Independent Film Round-Up

Welcome to Den of Geek’s round-up of the latest in independent film, with quick spotlight reviews of some of the best or at least the most interesting new releases out there that don’t have the name of a superhero or Star Warsin the title. This list will be updated from time to time with the newest featured films on top, with the goal of finding some of the most unique indie films of 2015.

Some of the movies on this list will get either limited or occasionally even wide theatrical release, while others are more likely to be found on VOD. With distribution platforms changing all the time, a number of quality films are finding new ways to get to potential viewers without the pressure of trying to get placement on 800 screens or more. You’ll find those movies here as well, and hopefully we’ll point you in some intriguing cinematic directions…

Infinitely Polar Bear (June 19, limited release)

Mark Ruffalo stars as a father and husband suffering from bipolar disorder who is tasked with watching over his two young daughters while his wife (Zoe Saldana) goes to work in writer/director Maya Forbes’ terribly titled autobiographical drama. Following a breakdown and hospital stay, Ruffalo’s Cameron is unable to work and his spouse Maggie has to become the breadwinner while also attending business school in New York, forcing the unpredictable Cameron to be a stay-at-home dad. The period details (it’s set in Boston in the ‘70s) are sharp but the movie is episodic and meandering, bouncing from the standard “quirky” comedic moments to scenes of drama and potential trauma without establishing a real momentum.

It’s helped considerably by a strong cast, even if one tires of the repetitive scenes of Cameron and his two little girls (Imogene Wolodarsky and Ashley Aufderheide, both charismatic) screaming at each other. Ruffalo skillfully manages to grab hold of a role that is ill-defined on the screen: it feels like the sharper edges of Cameron’s illness have been softened to make the character -- whose old money background is also kind of fuzzy -- more palatable to audiences, but the actor’s immense empathy goes a long way toward selling it. Best of all is Saldana, and I wish the movie’s focus was more squarely on her: as a young black mother trying to make ends meet and raise her family out of poverty, her frustration, love and exhaustion are all palpable and real, unlike large stretches of the film. 

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

Felt (June 26, limited release)

Director Jason Banker’s angry film, part feminist drama and part horror outing, is appropriately difficult to watch but, less effectively, also troublesome to find a way into. Amy Everson (who also co-wrote the movie with Banker, based on her own experiences) stars as a fictionalized version of herself, a badly damaged young woman still coming to terms with an undisclosed sexual trauma in her past while navigating the traps of a male-dominated rape culture. She works at a menial job, has a rather potty sense of humor and hangs out with a few friends, but her real passion is creating grotesque costumes based on distorted male imagery that she occasionally dons. The arrival of a new, seemingly decent man in her life finally allows her to crack open the rough armor she’s encased herself in, but the movie leads the relationship to a conclusion that is as predictable and unsatisfactory as it is abrupt.

Everson has no previous acting experience and it shows, while Banker gambles with a slow pace that skirts dangerously toward tedium at several points. The message of what women have to go through on a daily basis is a sound and sadly accurate one, but the film offers no real context or exploration of it beyond that every man is an asshole.  Unfortunately, Amy kind of comes across as one too through a lot of her actions, so that the eventual payoff doesn't come across as powerfully as it could. There is potential in Felt, but it’s never truly realized.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars

See previous weeks' reviews below:

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (June 12, limited release)

This Sundance breakout from director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (American Horror Story) follows high school loner Greg (Thomas Mann, Project X) as he is badgered by his mother into visiting a local girl named Rachel (Olivia Cooke, Bates Motel) who is stricken with leukemia. At first he can’t be bothered and neither can she, but gradually -- with some nudging from Greg’s lifelong “associate” Earl (RJ Cyler) -- a friendship is formed, and Greg begins to realize that life is too precious to hold people at a distance. Self-consciously quirky at first, the film walks an unsteady line between whimsy and irritation until finally settling down as the relationship between Greg and Rachel becomes more bittersweet (and refreshingly remains platonic).

The three leads are all excellent with Cyler in particular making a knockout screen debut. They’re ably supported by Connie Britton, Molly Shannon, Nick Offerman and especially Jon Bernthal, dropping his tough-guy persona to play a teacher that Greg likes to hang around with. Gomez-Rejon brings the story to life through unusual compositions and the use of claymation and other formats, giving Me and Earl and the Dying Girl a fresh feel even if some of the emotional beats seem similar to other recent YA material.  

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Hungry Hearts (available on VOD; opens in Los Angeles on June 12)

Bizarre and unsettling, Hungry Hearts begins with perhaps the strangest “meet cute” sequence ever as Jude (Adam Driver, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Mina (Alba Rohrwacher, I Am Love) are accidentally locked in a restaurant restroom together that Jude’s upset stomach has just made near-uninhabitable. We then flash forward through their blooming romance and eventually the birth of their son, only to come to a disturbing turn of events: Mina, obsessed with keeping the baby’s body “pure,” may be inhibiting his growth and effectively starving him to death.

After the somewhat jarring shift from romantic comedy to psychological horror in the first act, writer/director Saverio Costanzo keeps the movie on track for most of the rest of its running time and sustains a tone of stark unease. Driver and Rohrwacher are both excellent, although there are points where you wonder why Jude remains so subservient to his wife’s regimen for so long. The recent anti-vaccination lunacy gives the movie added relevance, but the tension and conflict between the couple and the escalating horror of the situation are undermined by a contrived ending that just doesn’t fit with the rest of the material.

Rating: 3 and a Half out of 5 Stars

Love and Mercy (out now in limited release, expanding this weekend)

Two critical periods in the life of Beach Boys co-founder and main songwriter/visionary Brian Wilson are chronicled in this outstanding biopic from director Bill Pohlad, a longtime producer getting behind the camera for just the second time. In a risky move, Pohlad has Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood) playing Wilson in his earlier years and Cusack portraying him years later. It feels uncertain at first, but the two men somehow work in sync to create a poignant portrait of a man who truly did walk the thin line between genius and madness.

Dano is outstanding as the younger Wilson, whose mind and relationships are beginning to crumble just as he is creating his masterpieces, Pet Sounds and the never-completed (until years later) Smile; Cusack, meanwhile, gives his best performance in quite some time as a heavily medicated, older Wilson who is living under the control of the megalomanical therapist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) until a woman named Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) enters his life. The scenes of Dano in the studio are electrifying and the emotional payoffs in the later Cusack sequences are satisfying and moving. One of the best films of the year so far. 

Rating: 4 and a Half out of 5 Stars