{"id":2220,"date":"2011-12-31T09:06:55","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T16:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=2220"},"modified":"2011-12-31T10:09:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-31T17:09:23","slug":"2011-in-review-the-indie-and-art-house-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=2220","title":{"rendered":"2011 in Review – The Indie and Art House Threats"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>C<\/strong>ertainly Terrence Malick\u2019s \u201cThe Tree of Life\u201d couldn\u2019t be categorized as an indie film, but it\u2019s safe to call it an art house entry. The movie tried to be about, I think, the origin of life built within a family drama. My problem with it was that it so deliberate and esoteric taking off in odd directions that my mind wandered and I began to nod off. \u201cTree of Life\u201d is the farthest thing from mainstream and if you liked it, you\u2019re an extremely patient viewer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe Need to Talk About Kevin\u201d can be seen by wider audiences in 2012, but it technically opened for awards consideration in 2011. It is in my top ten and I liked it far better than \u201cMartha Marcy May Marlene,\u201d which introduced us to the other Olsen sister, not a twin or anything, but a talented youngster named Elizabeth Olsen. She should factor into the Best Actress category and Sean Durkin, who wrote and directed the film could get awards consideration for his screenplay.<\/p>\n

\u201cKevin\u201d is an incredibly well made movie. The story is told in flashbacks as a woman (play excellently by Tilda Swinton) reminisces about the raising of her son, who in the present is in prison having committed some heinous crime. The film works if you understand that we are seeing everything from her point of view often filtered through her damaged memory. Therefore, when her 5 year old acts like an adult in her remembrances, it is how she remembers it maybe not how things actually happened. I just couldn\u2019t take everything in the film literally and resolved that it worked best on the metaphorical level.<\/p>\n

By contrast \u201cMartha Marcy May Marlene\u201d caught me with a chilling dose of reality. The story is about a girl who escapes from a cult only to be haunted by events that took place while she was a member of the commune. The truth of both \u201cMartha\u201d and \u201cKevin\u201d is that sometimes you just can\u2019t get over things in your past, in fact, you never do.<\/p>\n

I saw the Lars von Trier experimental meditation on the end of the world and marriage. That was something called \u201cMelancholia,\u201d and I just couldn\u2019t get into it. The visual scope was lovely then muddy and the Altmanesque dramatic pacing and dialogue grated on my one last nerve as the film and the world ground to a halt.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake Shelter\u201d was the one I missed. The sophomore feature from writer\/director Jeff Nichols (\u201cShotgun Stories\u201d) also reteamed him with Michael Shannon. Jessica Chastain plays Shannon\u2019s wife in the film, and that combination is enough to recommend it without even screening it first. The movie is about a man (Shannon) plagued by apocalyptic visions. His relationship with his wife is naturally strained when he decides to act on his visions and build a shelter. Everyone I\u2019ve spoken with who has seen the film was taken with it. I\u2019ll be catching it sometime in 2012.
\n
\nNext: The foreign language offerings…<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan had problems with TREE OF LIFE and MELANCHOLIA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","has-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2299,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions\/2299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}