Cronies
Cronies (2015)
What’s it about?
A spliff-fuelled day out for three twenty-something guys that tests old and new friendships.
Who made it?
Debut director Michael Larnell also wrote, produced and edited. In a filmmaker’s fantasy-come-true, Cronies – his thesis project at film school (he just graduated in May of this year) – was exec produced by Spike Lee no less (his professor) and had its world premiere at this year’s Sundance.
What’s special about it?
With beautiful monochromatic photography, a gentle, documentary-like naturalism and an unhurried plot, Larnell’s film is high on mood and texture. He also delivers a truthful examination of male and childhood friendships, looking at how ambition, emotional maturity and attitudes to race and culture affect those relationships.
What the critics say
“There’s a striking exigent quality to Cronies that recalls the authentic electricity of La Haine and animated immediacy of Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It. Cronies feels alive and of-the-moment.” – The Playlist, Indiewire; “A thoughtful reflection on nostalgia and how the sins of the past affect the present… funny and moving in equal doses.” – Consequences of Sound
Entertainment
What’s it about?
Death. Comedy. America. Neil Hamburger is an anti-comedian, touring across US ghost towns, performing to ambivalent crowds, checking out tourist spots and having a meltdown.
Who made it?
Rick Alverson, director of existential character study The Builder (2010), Will Oldham starrer New Jerusalem (2011) and cult misanthropic drama The Comedy (2012), along with music videos for the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Lead actor Gregg Turkington has been recording comedy albums as alter ego Neil Hamburger since the 1990s; The Guardian hailed his 2010 Edinburgh performance as “so-bad-he’s-still-bad.”
Why you should see it
Out of perversity: because it is singular and unsettling and there is nothing else like it in cinema at the moment. Out of curiosity: because you are interested in confrontational voices in American filmmaking and this is the anti-Little Miss Sunshine. For redemption: because you are scared that you have a black hole where your soul should be, but you like John C. Reilly, so you can’t be all bad.
What the critics say
“An unforgettable death march to the rotting core of American culture” – Time Out New York. “A twisted, existential comedic masterwork” – Indiewire. “Extravagantly rude, confrontational and surprisingly poignant” – Variety
King Jack
King Jack (2015)
What’s it about?
15-year-old Jack spends his summer alternately avoiding and antagonising the local bullies. He’s none too happy having to look after his visiting younger cousin, a slightly pudgy boy who attracts unwanted attention from the older bullies.
Who made it?
26-year-old Australian-American and LFF short film alumni Felix Thompson, working with British-based producer Dominic Buchanan (Lilting and Gimme the Loot) and US-based producer Gabrielle Nadig.
What’s special about it?
Thompson draws hugely compelling and naturalistic performances from his multi-racial extended young cast. Particularly strong, Charlie Plummer is tousle-headed Jack, a man-child struggling to bury his natural sensitivity to survive a dog-eat-dog world where teens prowl unsupervised (their absent parents almost certainly off at minimum wage jobs). This has echoes of recent coming-of-age work like The Kings of Summer (2013) and The Spectacular Now (2013), yet Thompson also brings something very fresh to his teenage realm, above all demonstrating real talent as an emerging director.
What the critics say
“Thompson demonstrates enough visual and verbal ingenuity to make this appealing miniature – an audience-award winner at the Tribeca fest in April – both a viable art-house play and a harbinger of more ambitious things to come from its writer-helmer”. – Variety
Petting Zoo
Petting Zoo (2015)
What’s it about?
The lives of American rural youth – far removed from the shallow teen cares typical in US film and TV fare. Dirt-poor 17-year-old Layla lives with her grandmother and helps care for her young cousins in rural Texas. An unwanted pregnancy threatens her chances of having a future of more opportunity.
Who made it?
It’s the debut of a superwoman: Micah Magee, award-winning short filmmaker, former film festival programmer and also a full-time mum. Magee based this on her own experiences as a teenager.
