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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

Touchy Feely
Abby (Rosemarie DeWitt) is a successful massage therapist who lives in Seattle. She is close with her brother Paul (Josh Pais), a dentist with a failing practice who lives and works with his daughter Jenny (Ellen Page). At a family dinner, Abby’s boyfriend Jesse (Scoot McNairy) asks her to move in with him, and this sets off a chain of events that alter the family dynamics when Abby develops an aversion to human contact. This obviously puts a crimp in her massage practice as well as her relationship with Jesse.

When Abby loses her healing touch, Paul gains the ability to seemingly miraculously heal a patient’s crippling TMJ pain. As word spreads of his “miracle cure” the formerly empty waiting room is now overflowing with people looking for relief and business is booming.

The plot reads something like a fable and there is a small touch of the body switching genre with the magical healing power transferring from Abby to Paul, in this case Allison Janney as Abby’s spiritual healer friend Bronwyn standing in as the magic genie/fountain/fortune cookie. In Touchy Feely the swap isn’t literal, though, and the film prefers to remain rooted in reality. Though there are comic moments (one scene in particular between Paul and Bronwyn reaches hilarious farce territory), it is more accurate as a drama with comedy than vice versa.

Touchy Feely is about how we rarely examine life until some disruptive event forces us to. Most of us live in a rut, even if that rut is a generally positive one of a steady career, relationship, and/or friendships. It posits that perhaps it is a good thing to reflect and question your life path from time to time whether you decide that you need to make changes or just learn to appreciate the things you have.
Available at Amazon
Available at iTunes
Available at Vudu

New releases for August 9th

I Give it a Year: I Give It A Year begins where most romantic comedies end – at a wedding. Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall) have just gotten married, and it should be time for happily ever after, but instead they quickly learn that they might not be as compatible as they thought. When they are both presented with possible alternatives – a handsome advertising client (Simon Baker) and an ex-girlfriend (Anna Faris) – they have to decide whether to try to stick it out or to bail for greener pastures. The film is written and directed by Dan Mazer, the co-writer of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat and Bruno, providing a clue that this is going to be a bit more raucous and cynical than your average romantic comedy.
Available at Amazon
Available at iTunes
Available at Vudu

In a World: Lake Bell writes, directs, and stars in In a World, a romantic comedy about a struggling vocal coach who gets a break in the cutthroat world of movie trailer voiceovers. On top of the challenges of trying to break into a male-dominated field, her burgeoning career puts her in direct competition with the reigning king of voiceovers, who also happens to be her father. The film won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Lovelace: Amanda Seyfried stars as Linda Lovelace (nee Boreman) who grew up in a restrictive religious family before finding fame in the porn world in the 1970s sensation Deep Throat. Though she only made that one X-rated feature, she is still arguably the most famous porn star of all-time, becoming the unofficial symbol of female sexual liberation. The fun-loving image hid a darker behind-the-scenes life, as she claimed that her husband at the time forced her into pornography at gunpoint and beat her, and she later became an activist against the porn industry.
Available at Vudu

Prince Avalanche: Most films are start with a story, but the inspiration for Prince Avalanche was a bit backwards. David Gordon Green was looking to make a more stripped down film after making a few bigger budget Hollywood films in a row, and when he visited Bastrop State Park outside of Austin, Texas, which had suffered a devastating wildfire, he knew he wanted to set a movie there. All that was missing was the story, which came in the form of a loose remake of an Icelandic Film, Either Way. The result is an offbeat comedy starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as two men who paint traffic lines on a desolate country highway.