American Independents

American Independents

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American Independents
  • Raising Victor Vargas

    Movie

    Directed by Peter Sollett • 2002 • United States
    Starring Victor Rasuk, Judy Marte, Melonie Diaz

    Vividly set amid New York City’s Dominican community, this warm, naturalistic slice-of-life is one of the brightest gems of early-2000s American independent cinema. Growing up on the Lower East Side,...

  • Between the Lines
    Movie + 1 extra

    Between the Lines

    Movie + 1 extra

    Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1977 • United States
    Starring John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Jeff Goldblum

    Inspired by director Joan Micklin Silver’s time working at New York’s storied alt weekly the “Village Voice,” this unsung gem of 1970s slice-of-life seriocomedy offers an incisive, bitterswe...

  • Eternity’s Pillar

    1 season

    Throughout the mid-1980s, viewers tuning in late at night to Los Angeles’s KTTV Channel 11 could catch a broadcast unlike any other: ETERNITY’S PILLAR, a journey through the astral plane created and hosted by jazz visionary and spiritual guru Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda. Blending music, med...

  • Drylongso
    Movie + 8 extras

    Drylongso

    Movie + 8 extras

    Directed by Cauleen Smith • 1998 • United States
    Starring Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will Power

    A rediscovered treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s DRYLONGSO embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rat...

  • Say Anything . . .

    Movie

    Directed by Cameron Crowe • 1989 • United States
    Starring John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney

    Cameron Crowe made his auspicious directorial debut with this beloved teenage romantic comedy, which breathed new life into the high-school movie with its refreshingly authentic characters and irresist...

  • THX 1138

    Movie

    Directed by George Lucas • 1971 • United States
    Starring Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley

    Before STAR WARS, director George Lucas created this haunting vision of the future starring Academy Award winner Robert Duvall. In the twenty-fifth century, humans exist in a computer-contr...

  • Singles

    Movie

    Directed by Cameron Crowe • 1992 • United States
    Starring Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick

    Six young Seattle urbanites just starting their lives—with bills to pay, budding careers, heightened social awareness, and restless hearts—share their dreams, their music, and the common courty...

  • Hale County This Morning, This Evening

    Movie

    Directed by RaMell Ross • 2018 • United States
    Starring Quincy Bryant, Daniel Collins

    An inspired and intimate portrait of a place and its people, RaMell Ross’s HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING looks at the lives of Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, two young African American men from rura...

  • The Childhood of a Leader

    Movie

    Directed by Brady Corbet • 2015 • United States, United Kingdom, Hungary
    Starring Robert Pattinson, Bérénice Bejo, Liam Cunningham

    A child’s angelic face conceals a budding sociopath in the audacious, senses- shattering feature debut from actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet (THE BRUTALIST). A po...

  • Desperate Living

    Movie

    Directed by John Waters • 1977 • United States
    Starring Liz Renay, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe

    Described by John Waters as “a lesbian melodrama about revolution,” the third installment in the director’s Trash Trilogy, following FEMALE TROUBLE and PINK FLAMINGOS, is a demented fairy tale wherein a scr...

  • Donnie Darko

    Movie

    Directed by Richard Kelly • 2001 • United States
    Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, James Duval

    Described by director Richard Kelly as “‘The Catcher in the Rye’ as told by Philip K. Dick,” this cult classic is a mind-altering experience whose metaphysical enigmas are still being unraveled. T...

  • Out of the Blue
    Movie + 2 extras

    Out of the Blue

    Movie + 2 extras

    Directed by Dennis Hopper • 1980 • United States
    Starring Linda Manz, Dennis Hopper, Sharon Farrell

    Dennis Hopper’s hurricane-force domestic tragedy is the ’80s answer to EASY RIDER, following troubled youth subculture to its frightening, screaming, self-annihilating extreme. Just out of prison ...

