Indie News

Welcome to my latest call to action to get everyone who hasn’t seen the Safdie Brothers’ “Good Time” to go watch it. Actually, this is really an update about the writing/director duo’s latest film, “Uncut Gems,” which is finally to start to come together, with an exciting addition to the cast and an international distributor.

First, and foremost, we have to talk about how the Safdie Brothers have hit it out of the park, yet again, with another exciting casting announcement for “Uncut Gems.” In addition to Adam Sandler, returning to drama work, and Eric Bogosian and Judd Hirsh, we can now add Lakeith Stanfield to the mix, according to Deadline.

Continue reading Lakeith Stanfield Joins The Safdie Brothers’ ‘Uncut Gems’ As Netflix Signs On For International Distribution at The Playlist.

Exclusive: Academy Award winner Melissa Leo and Bella Thorne have been tapped to topline Leave Not One Alive, an indie revenge thriller written and directed by Jordan Galland. The pic, which is currently filming in New York, hails from Ace Pictures Entertainment and DeerJen. Jake Weary (It Follows), Michael Potts (The Wire), Benedict Samuel (Gotham), Kevin Corrigan (The Departed), and Adrian Martinez (I Feel Pretty) co-star.

The plot follows a theater actress, Lillian Cooper (Leo) whose son (Weary) dies mysteriously. When the investigating officer (Potts) rules the cause of death an accidental overdose, Lillian conducts her own investigation which leads her to an unlikely alliance with her son’s former drug dealer (Thorne). On her quest for answers, Lillian hallucinates some of the iconic characters she’s played on stage which serve as her inner voice, urging her to avenge her son’s death.

Producers are Jen Gatien, Peter Wong,

Mangurama and Bobb Films have bought U.S. and Canadian theatrical distribution rights for the documentary “Weed the People,” executive produced by Ricki Lake.

Abby Epstein, who teamed with Lake on “The Business of Being Born,” directed “Weed the People.” The film made its world premiere at the 2018 SXSW Festival, was the audience award winner at the Nashville Film Festival and will have a West Coast premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

Epstein and Lake said, “We are thrilled to be working with Mangurama on the theatrical release of our documentary, ‘Weed The People.’ Following in the footsteps of ‘The Business of Being Born,’ which changed the way Americans looked at childbirth, we hope that ‘Weed The People’ will humanize the controversy around medical cannabis. As our film reveals, access to this plant has become a human rights issue.”

The film focuses on several families who obtain cannabis oil

[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for the premiere of “American Horror Story: Apocalypse,” aka “Ahs” Season 8.]

Sometimes you’ve got to kick back in your nuclear fallout shelter, eat some human flesh, and savor every second of the world’s complete and utter implosion — you know, like your Nana would. The Season 8 premiere of “American Horror Story” ditched the pretense of importance that weighed down an overly complicated “Cult” and delved into the wicked fun Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s series can find at its peak. There’s still plenty of opportunities for commentary coming, but the haunting setups are punctuated with showy flourishes of humor, making the start of “Ahs: Apocalypse” feel just like Ms. Venable wants: a welcome beginning instead of a harrowing end.

The nuclear fallout began with a haircut; fitting, given the camp value of “Ahs” at its finest, and most of the opening sequence highlighted the best Ryan Murphy’s anthology series can offer: a haunting vision of an inescapable demise,

A probing but misshapen drama about a wealthy, middle-aged retiree who’s left his wife (and his career) in search of the uncomplicated buoyancy that used to define his life, Nicole Holofcener’s latest film might as well have been called “The Unbearable Lightness of Being Retired and Single.” Alas, when it came to the title of the writer-director’s first adaptation, “The Land of Steady Habits,” she was sort of handcuffed to the one that Ted Thompson used for his 2014 novel of the same name.

The term refers back to a centuries-old sobriquet for Connecticut; a moniker that was coined as a tribute to the state’s relaxed splendor, but has since curdled into an insult of its suburban conformity. Mercifully, neither Thompson nor Holofcener are much interested in exhuming the “American Beauty” of it all, as this brittle character study — like the rest of Holofcener’s work — errs

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from “The Sinner” Season 2, Episode 7, “Part VII” and theories about the upcoming finale.]

Just like last year, “The Sinner” spent its penultimate episode of the season in a lengthy flashback to reveal answers to many of the questions that had been spun out from the beginning. “Part VII” revealed that not only was Marin (Hannah Gross) still alive, but that she was indirectly responsible for the mess everybody is currently in, including her son Julian (Elisha Henig) poisoning two Mosswood members with tea brewed with Jimsonweed.

