With Green Room, Jeremy Saulnier has perfected the intensity he showed in brief glimpses with his previous film Blue Ruin. Whereas Ruin played out through a more slow-paced approach and focused on the vicious cycle of a long-lasting blood feud, Green Room goes full genre, putting characters in a situation that’s seemingly impossible to get out of while gleefully letting everything to go hell in a handbasket. It’s a thriller that knows exactly what it’s doing, raising the stakes to an unbearable level while subverting expectations associated with the genre. In terms of pure, raw intensity and entertainment, Green Room is fantastic, and confirms Saulnier as a filmmaker to be reckoned with.

As these sorts of stories go, things start off with a calm before the storm. Punk band The Ain’t Rights are touring with no money and apparently no gigs either; they can barely afford food and siphon gas in order to keep traveling to their next destination. After driving out of their way to perform for some guaranteed cash they learn that the show’s been cancelled, but they’re offered an alternate gig; performing at a neo-nazi bar in what looks like the middle of the woods. They accept, and despite a rocky performance, things go well. It isn’t until they’re about to leave that things go south, when band member Sam (Alia Shawkat) forgets her phone in the eponymous green room. When bandmate Pat (Anton Yelchin) goes back to grab it for her, he walks in to find the headline act standing over the dead body of a young girl. With Pat being witness to a crime, the neo-Nazi bar staff lock the band in the room while bar owner Darcy (Patrick Stewart) and his right-hand man Gabe (Macon Blair) figure out how to handle the situation.

Right away, Saulnier establishes that playing by his own rules. The band, who turn Pat into a de facto leader as they try to negotiate an escape with Darcy through the room’s locked door, aren’t stupid. They know what will happen to them, and the more time they spend waiting the more time their captors can strategize a way to take them out. This is where the film’s earlier section pays off, since Saulnier’s ability to write realistic characters makes it easy to relate to the band’s desperate, yet smart, attempts to get out alive. Saulnier realizes the importance of realism, and that making viewers relate to the characters only ups the anxiety to a nauseating degree.

And once the situation goes haywire, Saulnier doesn’t hesitate to get brutal (and boy, does it get brutal). Machetes, box cutters, rabid dogs, and plenty more get used in the various showdowns, and when people die they go out screaming. Saulnier’s decision to cast character actors like Yelchin and Shawkat in the band puts his protagonists on a level playing field, making it impossible to guess who might make it out alive by the end. One by one, Saulnier removes the safe havens of conventions from viewers, meaning every moment plays out with an unpredictability that the film thrives on.

That’s largely because Saulnier doubles down on the best aspect of Blue Ruin; the ability to let his characters make mistakes. While Pat and his bandmates try their best to outsmart their rivals, Saulnier constantly reminds viewers that these are people desperately trying to feel their way through a situation they have no earthly idea how to grasp. Clever attempts to trick Darcy’s foot soldiers play out in ways they couldn’t expect, and even if they do pay off it might come at the cost of someone’s life. Much like The Raid: Redemption, Green Room is a survival thriller that understands the importance of constantly establishing the stakes, raising them higher, and letting people enjoy watching characters try to get out of the increasingly small corner they’ve put themselves in. It’s like watching a spectacularly bloody fireworks show, but with the knowledge that one of those explosives could come flying in your direction at any time.

Director Jeremy Saulnier‘s second feature Blue Ruin, a stripped down revenge thriller, took the indie world by storm last year on its way to a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2015 Indie Spirit Awards. Wasting little time in assembling a follow-up, Saulnier is now in Cannes to debut his next color-related movie Green Room. Featuring a larger and more well-known cast than his previous film, including Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots, Green Room held its Cannes Film Festival premiere over the weekend to a largely positive reception.

Green Room follows a group of punk rockers called The Ain’t Rights, who take an ill-advised gig in the backwoods of Oregon, only to stumble onto violent crime and in the middle of a confrontation with the local, violent, white-supremacist gang. Patrick Stewart plays the leader of the gang. Green Room also stars Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Mark Webber, as well as Blue Ruin star Macon Blair.

Watch the first clip of Green Room below, in which an intimidating Eric Edelstein explains the difference between a bullet and a cartridge:

Coming off a disappointing previous film (Touchy Feely), director Lynn Shelton returns with Laggies to what she does best —examining likable but flawed characters at a crossroads in their life. Working from a script she didn’t write (a first for the director) and her largest budget to date, Shelton ditches her typical improvisational approach for a more conventional structure. But even with a more refined technique, Laggies still obtains excellent chemistry between its cast, giving off the authentic vibe that we’re used to seeing in Shelton’s work.

It’s been over 10 years since Megan (Keira Knightley) graduated from high school, and while her friends are getting married, having babies, and starting up their own restaurant, Megan twirls signs on the street for her father (Jeff Garlin). It slowly dawns on her that she’s lagging behind her peers and just floating through life. She needs some time away from her social group and her boyfriend Anthony (played by Mark Webber, who always gets typecast for these kind of roles) to clear her mind and to find herself.

