing under Bloom’s façade the entire time. People die in the chase because of Bloom’s unsympathetic and greedy decision-making; but what does Louis think? All he cares about is if it looked good on camera. [Blake]

Nymphomaniac: Volume I – Mrs. H

The first part of Lars Von Trier’s epic, explicit saga of Joe, the titular sex addict (played in this scene by Stacy Martin) has plenty of sexual depravity going on, but the film’s knockout sequence doesn’t have anyone baring skin. In a chapter titled “Mrs. H,” one of Joe’s regular flings comes to her place with his bags. He’s left his wife and children, ready to finally come live with Joe. She isn’t actually interested in this man, but that’s the least of her problems. Suddenly the man’s wife (Uma Thurman, who needs to work more with Von Trier) shows up with their kids, letting herself in and unleashing a firestorm of emotions on Joe and her husband. The scene is Von Trier in top form: funny, unbearable, sad, provocative, and riveting all at once. It’s a sequence that lingers all the way through to the next volume, and while the rest of the film offers plenty to like, nothing comes close to matching the power of “Mrs. H.” [C.J.]

Rosewater – First Interrogation

When Maziar Bahari is first taken in by the Iranian government and questioned about his involvement covering the presidential election, it seems like a joke. Certainly, he’s not an American spy as he’s being accused. We’ve seen his incredible attempt at trying to stay unbiased while still being inquisitive. But his accusers are wrapped up in silly questions over his possession of Italian art films and misunderstand his appearance on a satirical political show. Javadi, his interrogator, seems like a brutish buffoon who will easily get his comeuppance. But then Javadi leans into Bahari, lowers his voice and changes his expression. He asks Bahari why he talks about Americans and Iranians as if they are similar. Suddenly, the entire mood of the scene and the film changes from a fish-out-of-water comedy to something much more serious. In a simple character moment, we understand that Javadi isn’t a clown or a buffoon, but a very serious man who is hurt and angered. He’s not just a powerful captor, but a wounded animal who poses a legitimate threat to Bahari’s freedom. There are louder, more dramatic interrogation scenes in Rosewater, but none crystallize the complex political environment as much as this moment. [Aaron]

Snowpiercer – The Classroom

The Snowpiercer classroom scene is a bit like the “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” moment from The Wizard of Oz. It begins the unmasking of the surreal world brought to life by Bong Joon-ho in an abrupt shift of tone. Lead by an absolutely zany performance from Alison Pill, the schoolteacher guides her young class through ritualistic songs praising the train’s mighty engine and its creator Wilford. Sure, the scene’s use of propaganda as educational material serves for a convenient exposition dump, but the colorful classroom and its blissfully ignorant children occupants add a moment of levity between the movie’s frequent brutality that manages to somehow feel crazier than many of the story’s insane twists. This scene turns swiftly brutal too, after Teacher retrieves a hidden automatic gun only to be dispatched by a swiftly thrown knife. All of it is mesmerizing and bizarrely fun. [Zachary]

Stray Dogs – Final 2 Shots

Anyone familiar with Tsai Ming-Liang knows how duration plays a vital part in his work. I saw Stray Dogs in theatres last year during its festival run, hopeful that Tsai’s self-declared final film would have him close off his filmmaking career on a strong note. I did not expect something as powerful as the film’s final two scenes, possibly the best work Tsai has ever done, to come from it. It’s hard to explain exactly why the ending has the power of an emotional sledgehammer without getting into too much detail, so I’ll stick to the facts. Shooting on digital instead of film, Tsai no longer has the limitation of a film reel to stop him from rolling. The penultimate shot lasts for close to 15 minutes, and the next shot lasts closer to 10. The extended length turns both shots into something constantly changing with each minute, an engrossing and ultimately transcendent experience. Few films have moved me the same way as those final minutes of Stray Dogs. I’m sure that only a few films ever will. [C.J.]

Two Days, One Night – Meeting Timur

Marion Cotillard’s Sandra spends the length of Two Days, One Night attempting to convince a slew of co-workers to give up a significant bonus which will allow her to retain her job. The task is uncomfortable, and for Sandra incredibly anxiety-provoking, especially after her first couple of face-to-face interactions with co-workers don’t end in her favor; however, one excursion provides Sandra hope, and gives Two Days, One Night a much needed release of tension early in the film. As Sandra starts to hesitantly ask for empathy, becoming accustomed to the routine of being turned down by her colleagues, Timur instead is the one to break down into tears. He confesses that the decision to take his bonus rather than fight for his job has been haunting him. To Sandra’s surprise, Timur is relieved to have the opportunity she’s provided him, so much so that he’s even agreed to call another one of their co-workers. The scene comes unexpectedly, but is a beautiful and heartfelt moment that sets Two Days, One Night into motion. [Zachary]

Watchers of the Sky – Tycho Brahe

At the end of Watchers in the Sky, one of the documentary’s subjects relates a story about the 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe. Brahe spent decades observing the stars and their position in the sky, writing his observations down every night. When someone asked Brahe what the purpose of his work was he said he didn’t know, but he was sure that, when someone does figure it out, he’ll have saved them several decades worth of work. And sure enough, Brahe’s measurements ended up being used by the first astronauts on the moon. It’s a moving, goosebump-inducing sequence because of how perfectly it ties into the film’s subject. Following different people fighting to end genocide, Watchers of the Sky commends them for their hard, thankless efforts. None of these people might ever see their goals fully realized, but their work will help make it easier for whoever ends up carrying their torch. It’s a level of selflessness that can inspire chills. [C.J.]

Whiplash – The Concert

If one thing’s obvious from Damien Chazelle’s 2nd film Whiplash, it’s the director’s impeccable sense of timing. The film moves along at a quick pace, settling into a rhythm of highs and lows for Miles Teller’s lead character Andrew. It’s in the film’s exhilarating finale that Chazelle allows his movie to hit the crescendo (Warning: Spoilers ahead). As Andrew performs with a band of professionals lead by the abusive conductor he’s just screwed over, he finds out Fletcher has set him up for disaster by not giving him sheet music to play. Andrew fumbles through one song so spectacularly that he leaves the stage out of embarrassment; however, just as you’ve become ready to accept this downer ending, Andrew storms back onto the stage. He interrupts Fletcher’s preamble with a energetic jazz beat and leads the band into an electric performance of “Caravan,” highlighted by a captivating drum solo. Andrew’s talent shines through so undeniably that he even wins over Fletcher. It’s an intensely visceral, satisfying moment that deserves a standing ovation. [Zachary]

What Else?

Working on this feature was like dealing with an embarrassment of riches. We could keep going on, talking about dozens of other scenes that left some sort of impact on us this year, but we all have our limits. In some cases it was simply too hard to pick one scene out of a film that contained so many amazing moments, like Under the Skin, A Spell to Ward off the Darkness and Winter Sleep. While we talked about the heart-pounding car chase in Nightcrawler, an earlier scene where Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo “negotiate” over dinner, is also notably skin-crawling. 22 Jump Street wasn’t as funny as its predecessor  but its end credits, a hilarious montage of potential sequels, was ingenious;  the ending revelation of The Overnighters packs a wallop, tragically shedding everything that came before it in a new light; and the moment when Jean-Luc Godard “splits” his 3D cameras in Goodbye to Language 3D is, simply put, something that’s never been done in cinema before. Want to share the love of a moment we picked? Want to let us know how wrong we are for not including a scene you loved? Let us know what your favorite movie moments of 2014 are, and here’s hoping 2015 brings us many more unforgettable sequences.

December hasn’t even started yet, and the lists are already starting to come out. Sight & Sound just put out their list of the year’s best films, and it’s quite the mix between awards fare and more out there material. Now you may be asking yourself, “Why are we talking about this list?” Well it’s because Sight & Sound, run by the BFI, is one of the most respected film publications in the world. They’re also responsible for the survey on the greatest films ever made that gets updated once a decade, the gold standard when it comes to all-time lists.

So what’s on this list? First off, it’s based on UK release, so some films like Wolf of Wall Street and The Wind Rises are on the list despite coming out last year in the US. Putting those aside, the top of the list doesn’t come as a surprise with Richard Linklater’s Boyhood at number one. Seeing the number 1 next to Boyhood is going to be a sight we all have to get used to by the end of the year (not that anyone’s complaining, though). After that it’s a range of titles from the more mainstream (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ida, Mr. Turner, Birdman) to the extreme arthouse picks (Jauja, Horse Money, Goodbye to Language). In other words, watching these movies will give you a fair share of the accessible and inaccessible in 2014.

Read the list below, check out our reviews for some of the films by clicking on them, and take a peek over at the Sight & Sound website for more information on the list. And be sure to check out all of Way Too Indie’s year-end coverage coming up throughout December, when we reveal our list of the best films of 2014 at a more reasonable date than the end of November.

Sight & Sound’s Best Films of 2014

1. Boyhood
2. Goodbye to Language 3D
3. (tie) Leviathan
3. (tie) Horse Money
5. Under the Skin
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel
7. Winter Sleep
8. (tie) The Tribe
8. (tie) Ida
8. (tie) Jauja
11. (tie) Mr. Turner
11. (tie) National Gallery
11. (tie) The Wolf of Wall Street
11. (tie) Whiplash
15. The Duke of Burgundy
16. (tie) Birdman
16. (tie) Two Days, One Night
18. (tie) Citizenfour
18. (tie) The Look of Silence
18. (tie) The Wind Rises

Let’s talk about FOMO.

You know what I’m talking about. That feeling you get when a friend posts online that they just saw the film you’ve read about for months and haven’t seen yet. It’s avoiding social media the entire weekend a new movie opens for fear of spoilers. It’s knowing that awards season is just around the bend and there’s more films to be seen than time to see them in. It’s Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) and in some way, shape, or form it’s been eating at you for months during the busy-ness of fall. But the light at the end of the tunnel has arrived: the Holidays.

Full, work-free days where you are practically mandated to eat a lot of food and catch up on movies. But unless you’re in college, you don’t have ALL the time in the world, so here’s your Holiday Movie Preview, just in time to help you figure out what’s coming out so you know where best to put your energy. You may return to work from the holidays 5 pounds heavier, but you’ll ace any water cooler movie pop-quizzes.

Must-Sees

Mockingjay: Part 1

It’s the beginning of the end for what is arguably the best YA film adaptation series of all time. Of course you’ll feel incomplete having to wait a year for Part 2, but this will be the one all your friends are talking about. (11/20)

The Imitation Game

The Oscar buzz around Benedict Cumberbatch will make this one worth being able to talk about. (11/27)

The Babadook

Perfect for those who like balancing savory and sweet, family time and fright time. Nothing makes you more grateful for family than a horror film about a mother and her son fighting to reconnect as they are haunted by a kid’s book character. (11/28, limited)

Wild

Skip the book, see the movie, bring tissues. Reese Witherspoon is phenomenal in the film, and Laura Dern adds emotional veracity. (12/4)

Still Alice

It’s been a slow year for decent female-led films. Julianne Moore has been building buzz around her role as a woman who discovers she has early-onset alzheimers. (12/5, limited)

Top Five

Animated films and Grown Ups movies aside, Chris Rock hasn’t been on our radar for a while, but when Top Five debuted at TIFF this year it was immediately what everyone was talking about. Chris Rock taps his best stand-up while exploring being black and famous. (12/11)

Exodus: Gods and Kings

If you’re over Middle Earth but still want some big screen epic action (with Christian Bale no less), this film’s got your back. And if it means Ridley Scott is getting back to Gladiator-level awesomeness, it should be a satisfying watch. (12/11)

Inherent Vice

The loopy, cool movie you’re film-geek friends will want to discuss. With a bit more humor than his usual, Paul Thomas Anderson weaves a groovy stoner-style mystery starring Joaquin Phoenix. (12/12, limited)

Mr. Turner

A British biopic of the eccentric painter J.M.W. Turner. Timothy Spall will be among award contenders playing the impassioned artist in director Mike Leigh’s latest. (12/18)

Big Eyes

This one might be iffy as the historical art drama hasn’t garnered a whole lot of accolade as of yet, but we’re willing to take a bet on Tim Burton, Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams almost any day. (12/24)

Unbroken

Angelina Jolie’s inspiration tale of war hero Louis “Louie” Zamperini (Jack O’Connell,) who was taken as a prisoner-of-war in WWII after surviving in a raft for a month and a half. Take Grandma, it’s almost guaranteed to be the inspirational tale of the year. (12/24)

The Interview

Intriguing due to the controversy around it and Kim Jong-Un’s apparent hatred for it. Basically after seeing Rogan and Franco in This Is the End we’re betting this could be just as hilarious. A good one to catch with friends once the family has cleared out. (12/25)

American Sniper

It’s not a true end of the year awards race without an entry from Clint Eastwood. Starring Bradley Cooper as America’s best sniper, coping with life in war, and outside of it. (12/25, limited)

Selma

If you live near a city you’ll likely be able to see this one before it goes nationwide in January, marking the 50th anniversary of the organization of the march from Selma to Montgomery, a turning point in the American Civil Rights movement. Critical consensus thus far is that director Ava DuVernay makes a name for herself with this timely historical drama. (12/25, limited)

A Most Violent Year

Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain are the new wave of hollywood elite, of the DeNiro and Streep variety. It’s a crime-thriller set in dirty 1981 NYC where an immigrant family attempts to capitalize on the American Dream. Might be the perfect grit to go with all that dessert you’ve been eating. (12/31)

Leviathan

Alright, this is for the arthouse families willing to find small theaters and in the mood for a more serious foreign film. But this drama around a family in a small fishing town has garnered serious praise thus far. (12/31, limited)

With the Family

Family-safe for when the small-talk AND the food has run out.