The revelations actually begin a few days prior to Julian’s fateful act. While Marin has left her son behind to be raised at Mosswood, in the intervening years she tried and often failed to deal with some of her issues, whether it meant taking drugs, going into rehab, or finding religion. When she had finally gotten what peace she can, she returns to Mosswood not to do “the work,

Jeremy Saulnier was a breakout genre sensation with his taut revenge thriller “Blue Ruin,” but “Green Room” solidified his aesthetic with a punks-versus-skinheads survival story that dovetailed from taut survival drama to war movie. With “Hold the Dark,” he continues that fascinating hodgepodge approach, transforming the eerie backdrop of the Alaskan wilderness into an expansive playground for various genre tropes.

By merging a riveting outdoor survival yarn worthy of Jack London with bloody shootouts and supernatural thrills, Saulnier solidifies an aesthetic steeped in the delicate art of merging many kinds of movies into a formidable whole. It’s not always satisfying — this time, the approach yields a confusing and sometimes convoluted narrative — but Saulnier and screenwriter Macon Blair maintain their gripping atmosphere with a rapid-fire pace, and the relentless experience adheres to its own homegrown beats.

The movie begins with a haunting scenario that would sound absurd if Saulnier didn

“Three days ago my son Bailey was taken by wolves,” she writes in the letter, and she harbors no illusions about what happened next: “I don’t expect you to find my son alive. But you could find the wolf that took him.” When Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) arrives at her door, Medora (Riley Keough) holds up the back of the book and compares the author photo. “You’re old,” she notes and lets him in.

Continue reading ‘Hold the Dark’: Jeremy Saulnier Crafts A Moody, Post-Peckinpah Thriller [Tiff Review] at The Playlist.

Two city folk decide to trade their cosmopolitan lives to build an Edenic farm just outside of Los Angeles in the charming, but overly superficial, documentary “The Biggest Little Farm.” John and Molly Chester’s dream to build a sustainable, multi-crop farm that resists macro-farming techniques in favor of cultivating a natural balance within their environment is noble. However, John, who also serves as director, cinematographer, and co-narrator alongside his wife, often resists drama in favor of bland aphorisms that end up obscuring the hardships present with creating such a diverse farm.

Continue reading John Chester’s Doc ‘The Biggest Little Farm’ Is A Truly Beautiful, Well-Crafted Advertisement [Tiff Review] at The Playlist.

[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Castle Rock” Season 1, Episode 10, “Romans” — the first season’s finale.]

After a wild episode set in an entirely new timeline, “Castle Rock” used the shaky ground established in “Henry Deaver” to provide moral instability in “Romans,” the Season 1 finale. What could have been a bloodbath, with mankind’s last decent man battling the devil incarnate, turned out to be a consideration of faith, certainty, and moral capability.

In a world of extreme actions, creators Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason have crafted an ending focused on doubt. One could argue it’s anti-death penalty and even anti-violence, which despite a few narrative hiccups, is quite the unexpected conclusion for a series set in the home of Stephen King’s many evil creations.

As flashed in the catch-up montage, the ending directly connected to the beginning. During our introduction to Henry (Andre Holland), the defense attorney was asking the journey how much

A funny thing started happening on the internet last week: People started convincing their family members that they were invisible.

Like an infinite number of primates eventually stumbling on Shakespeare, the 2018-era meme-iverse might have eventually stumbled on this new viral trend on its own. But it’s impossible not to trace this growing crop of living room videos to an episode of the Netflix show “Magic for Humans.”

In Episode 4, host Justin Willman leads a group of people in a Los Angeles park to help persuade a random passerby that no one can see him. There’s magic involved — Willman effectively disappears another guy who’s in on the experiment — but the trick only works because dozens of people play along.

Following the show’s lead, this segment has morphed into a video challenge where families use their combined powers and some careful prepwork to focus on making one

Hot off the heels of world premiering at the Venice Film Festival, as well as debuting on this side of the pond at Telluride and Toronto, “First Man” is shaping up to be a bona fide Best Picture contender this Oscar season. Described as an “often spectacular and satisfyingly old-fashioned epic” in our Venice review, “First Man” has received mostly effusive praise for the performances of Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy, Justin Horowitz’s score, and, of course, Damien Chazelle’s assured direction.

Continue reading New ‘First Man’ Trailer Debuts As Oscar Buzz Blasts Off After Venice Premiere at The Playlist.

“The Eyeslicer,” one of independent television’s boldest players, is hitting the road this fall with a new Halloween special chock full of great mind-blowing short films, including the Sundance award-nominated “Great Choice,” starring Carrie Coon.

Featuring shorts from the festival circuit by over a dozen American filmmakers, creators Dan Schoenbrun and Vanessa McDonnell, with the support of Sante Fe-based artist collective Meow Wolf, will be bringing the feature-length creation to theaters in 15 cities for “a chaotic journey through the liminal space of the Halloween season” (per the official release), hosted by “nine amateur Elvira impersonators we found on CraigsList.”

