Declare Your Independents: Volume 22
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…
Notes on the Best Indie Movies of 2014 So Far
2014 Venice Film Festival Lineup Announced
Hot Hollywood Trend: Two Scripts, One Movie
Box-Office Slump: Hollywood Facing Worst Summer in 8 Years
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 (7/25)
Chinese conjuror Wei Ling Soo is the most celebrated magician of his age, but few know that he is the stage persona of Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth), a grouchy and arrogant Englishman with a sky-high opinion of himself and an aversion to phony spiritualists’ claims that they can perform real magic. Persuaded by his life-long friend, Howard Burkan, Stanley goes on a mission to the Côte d’Azur mansion of the wealthy Catledge family and presents himself as a businessman named Stanley Taplinger in order to debunk the alluring young clairvoyant Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) who is staying there with her mother. Sophie arrived at the villa at the invitation of Grace Catledge, who is convinced that Sophie can help her contact her late husband, and once there, become attracted to the attention of her son Brice, who has fallen for her head over heels. From his very first meeting with Sophie, Stanley dismisses her as an insignificant pip-squeak who he can unmask in no time, scoffing at the family’s gullibility. To his great surprise and discomfort, however, Sophie accomplishes numerous feats of mind-reading and other supernatural deeds that defy all rational explanation, leaving him dumbfounded. Stanley realizes that anything might be possible, even good, and his entire belief system comes crashing down. In the end, the biggest trick this film plays is the one that fools us all.
Read Indiewire’s interview with Woody Allen here.
The late Philip Seymour Hoffman gives his final screen performance in this taut yet labyrinthine adaptation of John le Carré’s 2008 spy novel. In the years immediately following 9/11, Gunter Bachmann (Hoffman) is a counterterrorist expert based in Hamburg who operates as a rogue agent, independently of the Grenzschutzgruppe 9 der Bundespolizei (GSG-9). He specializes in bringing down jihadists, and as the story opens, he begins to fixate on a Chechen immigrant named Issa Karpov, newly arrived in town. Issa’s motivations are initially unknown, but he befriends an American social worker (Rachel McAdams) who grows convinced of his harmlessness and sets about persuading Gunter of the same. Meanwhile, Gunter becomes aware of a palpable and imminent threat to national security that involves future jihad activity, and devises an ingenious plan that he hopes will both extinguish the threat and provide amnesty for Issa. The Americans and the GSG-9, however, learn of Gunter’s plot and express both impatience and a general skepticism about the scheme’s effectiveness. A Most Wanted Man premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Read CraveOnline’s interview with director Anton Corbijn here.
Two disparate women establish a friendship that provides them with precisely the support they both need in this independent drama from writer/director Joe Swanberg. Christmas is coming, and after breaking up with her boyfriend, short-sighted Jenny needs a place to stay. Fortunately, her brother Jeff and his wife Kelly have a swanky basement that is currently unoccupied. Shortly after arriving at their Chicago home and settling in, Jenny finds her penchant for alcohol and pot impeding her attempts to get her life straightened out. Meanwhile, despite her frustrations at watching her sister-in-law flounder in a downward spiral, Kelly, too, begins to feel as if she has run out of options. Later, as the Christmas lights flicker to life and the snow begins to fall, Jenny and Kelly begin looking to each other for the strength to face the future. Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, and Lena Dunham co-star.
Read Grantland’s interview with director Joe Swanberg here.
Producer Naomi Foner takes the director’s chair for this gentle and sensitive youth drama that follows two New York City teenagers and the events that put a strain on the bond between them, during one of the last summers of their adolescence. Lilly (Dakota Fanning) is quiet, thoughtful and introspective — the product of two conservative parents who keep a tight rein on her. Gerry (Elizabeth Olsen), on the other hand, is free-spirited, uninhibited and slightly caustic — the daughter of a left-of-center mom and dad who let her do whatever, and go wherever, she pleases. Shortly before they each leave for college in the fall, the girls spend most of their time together, whiling away pleasant afternoons, but soon they both meet and fall for the same boy — artist David, who sells novelty ice-cream bars at Far Rockaway Beach. Not long after, an unexpected tragedy occurs in Gerry’s family and forces Lilly to reach out in an attempt to console her best friend.
