Category Archives: Indie film directors

Entrance

Entrance (2012), directed by Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath is an interesting and extremely minimalistic indie film. In fact, the movie is only 84 minutes long, and hardly anything happens the first hour.

Entrance is about the quietly unfulfilling life of a single young woman (Suziey Block) in Los Angeles. She lives in the trendy Silverlake neighborhood, has a roommate and must walk to her job at a coffee house when her car breaks down.

It’s difficult to say too much about the plot without giving away crucial details. Suffice it to say that the film is effective about building a very gradual sense of foreboding. This builds to a climax that turns it into a more traditional type of genre film and in this sense it was a bit of a disappointment.

I have a higher than average tolerance for very slow moving films that focus on mood, character and atmosphere. Yet Entrance still tested my patience as it crept along at a snail’s pace for the first hour. I think the payoff could have been handled with a little more originality, as what emerged was a rather cliched villain whose type can be found in thousands of low budget films and TV shows.

Still, I admire the way the directors were willing to take their time and emphasize the everyday life of the characters. I wouldn’t be surprised if their next film is more impressive overall.

Entrance on IMDB

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    The Future -Written and Directed by Miranda July

    The Future is the second feature film directed by Miranda July, best known for Me and You and Everybody We Know (2005). While the latter was a popular and well received indie film, The Future is even more offbeat and challenging to mainstream viewers. Nevertheless, it’s well worth watching if you can appreciate movies that are non-linear and that cross boundaries when it comes to genre.

    The Future is kind of hybrid drama, comedy and fantasy. You know it’s going to be something offbeat when it starts off being narrated by a cat. This cat, who is ill and may not live much longer, is scheduled to be adopted by Jason and Sophie, a couple in their thirties who are somewhere in between hipsters and slackers.

    There’s not too much of a plot here. Fans of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise (1984) may appreciate the scenes of apparently pointless dialog and inaction -though the style of this film is quite different overall. I actually admire movies like this one and Stranger Than Paradise, though, where the characters are allowed to exist in a state of existentialist aimlessness.

    Both Jason and Sophie quit their jobs. Sophie drifts into an affair with an older man for no apparent reason. Jason meanwhile, begins volunteering for an environmentalist group that makes him go door to door selling trees. There’s a kind of randomness to it all. At the same time, like Me and You and Everyone We Know, there’s an underlying themeĀ  of how important and yet tenuous connections between people are in today’s world.

    To make things more complicated and bizarre, Jason apparently has the ability to stop time. This is where the fantasy or paranormal enters into the mix, and where some viewers might lose patience. For there’s no real attempt to weave this into the story in a logical manner.

    If you watch this film on Netflix, as I did, I suggest you don’t even bother to read the customer reviews. Netflix viewers are notoriously mainstream and conservative, and have little patience for oddball indie movies. They will mercilessly savage any script that dares thumb its nose at cinematic conventions (not all the reviewers, to be fair, but a sizable percentage).

    Overall, The Future succeeds at doing something that the better quirky offbeat films manage to do -get you to take a step back from ordinary life and society and realize that the normal and everyday aren’t necessarily all there is and that there may be other, more interesting alternatives.

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      Martha Marcy May Marlene

      The title of this film refers to the identity crisis suffered by a young woman (Elizabeth Olsen) who has recently escaped from a cult. The film switches back and forth between the past and present, as Martha (her real name) comes to live with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and Lucy’s new husband Ted (Hugh Dancy). Lucy and Martha have been somewhat estranged, for reasons never spelled out (much in this enigmatic film is left unstated), making their reunion especially awkward.

      Through flashbacks that intrude in an unsettling way into the present, we see that the rural “community” led by a bearded, guitar playing hippie-survivialist-philosopher named Patrick (John Hawkes) is a lot more sinister than it first appears. Martha is having trouble adjusting to the almost painfully normal bourgeois lifestyle of Lucy and Ted. She strips naked to go swimming, and even jumps into the couple’s bed in the middle of the night as they are having sex.