Penguins of Madagascar

The other Benedict Cumberbatch movie opening Thanksgiving week, and while this franchise seems overdone, from what we saw at Comic-Con it’s quite clever. Take your little sister. She’ll love you. (11/25)

The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies

For the family member obsessed with Tolkien, or for those who always finish a book even if they don’t like it. At least you’ll feel you got closure by watching this last installment in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit series. (12/16)

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

It’s the third in the franchise, so no guarantees on quality. But the gang’s all back, Stiller, Wilson, Gervais, and even Robin Williams. Might be nice to see just to see the latter one more time. (12/18)

Annie

Understand that we’re only trying to give you options that the whole family might enjoy. But as a musical re-make of an already cutesy film, we make no promises. Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, and Rose Byrne lead the family friendly foray. (12/19)

Into The Woods

A film version of Sondheim’s musical of fairy tale characters with real world problems sounds great. With Disney behind it, we worry they may soften it a bit. Either way it’s got an all-star cast including Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, and Chris Pine. (12/24)

Skip ‘Em

Trust us, these ones are likely not to be worth your precious time.

VHS: Viral (11/21)

Horrible Bosses 2 (11/25)

Extraterrestrial (11/28)

The Gambler (12/19)

The Mule (12/28)

Dying of the Light (12/5)

Cannes is over. Three words that are going to be sinking in for a while, while I try to regroup and accept that yes; the glorious, maddening, disorganized, exhilarating, and one-of-a-kind Cannes film festival is over. The Prozac to my depression is that it was an absolute blast, and an experience I wouldn’t exchange for anything. While I spend the next few days catching up on all my sleep and vitamins, the medley of scenes, moments of cinematic enormity, fits of laughter, and gasps of horror will be scooped up along with the bits and pieces of my blown mind, and shaped into a cherished memory. But in the meantime, therapy is in order and part of the 12-step program of recovery after coming back from a place like Cannes is making a Top 10 List. So here we are.

If you’ve followed my coverage, this list might not be very surprising but it’s still a good way to summarize why this was such a fantastic festival, and include some thoughts on the recently announced winners.

Honorable Mention – Whiplash

One of two Director’s Fortnights I managed to see was this Sundance hit, about a teenager’s unrelenting passion to become one of the world’s greatest drummers. With magnificent turns by Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons (the latter especially, who should be considered for Best Supporting Actor once we fast-forward seven months from now), and a well maintained adrenaline rush by focused directing and excellent editing, the only reason Whiplash isn’t in the Top 10 is because of it’s noticeably poor depiction of women and predictable emotional beats. Read my review.

#10 – Maps To The Stars

Julianne Moore may have stolen the Best Actress award from Marion Cotillard, but it’s wonderfully ironic that she did it with this role. Obviously, she’s fantastic in it and my review gushed over her. She’s a big reason David Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars makes it on this list. Hollywood gets scrutinized in brutal fashion by the master of the absurd, and it ranks as one of my most entertaining and alive moments in a Cannes screening. Worthy of noting; this is the only screening I was unable to get into initially and had to schedule in for later, so it’s good to see that the popularity paid off.

#9 – Amour Fou

Jessica Hausner was a discovery for me, but thanks to Way Too Indie’s CJ for making sure she gets a place in the anticipation list because it enticed me enough to check out this wonderfully austere 19^th century tragic-comic look at love in all its silly desperation. After her third appearance in the Un Certain Regarde, Amour Fou really showcases Hausner’s talent and is one of those films which felt misplaced in its sidebar, fitting in main competition. A unique approach to love, and perfectly framed, Amour Fou should be getting distribution if it hasn’t already so hopefully people on this side of the pond will get a chance to laugh with and at all its awkwardness. Read my capsule review here.

#8 – The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

Even though I was fortunate enough to see the much superior Him and Her versions of this heartrending love-story, Them is more than good enough to deserve a spot on this list. Without doubt the biggest “WTF are they thinking” award decision was giving the Camera D’Or to the directors of Party Girl and not Ned Benson, whose tireless years of work on this project pays off in spades with career-turning performances, assured direction, and a deeply felt story of love and loss. I’d still recommend the richer 3-hour version over this two-hour combined perspective, but if your time is that precious, you won’t go wrong with this version once it gets released. Read my capsule review here.

#7 – Mommy

Trepidation coursed through my veins during the awards ceremony because the buzz was so supportive for Xavier Dolan’s Mommy winning the Palme. Thankfully, and deservedly, Dolan shared the Jury Prize with Jean-Luc Godard and his video essay Goodbye To Language 3D. But it’s important to point out how deserving it is that Dolan walked away with something, because Mommy is a joyous experience full of sorrow, laughs, and vigorous humanity. Even the use of music, or Dolan’s knack to indulge with style, ended up being an asset rather than a flaw here. A truly impressive piece of work by a youngster whose talent is undeniable. Read the review here.

#6 – P’Tit Quinquin

The second Director’s Fortnight film I managed to see and it almost makes it into my Top 5. Bruno Dumont is a master filmmaker, there’s no denying that, and while he is known for putting you down (and kicking you a little while you’re down there) with P’Tit Quinquin he made the funniest film I’ve seen at Cannes. But it’s also one of the smartest, which is the major reason it’s appearing here. Bernard Provost gives an outstanding performance, and helps ease the 3 hour 20 minute running time. Another one CJ needs to be thanked for putting in our anticipation list, even though it’s made-for-TV make sure to seek out P’Tit Quinquin in all its cinemascope glory if you get the chance. Read my capsule review here.

#5 – Two Days, One Night

After the reaction the new Dardennes film got from its first screening, critics were declaring Palme. I wasn’t one of them however, because getting a record third Palme D’Or was always going to be a steep mountain to climb. Regardless, if they had won no one would have bat an eyelash because Two Days, One Night is Dardenne dominance at its most simplistic and vital. It lingers on long after the credits role thanks to the greatest closing lines of any film at the festival, and Marion Cotillard. Will she ever win a Cannes Best Actress? This is the third time her performance is praised to immeasurable heights, and she walks away empty-handed. I don’t like to take anything away from Julianne Moore, whom I adored in Maps, but this really did belong to Cotillard. Perhaps an Oscar will lick her wounds. Read the review here.

#4 – Mr. Turner

Mike Leigh is one of my favorite filmmakers working today. That’s just how it is, and Mr. Turner was one of my must-sees. The second film I saw at the festival and its wondrous cinematography, resonant performances, and an organic direction that plays right into my wheelhouse; Mr. Turner proves that Leigh can tackle the tricky genre of the biopic better than, well, anyone I’ve ever seen. Once you see Timothy Spall (who absolutely must be nominated for an Oscar or it’s all gone to shit) grunt, grumble, growl and gawk his way as J.M.W. Turner you’ll know how deserving that Best Actor win was. An absolute delight this film is, and one I can’t wait to relive again. Here’s my review.

#3 – Winter Sleep

And now we come to the three experiences and near-masterpieces. Winter Sleep is our brilliant, refined, introspective, and much deserved Palme D’Or winner. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is now one of the most celebrated filmmakers at Cannes; with two Grand Prix prizes, one Best Director, and now the Palme to his name. Predicted as possible winner before the festival even started, hated on by a few once it screened (including New York Times’ Manohla Dargis), Winter Sleep still managed to take most critics’ breath away and mine included (it also walked away with the FIPRESCI prize.) Thank God it appears to have done exactly that with Jane Campion, Willem Dafoe, Gael Garcia Bernal and the rest of the jury because Winter Sleep is exemplary cinema at its most dignified and sophisticated. A big hip hip hooray for this win. My review.

#2 – Leviathan

Battling it out with Winter Sleep in an almost tied position of second and third spot is Andrey Zvyagintsev’s artistic magnum opus Leviathan. Religion and politics get a scathing scrutiny in a Man vs. State tale, told through allegorical fashion of the biblical Job story. When it was announced that Leviathan won Best Screenplay, my heart skipped a beat, then slightly sank because I knew it meant chances of a Palme were slim to none. Neverthless, it goes back a winner and it’s been acquired by Sony Pictures Classic so a release date State-side is imminent. Everything just works in this film; from magnanimous Philip Glass, absorbing scenery, ridiculous eye for detail, and balletic camera movement; Leviathan is a work of art with a capital A. My capsule review is here.

#1 – Jauja

What in seven hells is Jauja? Where did it come from? How was it conceived? Where will it end up? These are the kinds of questions still circling in my mind as I try to wrap my self around this transcendental and illuminating experience. Screening in Un Certain Regarde, and playing around with a format that makes you wish you had every shot hanging on your wall, Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja walked away with the FIPRESCI prize so it’s nice to see others critics clicking with it. By far the most challenging film I’ll likely see all year, similar to how mind-boggling Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux must have felt when it screened in competition a few years ago, part of why I have it over giants like Leviathan and Winter Sleep is because its mystical powers fascinate me beyond words. Viggo Mortensen’s screen presence and his guitar-playing skills are in full effect here, but it’s all Alonso with the irreplaceable shot composition and philosophical depths showing why cinema is unlike any other art-form out there. Read my review here.

Closing Thoughts

My biggest regret was missing Jean-Luc Godard’s Jury Prize winning Goodbye To Language, but thanks to its warm reception chances of seeing it released are much bigger than before the festival started. Another big miss was Alice Rorwacher’s The Wonders, which ended up winning the Grand Prix, but from everything I read and heard, it’s not one I’ll be rushing to see. Unlike White God, It Follows, The Tribe, and Turist; all of which received either some kind of award or incredible word of mouth, and all of which I managed to unfortunately miss.

But that’s how the cookie crumbles with festivals; see some, miss some – it’s just impossible to see everything (but there’s a superpower I’d love to have.) The biggest disappointment was probably Assayas’ Clouds Of Sils Maria (review here) and not Ryan Gosling’s dog’s breakfast Lost River (reviewed here) because the former is an accomplished director and the latter is an actor playing the role of a director, poorly. Though if I could, I would replace Party Girl (capsule here) and The Blue Room (capsule here) with one of my regrets.

But even if I had to endure three Lost Rivers, there’d be absolutely nothing to complain about. The people, the films, the place, the atmosphere, and the joy of covering the world’s greatest festival; all combine for one unforgettable ride. I hope this will be the first of many Cannes film festivals for me, because there’s just simply nothing like it. Thanks to the films on this list, in some ways Cannes will never really be over for me. And now, the next step; sleeping for 48 hours straight.

The corruption pulsating under Leviathan’s surface is so dense, you’d need an especially sharp scalpel to puncture it. Andrey Zvyagintsev manages to do just that with one of the festival’s greatest films. Though it screened in the twilight days of the festival calendar, no amount of fatigue could prevent the reach of Leviathan’s subtle grip to shake you at the core. This is mostly attributed to the masterfully handled direction of scenes, a cinematography that’s never showy yet essentially influential in key scenes, penetrating performances by every single actor, and a thematic depth reached by an allegorical fable that’s worthy of being placed among the very best of Russia’s intimidating artistic pantheon.

Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) is fighting to keep his property away from state’s hands, and commissions his old army buddy Dimitri (Vladimir Vdovitchenkov) from Moscow to be his lawyer. Dimitri says he has a big file of dirt on the town’s mayor Vadim (Roman Madianov) and all he needs to do is tug him gently by the balls to get him to back away. Parallel to this, Kolya’s personal life is in a delicate state itself; with his young son Roma (Sergei Pokhodaev) not adjusting very well to Lilya (Elena Liadova), Kolya’s young wife. Kolya’s livelihood begins to slowly choke in this modern allegorical retelling of the Leviathan passage in the Book of Job.