Watch the L.A. Times’ interview with writer/director Naomi Foner and the film’s cast here.
The Kill Team goes behind closed doors to tell the riveting story of Specialist Adam Winfield, a 21-year-old infantryman in Afghanistan who attempted with the help of his father to alert the military to heinous war crimes his platoon was committing. Tragically, his father’s pleas for help went unheeded. Once Adam’s fellow soldiers got wind of what he’d done, they threatened to silence him — permanently. Forced to choose between his conscience and his own survival, Adam found himself drawn into a moral abyss, faced with a split-second decision that would change his life forever.
Watch the Huffington Post’s interview with director Dan Krauss here.
NOW IN THEATERS
Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood charts the rocky terrain of childhood like no other film has before. Snapshots of adolescence from road trips and family dinners to birthdays and graduations and all the moments in between become transcendent, set to a soundtrack spanning the years. Boyhood is both a nostalgic time capsule of the recent past and an ode to growing up and parenting.
Watch a 30-minute interview with director Richard Linklater here.
Writer/director Mike Cahill’s drama I Origins centers on medical student Ian Gray (Michael Pitt). Ian specializes in the evolution of the human eye. One day he attends a party where he meets a masked woman whose eyes transfix him, and soon the two fall in love. Years later, Ian makes a startling discovery in the lab, forcing him on a trek across the globe in order to uncover profound truths about mankind. I Origins screened at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Watch Sundance’s Q&A with director Mike Cahill and the film’s cast here.
Following his celebrated debut feature, Garden State, Zach Braff delivers a new postcard from the edge of existential crisis, this time playing a thirtysomething family man wrestling with a few minor hindrances — like his disapproving father, an elusive God, and yes, adult responsibility. Aidan Bloom is a pot-smoking actor whose last job, a dandruff commercial, was longer ago than he cares to admit. Pursuing his thespian dream has landed him and his wife in tough financial straits, so when his grumpy father can no longer pay for the kids to attend Jewish Yeshiva, Aidan opts for homeschooling. To the chagrin of his hyperdisciplined, religious daughter and the delight of his less-than-studious son, Aidan takes matters into his own imaginative hands, rather than sticking to the boring old traditional curriculum.
Watch a DP/30 interview with director Zach Braff here.
Eminently inventive Michel Gondry finds inspiration from French novelist Boris Vian’s cult novel to provide the foundation for this visionary and romantic love story starring Audrey Tautou (Amélie, Coco Before Chanel) and Romain Duris. Set in a charmingly surreal Paris, Duris plays wealthy bachelor Colin, whose hobbies include developing his pianocktail (a cocktail-making piano) and devouring otherworldly dishes prepared by his trusty chef Nicolas (Omar Sy, The Untouchables). When Colin learns that his best friend Chick, a fellow acolyte of the philosopher Jean-Sol Partre, has a new American girlfriend, our lonely hero attends a friend’s party in hopes of falling in love himself. He soon meets Chloé (Audrey Tautou) and, before they know it, they’re dancing to Duke Ellington and plunging headfirst into a romance that Gondry rapturously depicts as only he can. Their whirlwind courtship is tested when an unusual illness plagues Chloe; a flower begins to grow in her lungs. To save her, Colin discovers the only cure is to surround Chloe with a never-ending supply of fresh flowers.
Watch a Q&A with director Michel Gondry here.
Hoop Dreams director Steve James creates a portrait of influential Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert. Officially an adaptation of Ebert’s bestselling memoir of the same name, the documentary uses Ebert’s valiant struggle with cancer as a structural device to examine his many career accomplishments. As a series of flashbacks take us through Ebert’s colorful life and times, James periodically returns to his subject’s traumatic last days in the hospital, where his wife Chaz and other loved ones prepare to say their last goodbyes. The result is a reverent meditation on the life and death of the writer whose passion for film was evident in every review he penned, but whose love of life taught his loyal readers to treasure every moment.
Watch an interview with the film’s director Steve James 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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