Declare Your Independents — Vol. 36
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…
Marvel Reveals Film Slate Through 2019, including “Captain Marvel” and “Black Panther”
Does “Interstellar” Have a Real Shot at a Best Picture Oscar?
The 25 Best Horror Films of the 21st Century
Revisiting “The Blair Witch Project” 15 Years Later
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 (10/31)
NIGHTCRAWLER is a pulse-pounding thriller set in the nocturnal underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Lou Bloom, a driven young man desperate for work who discovers the high-speed world of L.A. crime journalism. Finding a group of freelance camera crews who film crashes, fires, murder and other mayhem, Lou muscles into the cut-throat, dangerous realm of nightcrawling — where each police siren wail equals a possible windfall and victims are converted into dollars and cents. Aided by Rene Russo as Nina, a veteran of the blood-sport that is local TV news, Lou thrives. In the breakneck, ceaseless search for footage, he becomes the star of his own story.
Watch DP/30’s interview with writer/director Dan Gilroy here.
Based on the novel by Joe Hill, Horns is a supernatural thriller driven by fantasy, mystery and romance. The film follows Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe, “Harry Potter” films), the number one suspect for the violent rape and murder of his girlfriend, Merrin (Juno Temple). Hungover from a night of hard drinking, Ig awakens one morning to find horns starting to grow from his own head and soon realizes their power drives people to confess their sins and give in to their most selfish and unspeakable impulses — an effective tool in his quest to discover the true circumstances of his late girlfriend’s tragedy and for exacting revenge on her killer.
Watch an interview with Alexandre Aja, the film’s director, 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 Verite Magazine’s interview with writer/director Rowan Joffe here.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, Point and Shoot chronicles the journey of Matthew VanDyke, a timid 27-year-old who leaves his home in Baltimore and sets off on a self-described “crash course in manhood” through the Middle East. The film begins in 2007, when VanDyke, armed with a video camera, embarks on a 35,000-mile motorcycle trip through Northern Africa and the Middle East. While traveling, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a Libyan hippie, and when revolution breaks out in Libya, Matt joins his friend in the fight against dictator Muammar Gaddafi. With a gun in one hand and a camera in the other, Matt fights in — and films — the war until he is captured by Gaddafi forces and held in solitary confinement for six months. Two-time Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry (Street Fight, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front) tells this harrowing and sometimes humorous story of a young man’s struggle for political revolution and personal transformation.
Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show
Directed by Des Doyle, SHOWRUNNERS is the first ever feature-length documentary to explore the fascinating world of U.S. television showrunners and the creative forces aligned around them. These people are responsible for creating, writing, and overseeing every element of production on one of the United State’s biggest exports — television drama and comedy series.
Filmed for over a decade, MAGICAL UNIVERSE is a portrait of Al Carbee, an 88 year old strange and reclusive outsider artist who spends his days alone in a massive house in Maine creating art — mostly featuring Barbie Dolls in elaborate dioramas. The documentary profiles Carbee’s amazing body of work and his relentlessly creative lifestyle. Carbee’s story is explored through the prism of his unlikely friendship with New York filmmaker Jeremy Workman, who unexpectedly becomes Carbee’s closest friend and only link to the outside world. Far beyond just a portrait of an eccentric, MAGICAL UNIVERSE is about wonder, friendship, and the transcendent power of creativity. Its story culminates with Al Carbee’s greatest triumph as an artist and a man.
On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in a blaze of fire that could be seen 35 miles away, killing 11 workers and causing the worst oil spill in American history. THE GREAT INVISIBLE, the first comprehensive overview of the incident and its aftermath, is the result of four years that Alabama-born Brown spent traveling in the small towns and major cities all around the Gulf, talking to those affected. With an eye for unforgettable characters, Brown gained the trust of a wide range of people- from industry insiders to small-town fishermen, from lawyers administering BP’s faulty compensation fund to the shell-shocked survivors of the initial blast (one of whom provides chilling first-person video taken onboard the Deepwater Horizon in the days leading up to the disaster). Together, their testimony adds up to a damning portrait of an industry whose lack of government oversight led to unthinkable catastrophe — a lack of oversight that has not changed, despite the widespread outrage at the time.
Watch DP/30’s interview with director Margaret Brown here.
All You Need is Love is a documentary that focuses on the lives and dreams of the children of Good Morning School in the district of Mae Sot, Thailand. Mae Sot is a town on the Thai-Burma border where hundreds of thousands of Burmese nationals have chosen to live as a result of the repressive actions taken by Burma’s military junta. They fled from Burma and escaped to Mae Sot with the hope that they will be able to sustain their families and become free from the fear of getting shot and arrested. However, the vast majority of Burmese in the town exist as people without nationality, rights or any solid future. This is the harsh reality that the Burmese children in Mae Sot have to face every day. The documentary highlights not just their plight, but also the positive way that these children go about their lives in conditions and under circumstances we dare not even imagine. All You Need is Love will take you on an inspirational journey towards a greater understanding of the human spirit and the power of the positive. It is a testament to all the very best facets of the human character.