Comparisons will be made to Winter Sleep, most fervently by those who are intent on proving Winter Sleep’s lack of engagement, but I’d argue both films succeed in engaging through different means. Whereas Winter Sleep pulls the audience (or most of it one hopes) through conversation, and lets the scenery breathe in the contemplative pauses, in Leviathan it’s the meticulous mise-en-scene that speaks the loudest.  The dried up and ruinous exteriors overlooked by the mountains like guards watching over precious relics in an abandoned museum, and interiors breathing with a life you only become aware of once it’s too late to save your sinking heart. The camera’s movement glides gently, pulls in for a kiss or follows a character as she washes her hands in the lake, and through this delicate attention establishes a penetrating familiarity, completely taking you off guard. The Machiavellian narrative, aided by musical bookends of ostentation operatic sounds only Phillip Glass can conjure, and the sense of entrapment inflicted on everyone in the story, but most poignantly on Kolya whose drowning sorrows can’t find the bottom of all the vodka bottles in Russia, help to elevate the film in constant incline.

Andrei Zvyagintsev has thoroughly understood, and mastered, the subtle power of the moving image. With his magnificent debut The Return and the masterpiece of intimate decision-making in Elena – there’s no denying that Russian cinema has found itself again through this bold craftsman, whose scalpel has never been sharper than it is here. His knack of elevating the experience (there’s that word again) to a league of its own, standing just as high as Ceylan’s didactic tête-à-tête opus but in a different mantelpiece, has confirmed him one of today’s most refined filmmakers. Soaked in spirituality, vodka, and an undercurrent of violence, Leviathan is a film worthy of study, and one can only hope that its two principle actors (Serebryakov and Madianov) or, better still, its director, will walk away awarded for the intoxicating artistry displayed by, and through, Leviathan.

Before we send this year’s Cannes correspondent Nikola Grozdanovic off to the south of France, the Way Too Indie staff compiled a list of our 10 Most Anticipated Films at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Despite the lowest number of films playing in Competition since 1990 (18 total), there is still a lot to get excited for with new films from David Cronenberg, Xavier Dolan, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Michel Hazanavicius, Mike Leigh, a directorial debut for Ryan Golsing, and more. And besides, some of our favorite films in the past have come out of other categories at the festival such as Un Certain Regard, Midnight Screenings, and sidebar events like Director’s Fortnight. We will be bringing you up-to-the-minute coverage from the festival beginning May 14th. In the meantime, see below for the films we can’t wait to see.

Way Too Indie’s 10 Most Anticipated Films At Cannes 2014

The Captive

This marks Atom Egoyan’s sixth film to play in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The plot for The Captive closely resemblances Denis Villeuneuve’s recent film Prisoners, a father (played by Ryan Reynolds) attempts to find his kidnapped daughter. But after watching the impressive trailer, Egoyan adds a hair-raising twist when the family uncovers surveillance cameras in their own home. Suddenly they realize this is not just an average kidnapping case and fear their every move is being monitored. Co-starring alongside Reynolds are Rosario Dawson, Mireille Enos, Scott Speedman, and Bruce Greenwood. Egoyan has received his fair share of awards from Cannes in the past, but it’s been nearly 20 years since his last win. Maybe The Captive will change that. [Dustin]

Maps to the Stars

It’s hard not to get giddy with anticipation whenever David Cronenberg’s got a new film on the horizon. He’s an auteur with a delectably skewed vision of the world, so Maps to the Stars, written by cult author Bruce Wagner, seems a perfect match: An unrelenting showbiz satire, it follows the famous Weiss family, a clan of corrupted, mentally unstable Hollywood types, and their strange, fucked up lives. Cronenberg’s got a strong stable of talents at his disposal, with Julianne Moore, John Cusack, Mia Wasikowska, Rob Pattinson and the underrated Olivia Williams rounding out the cast. [Bernard]

Mr. Turner

As far as first and second visits to the Cannes Film Festival competition go, I don’t think there’s ever been a bigger success story than Mike Leigh (let us know in the comments if there was). In 1993 Leigh entered the main competition for the first time and walked away with the Best Director, helping David Thewlis earn Best Actor for the same film, the irreproachable Naked. Three years later, he returned for the second time with the emotionally stirring familial, class, race, and life drama Secrets & Lies, and walked away with the Palme D’Or, helping Brenda Blethyn earn Best Actress for her portrayal of mother-in-shambles Cynthia. You don’t need a PhD to recognize the pattern; Leigh is a bonafide master of the craft and he’s got a way with actors. This year, he’s back with Mr. Turner and two of his most prominent collaborators, Timothy Spall in the title role and Leslie Manville who redefined acting in Leigh’s last film Another Year. The closest Leigh got to a 19th century biopic was 1999’s Topsy-Turvy but something tells me this one’s going to be slightly different in tone, as it deals with the last quarter of controversial painter J.M.W. Turner’s life. Honoured to be waving the Way Too Indie banner at this year’s Cannes, Turner is at the very top of my must-see films mostly because Leigh has yet to disappoint me (and I’ve seen all of them). Watch out for an early review as Mr. Turner screens in the first few days. [Nik]

P’tit Quinquin

Bruno Dumont may have won 2 Grand Prix awards at Cannes (L’Humanité and Flandres, respectively), but he’s still not an especially well-known or watched figure for arthouse audiences. His style, filled with ambiguities and provocations, leaves audiences both captivated and enraged. His last film, Camille Claudel 1915, was a bit of a departure due to his casting of Juliette Binoche (Dumont typically prefers to work with non-professionals), but P’Tit Quinquin appears to be the beginning of a completely new direction for the filmmaker.

P’Tit Quinquin is a four part miniseries dealing with a string of bizarre murders in a small French town. The fact that Dumont was able to get a miniseries made in the first place is shocking enough, but the trailer appears to show Dumont making something appealing to mainstream audiences. Of course it’s not a complete 180 for Dumont; the series still looks very strange, and it’ll be exciting to see the results. With the show airing in the fall, and signs of a North American release unlikely, it’ll be quite interesting to see how this new work by Bruno Dumont turns out. [CJ]

Lost River

Ryan Gosling is usually starring in my most anticipated Cannes films, so this new turn of Gosling behind the camera obviously piqued my interest. Furthermore, that his directorial début has thus far been described as a dark fantasy thriller, makes Lost River that much more intriguing. Formerly called How to Catch a Monster, the story follows Billy, played by Gosling’s Drive co-star Christina Hendricks, as a single mother of two who is pulled into the dark and macabre underworld of her dying city, Lost River, while her adult son Bones (Iain De Caestecker) finds a secret road leading to an underwater town. The film also stars Saoirse Ronan, Matt Smith, Eva Mendes, and Ben Mendelsohn.

In his director’s statement on the film Gosling mentions being inspired by the time he’s spent in Detroit, a city in desperation having been hit hardest by the recession and with thousands of homes and neighborhoods abandoned. Gosling described the true main character of the film as the city of Lost River itself, saying the city is “the damsel in distress” and the characters are “broken pieces of a dream, trying to put themselves back together.” Gosling may follow in many other lead actors steps jumping behind the camera, but it’s admirable he hasn’t tried to capitalize on his own acting acclaim by casting himself in the film. Warner Brothers has already picked the film up for distribution, so the rest of us will get to see it soon enough, and in the meantime I’ll be keeping an eye on the Un Certain Regard competition. [Ananda]

The Search

Director Michel Hazanavicius made a huge critical splash with his previous film The Artist, a wildly entertaining throwback to the silent black-and-white era, picking up 5 Oscars and 4 Independent Spirit Awards along the way. Hazanavicius returns to the Croisette this year with his latest film called The Search, a two and a half hour film that is adapted from Fred Zinneman’s 1948 film of the same name. Bringing back his wife Bérénice Bejo for the lead role, The Search is about a woman working for a non-governmental organization who forms a special relationship with a young boy in war-torn Chechnya. The film will also feature Oscar Nominated actress Annette Bening. All eyes will be on Hazanavicius to see if he can repeat the success he had from his previous efforts. [Dustin]

Two Days, One Night

Two Days, One Night‘s premise is so ingeniously simple it’s a wonder no one’s thought of it yet: A woman has a weekend to convince her co-workers to forego their annual bonuses so that she can keep her job. It’s a fruitful setup with so much drama ripe for the picking I can’t help but be intrigued. Oh, and the brilliant Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardene (The Kid With a Bike, L’enfant) are in the directors’ chairs. And the film stars Marion Cotillard. Oui s’il vous plait! [Bernard]

Leviathan

This was something of a surprise when it was announced by Fremaux, because the state of production was kept very much under wraps on this one. Also, the state of Russian cinema hasn’t exactly been taking international film by storm as much as it was when people like Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov and Mikhail Kalatozov were around, so there’s been a lack of attention. Well say hello to Andrey Zvyagintsev, who should be changing all of that. If his short filmography is anything to go by, he’s the one sticking his country’s flag in today’s film world. His latest Elena, about a woman stuck between her lazy son and her stubborn husband, is directed with such finesse and poise, it transports one to a level of sophistication that’s rarely felt these days in cinema. His feature debut, The Return, about two brothers coping with their absent father’s return, is even better; atmospheric and deeply absorbing with brilliant performances and a thematic depth you can dive into headfirst with no fear of ever hitting the bottom. This time he’s coming back to Cannes with Leviathan, a story set around the Barents Sea coast in North Russia about a man’s struggle to keep his small business when the mayor of his town threatens to close it down. Human struggles on the edges of a gorgeous remote location, directed with a Russian artist’s eye for the powerfully subtle and the visually stirring? This is an absolute must, and no amount of festival fatigue will restrain my anticipation when I catch it during the last days of Cannes. [Nik]

Amour Fou

It didn’t matter what exactly Amour Fou was about, because what puts this film on our list is the director. Jessica Hausner has slowly gained traction over the years as a director to look out for, from her debut Lovely Rita to Lourdes, her most recent film. Five years after Lourdes, Hausner returns with a film inspired by the life and death of German poet Heinrich von Kleist. Of course, Hausner isn’t one to make a film as simple as that description, with the official synopsis saying “rather than being a biographical portrait, the film is a parable about the ambivalence of love.” Lovely Rita and Hotel, her extremely underrated horror film, have both played Un Certain Regard, and Amour Fou will play the sidebar as well. Hopefully this year will be the one where Hausner finally gets her due. [CJ]

Foxcatcher

Bennett Miller has pretty much proven he has a knack for bringing true stories to the screen in mesmerizing ways. He seems to prefer to work with the stories that arise from real life and made baseball statistics intriguing in Moneyball, and cold-blooded killers and one off-kilter writer a fascinating look at two sides of humanity in Capote. Now Miller takes on another tragedy, coupled (as life seems to do) with the inspiring story of Olympic wrestling champions Mark and David Schultz played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo respectively. The Schultz brothers hold the distinction of having won more NCAA, US Open, World Championship, and Olympic titles than any American brother duo in wrestling history.

Their biggest headline however was in 1996 when Dave was shot and killed by the Schultz’s longtime friend and mentor John E. Du Pont (played by Steve Carrell in what could be an Oscar-worthy performance if he pulls it off), the mentally ill multimillionaire who founded Team Foxcatcher and who owned the facility where the two wrestlers trained. Up for the prestigious Palme d’or, Foxcatcher seems the sort of difficult tale that Bennett Miller is so good at depicting, and its subjects provide for challenging performances that are guaranteed some attention. [Ananda]

Unless you’ve managed to live without the internet since April 16th, the question “How do you feel about the Cannes lineup this year?” must have surfed its way to – or from- you by now. Yes, cinephiles around the world have been slowly digesting Thierry Fremaux’s announcement from April 17th, and Way Too Indie is no exception. As this years man in the field, my excitement is only contained by perpetual bouts of anxiousness as I mentally prepare for the invasion my body and mind will succumb to in three weeks time. 19 films competing for the main prize, 19 films competing in the smaller, edgier, and often times more revelatory Un Certain Regard section, 2 films in the Out Of Competition slot, 3 Midnight Screenings, and 5 Special Screenings (Cannes slang for Documentary.)

That’s 48 movies, and with Fremaux confirming that two or three more will be added in the coming weeks, that’ll make just about 50 or so films in the Official Selection. That’s not even including the Cannes affiliated Director’s Fortnight and Critic’s Week! What I would give to be able to see them all! But that’s not going to be possible, so once every film gets announced, and the schedules are out, I’ll have a better idea of what I’ll be able to catch.

