So, read on, enjoy, and by all means share your own favorites with us in the comments below. Oh, and if you feel I left off any titles, lets discuss as I know there are a few grand omissions (Upstream Color I am looking at you).
BEFORE MIDNIGHT
The second installment of this column (all the way back in May) was a veritable love letter to Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and the three fabulous films they have made together over the last 18 years.
So, yeah, it's very hard not to sound like some kind of fan boy when talking about Before Midnight as it was just one of those films I was predestined to love on so many levels. Like its predecessors, it is frank and funny in how it addresses relationships. I love spending time with Celine and Jesse more than any other movie characters out there. In large measure that's because I relate to them so closely, which is very comforting.
A highlight in a film that is shining with them, is also a first in the series: I am talking about the scene where we get to have Celine and Jessie sit and interact with a large table of people from multi-generations. It's energizing, life-affirming stuff.
DIAMOND ON VINYL
J.R. Hughto's SoCal noir is a fascinating and thrilling study on the role of the other and the destruction and rebirth of the self through painstaking process. It's also a damn fine inversion of the genre, with Sonja Kinski and Brian McGuire constantly swapping the roles of victim and voyeur, subject and saboteur.
In this way there are no outright detectives or dames in Diamond On Vinyl, no large conspiracies (outside of the mystery of the self). But few other recent films crackle with an intensity that echo back to the darkly cloaked pulp writings of David Goodis, or recall cinematic classics such as The Conversation or Blow Out in their social-psychological labyrinths. Provocative and meditative stuff to be sure.
THE DIRTIES
It's really easy to sound hyperbolic when talking about Matt Johnson's multi-award winning first feature (slipping in 'multi-award winning' either makes this sound more pretentious or backs it all up with more objective angling).
But make no mistake The Dirties is likely the most timely film of 2013 for the way it handles the subject of school shootings, bullying, and the way we receive and process information of all kinds. Johnson aims for the hard questions with little to no answers, unless, of course, we're willing -- as he is -- to not outright label these young men who commit such violent acts as mere monsters. Because it's a lot more complicated than that. And The Dirties proves it ten fold. It's also a hilarious bromance.
The Dirties release in the U.S. on October 4th.
EXIT ELENA
A lonely, fresh-faced live-in nursing aide must deflect, deter, and ultimately befriend the manic household she finds herself working and living in. Nathan Silver's second feature is terribly funny, painfully awkward, and always impressive in its ability to reveal the septic, insensitive side of life as a way of reaching out to others -- Desperately reaching out.
Exit Elena is also the MVP of this column thus far as this is the fourth time I've mentioned the film since Indie Beat started nearly 3 months ago. Okay, I'll shut up about it now. That is until we get to our year-end lists...
FYNBOS
The title of commercial director Harry Patramanis' feature sure sounds like science fiction. Truth be told the beguiling and strange world we encounter on screen isn't too far off from that of a Martian landscape, even if it is just the Western Cape of South Africa (where a plant called Fynbos thrives). The post-modern house that sits atop the hill is our crashed rocket ship; the scattered souls which populate it, the shattered crew -- they are strangers in a strange land, and strangers to each other. What little is said among them are riddles. What few events happen remain mysteries.
Patramanis isn't looking for answers, he is asking the audience to remain mesmerized at the thought of the unknown. And it is, indeed, breathtaking.
KOHLHAAS, OR THE PROPORTIONALITY OF MEANS
There are few films that handle the spark of creative energy and that absolute willing madness to lead like Aron Lehmann's Kohlhaas. A film that starts off as a mockumentary on the making of an independent feature about the famous German literary character, Lehmann's tale soon unravels into a joyous, madcap and even meditative look at why we need to create. Realities collapse into themselves and are born anew as the film crew and rural townsfolk alike find freedom on the fringes of the imagination that none thought possible.
This cinematic Kohlhaas, which should not be confused with the big budget film starring Mads Mikkelsen, opens in Germany on August 8th.
ONLY GOD FORGIVES
With each new film, I become less an admirer and more an outright fan of Nicolas Winding Refn. If you kept up with last week's 5 Days Of Refn here at ScreenAnarchy then you know how much I adore his latest.
Only God Forgives is an expressionistic nightmare of a western, populated not by actual characters but more or less avatars for mythological and religious archetypes. It's a brutal film to be sure, but this time out Refn is far more fascinated by the stillness; that calm before and after the storm.
SHORT TERM 12
Last month, in my review of Destin Daniel Cretton's second feature, I said that "Brie Larson gives a performance that is as devastating and uplifting as any you're likely to see this year from an actress of her generation"
I stand by that assessment, and come year's end think it will hold up. The rest of the film around Larson ain't too shabby either, focusing in on a world we rarely see on screen -- that of a short term foster care facility -- and getting the mindset and emotions of adolescence really, really right. Short Term 12 is a hard film as much as it is a tender one, and that's probably why its been racking up audience awards and jury prizes alike on the fest circuit.
Short Term 12 releases in the U.S. on August 23rd.
SOFT IN THE HEAD
Soft In The Head is Nathan Silver's third feature. Yes, he's that prolific, damn the guy. Or rather bless him. A even rawer and rougher affair than Exit Elena, Soft... follows the wayward Natalia (the electric Sheila EtxeberrÃa) through one hell of a week in New York.
Breaking up with her boyfriend, Natalia seeks solace with her oldest friend and her family. In doing so she encourages the affections of the friend's naive younger brother. She then finds acceptance in the oddest of places: a makeshift men's shelter in the home of good Samaritan (played with such genuineness by Ed Ryan). The topsy turvy lives of Natalia and the broken if bright people around her is captured by cinematographer Cody Stokes in an intimate, immediate style that gives particular focus to hands. Whether or not there's symbolism in that is largely left to the viewer to decide.
Soft In The Head is currently on the festival circuit. Keep an eye out for it.