2005 Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films

Edwin Pereyra · 02-02-2005, 12:15 AM

Welcome to 2005 edition of the Alternative, Foreign and Independent Films thread.

This thread will keep track of the independent and foreign films released throughout the year, which often go unnoticed and dwarfed by the more mainstream and big budgeted films.

This original post consists of two parts. The first half will list the films currently in release or about to be released.

The second half will be an index of the reviews posted in this thread.

Both the list and index will be updated periodically.

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Films Scheduled For May – June and those currently in circulation:

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FILMS INDEX: (Film Name, Name of Reviewer and link to review, Post #)

Updated: 5/6/05 thru Post #90

3-Iron

• Eric Howell (#83)

Animation Show, The

• Adam_S (#26)

Assisted Living

• Steve Felix (#44)

Ballad of Jack and Rose, The

• Steve Felix (#46)

Boys & Girl From County Clare, The

• Dave Hackman (#58)

Bride and Prejudice

• Jason Seaver (#19)

Clean

• Haggai (#82)

Daybreak

• Michael Reuben (#20)

Downfall

• Ted Todorov (#23)
• Edwin Pereyra (#49)
• Dave Hackman (#52)

Eating Out

• Lew Crippen (#86)

Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room

• Lew Crippen (#85)

Eros

• Eric Howell (#54)
• Haggai (#59)
• Jason Seaver (#63)
• Brook K (#78)

Gunner Place

• Adam_S (#45)

Head-On (Gegen die Wand)

• Michael Reuben (#4)

Loggerheads

• Dave Hackman (#77)

Look At Me

• Lew Crippen (#89)

Lost Embrace

• Michael Reuben (#31)

Me And You And Everyone We Know

• Steve Felix (#41)

Melinda & Melinda

• Jason Seaver (#63)

Millions

• Dave Hackman (#60)
• Edwin Pereyra (#73)
• Adam_S (#84)

Murderball

• Dave Hackman (#12)
• Steve Felix (#88)

Nina's Tragedies

• Pascal A (#8)

Nobody Knows

• Dave Hackman (#80)

Off The Map

• Dave Hackman (#50)

Oldboy

• Adam S (#42)
• David Lawson (#79)

Rory O’Shea Was Here

• Dave Hackman (#14)

Steamboy

• Adam S (#47)

Swimming Upstream

• Michael Reuben (#10)

Syrian Bride, The

• Haggai (#81)

Walk On Water

• Haggai (#55)

Watermarks

• Dave Hackman (#33)

Winter Solstice

• Dave Hackman (#90)

~Edwin

Scott Weinberg · 02-02-2005, 07:13 PM

Here are some reviews from Sundance flicks:

After Innocence
The Aristocrats
Grizzly Man
MirrorMask
Pretty Persuasion
Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story
Twist of Faith
Zombie Honeymoon

Hope these films fit the mold of this thread. I didn't play in this sandbox last year.

Edwin Pereyra · 02-03-2005, 01:48 PM

The more, the merrier.

Here are the top winners at the Sundance Film Festival and others films to keep an eye on in the coming months. From USA Today:

Quote:

Top Film: Hustle & Flow. Written and directed by Craig Brewer and starring Terrence Howard, the movie won the American Dramatic Audience Award for most popular film Saturday.

And its producer, John Singleton, got the deal of the festival, with $9 million from Paramount Pictures for the film and another $7 million to develop two more films.

Set in Memphis, the story of a pimp who decides to become a hip-hop star has echoes of Eminem's 8 Mile.

Other films that won awards at the festival that ended Sunday:

• The story of a Memphis music producer's restless Russian trophy wife, Forty Shades of Blue by director Ira Sachs, took the American Dramatic Grand Jury Prize.

• Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, about the path to war in Iraq, won the grand jury prize for documentaries.

•Murderball, a documentary about paralympic rugby, which is played by young men tooling around in Mad Max-style wheelchairs on basketball courts outfitted with goalposts, won the documentary Audience Award. The film is co-directed by Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro and was brought to Sundance by ThinkFilm, which has made a name for itself with theatrically popular documentaries, such as Spellbound.

This year, for the first time, Sundance awarded foreign films:

• The world dramatic jury prize went to Zézé Gamboa's The Hero, about postwar Angola.