In the meantime, you’d do well to bookmark this page because for the coming weeks this is going to be a PR mecca for everything Cannes related. We will have trailers, images, interview links and anything else we grab our hands on. You’re encouraged to use the comments section and let us know if we’ve missed anything!

IN COMPETITION

Clouds Of Sils Maria

Director Olivier Assayas

Saint Laurent

Director Bertrand Bonello

Winter Sleep

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Maps To The Stars

Director David Cronenberg

Complex look at Hollywood and what it reveals about Western culture.

Two Days, One Night

Directors Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

The film follows Sandra, a young woman assisted by her husband, who has only one weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses so that she can keep her job.

Mommy

Director Xavier Dolan

A widowed single mother, raising her violent son alone, finds new hope when a mysterious neighbor inserts herself into their household.

The Captive

Director Atom Egoyan

A father tries to track down his kidnapped daughter.

Goodbye To Language

Director Jean-Luc Godard

The Search

Director Michel Hazanavicius

A woman who works for a non-governmental organization (NGO) forms a special relationship with a young boy in war-torn Chechnya.

The Homesman

Director Tommy Lee Jones

A claim jumper and a pioneer woman team up to escort three insane women from Nebraska to Iowa.

Still The Water

Director Naomi Kawase

Mr. Turner

Director Mike Leigh

A look at the life of British artist J.M.W Turner.

Jimmy’s Hall

Director Ken Loach

Political activist Jimmy Gralton is deported from Ireland during the country’s ‘Red Scare’ of the 1930s.

Foxcatcher

Director Bennett Miller

The story of Olympic Wrestling Champion Mark Schultz and how paranoid schizophrenic John duPont killed his brother, Olympic Champion Dave Schultz.

Le Meraviglie

Director Alice Rohrwacher

Timbuktu

Director Abderrahmane Sissako

Wild Tales

Director Damian Szifronr

Leviathan

Director Andrey Zvyagintsev

UN CERTAIN REGARD

Party Girl

Director Marie Amachoukeli

An aging nightclub hostess decides to settle down and get married.

Jauja

Director Lisandro Alonso

A father and daughter journey from Denmark to an unknown desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization.

poster via IndieWire

Le Chambre Bleue

Director Mathieu Almaric

Incompresa

Director Asia Argento

Titli

Director Kanu Behl

A young man in Delhi tries to break free from his controlling brothers.

Eleanor Rigby

Director Ned Benson

A New York couple’s relationship.

Bird People

Director Pascale Ferran

An American arrives in Paris, checks into a hotel, turns off his cell phone and starts his life anew.

Lost River

Director Ryan Gosling

A single mother is swept into a dark underworld, while her teenage son discovers a road that leads him to a secret underwater town.

Amour Fou

Director Jessica Hausner

Charlie’s Country

Director Rolf De Heer

Snow in Paradise

Director Andrew Hulme

Hard-hitting character study that’s based on the real story of one man’s journey to control his violence through religion. It takes us from the blood soaked East End of London to the world of the Islamic whirling dervishes.

A Girl At My Door

Director July Jung

Xenia

Director Panos Koutras

Strangers in their own birthplace, 16-year-old Danny and 18-year-old Odysseus cross the entire country in search of their Greek father, after their Albanian mother passes away.

Run

Director Philippe Lacote

Run escapes… He just killed the Prime Minister of his country. In order to do so, he had to act as if he was a crazy man, wandering through the city. His life comes back by flashes; his childhood with Tourou when his dream was to become a rain miracle-worker, his adventures with Gladys the eater, and his past as a young member of militia, in the heart of the politic and military conflict in Ivory Coast. All those lives, Run didn’t choose them. Everytime, he felt in by running from another life. That’s the reason why his name’s Run.

Turist

Director Ruben Ostlund

Hermosa Juventud

Director Jaime Rosales

Fantasia

Director Chao Wang

The Salt Of The Earth

Directors Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado

Away From His Absence

Director Keren Yedaya

The film plans to follow the incestuous relationship between a 60-year-old man and his 22-year-old daughter who live together in a small apartment in Israel. The film will deal with difficult moral and political issues. It faces questions such as how and why an evolving, adult woman is still having sex with her father — a man whom, despite raping her at an early age, she claims to be in love with.

White God

Director Kornel Mundruczo

OUT OF COMPETITION

Grace Of Monaco

Director Olivier Dahan

The story of former Hollywood star Grace Kelly’s crisis of marriage and identity, during a political dispute between Monaco’s Prince Rainier III and France’s Charles De Gaulle, and a looming French invasion of Monaco in the early 1960s.

How To Train Your Dragon 2

Director Dean DeBlois

It’s been five years since Hiccup and Toothless successfully united dragons and vikings on the island of Berk. While Astrid, Snotlout and the rest of the gang are challenging each other to dragon races (the island’s new favorite contact sport), the now inseparable pair journey through the skies, charting unmapped territories and exploring new worlds. When one of their adventures leads to the discovery of a secret ice cave that is home to hundreds of new wild dragons and the mysterious Dragon Rider, the two friends find themselves at the center of a battle to protect the peace. Now, Hiccup and Toothless must unite to stand up for what they believe while recognizing that only together do they have the power to change the future of both men and dragons.

Coming Home

Director Zhang Yimou

A Chinese man is forced into marriage and flees to America, but when he returns home, he is sent to a labor camp.

In The Name Of My Daughter

Director André Téchiné

The real life story behind the disappearance of Agnes Les Roux

MIDNIGHTERS

The Rover

Director David Michôd

A loner tracks the gang who stole his car from a desolate town in the Australian outback with the forced assistance of a wounded guy left behind in the wake of the theft.

The Salvation

Director Kristian Levring

In 1870s America, a peaceful American settler kills his family’s murderer which unleashes the fury of a notorious gang leader. His cowardly fellow townspeople then betray him, forcing him to hunt down the outlaws alone.

The Target

Director Chang

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Maidan

Director Sergei Loznitsa

A look at the 2013 and 2014 civil unrest in the Ukrainian capital’s central square.

Red Army

Director Gabe Polsky

Following the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, RED ARMY tells the story of the nation’s famed Red Army hockey team through the eyes of its captain Slava Fetisov. Whether he was pitted against enemies in the political arena or on the ice, Fetisov’s story provides a rare glimpse behind the Iron Curtain of the 1970s and ’80s by mirroring the social and political forces at work in the world around him. While helping pave the way for his nation to cross over into the next century, this one man demonstrated how sports could not only be an avenue for creative expression in a world determined to suppress it, but also be something so inextricably intertwined with a nation’s cultural and political identity.

Bridges of Sarajevo

Director Aida Begic, Leonardo di Costanzo & more

The Bridges of Sarajevo is a cinematic contribution to the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of WWI. The film is a collaboration of well known European directors, who all contribute one short to the feature film.

Cartoonists, Foot Soldiers of Democracy

Director Stéphanie Valloatto

The Ardor

Director Pablo Fendrik

An Argentinian western revenge tale starring juror Gael Garcia Bernal.

Geronimo

Director Tony Gatlif

A story about social conflict between Turks and gypsies as seen through the eyes of a teacher.

The Owners

Director Adlikahn Yerzhanov

Two brothers struggling to hold on to their ancestral home while their sister and mother lose their breath and mind, respectively.

Of Men And War

Director Laurent Becue-Renard

2013 was filled with plenty of tremendous films, and just as many memorable moments. As a companion to our Best Films of 2013 list, we asked our staff to come up with some of their favorite moments in movies this year. Covering all our favorites would just take too much time, so below we have singled out a few moments (15 to be exact) that stuck in our heads the most throughout the year.

Way Too Indie’s Favorite Movie Scenes From 2013

Sex scene – Her

The story of a man falling in love with his computer is an absurd sitcom-ready premise, but through Spike Jonze’s vision it’s looked at in a disarming and surprisingly sincere light. When Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) installs his new OS Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), their relationship feels naturally developed aside from the fact that Samantha doesn’t have a physical form. When Theodore, after going on a bad date, comes home and tells Samantha about it they finally act out on their feelings. Jonze avoids showing the sex scene, instead fading to black and letting the audience hear Theodore and Samantha make love. It’s a graceful move by Jonze, and a ballsy one to let the audience be left in the dark with only the sounds of the two leads moaning. But Phoenix and Johansson put in excellent performances, and the scene shows how, when you take everything else away, there’s an undeniably pure love between these characters. [CJ]

Oscar Grant Shooting Re-enactment – Fruitvale Station

One of the main reasons Fruitvale Station has touched a nerve with audiences across the world is the pervading air of authenticity: Like Oscar Grant, the film’s slain inspiration, director Ryan Coogler is a Bay Area native, and it was imperative to him that he shoot the film exclusively in the neighborhoods where Oscar lived his life. The tragic final moments of Oscar’s life (which were captured in real life by onlookers via camera phone) were spent face down on a BART platform until one of the police officers detaining him shot and killed him. Coogler and his crew filmed their reenactment in the exact spot it took place, with Michael B. Jordan, playing Oscar, laying his torso directly onto the bullet hole left from Oscar’s murder. His performance and Coogler’s direction make for a stunning, powerful cinematic moment. [Bernard]

The Hanging – 12 Years a Slave

Many parts of 12 Years a Slave are particularly hard to watch, but none was so impacting to me as when Solomon Northrup is strung up to a tree to hang after defending himself against an overseer who wrongfully attacked him. He escapes hanging but is left on his tippy toes gargling for breath for what seems like hours. Rather than show time passing by cutting away or letting the audience imagine how horrifying such a situation would be, director Steve McQueen forces us to watch as other slaves go about their business and the mistress of the plantation looks on, always hearing the low gurgle of a man literally barely holding on for life. Never as an audience member have I felt so helpless. This scene will likely hold its place in film school classes teaching the awful power of the camera’s gaze. [Ananda]

“Everytime” montage – Spring Breakers

Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers is a visual delight. The 95 minute film feels like one giant montage that never ends. Korine uses all the tricks he can muster to attack your senses. Every scene is filled with bright colors and flashy editing set to the hypnotic score by electro whizzes Skrillex and Cliff Martinez. At times its sensory overload and can be hard to comprehend what we’re looking at. In the middle of all the debauchery Korine does manage to slow the film down for a treat for the ages. Alien (played by James Franco) sits poolside of his Floridian mansion, playing a white grand piano. His three new friends that he’s rescued from jail emerge with pink ski masks toting guns. They ask him to play a song and he indulges with a rendition of Britney Spears’ “Everytime”.

Just as we’re about to laugh at the scene because of how completely odd it is, the actual song by Spears fades in as we’re treated to a montage entirely in slow motion of Alien and the pink ski masked girls beating and robbing people violently. The scene must be seen to be believed. I’ll never forget sitting in the theater with a gigantic smile on my face as I watched Alien jumping on a bed with maniacal grin while the girls were giving a bunch of bros bloody lips. The scene comes at the perfect time in the film. For 60 minutes you are bombarded with eccentric images and just when you think you can’t take any more of it, Korine slows it all down for you. Just in time of course for the climax to explode all over the screen. [Blake]

Shower scene – Stoker

The scene that was most prominent to me this year was Chan-wook Park’s particular spark of controversial genius in Stoker. India (Mia Wasikowska), the 18 year old girl who is the focus of the film, struggles with the loss of her father (Dermot Mulroney) and becomes overly and inappropriately intrigued by her estranged uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) who visits after his brother dies. The shower scene in which India masturbates in the midst of washing away the dirt and trauma of what she has just experienced, was not only initially confusing to myself, but was also totally shocking. Despite the scene being awkward at first, it juxtaposed the scenes that made up the disturbed realisation of the weakness and confusion India feels. [Amy]

Opening shot – The Place Beyond the Pines

The technical achievement of pulling off the elaborately choreographed three minute long continuous shot at the beginning of The Place Beyond the Pines is simply speculator. A muscular man paces back and forth while flipping his butterfly knife before a knock on his trailer door indicates that it is show time. The uninterrupted scene continues as the man grabs his jacket and begins to weave around games and tents that produce loud noises and bright lights at a carnival. Walking with clear determination, the man travels across the heavily populated fairground to a tent where a large crowd of people is gathered to cheer for him. The announcer introduces the heartthrob over the loudspeaker as he proceeds to get on his motorcycle. Just before he puts on his helmet we see his face for the first time. After a few thrusts of his engine he joins two other stuntmen in a metal cage where they ride upside-down, narrowly missing one another. This tracking sequence establishes the confident personality of Ryan Gosling’s character, as well as getting a taste of what his character is capable of on a motorcycle—both of which are relevant during the course of the film. [Dustin]

The Birds – Leviathan

The beauty and terror of Leviathan could be easily summed up in the astounding shot that closes the film. At night the camera, presumably tied to the back of a ship, is bobbing up and down in the ocean as dozens of birds are flying around. The footage is flipped 180 degrees, making everything upside down. Pitch-black ocean, only identified by the brief glimpses of crashing waves, is now sky as we view multitudes of small, moving white lines float underneath it. It’s a disorienting image, one that turns the familiar into something otherworldly, and is a good showcase for why Leviathan has bowled over so many people. [CJ]

Opening scene – Post Tenebras Lux

Admittedly there are many scenes in this Carlos Reygadas directed film that are likely to stay with a person. A glowing red devil walking in a house at night, a man punching a dog severely, and a crazy French orgy all come to mind, and are also reasons I wouldn’t actually recommend this film. But if you watch any of it, watch the first ten minutes where a small child wanders alone in a cow pasture. She shuffles in the mud giggling with delight as giant cows graze around her and herding dogs do their best to keep her from danger. The scene switches between the view of seeing the child, a huge and sun-streaked sky behind her, and the narrowly focused and low perspective of the child running among the animals. It’s impossible not to feel fear for the child’s well-being while simultaneously be in awe of such a spectacle. [Ananda]

Safe Haven – V/H/S/2

Technically this is not a scene as much as it is a short film, but we are counting it because of the way V/H/S/2 is comprised of several of these sequences. Also because Safe Haven happens to be one of the most enjoyable horror segments of the entire year. The basic premise of Safe Haven involves a documentary crew interviewing a local man who runs a cult. After questioning the man’s beliefs (at one point they almost laugh at him), they ask him to take them to his compound so they can get an account of daily life.

