Welcome to the Indie Film Minute Blog! Browse our curated collection of film essays and explore unique perspectives on the indie film world. Visit our Facebook page and tweet us at @indiefilmminute to let us know what you think.
Two Days, One Night maintains an intelligent, measured focus on individual experience, where human beings exist in situations beyond their control but choose to act based on what they know and what is within their reach. This film asks us what it would mean to look beyond ourselves—recognizing that compassion, like many good things, is costly.
Read MoreAs in real-life drone operations, much is in the grey area when it comes to killing people without fair trial and without declaration of war. Eye in the Sky expertly takes us up the chain of command as we follow the decision being thrown from official to official like a hot potato.
Read MoreLanthimos’s newest film, The Lobster, continues a sort of trilogy preceded by Alps (2011) and Dogtooth (2009), his breakout film. Each film takes place in a world that seems a surreal reflection of our own, and each deals with the same theme: control.
Read MoreThe most powerful vehicle for Prince's feverish sexuality is Purple Rain, the 1984 American film. In the role of “The Kid,” Prince showcases his acting abilities, and more importantly, his stage performances, which are infused with Pan-like overtures of sex and taboos.
Read MoreRemembrance is a film I want to return to, a film I have no wish to forget. But there’s something in the idea of monumented, sacred space—given time to exist and resonate without encroachment—that rings true for me when considering a film like this.
Read MoreThe central problem of Caché, both in its original release and in a contemporary viewing, is the issue of surveillance: the thought that we are being watched by an unknown force or figure. Caché is not a horror film, but it does carry a sense of menace with its every frame.
Read MoreMuch like London itself, and perhaps all western metropolises, a foundation of raw exploitation lies beneath the surface of glamour, intrigue, and possibility. Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things offers this cutting commentary with refreshingly little restraint. His vehicle for this is a tongue-in-cheek thriller, complete with all the trappings of suspense, unexpected twists, and unlikely heroes.
Read MoreThe films choose you in a way, and perhaps that’s best. You can be their torchbearer and carry them to friends and family. You are offered a slate of directors and actors hoping to move you, and you get to let it all come and wash over you. That’s the miracle of the film festival; more so, it’s the miracle of small festivals like IFFBoston, where you don’t have the marquee names that light up Toronto or Venice or Cannes.
Read MoreJeff Nichols’s new film, Midnight Special, is something of a throwback to a Spielbergian Americana of the late 70’s. The cues Nichols utilizes are subtle, but similarities are still noticeable in how both Nichols and Spielberg stage unassuming, rural Americans.
Read MoreIt’s Such a Beautiful Day is powered by metaphor. In its collage-like style, with animation superimposed over raw footage, cartoon and the familiar world combine—sometimes in harmony, often in dissonance. And, like any good metaphor, what is suggested is as evocative as what is there explicitly: in life, both artifice and “reality” may exist side by side.
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