Best Independent Films of 2010
I’ve posted my "best film" list for the past three years now in February rather than December like other critics and bloggers. The reason is simple. Because I’m based in the Midwest, I always want to be sure I’ve seen all the major indie films that might be worthy of consideration. As I keep complaining, […]
Prince of Broadway
Sean Baker has to be one of the most underrated young American indie filmmakers working today. After Four Letter Words (2000), he reinvented himself with two stellar features, namely Take Out (2004), which took years to screen theatrically, and Prince of Broadway (2010), which actually came out a couple of years ago. It played at […]
Goodbye Solo
The location of Ramin Bahrani’s third feature Goodbye Solo (2009) has shifted from New York City – the setting for his first two films Man Push Cart (2005) and Chop Shop (2008) – to his home town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While the film clearly references Abbas Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry (1997), it actually […]
Treeless Mountain
Set in Korea, So Yong Kim’s American indie Treeless Mountain (2009) tells the story of two young girls – seven-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her younger sister Bin (Song Hee Kim) – who are abandoned by their single mother (Soo Ah Lee). It’s initially supposed to be only temporary while she seeks to track […]
Momma's Man
Azazel Jacobs’s low-budget second feature Momma’s Man (2008) serves as yet another example of an independent film that deliberately blurs the line between non-fiction and fiction as an alternative narrative strategy (see previous post). The thirty-something protagonist is roughly the writer/director’s age. Jacobs sets the film in the lower-Manhattan loft in which he grew up, […]
Silent Light
Seeing Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light (Stellet Licht) for a second time at the Wisconsin Film Festival yesterday morning only confirmed that it’s a truly great film. What surprised me, however, was how much more emotional this formal and austere film seemed on a second viewing. Reygadas somehow manages to imbue each scene with a sense […]
Tokyo Sonata
The Wisconsin Film Festival always has had a stellar lineup of outstanding films from around the world. This year is no exception. Two of the films from the 2008 festival – José Luis GuerÃn’s In the City of Sylvia and Jia Zhang-ke’s Still Life – were among my favorites of last year. Carlos Reygadas’s austere […]
The New Year Parade
This year’s Wisconsin Film Festival features its strongest-ever lineup of independent narrative features. The most notable ones include Ronnie Bronstein’s late-addition Frownland (the director will be here in person), Antonio Campos’s Afterschool – both of which I’ve written about previously and made my list of best indie films of 2008 – Ramin Bahrani’s Goodbye Solo, Azazel […]