The final 15 minutes of Safe Haven is an orgasmic release of unapologetic, ritualistic, and unbelievably bloody violence. Director Gareth Evans holds nothing back. Kids swallow suicide pills, a room full of men blow their brains out with pistols, men chasing each other with shotguns, and dead people come back to life as zombies. In one scene a man wills his body to explode sending his innards all over the walls of a hallway. All of this leads up to a magnificent scene of an 8 foot demon sticking its horn through an innocent woman’s stomach as she gives “birth” to Hell on Earth. And as the last survivor desperately tries to find his way out of the compound, you’ll shiver as the growls of the demon echo throughout your sound system as if Satan himself was ringing the dinner bell notifying his vermin that it’s time to eat. Safe Haven isn’t the best horror film that 2013 has to offer, but for a quick 30 minutes you’ll be struggling to pick your mouth up from the floor. [Blake]

Eva and Chloe – Enough Said

In Nicole Holofcener’s terrific Enough Said (if you haven’t seen it yet, what’s stopping you?), a lot of attention (and flack) has been given to a subplot involving Eva’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) friend Sarah (Toni Collette) fretting over replacing her maid. Sadly not as much attention is being paid to another subplot within the film, one that seemingly comes out of nowhere. As Eva’s daughter prepares to move away for college, her best friend Chloe (fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson, making her acting debut) starts to replace Eva’s daughter. It’s an unexpected and hilarious storyline, serving as a perfect complement to Eva’s fears of separation throughout the film. The subplot is one of the more original and bizarrely funny things to come out of 2013, and it shows why Holofcener is one of the more consistent and undervalued directors working today. [CJ]

The Big Twist – Stories We Tell

In Canadian director Sarah Polley’s experimental, poetic documentary about the relationship between people (her family, specifically), stories, and identity, she investigates the validity of the lingering family joke that her dad, Michael Polley, isn’t her biological father. After a 108 minute-long roller coaster ride of twists, turns, and revelations, the credits roll, and we’re left with a pretty clear idea of who Polley’s biological father truly is. That is, until a couple minutes into the credits, when a snippet of footage turns everything we thought we knew about the story on its head. The beauty of this final twist is that it strongly emphasizes Polley’s primary observation, that memories are abstract, malleable, and elusive. [Bernard]

Butterfly Metaphor – Dallas Buyers Club

Towards the end of Dallas Buyers Club, Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) returns to the Mexican hospital where he first received medications to effectively help him battle his HIV. Shortly after Ron and the doctor discuss a new possible treatment evolving from caterpillars Ron wanders into a back room full of monarch butterflies. Simultaneously back in Texas, his business partner, fellow HIV sufferer, and possibly the best friend Ron has ever had is succumbing to the aggressive disease. Rayon (played with perfection by Jared Leto) is a transgendered woman who never did get the sex change she wanted. Watching Ron among those possibly life-saving butterflies, as his best friend undergoes the ultimate cocoon transformation leaving her poor frail body behind, is the best kind of cinematic metaphor. [Ananda]

Under The Bed – The Selfish Giant

It’s impossible to go over the specifics of this sequence without delving into spoilers, so I’ll try to speak as generally as possible. In The Selfish Giant, best friends Arbor and Swifty spend their days collecting scrap metal and copper wire for a local junkyard owner. Right from the opening we see how Arbor and Swifty’s relationship operates. Arbor, a hot-tempered adolescent with some sort of behavioral issue (never specifically mentioned but hinted at by his refusal to take medication), is first seen lying underneath his bed having a fit. He screams and pounds at his bed until Swifty takes his hand, finally calming Arbor down. Writer/director Clio Barnard eventually revisits this moment in the final act with devastating results. In one quiet, simple shot Barnard breaks viewers’ hearts while putting them directly in Arbor’s state of mind. In this moment, and the one immediately after involving Siobhan Finneran, it’d be near-impossible to find anyone with a dry eye. [CJ]

Opening shot – Gravity

I certainly did not expect to see a better opening sequence this year after The Place Beyond the Pines’ three minute long tracking shot, but Gravity ups the ante with a fifteen minute continuous shot which masterfully introduces us to each character, as well as the weightless environment of space. The first couple of minutes of the film we only hear the radio communication between the astronauts and mission control as Earth slowly fills the screen. In the distance a white dot very slowly starts to enter the foreground and before long the space orbiter shape is recognizable. The camera floats around this orbiter in all directions, visually establishing the weightlessness of space. When Sandra Bullock’s character accidentally lets go of a screw and it flies right into the camera instead of straight down, the audience also feels no gravity for the next hour and a half. At this point the film is leisurely introducing the environment and the characters, however, this suddenly interrupted when news comes in that space debris is heading their way. The film is one long thrill ride after that. There is no doubt that what makes Gravity such an impressive work of art are the visual effects and cinematography, both are on full display in the film’s opening moments. [Dustin]

Car scene – Before Midnight

While Alfonso Cuaron’s space ballet opening scene in Gravity is arguably the pinnacle of cinematic spectacle for 2013, an early scene in Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight–the Rohmer-ish, talky third film in his beloved Before series–creates spectacle in a stealthier fashion, via a boldly extended single shot and sublime verbiage. As we watch gabby lovers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) chit chat about their career plans, twin daughters, and the beautiful Greek surroundings, the camera (planted firmly on the dashboard) keeps rolling…and rolling…and rolling, until it dawns on us that we’re watching a master-stroke of a shot. The unparalleled naturalistic dialog, the gorgeous Greek landscapes rolling out behind them, and the monumental length of the thing, make for a sequence every bit as elegant and awe-inspiring as Cuaron’s anti-gravity mini-opus. [Bernard]

Now that you have gotten a chance to read Way Too Indie’s Best Films of 2013, a cumulative list from our staff, check out the individual Top 10 Lists from the eight staff members that created the list. The differences between the cumulative site list and these individual ones are actually quite different. First of all, even though mathematically Gravity was our overall #1 film for 2013, it only appears in the #1 spot in one of the eight lists below. Also, because a film had to get at least two mentions to quality for our cumulative list, you’ll find quite a few different titles down below: Leviathan, Paradise: Love, Blackfish, A Hijacking, The Past, and many more.

Staff Top 10 Lists For 2013

Dustin’s Top 10

Jansen’s Top 10

Ananda’s Top 10

Bernard’s Top 10

Amy’s Top 10

Pavi’s Top 10

Blake’s Top 10

CJ’s Top 10

For this monthly staff feature we came to the conclusion that because not everyone on the staff has been to the same festivals, thus having the opportunities to see the same films, that each writer from the staff would list their own individual Top 5 Films of 2013 (So Far). You can tell just by looking at our lists that there is a wide range of quality films that have been released at the halfway mark of 2013. While we wait to see what upcoming gems 2013 will bring us, here are the best films of the year so far.

Blake’s Top 5

2013, what a year you’ve been so far for us film going folk. You’ve made me cry (A Haunted House, Aftershock), you’ve made me laugh (Warm Bodies in a good way, A Good Day to Die Hard in a bad way) and you’ve had me cheering from the rafters (Gareth Evan’s Safe Haven, Fast and Furious 6). You were better than the first half of 2012 so keep up the good work. Picking my favorite 5 films of the year so far has proven to be a malicious act. I’ve seen some great films. There are easily more than five and since I can only have that amount, I shall list what barely misses here. These are my, as Roger Ebert would call them, Special Jury winners: Graceland, The Silence, The Act of Killing, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Side Effects.

#1  Spring Breakers

#2  Reality

#3  The Hunt

#4  Upstream Color

#5  The Lords of Salem

Bernard’s Top 5

My top two films of the year so far are interchangeable, as they’re both brilliant, but in different ways. Before Midnight is nearly flawless—I was floored by every facet of it. Sarah Polley’s documentary/family-drama/soap-opera/whodunit, Stories We Tell, is a Frankenstein’s monster of personal filmmaking goodness that exists outside any genre. These two films are absolute beasts, and there are miles between them and the rest of the movies I saw this year. That said, it would be amazing if a film in the last half of 2013 can top them somehow. Fingers crossed!

#1  Before Midnight

#2  Stories We Tell

#3  Simon Killer

#4  You’re Next

#5  Like Someone In Love

Amy’s Top 5

I had the opportunity to see so many great films at this year’s Sundance London Film Festival, but only a few have so far have had confirmed releases, In a World will be heading to the UK this September. It was a tremendous comedy written, directed and performed by Lake Bell – I would recommend anyone to go see it when it hits cinemas! I also had the chance to see Mud at the festival and loved every minute of it. Stoker, (directed by Chan-wook Park, Oldboy) was a phenomenal film – its stunning visuals and intense storyline had me utterly gripped throughout, sincerely recommend for those who like Park’s style. Warm Bodies was a great film that turned our expectations of a zombie film upside down, making the dead come alive and love again. I really did not think I would take to Sightseers as much as I did, most of the film I was thinking – “what the hell is going on” – but the last few scenes had me in stitches. Looking forward to seeing: This is the End, The East, and Before Midnight.

#1  In a World

#2  Mud

#3  Stoker

#4  Warm Bodies

#5  Sightseers

CJ’s Top 5

I’ve never seen a year where my two favourite films (at this time) are documentaries, let alone ones that push the capabilities of documentary filmmaking and cinema itself into new directions. I had an internal debate about my placement of both films on this list. Do I give the #1 spot to the film with the most societal and moral impact, or the film with the most cinematic impact? In the end I couldn’t choose, so I let them both share the top spot. The other three are all terrific, and Bernard has explained enough why Before Midnight is great, but these first two shook me to the core. Other films that barely made the cut: Spring Breakers, Side Effects, The Place Beyond The Pines, Valentine Road.

#1 (tie)  Leviathan and The Act of Killing

#3  Before Midnight

#4  Beyond The Hills

#5  Hors Satan

Ananda’s Top 5

Perhaps it’s the celebration of the end of a long recession, but of 2013’s film offerings thus far, the ones that have seemed strongest to me are all of a lighter fare. Granted I haven’t seen A Hijacking, Mud, or The Stories We Tell (which would probably make this list because I have a huge girl-crush on Sarah Polley). I can wait for the fall to indulge in the heavier stuff, including all those festival films not yet released (Blue is the Warmest Color, holler). But sometimes lighter is better. From the bottom, This is the End is the best buddies-in-a-crises film I’ve seen since Shaun of the Dead and had my abs hurting for days. A three-quel on my list? I’m just as shocked, but when Hollywood’s wittiest writer, Shane Black, unites with the world’s wittiest superhero, Iron Man (played by the man Black was born to write for, Robert Downey Jr.) it’s a match made in Marvel heaven. Upstream Color isn’t easier to follow than Shane Carruth’s first film Primer, but was much easier to accept and had a lovely hum to it. It’s no secret I’m a sucker for films of the dark and twisty variety, and Stoker manages to be elegant with its seductive spookiness. Frances Ha, at the top of my list, stroke some realistic chords with this urban-dwelling 20-something, and Greta Gerwig shines as she makes what could be an aimless hipster, a relatable heroine. All in all, 2013 has me feeling rather positive thus far. Honorable Mentions: Side Effects (The twists and pacing of Ocean’s 11 with the gravitas of Contagion) and since we’re keeping it light with my list Warm Bodies successfully paired young love and zombies to my great delight.

