Declare Your Independents — Vol. 29
GITS development assistant Wendy Cohen here, and welcome back to Declare Your Independents, our new series highlighting the latest developments in the world of independent film!
This week…
2015 Oscar Predictions: Best Adapted Screenplay
Stephen Hawking vs. Alan Turing: Who’s Winning The Battle of the British Genius Biopics?
TIFF 2014: Best of the fest, so far
Ted Hope on the Past, and the Future, of Independent Film
Scott and I encourage any of you who go to see an independent movie to post your reactions to the film in these posts. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever. If there’s a film you want to recommend, do it. Use your words to inspire readers to transport themselves into a local cinema.
INDIE SPOTLIGHT: MOVIES TO SEE IN THEATERS THIS WEEK
OPENING FRIDAY (9/12)
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby
With his unique vision, writer/director Ned Benson ambitiously captures a complete picture of a relationship in the beautifully relatable portrait of love, empathy and truth that is THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY. Once happily married, Conor (McAvoy) and Eleanor (Chastain) suddenly find themselves as strangers longing to understand each other in the wake of tragedy. The film explores the couple’s story as they try to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone. Screened for the first time at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Benson’s latest version of their story combines his previous two films — titled HIM and HER — uniting their perspectives and taking a further look into the subjectivity of relationships.
Watch Variety’s interview with writer/director Ned Benson and the film’s cast here.
When estranged twins Maggie (Kristen Wiig) and Milo (Bill Hader) feel they’re at the end of their ropes, an unexpected reunion forces them to confront why their lives went so wrong. As the twins reconnect, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship.
Watch Sundance’s interview with the film’s director and co-writer, Craig Johnson, here.
A taut thriller based on the worldwide best-selling novel by S.J. Watson, BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP is the story of a woman (Nicole Kidman) who wakes up every day with no memory as the result of a traumatic accident in her past. One day, terrifying new truths begin to emerge that make her question everything she thinks she knows about her life — as well as everyone in it, including her doctor (Mark Strong) and even her husband (Colin Firth).
Watch an interview with writer/director Rowan Joffe here.
Do you remember when you were 11? Australian filmmaker Genevieve Bailey travelled the world for six years talking with 11-year-olds to compose this insightful, funny and moving portrait of childhood. From an orphanage in India to a single-parent household in inner-city Melbourne, to bathing with elephants in Thailand, this documentary explores the lives and thoughts of children from all around the world. It weaves together deeply personal and at times hilarious portraits of what it means to stand on the cusp between childhood and adolescence, that fleeting moment when childish naiveté has faded, yet teenaged self-consciousness has not yet taken hold. These young minds, still unguarded and remarkably honest, offer a powerful insight into the future of our world.
This film takes an inside look at organized crime’s use of local New York City bars as money-laundering ‘drops’. When lonely Brooklyn bartender Bob Saginowski uncovers a drop of a different sort in the form of a battered pit bull puppy that he rescues from certain death, he comes into contact with Nadia, a mysterious woman hiding a dark past.
This real-life thriller tells the story of one of Israel’s prized intelligence sources, recruited to spy on his own people for more than a decade. Focusing on the complex relationship with his handler, The Green Prince is a gripping account of terror, betrayal, and unthinkable choices, along with a friendship that defies all boundaries.
Watch an interview with the film’s writer and director here.
The Frontier is a comic drama about three unlikely individuals at crossroads in their lives, who come together and help each other find their way forward. Sean, a retired literature professor and civic activist who knows he’s nearing the end of his life, writes a letter to his son, Tennessee, a ranch hand who hasn’t been home for years. Upon receiving this letter Tennessee hitchhikes back home with the hope of making peace with his father. Nina, a young woman looking to find herself and her place in the world, accepts Sean’s offer to move into his guest room and help him write his memoirs. The three find it difficult to live under the same roof, but eventually as their walls come down they find that they are becoming a strange sort of family.
Kyle and Jen, estranged siblings, travel from New York City to rural Pennsylvania to pack up the home of their recently deceased mother. While there, they make a discovery that turns their world upside-down. A Picture of You is a serious movie about life that gets sideswiped in the supermarket parking lot by a funny movie about death. It’s a story about family, loss, secrets, letting go, and starting anew.
Watch an interview with writer/director J.P. Chan here.
