Cinematical Indie »

Clockwise from upper left: Splinterheads, Ghost World, An Education, House of the Devil.

Opening. Amiable and pleasant, Splinterheads revolves around a romance between Justin (Thomas Middleditch), an aimless small town dreamer, and Galaxy (Rachael Taylor), a gorgeous grifter who (literally) bumps into him at a gas station. She's more interested in separating him from his money than getting to know the lunkhead within, while he quickly decides that he's met the love of his life -- or, even better, a reason to leave his upstate New York world behind and start living for himself instead of his mother and grandfather.

Brent Sersen (Blackballed) is a better director than writer; the characters hold few surprises and the plot's trajectory threatens to die of old age before it reaches its pre-ordained conclusion. Still, he takes advantage of a visiting carnival and the grifter's obsession with geocaching, a variation on treasure hunting, to string together several lyrical interludes and enough laughs to deserve a recommendation. Dean Winters, Lea Thompson, and Christopher McDonald provide reliable support. Splinterheads opens in New York on Friday and expands to other cities the following week; check the official site for theaters and showtimes. Also opening in New York the same day: Collapse, Chris Smith's latest doc (more from last week and the exclusive poster debut).

On-Demand / Online Viewing. Terry Zwigoff's adaptation of Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Ghost World departs from the source material quite abruptly, but still remains faithful to the dark spirit of loneliness that haunts the characters. Thora Birch, Scarlett Johannson, and Steve Buscemi star. It's now available on FilmBuff, Cinetic's cable on-demand channel; check local listings to watch this essential indie at home.

After the jump: Who educated the devil?

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Here's my problem with the picture: a furiously-filmed chase through the streets of Paris should be spectacular and thrilling. Instead, it's incoherent, routine, even disappointing. Director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) turns in another by-the-numbers action spectacle, this time starring Dennis Quaid, Channing Tatum, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Marlon Wayans, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There are better ways to waste your time and money. Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Tony Scott's remake is a higher-grade disappointment, coming achingly close to delivering an unqualified success. Derailed by John Travolta's unrepentant scenery-chewing, which goes far beyond the bounds of bad taste, and an unhealthy preoccupation with explaining everything, the film motors along reasonably well, fashioning a paranoid tale of post-9/11 terror and ticking time bomb suspense. Denzel Washington is eminently watchable, and James Gandolfini has a good turn as the Mayor of NYC. Recommended with reservations. Rent it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

I Love You, Beth Cooper
As I wrote in my review, Larry Doyle's very funny book has been transformed into a dreadfully boring movie. Hayden Panettiere and Paul Rust are miscast as a rule-breaking dream girl and the boy who loves her from afar, respectively. The spend a night together that seems endless. Chris Columbus directed, without distinction. Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

Also out: Aliens in the Attic.

Indies on DVD, more Blu-ray picks, and Collector's Corner -- after the jump!

The Messenger opened the 12th Savannah Film Festival with a bang: a sellout crowd, international press, and Hollywood stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster in attendance to rub elbows all night. Even without the glitz, though, Savannah was a smart place to screen the Iraq drama. Oren Moverman's film is a character study about a soldier (Foster) dealing with the aftermath of war, but like Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq film The Hurt Locker, it's about the personal toll Iraq leaves on soldiers who survive and the families of those who don't; the politics of war are hardly an issue. And so, in a city that supports two military bases and the men and women who serve them, The Messenger played like gangbusters.

Foster stars as William Montgomery, a recent Iraq returnee dealing with serious leftover issues and a new assignment to play out his final three months of service: informing families that their loved ones have been killed on duty. As Montgomery's partner, Harrelson provides moments of levity, but there were plenty of sniffles throughout the film just the same.

While it was pretty easy to figure out what the general consensus was, there were three figures in particular I was watching for a reaction – the only three uniformed soldiers in attendance, who may or may not have been connected to the production. (The film has been screened for military personnel, and Harrelson and Foster personally met soldiers at Hunter Army Airfield prior to the night's screening.) When asked what military folk have thought of his film in the post-screening Q&A, director Moverman deferred to one of the officers in the audience to share his reaction with the crowd. What follows is the unnamed soldier's impromptu review of The Messenger.

