Disclaimer: If someone else wants to do a thread(s) on German, French, UK, Japanese etc best indie films, you have my blessing I, however, am looking for people’s opinions on the best American or Canadian indie films. Why? Because I’m not in a subtitles/trying to understand accents mood(I’m sick, my ears are all stuffed up. boo hoo. I don’t want to read or have to listen hard.), and Tuesday is video store day.
I’m angry at my cable company again for not taking my suggestion that they carry the sundance channel…two years! I’ve been begging them for two years! I miss my university’s cable company. Well, maybe it’s not such a great loss, I’ve seen 12 of their currently listed films and most I haven’t seem to focus on people’s sex lives… But I’ve digressed, sorry. So, what are your favorites?
Hard Core Logo - Apocolypse Now meets Spinal Tap (not my quote, but I forget who coined it)
Highway 61 - any movie where Thunder Bay is referred to as “the big city” has impeccable indie credentials
New Waterford Girl - scenery provides yet one more reason why I long to live in Cape Breton
Whale Music - “my mother’s name was Claire”
Exotica - 'cause it deals with my worst nightmare
Never on Sunday (or was it Twice on Sunday?) - amusing little fluff
Living in Oblivion - just to appease the Americans
and as soon as friggin’ Goin’ Down the Road is released on video, I’m sure it will be on my list, too. (It’s only been, what, 25 years since it was released?) But I’ve never had the chance to see it.
In the “Best Movies since 1990” thread I listed Exotica as the best movies since 1990, so obviously that goes first on my list. Some of my favorite indies, in abc order:
Barcelona
The Blair Witch Project
Brazil
Carnival of Souls
Citizen Kane
Clerks
Desolation Angels
Detour
Exotica
Evil Dead Series
Killer Klowns From Outer Space
The Last Days of Disco
Memento
Metropolitan
The Sweet Hereafter
Damn! That was my first pick. Definitely one of the best rock’n’roll movies ever.
Well, then let me recommend Bruce McDonald’s debut movie Roadkill (of course I doubt you’ll be able to find it). It’s an offbeat, uneven road movie about a band promoter searching for a band that up and disappeared in Northern Ontario. Plus it has Joey Ramone in it.
If you’re in a retro-surrealist mood try one of Guy Maddin’s flicks, e.g., Careful or Tales From The Gimli Hospital. His style owes much to old silent film techniques.
One of my most favorite films.
Two indie films that I have enjoyed were Last Night a Candian film Lips to Lips a Malaysian film but all the actors mostly speak in American english. Very fun to watch although it feels a bit like high school theater at times I would still highly recommend it if you can find it, good luck. Sordid Lives was a hoot.
And then of course there are the shorts. I really like shorts, they are some of the best things in film. Pennyweight, One Hand Left, Peep Show, and this amazing one from Sundance Channel about this couple who have a car which has a button that turns off gravity, so of course they push it and the world changes. Damn, forgot the title.
I loved this one, too, but left it off my list because I was under the impression that it was Egoyan’s first studio production, and not an indie. I’m curious to have this clarified! But either way, it WAS a great movie.
D18: My mistake. It is, however, a little known movie that more people should see, so I use every opportunity to promote it, just as I do with Whit Stillman, all of whose films are on my list.
Whoo hoo! I knew there’d be people with good suggestions
Clerks, The Blair Witch Project, and the** Evil Dead Series ** are somewhere in the house. This reminds me that I’ve only actually watched the third evil dead movie, though, and I could probably borrow the other two from my brother. Back in November some DVD company claimed they were releasing Kevin Smith’s Drawing Flies but I’ve never heard anything else about it, nor does their website yet offer it(the only movie I actually saw on the site for sale is Drinking Games and I have that on VHS already.) Maybe there will be more news soon.
The Sweet Hereafter…There are three subcatogories of films adapted from books 1. films that are 100% coherent to both people who have, and people who haven’t read the book. 2. films that are so far from the book that it doesn’t matter if you’ve read them or not 3. films that are ok to watch, but leave out parts of the book that’d make the plot more coherent. In my opinion, this one is a #3. I liked the film, but the girl’s motivation was too…delicately handled, so I sort of gleemed why, but it didn’t seem like the dad’s transgressions were overt enough to warrent what she did. Once I read the book, it became more clear. In a way it’s worse that the adaptations assume you read the book first than it is to change it completely. I personally wonder how well people who just saw The deep end of the ocean understood it, especially since the whole scene (in my opinion also the best and most chilling one at that) that explains the title is left out of the movie…
Memento unfortunately wasn’t in, but I did get to pick up ** The Last days of disco** which I’ll finally watch. The others I’ll check for next week. Thanks for the suggestions so far! Maybe I can compile a list of my own favorites while we’re at this
elfkin: Not having read the book (The Sweet Hereafter), I can assure you that the girl’s motivation is very clear to me. It’s a wonderful movie for those who haven’t read the book. For those who have, I couldn’t say.
Also, I have seen the movie The Deep End of the Ocean and by itself, without reference to the book, it’s a terrible movie. I realize that every Hollywood movie must be about the star, but from the point of the boy’s return, this should be the stepfather’s story.
I’m of a different school of thought when it comes to film adaptations of books. The movie should be judged independantly of the book. How well or how poorly it follows the book’s plot is entirely irrelevant. The movie has an existence of it’s own, and the only thing that matters is what appears on the screen while the movie is playing. Looking at source material can be interesting for understanding the filmmaking process, but a movie that needs the audience to have knowledge of the book it was based on is a failure.
I have ask why you consider these movies to be indie. Citizen Kane came from RKO Studios which was one of the giants back in the day. Brazil came out of Universal Studios and represents a victory of the director (Gilliam) over the studio, but it isn’t an indie film. Gilliam considers himself on the fringe, but he works with the “system”.
I also haven’t read the book, and it was quite clear to me. This was one of the best films I’ve seen in the last ten years, easily. The performances are all absolutely perfect; and Sarah Polley’s deposition scene is simply incredible. With very little outward emotion, she conveys an amazing amount of information just with her eyes and her responses. And Ian Holm’s reactions in that scene should have earned him an Oscar.
And while we’re lauding the Sweet Hereafter - I LOVED the acoustic covers Sarah Polly did of the Tragically Hip songs. Courage, in this context, ripped my heart out.
(The fact the lawyer’s daughter as a baby looked exactly like little miss D18 ripped my heart out too.)
Orson Welles was given free reign to do what he wanted withCitizen Kane and produced a film that was entirely his own personal vision. Though it was a studio release, it was not in any real sense a studio picture. I will grant you that technically, it doesn’t belong, but it certainly has the spirit of an independant film.
There are two versions of Brazil. The studio version of Brazil, with the (relatively) happy ending, and Gilliam’s version. Gilliam secretly recut the movie and screened it for the Los Angeles Critics Association. The studio released its version of the movie. Gilliam later recut the movie again, for a special director’s cut for Criterion. Universal’s cut is a studio film, I’ll grant you that. Gilliam’s director’s cut is an indepentent production. Consider my list ammended to include only the Special Director’s cut.
I, however, am looking for people’s opinions on the best American or Canadian indie films. Why? Because I’m not in a subtitles/trying to understand accents mood(I’m sick, my ears are all stuffed up. boo hoo. I don’t want to read or have to listen hard.), and Tuesday is video store day.