Indie Beat: Top 5 Most Intriguing Indies In December

LENNY COOKE (December 6)

Josh and Benny Safdie, the brothers behind the absurdest character studies, The Please Of Being Robbed and Daddy Longlegs, bring us their first documentary feature, the story of one Lenny Cooke. Once the top ranked high school basketball player, and touted to debut in the NBA on the level of LeBron James, Cooke's professional sports career never came to fruition in the way all the hype, but more importantly, all the talent suggested.

HERE COMES THE DEVIL (December 13)

Twitch readers know there is probably no better way to celebrate this time of year than with a Mexican horror film. Adrián García Bogliano, along with his brother Ramiro, have been leading the way in Argentine genre cinema for the better part of a decade now, but this Mexican set tale of demonically possessed kiddos seems to be Bogliano's ticket into the stratosphere of contemporary world class horror directors.

Check out Charles Webb's review from TIFF 2012

ALL THE LIGHT IN THE SKY (December 20)

Mr. Prolific Indie himself, Joe Swanberg directs Jane Adams as an aging actress must confront her own fears of self-worth when her young aspiring actress niece comes for a weekend visit. While I've never been the biggest fan of Swanberg's so called mumblecore, one can't deny the man's passion and curiosity. Drinking Buddies, certainly his most mainstream film to date but also his most accomplished, proved to impress me on a number of fronts, especially in proving that Olivia Wilde is a damn good actress. With Adams, a veteran thespian on board this one, you can color me curious.

THE PAST (December 20)

A few years back Asghar Farhadi saw his star rise to the world stage with his acclaimed drama A Separation. Farhadi returns with The Past, moving much of the action from Iran to France, where he charts the seismic shifts within a family when the Iranian born father decides to leave his French wife. It sure sounds like very similar territory to A Seperation, but with that being the one-two punch kind of drama it is, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

THE SELFISH GIANT (December 20)

While I wasn't thoroughly impressed with Clio Barnard's narrative feature debut about two tween boys living on an English estate, everyone else sure seems to be floored by this coming-of-age film done in the Brit's social realism tradition reaching as far back as Ken Loach, and more recently to the likes of Andrea Arnold. Barnard won a special critic's prize for her direction at AFI Fest where the film also won the Audience Award in its category New Auteurs. It has also been nominated for seven British Independent Film Awards.