The untold story behind History, a well-kept secret behind the world-wide icon: Nelson Mandela’s release was a Plot for Peace. PLOT FOR PEACE is a character-driven historical thriller documentary feature about the demise of apartheid. It tells the story of Jean-Yves Ollivier, alias “Monsieur Jacques”, whose behind-the-scenes bargaining was instrumental in bringing about regional peace and the end of racial discrimination in South Africa. For the first time, heads of state, generals, diplomats, master spies and anti-apartheid fighters reveal how Africa’s front line states helped end apartheid. The improbable key to Mandela’s prison cell was a mysterious French businessman, dubbed “Monsieur Jacques” in classified correspondence. His trade secret was trust.
The only film to get a round of applause mid-screening at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Prix du Jury), the 3D marvel Goodbye to Language alights on doubt and despair with the greatest freedom and joy. The idea is simple, in its way: a stray dog wanders from town to country, and over the course of some seasons observes a married woman and a single man as they meet, love, argue and fight. Or perhaps it’s the audience viewing one couple, or two couples, or an alternate version of the same couple. At 83, Godard works as a truly independent filmmaker, unencumbered by all concerns beyond the immediate: to create a work that embodies his own state of being in relation to time, light, color, and cinema itself. The artist’s beloved dog Roxy is the de facto “star” of this film, which is as impossible to summarize as a poem by Wallace Stevens or a Messiaen quartet. This might be a farewell to words — but it’s a warm welcome to the legendary director into the world of 3D, in which it must be seen and experienced to fully appreciate Godard’s wondrous use of the technology.
Watch an interview with director Jean-Luc Godard here.
NOW IN THEATERS
In January 2013, Laura Poitras (recipient of the 2012 MacArthur Genius Fellowship and co-recipient of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service) was several years into making a film about surveillance in the post-9/11 era when she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as “citizen four,” who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. In June 2013, she and Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is absolutely sui generis in the history of cinema: a 100% real-life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes. Executive Produced by Steven Soderbergh.
Watch an interview with the film’s director, Laura Poitras, here.
Overeducated and underemployed, 28 year old Megan (Keira Knightley) is in the throes of a quarterlife crisis. Squarely into adulthood with no career prospects, no particular motivation to think about her future and no one to relate to, Megan is comfortable lagging a few steps behind — while her friends check off milestones and celebrate their new grown-up status. When her high-school sweetheart (Mark Webber) proposes, Megan panics and- given an unexpected opportunity to escape for a week — hides out in the home of her new friend, 16-year old Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Annika’s world-weary single dad Craig (Sam Rockwell). Lynn Shelton, whose unique directorial voice created such astutely observed comedies as YOUR SISTER’S SISTER and HUMPDAY, crafts a sweet, romantic coming-of-age comedy about three people who find their lives intertwined in the most unconventional way as they make through the imperfect realities of modern day life. Keira Knightley shines as Megan, a rare female slacker hero who shows us that while you never stop growing up, you can choose stop lagging, and start living on your terms.
Watch Vanity Fair’s interview with writer/director Lynn Shelton here.
Based on the memoir by Amy-Jo Albany, LOW DOWN is a compassionate, tender look at the complex relationship between Amy-Jo (Elle Fanning) and her father Joe (John Hawkes), a man torn between his musical ambition, his devotion to his teenage daughter, and his suffocating heroin addiction. Set against a sensuously textured 1970s Hollywood, the film beautifully evokes a colorful, seedy world of struggling musicians, artists, and vagabonds, in which Joe and Amy-Jo strive to live the lives they want against seemingly insurmountable odds.
Watch DP/30’s interview with the film’s director Jeff Preiss and star John Hawkes, here.
Winner of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent, Dear White People is a sly, provocative satire of race relations in the age of Obama. Writer/director Justin Simien follows a group of African American students as they navigate campus life and racial politics at a predominantly white college in a sharp and funny feature film debut that earned him a spot on Variety’s annual “10 Directors to Watch.”
Watch Stephen Colbert speak with the film’s writer/director Justin Simien here.
Birdman: or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance is a black comedy that tells the story of an actor (Michael Keaton) — famous for portraying an iconic superhero — as he struggles to mount a Broadway play. In the days leading up to opening night, he battles his ego and attempts to recover his family, his career, and himself.
Watch THR’s Scott Feinberg’s interview with the film’s director and co-writer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu here and here.
Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is an ambitious young jazz drummer, single-minded in his pursuit to rise to the top of his elite east coast music conservatory. Plagued by the failed writing career of his father, Andrew hungers day and night to become one of the greats. Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons ), an instructor equally known for his teaching talents as for his terrifying methods, leads the top jazz ensemble in the school. Fletcher discovers Andrew and transfers the aspiring drummer into his band, forever changing the young man’s life. Andrew’s passion to achieve perfection quickly spirals into obsession, as his ruthless teacher continues to push him to the brink of both his ability-and his sanity.
Watch TIFF’s interview with Damien Chazelle, director and writer of the 2012 Black List script, 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.