#1  Frances Ha

#2  Stoker

#3  Upstream Color

#4  Iron Man 3

#5  This is the End

Dustin’s Top 5

It is not all that surprising that three of the top five films I have seen so far in 2013 had played at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. But only one of those (Nebraska) is allowed to be on this list as the other two (Like Father, Like Son and The Great Beauty) do not meet our prerequisite of having a hard 2013 U.S. release date yet. But because 2013 has been a solid year for films so far, it was not difficult to find two other films to take their place. And it will only get better during the fall festival circuit and awards season. Though I saw Ulrich Seidl’s hard-to-watch yet stimulating Paradise: Love last year, it is still the top film for me with a 2013 release date. A few films that just missed the cut for me were: To The Wonder, 28 Hotel Rooms, and The Act of Killing. I should also include a few films that I have not seen yet: Mud, Fruitvale Station, Before Midnight, and Post Tenebras Lux.

#1  Paradise: Love

#2  The Place Beyond the Pines

#3  Upstream Color

#4  Frances Ha

#5  Nebraska

Back in September when I covered the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival the movie I was looking forward to the most wasn’t anything from the major fests like Cannes or with major directors/writers/stars. It was a documentary about a fishing boat’s voyage that, going by its trailer, was unlike anything I’ve seen before. Leviathan, made by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, exceeded my already high expectations in every way imaginable once I actually got to see it.

Shot on a variety of small HD cameras which were thrown around on the ship and in the ocean, Leviathan is a disorienting assault on the senses that captures the terrifying forces of nature in a way no other movie has. Cinema Guild has picked up distribution rights in the United States, and it was just announced today that it’ll be coming out in theatres on March 1st. They also unveiled the film’s poster which gives a good sense of what to expect. Look at the poster below, and make sure to see this film if it ends up playing near you.

Official movie poster of Leviathan:

Nearly a month ago the first wave of 22 tiles were announced that would play at the 2012 Chicago International Film Festival and today the rest of the lineup has been revealed. Some of the notable additions to the lineup were; Paradise: Love which played at Cannes, Carlos Reygades’ baffling Post Tenebras Lux, the obsessive The Shining documentary Room 237, Brandon Cronenberg’s debut Antiviral and SXSW winner Gimme The Loot.

CIFF is shaping up to be a festival that is worth attending as the lineup is certainly stacked with some reputable films including the controversial Holy Motors and other Cannes film festival titles such as Beyond the Hills and Like Someone in Love. Other anticipated films that will play at the festival are; The Sessions, Leviathan (which was CJ’s favorite film at TIFF) and The Impossible.

Also a special presentation of Cloud Atlas will play at the festival and serve as the Centerpiece Film. Scheduled to attend that screening are the directors of the film; Tom Tykwer and the Chicago natives Lana and Andy Wachowski.

The 48th Chicago International Film Festival will be held on October 11th through October 25th 2012 at AMC River East 21 in downtown Chicago. This year I will be attending the festival and reporting back with capsule reviews and tweets for Way Too Indie so stay tuned.

2012 Chicago International Film Festival Lineup
Here is a link to .PDF with schedule and descriptions of the films.

The ABCs of Death (various directors)
After Christmas (Benjamin Kegan)
After Lucia (Michel Franco)
Ken Nordine Presents Agenbite of Inwit
Agon (Robert Budina)
Alaskaland (Chinonye Chukwu)
Another Bullet Dodged (Landon Zakheim)
Antiviral (Brandon Cronenberg)
Any Day Now (Travis Fine)
Art of Conflict (Valeri Vaughn)
As Goes Janesville (Brad Lichtenstein)
Astrid (Fijona Jonuzi)
Bad Seeds (Safy Nebbou)
The Believers (Clayton Brown Monica Long Ross)
The Bella Vista (Alicia Cano)
Benji (Coodie and Chike)
Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
Bite of the Tail
Black Pond (Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe)
Black’s Game (Axelsson)
Body Memory (Ülo Pikkov)
Boys Are Us (Peter Luisi)
Cadaver (Joseph Ansell)
Caesar Must Die (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani)
Café Regular, Cairo (Ritech Batra)
A Caretaker’s Tale (Katrine Wiedemann)
CatCam (Seth Keal)
The Central Park Five (David McMahon, Ken Burns and Sarah Burns)
The Chair (Grainger David)
Chill (Hana Jušić)
Citadel (Ciaran Foy)
The Cleaner (Adrian Saba)
Clip (Maja Milos)
Cloud Atlas (Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer)
Color of Sky (Dr. Biju)
Come to Harm (Bokur Sigthorsson)
Coming of Age (Gerhart Ertl and Sabine Hiebler)
The Conquerors (Sarolta Szabó and Tibor Bánóczki)
Consuming Spirits (Chris Sullivan)
Dad, Lenin and Freddy (Rinio Dragasaki)
Day of the Crows (Jean-Christophe Dessaint)
Dear Hunters (Zack Bornstein)
The Delay (Rodrigo Plá)
Diaz: Don’t Clean up this Blood (Daniele Vicari)
Dinosaur Eggs in the Living Room (Rafael Urban)
Don’t Click (Tae-kyeong Kim)
Dragon (Peter Chan)
Dreams for Sale (Miwa Nishikawa)
Drought (Everardo González)
The Drudgery Train (Nobuhiro Yamashita)
Edmond Was A Donkey (Franck Dion)
Ellen is Leaving (Michelle Savill)
Empire Builder (Kris Swanberg)
Everybody’s Got Somebody…Not Me (Raúl Fuentes)
The Exam (Peter Bergendy)
F*ckload of Scotchtape (Julian Grant)
Fable (Lester Hamlet)
Faces (Said Najmi)
The Final Member (Jonah Bekhor and Zach Math)
Flight (Robert Zemeckis)
Flowerbuds (Zdenek Jirasky)
Footnote (Joseph Cedar)
Friend Request Pending (Chris Foggin)
Full Circle (Zhang Yang)
Germania (Maximiliano Schonfeld)
Gimme the Loot (Adam Leon)
Hemel (Sacha Polak)
Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
Hometown Boy (Hung-I Yao)
The Impossible (Juan Antonio Bayona)
In Hanford (Chris Mars)
In Their Skin (Jeremy Power Regimbal)
Jai Bhim Comrade (Anand Patwardhan)
The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (Chris James Thompson)
John Dies at the End (Don Coscarelli)
Keep the Lights On (Ira Sachs)
Kern (Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala)
King Curling (Ole Endresen)
Kuma (Umut Dag)
La Demora (Rodrigo Plá)
The Land of Eb (Andrew Williamson)
The Land of Hope (Sion Sono)
Land of the Heroes (Sahim Omar Kalifa)
The Last Friday (Yahya Al Abdallah)
The Last Ice Merchant (Sandy Patch)
The Last Sentence (Jan Troell)
Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel)
Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
Maniac (Franck Khalfoun)
Marie Kroyer (Bille August)
Marla (Nick King)
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (Alex Gibney)
Meeting Leila (Adel Yaraghi)
Mekong Hotel (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Modest Reception (Mani Haghighi)
A Monkey on My Shoulder (Marion Laine)
Mr. Christmas (Nick Palmer)
Mr. Sophistication (Danny Green)
Murderer Alias X (Lynn Devillaz & Antonio Veiras)
My Bow Breathing (Enrico Maria Artale)
Next Door Letters (Sascha Fülscher)
Night Across the Street (Raoul Ruiz)
Not Fade Away (David Chase)
Numbered (Dana Doron and Uriel Sinai)
Of Snails and Men (Tudor Giurgiu)
Off White Lies (Maya Kenig)
Oh Willy… (Emma de Swaef)
Old Man (Leah Shore)
Once Upon a Time Was I, Veronica (Marcelo Gomes)
Otelo Burning (Sara Blecher)
Our Children (Joachim Lafosse)
Out in the Dark (Michael Mayer)
An Oversimplification of her Beauty (Terence Nance)
Paradise (Nadav Kurtz)
Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl)
The Patsy (King Vidor)
Paul (Adam Bizanski)
The Perfect Fit (Tali Yankelevich)
Pitch Black Heist (John Maclean)
La Playa DC (Juan Andres Arango Garcia)
Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas)
Postcards from the Zoo (Edwin)
The Pub (Joseph Pierce)
Quartet (Dustin Hoffman)
The Queen of My Dreams (Fawzia Mirza)
Rat Fever (Cláudio Assis)
Reality (Matteo Garrone)
The Repentant (Merzak Allouache)
Return (Shay Levi)
Rhino Season (Bahman Ghobadi)
Room 237 (Rodney Ascher)
Room 69 (Claude Barras)
A Royal Affair (Nikolaj Arcel)
The Runner (Ana Lazarevic)
The Sapphires (Wayne Blair)
The Scapegoat (Charles Sturridge)
Sea Shadow (Nawaf Al-Janahi)
A Secret World (Gabriel Mariño)
The Sessions (Ben Lewin)
Shadow Dancer (James Marsh)
Shameless (Filip Marczewski)
Sharqiya (Ami Livne)
Shun Li and the Poet (Andrea Segre)
Simon Killer (Antonio Campos)
Sister (Ursula Meier)
Sleep Tight (Jaume Balagueró)
Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas)
Stand Up Guys (Fisher Stevens)
Starlet (Sean Baker)
StringCaesar (Paul Schoolman)
Tastes Like Chicken? (Quico Meirelles)
Tchoupitoulas (Bill Ross and Turner Ross)
Tey (Alain Gomis)
This is London (Mohammed Rashed Buali)
The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (Rania Stephan)
TSTL/ King Lost His Tooth (Gheith Al-Amine)
Under the Colors (Esmaeel Monsef)
Valley of Saints (Musa Syeed)
Voice Over (Martin Rosete)
Waiting for P.O. Box (Bassam Chekhes)
War Witch (Kim Nguyen)
The Weekend (Nina Grosse)
Westerland (Tim Staffel)
Where the Buffalo Roam (Brad Bischoff)
Winter of Discontent (Ibrahim El-Batout)
The World Is Funny (Shemi Zarhin)
Written in Ink (Martin Rath)
Xingu (Cao Hamburger)
Yardbird (Michael Spiccia)
Yuma (Piotr Mularuk)
38-39°C (Kangmin Kim)
43,000 Feet (Campbell Hooper)

2012 Toronto International Film Festival came to close on Sunday when officials announced the Audience Award went to Silver Linings Playbook, a film that now has some serious Oscar potential. We did not attend a showing of that crowd-pleaser film but below is a recap of the films that Way Too Indie writer CJ Prince did see at this year’s festival.

Recap of Way Too Indie coverage of 2012 Toronto International Film Festival

Day #1: An Introduction to the festival

An informative article about Toronto International Film Festival along with helpful film festival pointers.

Day #2: Spring Breakers and The Master

The first actual day at the festival was full of delays which resulted in leaving early from Spring Breakers to catch P.T. Anderson’s highly anticipated The Master.

Day #3: Tabu, Amour, 90 Minutes, No One Lives

This was the busiest day at the festival as it consisted of four different films including Amour which many believe to be a front runner at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language.

Day #4: Cloud Atlas and The Land of Hope

Easily the largest budgeted film we cover, Cloud Atlas, ended up being one of our favorites that we saw.

Day #6: Berberian Sound Studio and Here Comes The Devil

Back from taking one day off from the festival we cover a film that was on Way Too Indie’s Top 10 Most Anticipated Films at TIFF 2012.

Day #7: The Hunt and Leviathan

This day would end up be to the best overall day, Leviathan which ended up being the best film we saw by far and The Hunt which was a crackling drama.

Day #8: Post Tenebras Lux and When Night Falls

Two films from TIFF’s Wavelengths programme which are films that straddle the line between conventional and experimental.

Day #11: Penance

Finally we close out the festival with an epically long 5 hour film that ended the festival on a mediocre level.

Way Too Indie on Twitter

Follow @WayTooIndie on Twitter to see all of our festival coverage as well as daily reviews and news. Below is a recap of some our TIFF ’12 coverage.

