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 Vincente (Rene "Residente" Perez Joglar) in Las Cruces, New Mexico over the span of at least a decade. Vincent 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 Vincente's…

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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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Indie Spirit Revue: "Dìdi (弟弟)"

by Nick Taylor

The 40th Film Independent Spirit Awards ceremony will take place on Saturday, February 22nd. Every voter has until February 13th to submit their choices. I'm enamored with most of this crop of nominees, and in celebration of an amazing year for independent cinema, I'll be profiling some of these lineups and nominated films. First up are the firsts: Best First Feature and First Screenplay, two categories with phenomenal taste and considerable overlap. Oscar will likely nominate none of these films, and that's their loss. But we get to celebrate them, and if any Academy voters are reading this, do your duty on behalf of good art! Nominate these movies!!! You'll be better and cooler for it! 

The first film in this series of reviews is Oscar-adjacent in a way. After all, its director was just nominated last year for Best Documentary Short. It's Sean Wang's Dìdi…

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Best International Film: Canada's "Universal Language"

by Cláudio Alves

In the last hours of voting for the Oscar nominations, let's celebrate one of the best films up for Academy consideration. It's none other than the Canadian submission for Best International Film, Matthew Rankin's sophomore feature – Universal Language. If watching the director's debut, The Twentieth Century, felt like witnessing the second coming of fellow Winnipegger Guy Maddin, seeing the wonder of his latest work is akin to re-encountering Jacques Tati in the 21st century. Or perchance a Manitoban Abbas Kiarostami. Rather than evading such comparisons, Rankin runs straight at them, making his latest project into a dialogue between filmic languages and other idioms along the way, reaching for the fantastical, so specific as to be universal…

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