This is when the film begins to test your ability to overlook and roll with the nonsensical developments. After buying beer for a group of underage high schoolers, Megan forms a close friendship with one of them named Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz). Megan decides to cash in her I-O-U from Annika for the beer and devises a plan to get away from her routine for a while. So she tells everyone she’s going on a weeklong self-development seminar, but instead stays with Annika at her father’s (Sam Rockwell) house. Like the audience, her father questions Megan’s motives but it doesn’t take much arm twisting before he allows her to stay. Everything goes according to plan until Megan develops feelings for Annika’s father, which threatens to ruin her relationships with Annika and Anthony.

Shelton continues to show her extraordinary ability to get the best performances out of her cast. Knightley puts on the best performance of her career by dominating her own scenes and enhancing everyone else’s around her. Moretz is very much in her comfort zone playing a snippy teenager and pairs well with Knightley. Rockwell has the luxury of getting the best material to work with, playing both the cool dad and the love interest with the effortless charm he’s known for.

There are some great life messages in Laggies, namely about gaining perspective on life while helping others avoid making those same mistakes. Another theme throughout is on the nature of relationships, their fragility and the constant attention needed to make them last. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of predictable moments in Laggies. It’s far too easy to guess how the story’s plot points will turn out before they happen. A predictability that is of course dissatisfying. Filled with solid performances from everyone involved, and an enjoyable original soundtrack by Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), Laggies is Lynn Shelton’s most accessible and crowd-pleasing film to date. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of believability and few moments that contain her unique style, making the film feel overly familiar and generic.

No one makes indie improvisational comedies fixated on placid relationship observations better than Joe Swanberg. He spent his career producing loosely outlined scripts that trade complicated plots for light storytelling with naturalistic tendencies. And he has made a lot of them. Happy Christmas marks Swanberg’s 16th full-length feature in just 9 years and is his most personal film to date. Swanberg bases the script off his real life, playing a filmmaker trying to raise a child in a home where both parents are artists, which forces one of them to put their career on hold. Happy Christmas is indirectly dedicated to the one who does the sacrificing as its focus is on the hardships of leaving and re-entering the workforce.

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Christmas trailer

Writer turned director Mark Webber is only 34 years old, his wife of a few months, Teresa Palmer, is 28. Incredibly young and newlywed for the level of drama they face in Webber’s latest directorial endeavor which involves him playing a photographer, Thomas, and Palmer playing his young actress wife, Ava. Blurring reality’s lines further Ava takes credit for Palmer’s real life films, and the fictional couple have a daughter, albeit older than the baby Webber and Palmer just had together in February. The realistic parallels make one wonder why on earth Webber and Palmer would want to imagine a false future for themselves as bleak as the one they paint in The Ever After. The film follows the young married couple as they face an early marriage slump, doubting each other’s feelings and trading sex for real conversations. The restless Thomas heads off to New York for a photography gig where he walks further down the path of infidelity only to find himself paying an intensely high price for his mistakes. Back in LA, Ava meets a hippy woman (Melissa Leo) who invites her to stitch and bitch in her storefront and starts to force her to address some of her issues, though the inner analysis ends up revealing a deeper problem than just a lukewarm marriage.

Perhaps Webber and Palmer were thirsty for challenging roles and decided the best way to do it would be to write their own. And indeed they’ve given themselves the sort of complicated content even older actors would shy away from. Palmer has an enthralling and expressive face, with exacting control of her emotions. In any given scene she fluctuates between five different moods and has mastered her tear ducts into working overtime for her. She’s inspiring to watch. Webber is equally masterful, having written for himself some truly gritty and horrifying content, and while it’s questionable why he felt it necessary to go quite so far it shows courage and commitment to his craft. I hope (for their sakes) the parallels between Thomas and Ava and Webber and Palmer is mostly confined to their reflections on the narcissism of their industries. The dark picture Webber has painted, while stirring and both beautifully felt and heard (Moby and Daniel Ahearn have put together a great soundtrack), makes for a sometimes difficult watch. The ending is a bit simplistic, boiling down all that heavy content into an easier to swallow broth so no one leaves the theater with suicidal thoughts. The film is sure to evoke mixed impressions, but one that carries across firmly is that this is a film made by immensely talented people.

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

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

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

Here’s the synopsis, via Magnolia/Paramount:

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Webber’s sophomore effort as a director, The End of Love, follows a jobless single-father who is struggling to make ends meet while caring for his son. The film feels incredibly personal to Webber as nearly everyone in the cast goes by their real name and his son in the film is played be his actual child. It is the type of film that we come to expect out of Sundance Film Festival, a realistic portrait of an aspiring artist with an attempt to tug at your heartstrings. Although it does not venture far from that “Sundance formula”, The End of Love stands out above the rest because of the spectacular acting performances between the father and son.