I'm in Savannah, Georgia to spend a week as a guest blogger for the Savannah Film Festival, an eight-day fest hosted in the historic Southern town by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). [Read my entries in the "Voices from the Fest" section on the festival website.] As the town prepares to kick off the 12th annual festivities with the Iraq film, or rather post-Iraq film, The Messenger, I'm wondering how SFF's growing success might reflect or even influence the rise of film festivals that similarly fall somewhere in between the biggies (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice) and the little guys.

For starters, a brief look at SFF's line-up and star-studded guest list. The festival begins today, October 31, with The Messenger, a Sundance entry that has Oscar possibilities but more likely will make a run at the Indie Spirit Awards. Stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster will be in attendance. (I will be attempting to run into them at the local Starbucks or wherever it is that Hollywood actors hang out when they visit other cities.) Another Oscar hopeful, the Emily Blunt-starring period biopic The Young Victoria, is screening the following day.

And then there are the almost certain Oscar pictures: George Clooney in The Men Who Stare At Goats; Lone Scherfig's An Education; Michael Haneke's Cannes winner The White Ribbon; Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, with star Jeremy Renner in attendance; and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, which will bring both director Lee Daniels and his star Gabourey Sidibe to town.

Read on for more about this year's Savannah Film Festival.

When was the last time you were genuinely surprised at your local multiplex? Maybe it was the unexpected qualities of a movie that you'd formed preconceptions about -- which were then pleasantly upended. Or perhaps it was the simple fact that a little-heralded independent picture was actually playing at your local bijou, the one with 18 screens, of which 14 always seem to be filled with predictable Hollywood product.

From Scott Weinberg's Sundance review, I knew that Good Hair, directed by Jeff Stilson, would be educational. From Eugene Novikov's box office report, I knew that it opened at 176 theaters three weeks ago. (It expanded two weeks ago and again on Friday.) But I was still quite surprised that it was playing at my local 18-screen bijou, which had somehow escaped my notice until I was recently binging on a (progressively disappointing) horror triple-feature. With horror DVDs stacked up at home waiting to be watched over the weekend, I decided that a well-regarded documentary might be just the thing to cleanse my palette. So I was in just the right mood to kick back and be surprised.

As expected, co-producer and co-scripter Chris Rock is a wry narrator and on-camera guide. What caught me off guard was how funny the interview subjects are! When I first read Scott's review months ago, I latched on to his opening line: "I now know more about black womens' hair than any middle-class Jewish guy ever has" and unfairly categorized it mentally as 'good for you, not necessary to see in a theater.' While I wish that the theater had been packed, I laughed out loud frequently nonetheless.

Indie Roundup, your weekly dose of what's happening (slightly) outside the mainstream.

Deals. Via our friends at indieWIRE, we learn that Brian Baugh's faith-based To Save a Life will be released by Samuel Goldwyn Films in January 2010. The film follows an "all-American teen" boy dealing with the aftermath of a friend's death. Cross-cultural romantic drama Cairo Time, starring Patricia Clarkson, will hit theaters and on-demand home viewing systems sometime in the new year, courtesy of IFC Films. Bradley Rust Gray's The Exploding Girl will open in early 2010 through Oscilloscope Laboratories. Zoe Kazan stars as a young college woman dealing with conflicting romantic feelings while home in New York for spring break.

Online / On Demand Viewing. Two recommendations this week, both for titles that are newly available through Amazon's VOD service. Susan Seidelman's Smithereens is a quintessentially New York picture and a fiercely independent experience from a time when indies were few and far between. It's a blast of fresh air about Wren (Susan Berman), a rough-talking young woman, and her travails through the seedier side of life as she tries to make something of herself. It's essential viewing, especially if you've been disappointed by one too many slick faux-indies. Musician Richard Hell is great, too.

Much less essential, but no less vital viewing, is Arlene Nelson's Naked States, which trails along as Spencer Tunick engineers massive works of art composed by live, naked human flesh. Tunick is a fascinating photographer / hustler, and so are the people who decide to bare all for the sake of art.

Activity of a different kind, Chilean cleaning, and AFI Fest -- after the jump!

