Indie Watch
By Dan Krovich
April 25, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
New releases for April 26th
Arthur Newman: Arthur Newman is the story of a divorced absentee father played by Colin Firth. Completely dissatisfied with his life, he decides to start fresh. He fakes his death, creates a false identity, and sets off to lead his new life, which he assumes will be better. Along the way he picks up a troubled young woman (Emily Blunt) as he heads to Indiana to become a golf pro. Along the way he discovers that you may be able to run away from your life but you can’t escape the aspects of yourself that led you to that position in the first place.
At Any Price: Director Ramin Bahrani has had success on the film festival circuit with his films Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, and Goodbye Solo. He has landed a higher profile cast in his new feature, At Any Price, which stars Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron as father and son in this family drama. Quaid plays a lifelong farmer who is looking to pass on the family business to his son, but his racecar driving son has other aspirations with dreams of one day racing in NASCAR.
Kon-Tiki People drifting across the Pacific on flimsy boats seemed to be a popular theme at the most recent Oscars. Life of Pi won Ang Lee a Best Director Oscar, and Kon-Tiki nabbed a Best Foreign Film nomination for Norway. The film is a dramatization of Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 expedition in which he set out to demonstrate that Polynesia could have been settled by South Americans who traveled there by sea. He embarks from Peru on a balsawood raft with a crew of five men to re-enact the journey as it would have been done by indigenous people 1500 years ago.
Midnight’s Children Based on the Booker Prize winning novel by Salmon Rushdie, and directed by Oscar-nominated director Deepa Mehta, Midnight’s Children tells the story of two men who were switched at birth on the eve of India’s independence in 1947. Saleem Sinai, the illegitimate son of a poor woman and Shiva, the son of a wealthy couple, live each other’s destiny until their lives become intertwined throughout India’s triumphs and struggles as a new independent nation.
Mud: After making a stream of forgettable romantic comedies, Matthew McConaughey has been on a hot streak with a string of memorable performances in indie films such as Bernie, Killer Joe, The Paperboy, and Magic Mike. In Mud, McConaughey plays the titular character, who is a fugitive on the run hiding out on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River. He befriends two teenage boys who aid him in eluding the law and bounty hunters while planning on reuniting and running off with an old love.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist: The timing of the release of The Reluctant Fundamentalist certainly feels relevant in light of recent events in Boston. Changez is a young Pakistani man finding success in the United States. After graduating from Princeton, he gets a job at a prestigious consultancy firm as an analyst and quickly moves up the ranks. That all changes after the attacks of 9/11. As a successful businessman, he escapes the harsh treatment of detention, but he can’t help noticing the increased suspicion that his background brings upon him, and he returns to Pakistan. There he begins to protest U.S. policies non-violently but vehemently, and his outspokenness leads to his becoming a suspected terrorist.
VOD Pick of the Week (also in theaters)
Sun Don’t Shine
The story starts in the middle as Crystal and Leo are involved in a struggle off the side of the road. At first it seems like she is trying to escape from him, but it soon becomes obvious that they are together, bound by some horrible secret. Leo is focused. He has come up with a plan to get them out of the predicament they find themselves in. He concentrates on protocol and schedule, but it is obvious that his attempts at controlling the situation are just a way to avoid facing the fact that things are spiraling out of control. Crystal is irrational and flighty. She speaks of building a house where she and Leo can live together, he with his place out back where he can keep his tools and she with her room upstairs where she stores her decorating supplies. When she speaks, it sounds like a dream, but real life is playing out more like an inescapable nightmare.
It’s difficult to watch Sun Don’t Shine without hearing echoes of Terrence Malick’s Badlands with two young lovers on the run across a desolate landscape, though in this case the northern Midwest is replaced with central Florida. The stifling Florida heat mimics the oppressive tension bearing down on Crystal and Leo, and the sweat drips off them like guilt and impending doom. Stylistic devices such as voiceover dialogue laid over montage images add to the Malickian feel.
We learn what has happened in bits and pieces. We discover that Crystal has a daughter and a husband and that she has a history of being in abusive relationships, which helps explain her behavior. Leo sees himself as her protector, albeit a dysfunctional one, and he is trying to set up an alibi for the couple. The film is less about what happens than it is about presenting an atmosphere and characters. As the film progresses, Crystal’s actions beg the question of whether she is actually the femme fatale in this neo-noir. She seems perpetually to be in a partial dream state, and her self-destructive behavior leads the couple towards their inevitable downfall that Leo is not bright enough to avoid no matter how much planning and scheming he does.
Sun Don’t Shine marks actress Amy Seimetz’s directorial debut and it does make sense that this film was directed by a woman and an actress. The noir genre gets new life coming from a female point of view, and as a director she allows for her actors (Kate Lyn Sheil and Kentucker Audley) to dig deep into their characters even if she doesn’t always make their motivations overtly known. It is an impressive debut that ends with a well earned ambiguity.
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