FIrst Rule of Movie Club is: you don't talk about Movie Club. But you do share, because sharing is caring.
They sure don't make 'em like this anymore- a 1933 indie film by experimental filmmaker Dudley Murphy with the distinction of being the first major movie to star an African-American. It would take another two decades before Hollywood would attempt that "audacious" idea, but even today, The Emperor Jones cuts deep. Starring the great Paul … Continue reading The Emperor Jones
What drives a person to make a film? A painting, a photo, even a book- these pieces take time and effort, but they're a singular task of one person, one canvas, one camera, one pen. But making a movie- even a bad one- is a gargantuan task that takes everything you've got: all your money, … Continue reading 12
John Waters and Harmony Korine are two sides of the same coin, having devoted their lives to chronicling the White Trash world of America's most ignored and least embraced. Waters, of course, chose to do so with a lovingly comic approach that throws kitch and social commentary into a blender and then pukes it up … Continue reading Julien Donkey Boy
Here's a 90's "indie film" starring Christopher Walken, Benicio del Toro, Isabella Rossellini, Annabella Sciorra, Vincent Gallo, Chris Penn, and Paul Hipp that never really made a big commercial splash, and is, for whatever reason, lost in limbo: Abel Ferrara's The Funeral, a fairly bleak crime family story about revenge and, well, revenge. All the … Continue reading The Funeral
There are so many already-forgotten 90's indie films floating around, victims of distribution wars and limbo copyright issues that keep them from getting released. Lisa Krueger's Manny & Lo is certainly near the top of that list- a quirky, character-driven dramedy about a couple of sisters on the run; it's a deceptively simple story that … Continue reading Manny & Lo
Hellbound Train is such a crazy, fascinating artifact on many levels: a great piece of amateur cinema, a great example of early Black Cinema, a great example of American indie filmmaking, and a great piece of religious propaganda, all rolled into one. Made in 1930, Hellbound Train was made by James and Eloyce Gist, Black … Continue reading Hellbound Train
You saw the short, now see the feature. Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade was one of those movies with perfect timing, capitalizing on a mid-90's American indie film wave that crashed into the Oscars and, for a brief second, convinced us all that Hollywood was getting tired of the same old same old. A mere … Continue reading Sling Blade
As open-minded as our society has become about gender and race (or, at least, part of our society) when it comes to incest, we're not exactly looking to move that needle forward anytime soon. And that's where art comes in, ready to push us into exploring the very ideas we'd most rather avoid discussing. It's … Continue reading Spanking the Monkey
Allison Anders was America's indie darling for about 5 minutes in the 90's with her Sundance hit Gas Food Lodging, which was a slick and glossy film with a weak script but an indie attitude that captured people's excitement. It made enough buzz to earn her a spot on the box-office bomb Four Rooms, the … Continue reading Mi Vida Loca
Patricia Rozema is not a household name, and she's made an odd smattering of films, including one for the American Girl series... and yet she's been a fiercely independent filmmaker in every sense of the word since the 1980's, the decade she first wrote, directed, edited, and produced her debut, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. … Continue reading I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing
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