The CMJ Festival ended Friday night with a whimper -- well, maybe that was me whimpering after I left a special screening of the spooky ooky alien thriller, The Fourth Kind. In case you haven't checked out the trailers and featurettes on the official site, I'll give you a quick breakdown -- the movie switches between "real" footage of director Olatunde Osunsanmi interviewing Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychiatrist in Nome, Alaska, an area with an allegedly high rate of reported alien abductions, and Milla Jovovich playing Tyler as she struggles with the mysterious death of her husband and her patients' nightmares and mental breakdowns. Interestingly enough, the movie also sometimes intersperses Tyler's "real" footage of her sessions with clients with Jovovich acting them out using split screens. In any case, despite any questions as to the validity of the Tyler story and problems with the last third of the movie, I found it pretty damn scary. The Fourth Kind will be begin probing theatergoers on November 6th. (Note: It's unclear whether this was the final cut or not.)

After a one-week break for bad behavior, Indie Roundup returns, refreshed and ready to sum up what's new and what's been happening in the independent film community.

Deals. Multiple deals have been made in the last two weeks, indieWIRE reports, notably involving higher-profile directors Catherine Breillat (Bluebeard, based on a classic fairy tale, will hit theaters next spring, courtesy of Strand Releasing) and Atom Egoyan (Chloe, starring Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, and Amanda Seyfried, due in the first half of 2010 through Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group). Of the latter, an erotic thriller, Monika Bartyzel wrote: "Chloe might not connect on a personal level, it does trap you into these lurid lives that flirt with every notion of bad behavior. I just wish they were characters I could love or hate, or simply feel for."

Director Chris Smith may be lower-profile, but fans of American Movie and The Yes Men (me! me!) will be glad to know that his latest work, Collapse, will hit theaters and VOD simultanteously next month. Kevin Kelly posted an exclusive poster and provided release dates, as well as a tidbit about the doc. Also coming to theaters and VOD next month is suspense thriller Uncertainty, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins; indieWIRE has more details on that one.

Online Viewing. As practically the only film critic in America who liked Couples Retreat, I feel honor bound to tell you that one of its stars, Faizon Love, had a much better showcase for his talents in Tao of the Golden Mask, which he wrote and directed. It streams exclusively on Babelgum this month. And Ti West's Trigger Man is finally available at iTunes Movie store.

The Maid cleans up -- after the jump!

CMJ, the multi-pronged music network that offers both online and print info for fans, industry insiders, and professionals, is also famous for its music and film festival that has NYC hipsters, journalists, and reps looking for the Next Big Thing raring to go. The CMJ Festival starts today and ends Saturday, so expect dispatches on what I'm checking out on the film front. From super small docs on techo music, Elliott Smith, and Leonard Cohen to star-studden films like The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Messenger, and The Fourth Kind, CMJ has a cool mix of music-related films and more general fare. The festival also offers panels on everything from how to break into film scoring to what the film industry can learn from the music industry on the digital piracy front.

While some of the films offer walk-up ticketing, you can also register for all-you-can-eat badges, and students get a discount. Visit CMJ's official festival website for the full film schedule.

Cinematical's big daddy Moviefone will also be covering the festival, so be sure to check in there too!

Deals. Sony Pictures Classics acquired The Last Station hot off its debut at the Telluride Film Festival and plans a quick turnaround, releasing it before the end of the year and pushing its stars Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, and James McAvoy for awards consideration, according to Thompson on Hollywood. Described as a "fictionalized chronicle of Tolstoy's last days" by our own Eugene Novikov, the film's main problem is that it 'madly equivocates' on whether Tolstoy, portrayed by Plummer is, essentially, "a crackpot."

Historical drama John Rabe will get a theatrical outing next spring courtesy of Strand Releasing, according to indieWIRE. Based on the diaries of a German businessman, the film tells about his role in saving the lives of 200,000 people during the Japanese invasion of Nanking, China in 1937. indieWIRE also reports that IFC Films picked up Bruno Dumont's religiously-inclined Hadewijch and Lorber Films will distribute Nobody's Perfect, a German documentary about a man's search for fellow Thalidomide 'children' willing to pose naked for a book of photographs.

Film Criticism. The New York Film Critics Circle celebrates its 75th anniversary this year and will get the spotlight on Saturday at the Hamptons Film Festival, with the ever-contrary Armond White of New York Press sitting down along several other members of the circle. The feisty James Toback, whose documentary Tyson is up for awards consideration this fall, will moderate.

Online / On Demand Viewing. A British journalist investigates the burgeoning phenomenon of public sex in Dogging: A Love Story (not to be confused with Michael Moore's romance), which is now playing on demand via IFC. And we've got the trailer to prove it, after the jump!

Also: Why so serious? The Coen Brothers and Michael Moore.