“There are so few opportunities for short films to play on the big screen and be released in a loving and holistic way,” Schoenbrun told IndieWire via email. “We’re core believers in Dio (‘do it ourselves’) instead of Diy, and we hope that this is the main thing the

Everyone’s a narrator with a story to tell in “A Faithful Man” (French: “L’homme fidèle”), a movie about love, loss, death, growing up, and the French being casual Af. Co-written, directed, and starring Louis Garrel, the film is steeped in uniquely European sensibilities, and while it doesn’t offend, the logic of the narrative, and the composition of the lead, hamstrings the effort.

Read More: Toronto International Film Festival: 22 Most Anticipated Movies

The picture opens in voiceover above urban Paris, where Abel (Garrel) explains that he thought he was living a good life until the day his girlfriend dumped him.

Continue reading Louis Garrel’s ‘A Faithful Man’ Starring Laetitia Casta & Lily-Rose Depp Flirts With Fun [Tiff Review] at The Playlist.

John C. Reilly has become one of the best comedic actors of our time. Appearing in films like “Talladega Nights,” “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” and of course, “Step Brothers,” Reilly has cemented himself as one of the best around. However, we often forget that the actor rose to fame thanks to some of his more serious efforts, particularly with Paul Thomas Anderson.

Continue reading John C. Reilly & Paul Thomas Anderson Describe A Hilarious, Unreleased ‘Cops’-Inspired Video With Philip Seymour Hoffman at The Playlist.

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Tuesday.

This week’s question: Last week we talked hits, so now for the misses. Which new TV show do you think will flop, and how would you fix it?

Damian Holbrook (@damianholbrook), TV Guide Magazine

This new season lacks that one network show that stands out as just total shit. Some are weak, like “Rel,” because it wastes the star’s talent and others, like “The Kids Are Alright,” are mostly unnecessary since we already have like, five sitcoms about large messy families set in different decades with voiceovers. But most have something going for them to spare the viewer from inescapable TV hell. So I am giving this Jeers to The CW’s “Charmed” reboot for making several missteps, some thankfully fixable. First off, even though it provides some nice representation with a Latinx central trio,

It’s easy to hate Becky Something, the hurricane of rock n’ roll destruction at the center of Alex Ross Perry’s “Her Smell.” Played with ferocious intensity by actress and producer Elisabeth Moss, the star’s third teaming with Perry sees Moss hitting another high note after the pair’s vicious “Queen of Earth,” but it also comes with a timely addiction narrative that she was eager to get right.

Told in a five-act structure and interspersed with flashbacks, “Her Smell” unfolds over nearly a decade as Becky and her bandmates struggle with the price of fame and creative freedom as their band, Something She, rises and falls, mostly due to Becky’s whims.

As the band cycles through bad gigs (three out of five of the film’s acts take place in grimy backstages) and even worse trips, Becky is forced to grapple with the havoc she’s wreaked on everyone around her,

Following “An Inconvenient Sequel,” “The Cove,” and “Chasing Ice,” a pointed and thorough environmental documentary can have a lasting impact on the global conversation around pollution and climate change. Three-time Sundance filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig has been a leading voice in the genre, and adds yet another environmental atrocity to the pile in her fourth feature film, “The Devil We Know.” The film takes aim at powerful corporations such as Dupont and 3M, following a group of West Virginia whistleblowers who claim both companies knew of the harmful environmental properties of the patented chemical Teflon, and covered it up for decades.

Per the official synopsis: “Unraveling one of the biggest environmental scandals of our time, a group of citizens in West Virginia take on a powerful corporation after they discover it has knowingly been dumping a toxic chemical – now found in the blood of 99.7% of Americans – into the drinking water supply.

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s an explosive rumor from Warner Bros. ailing DC Comics Cinematic Universe. But, look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! A plane! A contradictory (kinds of?) statement from Warner Bros.! As you’ve likely read, reports broke that Henry Cavill, who plays Superman in the DC Extended Universe (Dceu), was leaving the cape behind after three appearances as the man of steel (“Man of Steel,” “Batman V.

Continue reading WB Says “No Decisions Have Been Made” Regarding Henry Cavill’s Future As Superman at The Playlist.

While the news surrounding this weekend’s big debut “The Predator” has been…less than savory, as of late, there’s still a new entry in the famous Arnold Schwarzenegger franchise coming, like it or not. And according to our recent review from Tiff, it appears there is plenty to like. That being said, there’s one big thing missing from the film — Arnie. And according to filmmaker Shane Black, it’s for a pretty good reason.

Continue reading Shane Black Says Schwarzenegger Rejected A Role In ‘The Predator’ In Favor Of ‘Terminator 6’ at The Playlist.