Declare Your Independents: Volume 23
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…
11 Actors in Need of an Indie Intervention
What Happened to Original Movies Aimed at Adults?
What’s New on Netflix Streaming: August 2014
Robert Drew, Documentarian Who Fathered Cinema Verite, Dies at 90
THR’s Top 25 Film Schools: 2014 Edition
Box Office Gender Gap: Why “Lucy” Conquered “Hercules”
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 (8/1)
Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is a good priest, driven by spiritual integrity. One day in confession, an unseen man tells James that he’s going to kill him precisely because he’s done nothing wrong. Given a week to make his peace with God, James ministers to sundry lost souls — visits that double as a guided tour of suspects. His preparation for death is further complicated by the arrival of his daughter, who has recently attempted suicide.
Watch an interview with writer/director John Michael McDonagh here.
Drew (Kelly Blatz) is about to graduate from school, but the dire economic straits of his broken family have set a fence around his horizons. Drew seems destined to remain stuck in his rough neighborhood, following his older brother’s downward spiral into drugs and violence. But he does have one advantage on his side: a runner’s body, however untrained and in need of discipline. His efforts at track and field glory catch the eye of neighbor Coleman (Richard Jenkins), a former coach who’s bitter over past regrets. Admiration for Drew’s potential softens Coleman’s hardened reserve, and he offers the young man guidance on achieving his dreams on and off the track.
In his follow-up to The Help, Tate Taylor directs 42’s Chadwick Boseman as James Brown in Get on Up. Based on the incredible life story of the Godfather of Soul, the film will give a fearless look inside the music, moves and moods of Brown, taking audiences on the journey from his impoverished childhood to his evolution into one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Boseman is joined in the drama by Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Nelsan Ellis, Lennie James, Tika Sumpter, Jill Scott and Dan Aykroyd.
Watch a three-part interview with director Tate Taylor here.
Based on the acclaimed 1973 Cormac McCarthy novel, “Child of God” takes place in 1960s Tennessee, where Lester Ballard is a dispossessed, violent man. Deprived first of his family and then his home, Ballard descends literally and figuratively to the level of a cave dweller, falling deeper into a disturbing life of acrime and degradation.
Watch the Venice Film Festival’s interview with director James Franco here.
If you ever find yourself traveling down Interstate 49 through Missouri, try not to blink — you may miss Rich Hill, population 1,396. Rich Hill is easy to overlook, but its inhabitants are as woven into the fabric of America as those living in any small town in the country.
Watch Sundance’s interview with directors Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo here.
No individual better embodies African music of the 1970s and ’80s — and its pivotal role in postcolonial political activism — than Fela Kuti. After quickly taking his native Nigeria by storm, the pioneering musician’s confrontational Afrobeat sound soon spread throughout the continent and beyond, even as it made determined enemies of the repressive Nigerian military regime. As a result of continued persecution, increasingly unorthodox behavior, and, eventually, complications due to HIV, Kuti’s final years saw his musical output and influence wane.
Watch an interview with director Alex Gibney here.
It is a Saturday in autumn, and Karin and Simon are visiting their parents and youngest sister Clara. This family gathering provides the occasion for a dinner together, at which other relatives appear over the course of the day. While the family members animate the apartment’s space with their conversations, everyday activities and cooking preparations, the cat and dog range through the various rooms. they too become a central element in this quotidian familial dance that repeatedly manifests stylized elements, disrupting any naturalistic mode of presentation. In this way, adjoining spaces open up between family drama, fairy tale and the psychological study of a mother.
Watch The Seventh Art’s interview with writer/director Ramon Zurcher here.
John (David Duchovny) and Brenda (Hope Davis) are trying to put their life together after the tragic death of their young daughter, Maria (Olivia Steele-Falconer). As they deal with their numbing grief, they discover a way to honor their daughter’s wish for health and well-being for all children. With the help of their community, led by good friend Bruce (Timothy Hutton), they establish a children’s hospital called the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital… a state of the art health facility that brings the whole family into the healing process. Instead of being torn apart by their tragedy, John and Brenda celebrate their very special daughter and help thousands of children and their families.
A big new home, a lovely wife and a new job seem to steer Henrik firmly towards the middle age and a bourgeois lifestyle. There is, however, a substantial amount of boyish prankster still in him — sometimes a little bit too much. Director Martin Lund’s understated, offbeat humour often evokes Bent Hamer’s delightful studies of lone males.
Watch the Cleveland Film Festival’s interview with writer/director Martin Lund 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.
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.
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.
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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