Front of the spring breakers line is almost entirely young girls who are here for the cast. Poor souls have no clue what they’re in for.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 7, 2012

Screening delayed already, dammit. Gotta catch the master no matter what even if it means skipping on this movies ending #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 7, 2012

From what I saw SPRING BREAKERS was a typical Korine movie for me. Hit and miss, with incredible highs and dull lows. #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 8, 2012

THE MASTER: going to take another watch before I get a better idea of what to think. Plenty of amazing stuff but it doesn’t come together

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 8, 2012

Filling in for AMOUR #TIFF12 twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 8, 2012

Say hello to the directors of CLOUD ATLAS #TIFF12 twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 9, 2012

CLOUD ATLAS: Welp, they did it. Huge epic, it’s faults are overshadowed by its huge ambitions. #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 9, 2012

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO: Some fantastic moments but it gets too bogged down in its insanity to be truly great #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 11, 2012

Thomas Vinterberg at a Q&A for THE HUNT which got a standing ovation twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Overheard someone say they thought Morgan Freeman died a week ago, so anyone who thinks that #TIFF12 is for intellectuals can rest easy

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

LEVIATHAN: holy shit. Holy shit. Holy Shit. Holy. Shit. HOLY SHIT #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 13, 2012

In my 5 years of attending #TIFF12 I have yet to meet a nice person with a lanyard.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 13, 2012

POST TENEBRAS LUX: Uh… #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 13, 2012

Well guys it has been a fun #TIFF12. Thanks for the follows, RTs and support. I now hand the reins back over to Dustin, see you next year

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 16, 2012

It turned out that the day I was most cautious about was the best experience I had at the festival so far. Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt has been one of the hotter titles here, with praise thrown at it left and right from people who got the chance to see it. I didn’t know much about The Hunt going in, and despite my little knowledge beforehand it didn’t buck the current trend of ‘good not great’ that I’ve been experiencing. Kindergarten teacher Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) has his life turned upside down when a student at his school falsely accuses him of molesting her. The girl has a crush on Lucas, but when he rejects a gift she made for him (which she snuck in his coat shortly before trying to kiss him on the mouth) the girl angrily tells another teacher that he exposed himself to her. What makes this situation even more complicated is that the girl’s father is Lucas’ best friend Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen). The Hunt is a crackling drama that benefits greatly from taking what would be a morally black and white situation and forcing it into a grey area. Every character behaves justifiably (I can’t say the same for their actions), and Vinterberg milks out the intensity of the situation as much as possible. The first hour of the film, with Lucas slowly being ostracized by the town, is mostly predictable until Vinterberg brings in Lucas’ son. The movie shifts its POV to the son, and when we see how the townspeople deem him guilty by association things take an interesting turn. Mads Mikkelsen is terrific as Lucas, but some praise should also go to Bo Larsen who easily sells how conflicted his character is over whether to condemn or stand by his best friend. The Hunt may have been too see-through for me to truly enjoy it, but Vinterberg has crafted a very good movie here.

RATING: 7.5/10

The Hunt

And just as I was lamenting the lack of truly great films at TIFF this year, along comes Leviathan to save the day. As we’ve already mentioned in our trailer post, Leviathan is an abstract documentary that was filmed on a fishing boat working around the eastern seaboard. The opening sequence starts out from the point of view of a fisherman hauling in a catch, but suddenly the camera is thrown into the ocean. As the camera bobs up and down in the ocean we get brief glimpses of seagulls flying in the sky. Describing these kinds of scenes don’t do justice to how visceral watching Leviathan is. The use of small GoPro cameras not only gets some amazing footage, it lends an otherworldly quality to what’s on screen. The constant movement makes it impossible to orient oneself, so when the camera catches a net being pulled in during the night it can easily look like some sort of monstrous creature coming out of the water. I don’t see how anyone could watch Leviathan outside of a theatre and get the same impact as watching it on a giant screen. After being assaulted for nearly 90 minutes, the lights came on in the theatre and I suddenly realized that I seemed to have lost my place. Everything around me looked foreign, like I was suddenly dropped into the theatre and trying to figure out where I was. It’s the kind of reaction I’ve never had after watching a film, and it left me feeling euphoric afterwards. Leviathan is the best film of the year for me right now, the kind of movie that makes me realize why I love going to TIFF in the first place.

RATING: 9/10

Leviathan

NEXT UP: Post Tenebras Lux which gained Carlos Reygadas a Best Director prize at Cannes this year. It’ll be followed by When Night Falls, which annoyed the Chinese government so much that they offered to buy the film just so they could bury it. Plus, a review of Motorway.

Recap of some of my Tweets from today:

Follow @WayTooIndie for full coverage of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival!

In line for THE HUNT right now after arriving early at #TIFF12 today. Don’t know much about this film other than it pisses some people off.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Thomas Vinterberg at a Q&A for THE HUNT which got a standing ovation twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Now in line for the premiere of LEVIATHAN which @cinemaguild has picked up for distribution! That already tells me it must be good #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Someone just asked Vinterberg if he could explain dogme 95. KILL ME.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Overheard someone say they thought Morgan Freeman died a week ago, so anyone who thinks that #TIFF12 is for intellectuals can rest easy

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Audience sat in stunned silence throughout credits of LEVIATHAN. Here’s a pic of the very shy directors #TIFF12 twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 13, 2012

The staff at Way Too Indie narrows down the Top 10 films that we are most excited for at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. The task of narrowing a list down to only 10 is not an easy one considering that there will be over 300 films playing at the festival. Way Too Indie’s CJ Prince will be there to cover the festival and plans to review some of those that are listed below Listed below are Way Too Indie’s Top 10 Most Anticipated Films playing at Toronto International Film Festival 2012.

The Master (director Paul Thomas Anderson)

I think it is fair to say, even setting aside my complete biased opinion, that P.T. Anderson ranks up there among one of the most prominent American directors of today. That being said, it is easy to see why The Master, his follow up to 2007’s There Will Be Blood, is a highly anticipated film. At the helm as one of the lead characters is an Anderson veteran Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman plays a charismatic intellectual who starts up a faith organization and recruits drifter Joaquin Phoenix. Just from the trailer one can see how berserk Phoenix’s character goes and if anyone is fit to play that role it is Joaquin Phoenix. The other reason The Master is getting a lot of attention is that it is being shown in 70mm widescreen format that is suppose to look drop-dead gorgeous. [Dustin]

Spring Breakers (director Harmony Korine)

No one ever thought that they’d hear the words ‘Selena Gomez in a Harmony Korine film’ in their life, but here we are. The director of films like Trash Humpers, Mister Lonely and this disturbing Black Keys music video, Korine would seem like the last person in the world to team up with stars from Disney and Glee (Vanessa Hudgens, Dianna Agron and Korine’s wife Rachel round out the rest of the female cast). The casting may sound like it came straight out of Hollywood but the plot, about a drug dealer (James Franco aping the look of rapper Riff Raff) who hires the four bikini-clad girls to be his hitmen after they rob a fast food restaurant, sounds bizarre enough to fit in with the rest of Korine’s films. Now, with all of the crazy set photos and news of Skrillex getting involved with the score, Spring Breakers sounds like Korine has managed to capture the zeitgeist. [CJ]

Cloud Atlas (directors Tom Tykwer & Wachowski brothers)

The Wachowskis, directors of the Matrix Trilogy and the underrated Speed Racer, team with Tom Tykwer, director of Run Lola Run and The Princess and the Warrior, team to make this centuries spanning film involving actors playing different roles over the course of those centuries. As soon as the film was announced for TIFF a stunning trailer set to M83’s ‘Outro’ was released. The film looks to be a shoo in for technical awards at next year’s Oscars. It is not known whether or not the film will be a mess, though we’ll have a clearer picture in a couple of weeks. [Blake]

To The Wonder (director Terrence Malick)

It has been rumored that To The Wonder is even more experimental than Terrence Malick’s last film, The Tree Of Life, which seems hard to believe but if true we could be in store for another Malick masterpiece. The film is being billed as a romantic drama about a man who is reconnected with a woman after his marriage falls apart. It will star Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck and Javier Bardem. The only thing that has me a little worried is this will be the first time that Malick has ever released films in consecutive years. [Dustin]

Argo (director Ben Affleck)

The last time Ben Affleck came to TIFF it was for The Town, which went on to snag an Oscar nomination along with a surprisingly big haul of $92 million at the box office. Two years later, Affleck is hoping to repeat his success with Argo. Based on a true story, Argo follows a group of CIA operatives who go to Iran posing as documentary filmmakers in order to free six Americans trapped in the country. Unlike The Town, Affleck only takes on directing and acting duties this time (he doesn’t have a writing credit) but he’s assembled an impressive cast with names like John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, Victor Garber and Alan Arkin to name a few. It’s hard to tell if audiences will be interested enough in the story and 70s period setting, but Affleck has proven himself to be a strong enough director that Oscar buzz is building around the film. With a theatrical release right around the corner after its TIFF premiere, it won’t take long before we find out if Argo will be a serious contender in the awards race. [CJ]

Like Someone In Love (director Abbas Kiarostami)

Abbas Kiarostami last wowed audiences with his masterfully crafted Certified Copy starring the lovely French actress Juliette Binoche as a woman walking the Italian country side with a man she may or may not have a past with. Kiarostami’s new film is rumored to be a semi-sequel to Certified Copy. This film takes place in Tokyo and involves a relationship between a young woman and an old man. [Blake]

Room 237 (director Rodney Ascher)

After receiving both high praises and concerns over possible copyright issues, Room 237 made a splash at Sundance Film Festival this year. This documentary aims to explore theories about the hidden meaning in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The three decade old film is still being studied by scholars and hardcore fans as well as debated which is what this documentary shows. Of course, this documentary will only appeal to people who enjoyed The Shinning but you can count me in as it is my all-time favorite horror film. [Dustin]

Leviathan (director George P. Cosmatos)

Directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel focus their cameras on the ocean in Leviathan, a new documentary about a fishing boat. Castaing-Taylor and Paravel spent two months aboard as the ship traveled around catching fish, but their goal wasn’t to do their own version of The Deadliest Catch. Sharing multiple GoPro cameras with the fishermen on board, footage was captured from the bowels of the ship to under the ocean. We talked about the incredible trailer on here earlier, and the film received rave reviews (along with many walkouts due to feelings of nausea) at its premiere in Locarno. Leviathan looks like a truly original experience that will take its toll on viewers mentally and physically, but hopefully it should be something no one will ever forget. [CJ]

Berberian Sound Studio (director Peter Strickland)

I have a soft spot for Italian horror films. This new film by Peter Strickland looks to go behind the scenes of these horror movies to see how they are made. The film looks to be about a British sound engineer (Toby Jones) who is hired by an Italian director to do the sound for his newest film. However, it seems that life soon begins to imitate art as his job starts to get deadly. The film looks to be a great throwback to the 70s filmmaking era, especially the Horror genre. This could be a sleeper hit in the making. [Blake]

Penance (director Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa established himself early in the 2000s with the terrifying horror film Pulse. Since then he spent several years trying to re-capture his success at scaring people with films like Loft and Retribution but his output was uneven. In 2008 Kurosawa (no relation to legendary director Akira Kurosawa) changed gears with Tokyo Sonata, a drama about a family in crisis after the father is laid off. It was another masterpiece from Kurosawa, but he hasn’t made another film since then. Now, four years later, he makes up for his lost time with the 4.5 miniseries Penance. Taking place over 15 years, the miniseries follows a woman who tries to get vengeance for the unsolved murder of her daughter. Kurosawa’s filmography may be uneven, but he’s proven himself capable of making truly great films. Hopefully Penance will be the sign of a terrific comeback. [CJ]

With TIFF only weeks away, the festival has just dumped another massive amount of titles that will be playing come September. Today TIFF rounds out its Galas and Special Presentations program, announcing Paul Andrew Williams’ Song for Marion as the closing film. That brings the total number of Galas to 20 and Special Presentations up to a whopping 70. Highlights include Spike Lee’s Michael Jackson documentary Bad 25, Brian De Palma’s Passion and Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers. Titles from Cannes that are showing up in Special Presentations include Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy, Walter Salles’ On The Road and Pablo Trapero’s White Elephant. And, despite being revealed yesterday, one of the biggest announcements for TIFF is that Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master will be screening in 70mm for its North American Premiere.

Contemporary World Cinema, a massive programme dedicated to showing off cinema around the world, revealed the rest of its line-up. With 62 films, highlights include Christian Petzold’s Barbara, Edward Burns’ The Fitzgerald Family Christmas, Sergei Loznitsa’s In The Fog, Sion Sono’s In The Land of Hope, Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise: Love, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Penance and James Ponsoldt’s Smashed.