  • The Linguini Incident

    Movie

    Directed by Richard Shepard • 1991 • United States
    Starring David Bowie, Rosanna Arquette, Marlee Matlin

    A brilliantly bizarro, lost-and-found gem of early-1990s independent cinema, this surreal screwball caper casts none other than David Bowie and Rosanna Arquette as Monte and Lucy, a pair of s...

  • Heathers

    Movie

    Directed by Michael Lehmann • 1988 • United States
    Starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Kim Walker

    The ’80s teen comedy gets a deliciously warped and wicked twist in this acidic, ultraquotable cult classic. In one of her definitive roles, Winona Ryder stars as Veronica Sawyer, who becomes pa...

  • Queen of Earth

    Movie

    Directed by Alex Ross Perry • 2015 • United States
    Starring Elisabeth Moss, Katherine Waterston, Kentucker Audley

    Elisabeth Moss delivers a fearless performance in this tour-de-force portrait of psychological breakdown directed by her frequent collaborator Alex Ross Perry. She stars as Catherine...

  • Blaze

    Movie

    Directed by Ethan Hawke • 2018 • United States
    Starring Ben Dickey, Alia Shawkat, Josh Hamilton

    He was the greatest country singer you’ve (probably) never heard of: a genius, a loser, a philosopher, a drunk, a poet, a rebel, and a ramblin’ man who lived each day of his too-short life on his own ...

  • Fear City

    Movie

    Directed by Abel Ferrara • 1984 • United States
    Starring Tom Berenger, Melanie Griffith, Billy Dee Williams

    Cult auteur Abel Ferrara offers a bracing plunge into the sordid neon underbelly of 1980s Times Square in this stylishly pulpy neonoir sleazefest. There’s a psychopath loose on the streets...

  • Nowhere
    Movie + 2 extras

    Nowhere

    Movie + 2 extras

    Directed by Gregg Araki • 1997 • United States
    Starring James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton

    You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and sh...

  • Girlfight
    Movie + 4 extras

    Girlfight

    Movie + 4 extras

    Directed by Karyn Kusama • 2000 • United States
    Starring Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon

    Bullied by her father at home and feeling adrift at school, Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) finds refuge in an unexpected pocket of her native Brooklyn—a timeworn boxing gym, where she lea...

  • Melvin Goes to Dinner

    Movie

    Directed by Bob Odenkirk • 2003 • United States
    Starring Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price

    Perhaps the finest conversation movie this side of MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ, Bob Odenkirk’s directorial debut invites you along for a stimulating evening of hilarious, engrossing, and disarmingly...

  • Vengeance Is Mine

    Movie

    Directed by Michael Roemer • 1984 • United States
    Starring Brooke Adams, Jon DeVries, Ari Meyers

    Like director Michael Roemer’s prior features—the powerful civil-rights-era landmark NOTHING BUT A MAN and the offbeat mob comedy THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY—this continuously surprising, cuttingly incisi...

  • The World’s Greatest Sinner

    Movie

    Directed by Timothy Carey • 1962 • United States
    Starring Timothy Carey, Gil Barreto, Betty Rowland

    Timothy Carey—the unforgettable character actor whose weird, wiggy energy brought a manic edge to classics like THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY—wrote, produced, directed, and starred in this outrag...

  • Regrouping

    Movie

    Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1976 • United States
    Starring Kathryn Bigelow, Ariel Bock, Marion Cajori

    While Lizzie Borden’s features BORN IN FAMES and WORKING GIRLS have taken their place as landmarks of feminist cinema, her debut—the fascinating experimental documentary REGROUPING—has gone large...

  • Frances Ha
    Movie + 3 extras

    Frances Ha

    Movie + 3 extras

    Directed by Noah Baumbach • 2013 • United States
    Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner

    Greta Gerwig is radiant as Frances, a woman in her late twenties in contemporary New York trying to sort out her ambitions, her finances, and, above all, her intimate but shifting bond with her best friend, Sop...