• The world documentary jury prize went to Leonard Retel Helmrich's Shape of the Moon, a look at Christians and Muslims in Indonesia.

• The World Cinema Documentary Audience Award went to Canadian director Peter Raymont's Shake Hands With the Devil, about United Nations general Roméo Dallaire, who led the unsuccessful 1994 mission in Rwanda.

• The World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award went to director Susanne Bier's Brothers, about two grown brothers with a bad case of sibling rivalry.

Best actress went to Amy Adams in Junebug, about coping with a new family in the new South, and best actor went to Lou Pucci, who plays a savvy 17-year-old trying to separate from his parents (Vincent D'Onofrio and Tilda Swinton) and make it into New York University in Mike Mills' Thumbsucker.

~Edwin

Michael Reuben · 02-04-2005, 02:54 PM

Keeping a promise I made to Edwin, here's the first original review of this thread (links and reviews copied from elsewhere don't count

):

Head-On (Gegen die Wand)

The film is set in Hamburg and Istanbul, and the characters speak German and Turkish. But what I was most reminded of while watching this film were the great character-driven dramas made by Hollywood mavericks in the 1970s, the ones with meandering plots and characters with messy lives (my favorite is Five Easy Pieces).

Head-On is about Cahit and Sibel, two Turkish immigrants living in Hamburg who, for different reasons, have both attempted suicide. After one of the more unusual screen meetings in recent memory, they enter into a sham marriage. The idea is Sibel's, because it's the only way she can escape her traditional Muslim family and taste the freedom she's desperate to explore. Cahit's reason for agreeing is harder to fathom, because he spends much of the film staggering through life in a stupor of alcohol and grief (he's recently been widowed).

It's no surprise when Sibel's adventures take bad turns or Cahit's indifference toward the marriage turns into something else. But lead actors Cahit Tomruk and Sibel Güner bring these characters to life with such forcefulness that even the expected turns are fascinating. The film has its own special rhythm. Punctuated by scenes of a Turkish band performing on a gorgeous river bank (calling it a "Greek chorus" would be appropriate, if ironic), it keeps moving forward but never feels like it's trying to reach a particular destination. You just keep watching these two flawed but expressive people as they run "head on" at life and, more often then not, slam into a wall, both literally and figuratively.

The love scenes are raw, and so are the scenes of violence; in many instances, there's not much difference between the two. By the end of the film, several years have passed, and both Cahit and Sibel are different people. But there's no pat resolution. Their stories could continue, and the film is open-ended. Some viewers may find that frustrating, but I'm not one of them.

The film reportedly generated controversy in Germany because of its depiction of the circumstances of Turkish immigrants, but that subtext was lost on me. Cahit and Sibel are specific characters in a particular time and place, but the film isn't an exposé or a social tract. It's about two damaged souls who alternately reach out to each other and push each other away. There are people like this everywhere, but it's rare to find two who are so interesting to watch.

M.

Lew Crippen · 02-05-2005, 08:37 AM

Is Les Choristes listed by mistake, Edwin? It is showing in Dallas right now, but it has been on (at least here) for quite a while—long enough to get an Academy nom.

**HTF Ads**

Michael Reuben · 02-05-2005, 09:25 AM

According to IMDb, its first U.S. release (outside of film festivals) was Dec. 22 in L.A. It didn't open in New York until mid-January.

It's always hard to know what to do with films that have limited openings late in one year but play most of their dates in the next. I mentioned Merchant of Venice and Assassination of Richard Nixon in the 2004 thread, but they played for all of three days of that year in just a few locations. They could just as easily be here.

M.

Edwin Pereyra · 02-05-2005, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Keeping a promise I made to Edwin, here's the first original review of this thread...

And with that you are the first to make it on the index list.

Lew, I wasn't sure how much longer Michael was going to keep the 2004 thread open. I may have put the film in question here by mistake. Unlike the official 200X film list thread where certain guidelines are followed to be able to list a film in a certain year, here, we do not have such constraints. So feel free to discuss the film here or in the 2004 indie thread.

As for the 2004 thread, I sure hope Michael keeps it open for a couple more months so others can still catch up with the DVD releases and post their comments before archiving the thread.

~Edwin