New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

The landscape for independent films has changed rapidly. On one hand, the opportunity to build a theatrical release has become increasingly difficult, but on the other hand, digital release has given indies a chance to play to a broad national audience at once. Each week, new indie releases will be profiled and because they might not be playing at a theater near you, one highly recommended film available now a click or two away via VOD (whether a new or not quite new release) will be presented for viewing without leaving your computer.

VOD Pick of the Week

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
There is no better way to prepare for next week’s release of Before Midnight than by watching the first two movies in the series. Not that there’s anything wrong with those big budget fantasy, sci-fi, or superheroes, but the “Before” series is my idea of a trilogy.

In 1995, Richard Linklater was coming off the success of Dazed and Confused when he teamed up with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in what turned out to be the instant classic Before Sunrise. Hawke plays Jesse, a young American man travelling across Europe. He is heading to Vienna to catch a flight back to the states when he meets Celine (Delpy), a French student on her way back to Paris, on the train. They hit it off over coffee, and then Jesse has an idea. Why doesn’t Celine get off the train in Vienna and spend some time with him before he has to catch his flight?

They spend the day and night wandering around Vienna having one long conversation. They discuss music, exes, death, and sex, all the while wondering if this is just one great day together or the start of a romance. It is something of a bittersweet perfect gem of a movie. Hawke and Delpy have such an easy and charming chemistry that you could spend the entire evening with the characters even if it were filmed in real time.

The characters in Before Sunrise are so rich that it is easy to imagine them living a life outside of the film and to wonder whatever became of them, so though it is rare in the indie film world, in this case a sequel was certainly warranted and thus we have Before Sunset. It is nine years later, and Jesse is on a book tour with the book he has written about that night in Vienna when Celine stops by a book signing in Paris. Once again Jesse and Celine spend time together while he waits to catch a flight, but this time they are in very different places in their lives. Jesse is now married with a son while Celine is an environmental activist with a boyfriend.

As they talk you get the sense that both of them are somewhat dissatisfied with their lives and that night nine years ago lingers heavily with both of them and they wonder if that was their grand missed opportunity. Of course, the other possibility is that perhaps real life simply can not compare to an idealized night and an imagined future past. Before Sunset is the rare sequel that feels like a completely organic continuation of the previous film. It feels almost more like a documentary series a la Michael Apted’s 7 Up series than a narrative film.

By all accounts, the upcoming third film in the series is yet another worthy entry in the series. If you have yet to see the first two movies, now is the perfect time to catch them to prepare for the release of Before Midnight, and if you’re already a fan, why not revisit one of the great modern film romances?

Before Sunrise:
Available at Amazon
Available at iTunes
Available at Vudu

Before Sunset:
Available at Amazon
Available at iTunes
Available at Vudu


New releases for May 17th

Augustine: Based on a true story, French pop star Soko plays the titular role of Augustine, who after suffering a seizure is sent to an all female psychiatric hospital. Being 1885 in Paris, the diagnosis of “hysteria” is in vogue and Augustine’s seizures catch the attention of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot (who counted Sigmund Freud among his students). As Charcot’s interest in Augustine grows, the relationship between doctor and patient begins to blur.

Black Rock: Three women head off for a getaway on a remote island off the coast of Maine. Expecting to have the island to themselves, they are surprised to come across three men on a hunting trip. When a flirtation leads to a make out session that goes too far, one of the men ends up dead and the three women find themselves on the run from the other two men who are out for revenge.
Available at Vudu

Frances Ha: Noah Baumbach teams up with Greta Gerwig for the second time (the first being the Ben Stiller starrer, Greenberg) in the black-and-white comedy, Frances Ha. The film mines the same post college twenty-something New Yorker landscape as the HBO series Girls, presenting Frances’ existence in a series of seriocomic scenes.