Indie Film in the Cross Fire

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

Producer Mike S. Ryan has written a very provocative piece about indie cinema, entitled “Straight Talk,” in the latest issue of Filmmaker. He writes: “What concerns me, though, is not the slow, vague emergence of new business strategies but theRead More

Passenger Side

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

Matthew Bissonnette’s Passenger Side, a Canadian indie feature that played at the Wisconsin Film Festival last week, is a road movie that stays within very narrow parameters by mapping a specific place – the city of Los Angeles and vicinityRead More

Greenberg

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

It was inevitable that if the young filmmakers associated with mumblecore couldn’t capitalize on the phenomenon at the box office someone else would. Films like The Puffy Chair (2006), Baghead (2008), and Humpday (2009) were all expected to become commercialRead More

Fish Tank

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

Andrea Arnold’s disturbing second feature, Fish Tank (2009), tells the story of a disaffected fifteen-year-old girl named Mia, who’s stuck in a dead-end life. She lives with her single mom, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), who constantly parties and drinks too much,Read More

Daddy Longlegs

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

Josh Safdie’s French New Wave-inflected debut feature The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008) centers on a sociopathic protagonist named Eléonore (Eleonore Hendricks) and played at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Eléonore robs people – purses, credit cards, cars, as wellRead More

Bike Boy

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

The motorcyclist has been a figure of rebellion in American popular culture in the Post-Second World War era, as exemplified by Marlon Brando’s role in The Wild One (1953). Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1964), a film that strongly influenced Andy Warhol,Read More

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

Abel Ferrara’s cult classic Bad Lieutenant (1992) might be the most wonderfully demented independent film of 1990s. The story of a New York cop, who descends into a nightmarish hell of compulsive gambling, sex, and nonstop drug abuse, Bad LieutenantRead More

The Exploding Girl

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

Bradley Rust Gray pushes cinematic naturalism to the brink in his intriguing second feature The Exploding Girl, where very little happens and the real interest lies almost entirely beneath the surface. Gray is mining territory that has been explored previouslyRead More