What’s special about it?
Magee shows a real confidence in her direction, finding poignancy and a strong sense of character without excessive dialogue. It’s a rare and refreshing American film that isn’t obsessed with how many drugs its teenagers can do, how much sex they can have, or how cruel they can be to each other. Instead it offers tender realism; these are young people on the cusp of adulthood with real worries in a depressed American economy. Magee found finance outside of the US, and here works with European producers including Athina Rachel Tsangari (also behind Competition film Chevalier).
What the critics say
“A piercingly authentic, diamond-in-the-rough debut” – Variety
Queen of Earth
Queen of Earth (2015)
What’s it about?
A lakeside retreat becomes the backdrop for a brilliant and bleakly comic examination of toxic female friendship in free-fall.
Who made it?
Alex Ross Perry is a 31-year-old with a voracious love of movies, as happy to watch Robocop and Jean-Claude Van Damme as Truffaut and Cassavetes. Since attending film school at NYU, Ross Perry has been hyper-productive, with four features under his belt since 2009, including last year’s Listen Up Philip (which featured in many critic’s year end top 10s).
What’s special about it?
Alex Ross Perry is the real deal in American cinema, poised to take his place among the elite of writer-directors. There are a thousand reasons to kick yourself if you miss this one, but chief among them is a utterly electrifying duo of performances from Elisabeth Moss (who also appears in Truth and High-Rise in the Festival) and Katherine Waterston (daughter of Sam).
What the critics say
“Every beautiful, resonant image in writer-director Alex Ross Perry’s film is fraught with neurotic, diaphanous riddles” – Slant Magazine
Songs My Brothers Taught Me
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
What’s it about?
Teenagers Jashaun and Johnny live on their South Dakotan Native American reservation with their hard-drinking single mother. Johnny is determined to break away from the cycle of poverty and leave for Los Angeles, but he’s reluctant to abandon his bright younger sister Jashaun, who would be vulnerable without him.
Who made it?
Beijing-born debut director Chloé Zhao developed the project with Independent Feature Project, Film Independent and Sundance Labs. She got a rare production fund grant of $100k before joining forces with producers Forest Whitaker and Nina Yang Bongiovi (who produced Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station).
What’s special about it?
Zhao’s love of Wong Kar-wai can be seen in the loose, observational style and beautiful imagery, its series of narrative flashes and haunting scenes. While this is often harsh social realism – the reservation is beset by drug and alcohol problems, poor single-parent families in a still very patriarchal society – there is also a moment in the film when this becomes about hope, embodied by a smart young woman who offers the possibility of change.
What the critics say
“Undertaken in a truly free spirit – which most independent cinema seems to have lost these days” – Screen; “A lilting, immersive film that has an emotional afterglow” – eyeforfilm.co.uk
Take Me to the River
Take Me to the River (2015)
What’s it about?
A gay teenager is confronted by dark family tensions on a rural family reunion. When his young cousin emerges screaming and hysterical from a barn, all eyes are on him and a strange psychosexual conflict erupts.
Who made it?
Writer-director-producer Matt Sobel delivers one of the most quietly assured debuts of the Festival. It’s every inch the independent film: Sobel developed the screenplay over a year at Binger Film Lab in the Netherlands and it shows in what is a finely tuned, deliciously complex drama. The film features two impressive central performances, by Deadwood’s Robin Weigert and Josh Hamilton (Frances Ha, Dark Skies), but the heart of the film is its terrific young lead, Logan Miller, who gives a dynamic and nuanced performance as a reasonably assured gay teen city boy whose confidence is unravelled by small-town homophobia and family dysfunction.
What’s special about it?
For its exemplary script, which recalls many great American literary narratives, with a nuanced examination of family dysfunction.
What the critics say
“With its lyrical approach to a deliberate pace, the movie develops a hypnotic effect even when deceptively little happens. Sobel manages to penetrate Ryder’s interior state with constant focus.” – Indiewire
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