      Martha Marcy May Marlene is a difficult film to summarize, as it’s a combination psychological thriller, character study and social commentary. Actually, it only hints at the latter, and this is where it fails to deliver the intellectual punch that the early scenes promise.

      At first, the juxtapositioning of scenes involving the cult with those taking place in Lucy and Ted’s serene lake house seem to invite a comparison of the two diametrically opposing lifestyles. Martha criticizes the couple’s materialistic ways -the size of their home, their focus on money and career, etc. Yet the film never really goes anywhere with this comparison. Ted and Lucy never really show themselves as anything beyond a archetypically bland middle class couple.

      The cult, meanwhile, quickly degenerates into another kind of stereotype. It’s hardly shocking that Patrick, with his charming yet intimidating personality, brainwashes his recruits into an ascetic, conforming way of life and “initiates” all of the young women sexually -this is, after all, what cult leaders do. Yet, he turns out to be even worse than your run-of-the-mill cult leader, as he leads his flock into grotesque actions reminiscent of the Manson cult.

      From a sociological perspective, the film could even be seen as a critique of anything countercultural. Indeed, some conspiracy theorists imagine that Charles Manson was “created” to discredit the hippie movement. Not likely, but nevertheless, the way this film depicts a group of people who are attempting to live an alternative lifestyle, it makes even the most mundane middle class existence seem the epitome of sanity by comparison. Yet, I don’t think writer-director Sean Durkin was actually aiming for a Message with this film -which is, in a way, unfortunate, considering all of the interesting variables it introduces.

      If I was slightly disappointed by Martha Marcy May Marlene, it’s only because it promises to cover some truly original and profound territory, and then turns out to be little more than a thriller, albeit a subtle and very well acted one. Elizabeth Olsen is utterly convincing as a cult victim, with her affectless stare that’s occasionally interrupted by outbursts of rage. The other noteworthy performance is that of John Hawkes, who can’t be faulted if his role was written a little over-the-top. He was also outstanding in another impressive indie film, Winter’s Bone.

      Martha Marcy May Marlene has been described as an investigation into the slippery nature of identity. In that way, it’s more of an existentialist than sociological tale. The vagueness that’s sometimes annoying (so many details about the past -such as anything that happened to Martha pre-cult- are left out) can be seen as part of the film’s overall theme. It’s not giving anything away to say that the ending is frustratingly ambiguous.

      Overall, Martha Marcy May Marlene is an extremely impressive debut for both writer-director Sean Durkin and for Elizabeth Olsen.

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        Indie Film Director Profile -John Sayles

        A recent interview with veteran indie film director John Sayles prompted us to take a closer look at his fascinating career. The interview, by the way, is about his forthcoming film Amigo, about the little known Philippine-American war.

        His film debut was Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979), about a group of friends reminiscing about getting arrest at a 1960s protest years ago. This film was a precursor to The Big Chill and a few other movies about characters who might be labeled yuppies waxing nostalgic about their fading youth. While this description may sound uncharitable, it’s actually a quite compelling film. It’s a good example of a character/dialogue driven story done on a low budget.

        Sayles has directed a total of 16 films -Amigo will be #17, and we won’t describe each one. However, one of his quirkier ones (for a director who specializes in a type of quirkiness) is Brother From Another Planet (1984). Joe Morton plays the “Brother,” a black man from another planet who wanders around the earth, unable to communicate verbally with people, but still able to interact meaningfully with those whose paths he crosses.

        In The Secret of Roan Innish (1994), Sayles explores the rich world of Celtic mythology. The setting is the seaside Irish county of Donegal and the film explores the legend of the Selkie -a creature who is half human and half seal. This theme, incidentally, was explored more recently in a lesser known film called Ondine (2009), although in this case it’s not clear until the end whether the woman who’s suspected of being a selkie really is one, or if she’s a human with another type of secret.

        These are just a few highlights in the career of esteemed indie film director John Sayles.

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