Mark (Mark Webber), clearly exhausted, pleads with his two-year-old son Isaac (Isaac Love) to go back to sleep for just five more minutes. Because Mark is a single-father and can barely make his rent payments, paying for daycare every day is out of the question. Therefore, Mark is forced to bring Isaac along everywhere he goes, including his acting auditions that turn disastrous because of it. With his roommates on his back about paying rent, life delivers a knockout punch when his car is towed, setting him back half a grand.

Just as things could not get any worse for the struggling father and adorable son, a bone is thrown in their direction. Mark ends up meeting a lovely woman (Shannyn Sossamon) who is not only a single parent herself, but runs an indoor playground for children. You can tell his dating skills are rusty when she must make all the first moves, but the real kicker is when he tries to advance the relationship on the first date. This is painful to witness because you cannot help but feel remorse for him. And it is not the last time he makes the mistake.

Without question what makes The End of Love so moving is the empathy we feel for Mark and Isaac. The dynamic between the two is incredibly intimate because they are actually father and son in real life. This means the youngster did not need to recite lines and had the freedom to be his natural youthful self. Results of this improvised approach pays dividends in the long run by making the whole production seem exceptionally realistic.

Serving as a great contrast to the broke wannabe actor are the onslaught of cameos made by Amanda Seyfried, Jason Ritter, Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnson, and Michael Cera, all basically playing themselves as highly successful people in Hollywood. The unfortunate part is their success in the field gives Mark false illusions that he is close to achieving the same. But this is not a pity party for Webber’s character. The ratio between the audience feeling bad for him and despising him for doing something irresponsible is close to a one to one match.

Perhaps even worse than an ending that is wholly upbeat or devastatingly depressing is one that takes the middle of the road, and unfortunately that is where The End of Love lands. There is a sense that the lead character is finally coming to terms with his wife’s passing, but leaves enough unanswered to make the audience neither cheer nor weep. Unlike the rest of the film where emotions are heightened, the ending is much more complacent. In the grand scheme of it all, this is a fairly minor quibble in an otherwise notable character study about coming to terms with difficult situations.

Save the Date is a romantic comedy which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was picked up by IFC Films that features a solid upcoming cast of Lizzy Caplan, Alison Brie, Martin Starr, Mark Webber and Geoffrey Arend. If you just read the synopsis, watch the trailer or even simply looking at the title, you may think you are in for a standard romantic comedy but I am here to tell you that you are not. Granted, it features a commitment fearing character along with the guy that can do-no-wrong but it makes it work better than most others in the genre. Most importantly, the film achieves exactly what it intended to do.

The film opens with Sarah (Lizzy Caplan) preparing to move in with her boyfriend Kevin (Geoffrey Arend). You can tell she is very apprehensive about moving in when she deliberately looks for signs that tell her it is a bad idea, like when her truck full of her possessions will seemingly not start (until her sister Beth (Alison Brie) reaches over and effortlessly gets it to start). Unbeknownst to her, Kevin is planning on asking her to marry him as soon as he figures out the best time to ask her. So before the ten minute mark the recipe for disaster was presented.

Beth’s soon-to-be husband, Andrew (Martin Starr), happens to play drums in the same band as Kevin and he may have persuaded him to ask Sarah to marry him. When Beth finds out about this she tells Andrew to call it off because she knows her sister is not ready for marriage but by then it is too late. Kevin has made up his mind about asking her the question. Midway through their bands set, he pauses in front of everyone to ask Sarah to marry him. It goes over exactly how you think it would; terribly.

To complicate the impending doomed relationship of Sarah and Kevin is a man named Jonathan (Mark Webber) who in his words, “silently stalks” Sarah at the bookstore she works at. He jokingly says silently because it is a bookstore, not because he hides it very well. It is obvious that he has Sarah order him in obscure books just to be around her as much as possible. Jonathan is awkward, clumsy, and blatant when flirting with Sarah but he is also sweet and adorable. She is vulnerable right now and he understands he is “rebound guy” but he would rather have been in love than not to love at all.

Lizzy Caplan is simply amazing here and it is hands down her best performance to date. Her character is deeply flawed which can be frustrating at certain times but she is insanely humanistic. Even when her character goes back and forth between playing the protagonist and the antagonist she does so with enough charm but most importantly she stays true to her personality.

Save the Date thrives on solid performances by the rest of the cast as well. Each member of the cast stays within their role and does not overstep their boundary. And thanks to the script none of them must act out of character suddenly to throw the plot for a curve. All you see is five completely different personalities that are for the most part believable (with maybe the exception of Mark Webber’s character).

Just when you think Save the Date would follow down the tired path of a typical romantic comedy it veers away. While the initial plot setup is cliché, the rest of the film thankfully stays away from most of the pitfalls that similar films fall into by keeping it honest and with an ending that is absolutely perfect. The script is not complex nor groundbreaking but it was not trying to be; it is a genuine tale of common relationship quarrels told in a smart and charming way. Save the Date will surprise you with how good it is.