In an airport hotel on the outskirts of Paris, a Silicon Valley engineer abruptly chucks his job, breaks things off with his wife, and holes up in his room. Soon, fate draws him and a young French maid together.
Young newlyweds Paul and Bea travel to remote lake country for their honeymoon, where the promise of private romance awaits them. Shortly after arriving, Paul finds Bea wandering and disoriented in the middle of the night. As she becomes more distant and her behavior increasingly peculiar, Paul begins to suspect something more sinister than sleepwalking took place in the woods.
Watch an interview with the film’s director and co-writer, Leigh Janiak, here.
NOW IN THEATERS
A strange singer with God-given talent drifts through his adopted city of Memphis with its canopy of ancient oak trees, streets of shattered windows, and aura of burning spirituality. Surrounded by beautiful women, legendary musicians, a stone-cold hustler, a righteous preacher, and a wolf pack of kids, the sweet, yet unstable, performer avoids the recording studio, driven by his own form of self-discovery. His journey quickly drags him from love and happiness right to the edge of another dimension.
Watch a 45-minute interview with writer/director Tim Sutton here.
Eve is a catastrophe-low on self-esteem but high on fantasy, especially when it comes to music. Over the course of one Glasgow summer, she meets two similarly rootless souls: posh Cass and fastidious James, and together they form a pop group. This film is a poignant coming-of-age story that doubles as a sublime indie-pop musical from one of indie pop’s biggest songwriters.
Watch SXSW’s interview with writer/director Stuart Murdoch here.
The wife of a corrupt real estate developer is kidnapped by two common criminals, who intend to extort him with inside information about his crooked business and off-shore accounts. But the husband decides he’d actually rather not pay the ransom to get back his wife, setting off an unbelievable sequence of double crosses and plot twists that could only come from the mind of Elmore Leonard.
Watch TIFF’s interview with the film’s writer/director Daniel Schechter and the cast here.
Errol Flynn, the swashbuckling Hollywood star and notorious ladies’ man, flouted convention all his life, but never more brazenly than in his last years when, swimming in vodka and unwilling to face his mortality, he undertook a liaison with an aspiring actress, Beverly Aadland. The two had a high-flying affair that spanned the globe and was enabled by the girl’s fame-obsessed mother, Florence. It all came crashing to an end in October 1959, when events forced the relationship into the open, sparking an avalanche of publicity castigating Beverly and her mother — which only fed Florence’s need to stay in the spotlight.
Watch another TIFF interview with the film’s directors and co-writers — Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland — and cast here.
A committed gay couple find their fledgling marriage challenged by a series of unexpected developments in this compassionate drama from writer/director Ira Sachs (Married Life, Keep the Lights On). Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) have been together for nearly 40 years. When gay marriage becomes legal in New York, the happy couple decide that it’s finally time to tie the knot, and declare their love for one another in front of family and friends. Although the ceremony is everything Ben and George ever could have hoped for, the happy couple’s newlywed bliss is sadly short-lived when the diocese receives word of the wedding, and George is fired from his job as a music teacher at a local Catholic school. As a result, the pair are no longer able to afford the rent on the New York City apartment they’ve shared for two decades. In order to remain in the city while searching for a job, George moves in with his sympathetic neighbors, a pair of gay policemen (Manny Perez and Cheyenne Jackson). Meanwhile, Ben attempts to make the best of the situation by moving in with his nephew’s family in Brooklyn. Now, as the big event that should have brought Ben and George closer together leads only to loneliness and frustration, everyone involved finds their once-comfortable lives in a hopeless state of flux. Marisa Tomei, Darren E. Burrows, and Charlie Tahan co-star.
Watch an interview with the film’s director and co-writer Ira Sachs here.
Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) are a married couple on the brink of separation. At the urging of their therapist, they escape to a beautiful vacation house for a weekend getaway in an attempt to salvage what’s left of their relationship. What starts off as a relaxing and tranquil retreat soon spirals into a dizzyingly bizarre experience that forces the couple to reflect upon the complexities of their troubled partnership. Over the course of a few days, Ethan and Sophie work diligently to rediscover their better selves and embrace the unexpected as everything they once thought was real becomes more and more surreal.
Watch an interview with Justin Lader, the film’s writer, here.
Many thanks to Wendy for today’s post. Remember to Declare Your Independents by going to a theater or use V.O.D. to watch an indie feature this weekend.
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