A New Awards Group? Yup, Another One for the Indies

Over the years I realize that The Film Experience has been a bit of a killjoy in terms of one very specific development that other awards sites fawn on: the explosion of film award groups. It's just that over the years its been ridiculous to see the numbers explode but not see any correlative expansion of ideas or discussion about what constitutes great cinema. If all awards groups do is rubber stamp each other and watch the same 20 movies, we should just stick to the 3 or 4 original groups and be done with it! 

This preamble is a way of saying that when I heard there was a new Independent Film Award organization I initially rolled my eyes and shrugged it off with a tweet. Weren't The Gothams and the Spirits enough? But I've had a bit of a change of heart and am keeping an open mind after further investigation. If you're going to create a new film award, you need a purpose. And the American Independent Film Awards seems to have one. In fact, it looks like they're planning to do exactly what the Independent Spirit awards originally set out to do but have long since wandered away from as they've become a mainstream big publicity party for the mini-majors and their Oscar campaigns. The AIFA will focus on movies with budgets of $1 million or less. In other words, true indies as studios don't make films that size...  

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"It Comes At Night" is Coming to Scare You

Chris here. While yesterday’s trailer for Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled certainly rattled us, here’s another first look to give you the more terrified kind of chills: Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha follow-up, It Comes At Night.

Shults’ first film was a decidedly homegrown effort, but this looks to be a spooky step up in scale and ambition if no less psychologically taxing. The director has also assembled an intriguing cast with Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, and Christopher Abbott. The trailer keeps the specifics of this post-apocalyptic vision under wraps, but hints at some kind of malevolent force at play while Shults continues to mine tense family dynamics. From the opening shot of the trailer alone, we can probably bet this will be one of the year's most formiddable horror films.

Krisha was one of last year’s many promising directorial debuts (even if it had been kicking around for a while). Considering it played the Critics’ Week sidebar at Cannes, might Night be heading to the Croisette in some form as well? It Comes At Night opens on August 25.

Going Crazy and Coping With 2016 Films

Year in Review. Every afternoon, a new wrap-up. Today Chris on films that represented the tumultuous year...

It's a comfort to know that even in no-good-horrible-very-bad years such as this that the movies will always be there to sustain us. However this year the movies seemed to reflect our troubled times right back at us - from racial divides in Zootopia to global communication breakdowns in Arrival. But these very films that embodied the awful also provided us with ways to cope with the ceaseless catastrophe that was 2016.

It should come as no surprise to have more than one horror film on such a list, but let's look at some examples...

The Witch
The Crazy: Look what nightmares can be wrought from living in a bubble, even a self-induced one. Is this even our reality or just perception?
How to Cope: Go join that coven! You go. You got this, girl!

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John Waters's Top 10 of 2016

Chris here. One of the most interesting curiosities every year in Best Of kudos is the list from trashcamp grandmaster John Waters. The provcateur always delivers a list that is surprising in its inclusions both for the purely unexpected (like last year's Cinderella) and for title or two you probably haven't heard of. Rest assured no matter how many films you have seen in a given year, Waters has seen more and his taste is more expansive. Eat your heart out, critics groups.

This year his top choice goes to a film getting lots of breakthrough love this week - Trey Edward Shults's Krisha. The film is quite a fitting choice for the filmmaker - with nonactors on a microbudget, Krisha is all taught social mores, fraught observations of family structures, and psychosis. Sounds somewhat like his own fascinations, albeit with much more inhibitions. Here's what he says of the film, with the rest of his list after the jump:

This hilariously harrowing portrait of a family reunion ruined by an alcoholic relative and too many dogs is told with verve and lunacy and features a top-notch performance by Krisha Fairchild, the director’s own aunt. Other people’s hell can sometimes be so much fun.

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NBR Loves Manchester by the Sea

The National Board of Review, the only non-industry and non-journalist/critic group of note that passes out awards each year have announced their winners. They are notoriously secretive and hard to predict apart from three things: their eternal love for Clint Eastwood (even when no one else is loving him as with titles like Hereafter) so we knew Sully would be on their list; their recency bias (they love December releases historically more than Oscar); and their magical not-at-all suspicious divvying up of prizes to make sure each studio must purchases a table at their banquet.

Their top winner this year were Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea which won four awards and Moonlight which won two. No other film took multiple prizes though some received a prize plus a citation on one of their top five / top ten lists. Notable Oscar hopefuls that received no mentions whatsover: Jackie, Lion, Loving, Fences, Florence Foster Jenkins, Toni Erdmann and Love & Friendship.

The winners and list are after the jump...

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