Indie Spirits Revue: “The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed”

by Nick Taylor

It took me a while to get caught up in this one, lemme tell you. One can argue whether Joanna Arnow's droll tone, disposition towards cringe comedy, and restrictive palettes in color and emoting is a sneakily incisive feat or a weird student-film misfire. For a film about a woman's exploration of various BDSM relationships while navigating a dead-end job and a stilted relationship with her family, The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed possesses no titillation or temperature spikes to make the audience more engaged…

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Indie Spirit Revue: "Problemista"

by Nick Taylor

As a fan of Julio Torres's work on SNL for years who's had only intermittent contact with his other ventures, I am so goddamn delighted by Problemista. Every loopy, queer, topical, cubist dimension to his art is so fruitfully deployed while allowing the colors and slashes of every single collaborator to shine as brightly as he does. As a showcase of singular, unpredictable comedic instincts, this beats almost every other 2024 film for mining laughs from all directions. Bizarre art objects, wry narration, ridiculous tableaus, fantasy costumes, goofy-ass behavior, incredible commitment to the bit from all sides. She's got it all…

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