Finally, the Wavelengths line-up was fully revealed. Dedicated to avant-garde films, the program has expanded this year to include more film choices. On top of its 4 wavelengths sections, the programme includes Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mekong Hotel, Tsai Ming-Liang’s Walker, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s Leviathan, Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux and Ying Liang’s When Night Falls which just won 2 awards at the Locarno Film Festival.

The line-ups for Galas and Special presentations are listed below. You can read the rest of the line-up for Contemporary World Cinema and Wavelengths at the festival’s official site. Once again, WayTooIndie will be covering the Toronto International Film Festival next month where we hope to discover some amazing new films from around the world. More information about the festival, including the full line-up and how to get tickets, can be found on www.tiff.net/festival. The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 6th – 16th.

Galas:
Song for Marion Paul Andrew Williams, UK World Premiere (Closing Night Film)
A feel-good, heart-warming story about how music can inspire you. Song for Marion stars Terence Stamp as Arthur, a grumpy pensioner who can’t understand why his wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave) would want to embarrass herself singing silly songs with her unconventional local choir. But choir director Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) sees something special in the reluctant Arthur and refuses to give up on him. As she coaxes him out of his shell, Arthur realizes that it is never too late to change.

Emperor Peter Webber, Japan/USA World Premiere
In the aftermath of Japan’s defeat in World War II and the American occupation of the country, a Japanese expert (Matthew Fox) on the staff of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) is faced with a decision of historic importance, in this epically scaled drama from director Peter Webber (Girl With a Pearl Earring).

What Maisie Knew Scott McGehee, David Siegel, USA World Premiere
Based on the Henry James novella, the story frames on 7-year-old Maisie, caught in a custody battle between her mother – a rock and roll icon – and her father. What Maisie Knew is an evocative portrayal of the chaos of adult life seen entirely from a child’s point of view. Starring Joanna Vanderham, Onata Aprile, Alexander Skarsgård, Julianne Moore, and Steve Coogan.

Special Presentations:
Arthur Newman Dante Ariola, USA World Premiere
Wallace Avery is tired of being a loser. Once a hot shot in the world of competitive amateur golf, Wallace was dubbed ‘The Choker’ when he hit the pro circuit. Unable to shake off a monumental loss of nerve on the greens, Wallace retired from the pro tour and slipped into the ranks of the quietly desperate. Deciding to address a radical problem with a radical solution, he stages his own death, buys himself a new identity as Arthur Newman, and sets out toward his own private Oz of golf. An offbeat love story set in a perfect storm of identity crisis, Arthur Newman looks at how two people try to remake themselves and come around to owning up to some basic truths about the identities they left at home. Starring Emily Blunt, Colin Firth, and Anne Heche.

Bad 25 Spike Lee, USA North American Premiere
Bad 25 celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Michael Jackson “Bad” album with unseen footage, content shot by Jackson himself, and a treasure chest of findings. The documentary is divided into two parts: artists today who were influenced by Michael, and people who worked by his side – musicians, songwriters, technicians, engineers, people at the label – all committed to Michael and the follow-up to the biggest record of all time, “Thriller.” Interviewees include: Mariah Carey, L.A. Reid and Sheryl Crow.

Disconnect Henry Alex Rubin, USA North American Premiere
Disconnect interweaves multiple storylines about people searching for human connection in today’s wired world. Through poignant turns that are both harrowing and touching, the stories intersect with surprising twists that expose a shocking reality into our daily use of technology that mediates and defines our relationships and ultimately our lives. Directed by Academy Award® nominee Henry Alex Rubin (Murderball), and starring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Andrea Riseborough, Alexander Skarsgård, and Max Theriot, as well as Jonah Bobo, Colin Ford and Haley Ramm.

Do Not Disturb Yvan Attal, France World Premiere
Jeff unexpectedly shows up on Ben’s doorstep at 2am. Since their college days, they’ve taken very different paths. Jeff is still the wild man, a serial lover, an artist and eternal vagabond who’s never stopped roaming the world. Ben has settled down with chilled-out and wonderful Anna; they bought a small and comfortable house in the suburbs and started trying to make a baby. But this quiet life is disrupted by the whirlwind that is Jeff, especially when he takes Ben to a wild party, from which they return at dawn, having made a decision that is about to turn all of their lives upside down. This provocative, hot and funny new film by award-winning French director Yvan Atta stars François Cluzet and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Greetings from Tim Buckley Dan Algrant, USA World Premiere
Greetings from Tim Buckley follows the story of the days leading up to Jeff Buckley’s eminent 1991 performance at his father’s tribute concert in St. Ann’s Church. Through a romance with a young woman working at the concert, he learns to embrace all of his feelings toward the father who abandoned him – longing, anger, forgiveness, and love. Culminating in a cathartic performance of his father’s most famous songs, Jeff’s debut stuns the audience and launches his career as one of the greatest young musicians of his time. Starring Imogen Poots and Penn Badgley.

Lines of Wellington Valeria Sarmiento, Portugal North American Premiere
After the failed attempts of Junot and Soult in 1807 and 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte sent a powerful army, commanded by Marshal Massena, to invade Portugal in 1810. The French easily reached the centre of the country, where the Anglo-Portuguese army, led by General Wellington, was waiting. Starring John Malkovich, Nuno Lopes, Soraia Chaves, Marisa Paredes, and Victoria Guerra.

Love is All You Need Susanne Bier, Denmark North American Premiere
Love Is All You Need is a new film by Academy Award-winner Susanne Bier. Philip (Pierce Brosnan), an Englishman living in Denmark, is a lonely, middle-aged widower and estranged single father. Ida (Trine Dyrholm) is a Danish hairdresser, recuperating from a long bout of illness, who’s just been left by her husband for a younger woman. The fates of these two bruised souls are about to intertwine, as they embark for Italy to attend the wedding of Philip’s son and Ida’s daughter. With warmth, affection and confidence, Bier has shaken a cocktail of love, loss, absurdity, humour and delicately drawn characters who will leave only the hardest heart untouched. This is a film about the simple yet profound pains and joys of moving on – and forward – with your life.

On The Road Walter Salles, France/Brazil North American Premiere
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Walter Salles and based on the iconic novel by Jack Kerouac, On The Road tells the provocative story of Sal Paradise (Sam Riley), a young writer whose life is ultimately redefined by the arrival of Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), a free-spirited, fearless, fast-talking Westerner and his girl, Marylou (Kristen Stewart). Traveling cross-country, Sal and Dean venture out on a personal quest for freedom from the conformity and conservatism engulfing them in search of the unknown, themselves, and the pursuit of it – the pure essence of experience. Seeking unchartered terrain and the last American frontier, the duo encounter an eclectic mix of men and women, each adding meaning to their desire for a new way of life. The screenplay is by Jose Rivera (Academy Award nominee for The Motorcycle Diaries), while Executive Producer Francis Ford Coppola has been developing the project since 1978. Also stars Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst.

Passion Brian De Palma, France/Germany North American Premiere
An erotic thriller in the tradition of Dressed To Kill and Basic Instinct, Brian de Palma’s Passion tells the story of a deadly power struggle between two women in the dog-eat-dog world of international business. Christine possesses the natural elegance and casual ease associated with one who has a healthy relationship with money and power. Innocent, lovely and easily exploited, her admiring protégé, Isabelle, is full of cutting-edge ideas that Christine has no qualms about stealing. They’re on the same team, after all… But when Isabelle falls into bed with one of Christine’s lovers, war breaks out. Starring Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Karoline Herfurth and Paul Anderson.

Rhino Season Bahman Ghobadi, Iraqi Kurdistan/Turkey World Premiere
After thirty years spent in prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kurdish-Iranian poet Sahel finally walks free. Now the one thing keeping him alive is the thought of finding his wife Mina, who thinks he is long dead and has since moved to Turkey. Sahel sets out on an Istanbul-bound search. Starring Behrouz Vossoughi, Monica Bellucci and Yilmaz Erdoğan.

Spring Breakers Harmony Korine, USA North American Premiere
Four sexy college girls plan to fund their spring break getaway by burglarizing a fast food shack. But that’s only the beginning. During a night of partying, the girls hit a roadblock when they are arrested on drug charges. Hung over and clad only in bikinis, the girls appear before a judge but are bailed out unexpectedly by Alien (James Franco), an infamous local thug who takes them under his wing and leads them on the wildest spring break trip in history. Rough on the outside but with a soft spot inside, Alien wins over the hearts of the young spring breakers, and leads them on a spring break they never could have imagined. Starring Selena Gomez, James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens and Heather Morris.

The Master Paul Thomas Anderson, USA North American Premiere
A striking portrait of drifters and seekers in post World War II America, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master unfolds the journey of a Naval veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) who arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future — until he is tantalized by The Cause and its charismatic leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Starring Amy Adams, Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Dern.

The Paperboy Lee Daniels, USA North American Premiere
A chilling sex-and-race-charged film noir, The Paperboy takes audiences deep into the backwaters of steamy 1960s South Florida, as investigative reporter Ward Jansen and his partner Yardley Acheman chase a sensational, career-making story with the help of Ward’s younger brother Jack and sultry death-row groupie Charlotte Bless. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, David Oyelowo and Zac Efron.

The Son Did It Daniele Ciprì, Italy/France North American Premiere
The Son Did It is the story of the Ciraulos, a poor family from South Italy whose young daughter is mistakenly killed by the Mafia. As compensation, they receive a large amount of money from the State but this sudden richness will change their life in a completely unexpected way. Starring Toni Servillo, Giselda Volodi, Alfredo Castro and Fabrizio Falco.
The Suicide Shop Patrice Leconte, France/Belgium/Canada International Premiere
Imagine a shop that for generations has sold all the accoutrements for the perfect suicide. This family business prospers in all its bleak misery, until the day it encounters joie de vivre in the shape of younger son, Alan. What will become of The Suicide Shop in the face of Alan’s relentless good cheer, optimism and determination to make the customers smile? Starring Bernard Alane, Isabelle Spade, Kacey Mottet Klein, Isabelle Giami and Laurent Gendron.

Thérèse Desqueyroux Claude Miller, France International Premiere
In the Landes region of France, near Bordeaux, marriages are arranged to merge land parcels and unite neighbouring families. Thus, young Thérèse Larroque becomes Mrs. Desqueyroux. But her avant-garde ideas clash with local conventions and in order to break free from the fate imposed upon her and live a full life, she will resort to tragically extreme measures. Starring Audrey Tautou, Gilles Lellouche and Anaïs Demoustier.

White Elephant Pablo Trapero, Argentina/Spain North American Premiere
In a poverty-stricken and highly dangerous Buenos Aires slum, two men – both friends, both priests, both deeply respected by the local community for their tireless endeavours on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed – take very different paths in their struggle against violence, corruption and injustice. Starring Martina Gusman, Ricardo Darin and Jérémie Renier.

Yellow Nick Cassavetes, USA World Premiere
Nick Cassavetes’ seminal work, Yellow, is a searing take on modern society and the demands it makes on people. Centered on Mary Holmes, a young woman who has a difficult time feeling things, and swallowing twenty Vicodin a day doesn’t help. We enter her hallucinatory world, peopled with Busby Berkeley dancers, Cirque du Soleil, Circus freaks, and human farm animals where nothing is quite what it seems. Starring Sienna Miller, Gena Rowlands, Ray Liotta, David Morse, Lucy Punch, Max Theoriot, Riley Keough, Daveigh Chase, Heather Wahlquist and Melanie Griffith.

Leviathan is a new film by directors Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Paravel was the co-director on the 2010 documentary Foreign Parts while Castaing-Taylor co-directed the well-received 2009 documentary Sweetgrass. The first trailer for Leviathan has come online and, for what looks like a 4 minute excerpt from the film, it’s already one of the best trailers this year. Here’s a synopsis for Leviathan from the film’s official website:

“In the very waters where melville’s pequod gave chase to moby dick, leviathan captures the collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine. shot on a dozen cameras — tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker — it is a cosmic portrait of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors.”

The trailer feels like its own short film as a camera films dead fish being dumped into the ocean from the side of a ship. Eventually the camera itself plunges into the water and bobs around as hundreds of birds come to eat the floating scraps of waste. It’s a unique, disorienting experience that’s memorable on its own. If the rest of Leviathan impresses as much as this trailer, we should hopefully be in for something special.

Leviathan premieres in August at the Locarno Film Festival, and you can read more information about the film at www.leviathanfilm.org

Watch the trailer for Leviathan: