Indie Spirit Revue: "In the Summers"

by Nick Taylor

As beloved, disgustingly over-productive TFE writer Cláudio Alves phrased it to me, In the Summers would pair well with Janet Planet as studies of girls observing their parents over formative summers. Here, we see sisters Violetta (Lio Mehiel) and Eva (Sasha Calle) making four visits with their dad Vicente (Rene "Residente" Perez Joglar) in Las Cruces, New Mexico over the span of at least a decade. Vicente and their mother are separated, and the girl's trips are part of a regular visitation schedule. Costuming, personal styling, physical changes, and performance notes do a lot of work to suggest how much has changed in Violetta and Eva's lives without ever spelling out exactly what they've been up to, who they are now, or what they might think of their father. The family regularly visits a bar owned by Carmen (Emma Ramos), a wary, longtime friend of Vicente's…

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Gun Crazy @75: "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun."

by Cláudio Alves

A boy loves guns, he's obsessed with them, thrilled by them, given purpose by their dangerous nature. He grows up, and the love persists. One day, the boy finds a girl who shares the same fascination. A match made in hell, they come to love each other as much as they're besotted by the firearms, falling headfirst into a romance bound to become a tragedy. Even as they embark on a life of crime, the boy refuses to kill while the girl is all too eager. It doesn't end well, but it's a horny good time while it lasts. Guns and sex, sex and death, death as love, and love is the American way – and you know what? That's cinema, baby. That's also Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy, also known as Deadly Is the Female, a B-movie masterpiece that often feels like the urtext of film noir, chronologically displaced as it might be.

Today, it celebrated its 75th anniversary – there are disputes over Gun Crazy's first release, but we're going with the January 20th, 1950 date – so let's explore what makes this violent tale such vital, essential cinema…

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Paul Newman @ 100: "The Hustler"

by Nathaniel R

Paul Newman's second Oscar nomination came for THE HUSTLER (1961). All screenshots sourced from FilmGrab.

A smiling illustration on salad dressing bottles, a serious visage on movie posters, a guest on television talk shows? I can't recall when I first became aware of Paul Newman. He was always there, an unmoving fixture of popular culture. When I was a kid he'd already been in the movie business for 30 years. For most stars, two back-to-back lead Oscar nominations in your late 50s (Absence of Malice and The Verdict) would be a winding down or a swan song but Paul Newman was the definition of "enduring". When I started hitting movie theaters on the regular he was just 30 years into a career but there was still tank in the gas. He'd be back to the Oscars as a nominee thrice more, four if you count the Honorary statue.

For today's celebration, we're travelling way back to his second Oscar nomination to meet "Fast Eddie" Felson in The Hustler (1961)...

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Indie Spirit Revue: "Janet Planet"

by Nick Taylor

I was pleasantly surprised by Janet Planet after hearing months of ecstatic reviews following its festival premiere before it got wide distribution. So often, when we get films from lauded theatre directors or playwrights, there's usually a built-in leeway for those artists not playing with cinema as fully or successfully as they might. But Annie Baker has no such timidity, and the assurance behind Janet Planet's audiovisual richness would be extraordinary for any director. The fact that she translates her idiosyncrasies with dialogue and character is an added bonus - how often do we get so lucky?...

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Indie Spirit Revue: "The Piano Lesson"

by Nick Taylor

A very good movie, frustratingly close to being a great one if not for one problem at its absolute center. John David Washington drags down this new adaptation of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson to an inordinate degree, baldly imitating his dad's Troy Maxson and leaving Boy Willie out to dry as a result. Unburdened from even a shred of Denzel's charisma, we get a Boy Willie who's unambiguously trying to sell you a used car even when he's supposed to be bonding with his niece or drinking with a friend. His disastrous turn skews the text even more toward Berniece than it already was - imagine what Stephan James could've done with the role instead. Imagine Stephan James being nurtured by Hollywood after his heartbreaking performance in If Beale Street Could Talk…

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