It’s been said that if you screw up once, it’s a mistake, but if you do it three times it’s a style.

Don’t get me wrong, Submarine is a good film with a strong voice, but that’s not to say it’s not without pros and cons.  With a unique tone, interesting characters, and distinctive editing, director Richard Ayoade obviously had a strong vision for this film from the beginning.  The only problem was with the main character, Oliver Tate, who was written as such an offbeat character that there were times at which he was hard to relate to.

Submarine is a film full of feature film newcomers.  Ayoade makes his narrative feature debut as writer/director, a departure from his career as a TV actor and director.  Both of the young actors, as well, come fresh to the big screen.  Craig Roberts, playing Oliver Tate, takes on his first feature lead in this film (he has since starred in Jane Eyre), and Yasmin Paige, coming only from small parts in obscure films, gives a surprisingly beautiful performance as his love interest, Jordana Bevan.

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Terri is the latest entry in the “oh God, high school sucked” genre (will we ever get a film that puts us in the eyes of the “popular” kids?) that tells the story of Terri (Jacob Wysocki), a sullen, picked-on, overweight underachiever who knows as much about who and where his parents are as we do. Terri lives with and cares for his senile Uncle James (The Office’s Creed Bratton); pines for the pretty-girl Heather (Olivia Crocicchia); shares detention with the hair-pulling-kid Chad (Bridger Zadina); and sparks an interest in quirky-assistant-principal Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly). The pieces fit into place, and the actors perform with talent and aplomb.

Unfortunately, Terri doesn’t offer anything new to the genre. As the poster says, “We’ve all been there,” and I suppose we have, whether it be in high school, college, or work. But a thought occurred to me near the end of the film: What is the point of this movie? Is it “Don’t pick on the fat kid”?

Terri isn’t really picked on for the bulk of the film, and those who do pick on him are never punished; they’re simply forgotten. Perhaps it’s the old axiom, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” But no one’s opinion of Terri really changes—even Fitzgerald sees the good in him from the outset.

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We don’t feature enough Indie films around here so to remedy that, I’ve got one for you today that looks especially interesting. It’s called Bellflower and before you snicker and turn away because of the title, you really should watch the trailer.

Here’s some info about the film from the official synopsis:

Best friends Woodrow and Aiden spend all of their free time building Mad Max-inspired flamethrowers and muscle cars in preparation for a global apocalypse. But when Woodrow meets a charismatic young woman and falls hard in love, he and Aiden quickly integrate into a new group of friends, setting off on a journey of love and hate, betrayal, infidelity and extreme violence more devastating and fiery than any of their apocalyptic fantasies.

Written and directed by Evan Glodell, the film features Jessie Wiseman, Tyler Dawson, Rebekah Brandes, Vincent Grashaw and Evan Glodell. It opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, August 5th.

Check out the trailer to this very interesting film after the jump. You won’t be sorry you did.

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A host of  recent indie films have specialized in caustic characters and unlikable leads.  Greenburg, Mother and Child, and Please Give have all featured some of the most unpleasant fictional characters of recent memory.  However, none of their characters can hold a candle to Ben Kalmen in Solitary Man, played with gleeful abandon by Michael Douglas.

The former movies at least  allowed us to believe that those characters wanted a chance at redemption.  Those characters would have liked nothing more than to assuage their guilt over their toxic actions toward others.  Not Ben.  He gets a couple of opportunities to redeem himself,  he thumbs his nose at said opportunities. He is one of the most narcissistic characters ever brought to life on film.  He’s also a misogynistic pig.

Ben is sixty years old, yet he won’t even look at a woman over twenty.  The lone exception to this disturbing rule is his current girlfriend (Mary-Louise Parker) who he keeps around because she is wealthy and has a well connected family. Ben is trying to rebuild his life and fortune after an embarrassing career-ending swindle he pulled when he was a car-salesman guru.

Disgraced and penniless, Ben tries to make up for his shortcomings by bedding as many women as is physically possible for a man his age. He treats the women with cool disregard and cruel contempt after they succumb to his charms.  He is truly awful. He espouses offensive observations such as, “No one over forty is stick-thin.”

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Rodrigo Garcia’s new film is entitled Mother and Child, but it might more accurately have been called Mother and Daughter, as variations of that freighted relationship play out in the interconnected lives of three women in Los Angeles, depicted with stellar ensemble work by Annette Bening, Naomi Watts and Kerry Washington.

Annette Bening’s role is the most attention-getting, as Karen, a woman so angry and closed that she becomes apoplectic when a co-worker (the wonderful Jimmy Smits) attempts to give her a bag of home-grown tomatoes. Karen lives with a mother possibly even grimmer than herself, but her true wound is the loss of the baby she was forced to give up for adoption when she was fifteen years old.

It soon becomes apparent, at least to the viewer, that this baby is now the adult Elizabeth, played by Watts, a corporate lawyer who protects herself with clinical detachment and a sexually sadistic streak. Meanwhile, Washington plays Lucy, a young wife desperate to adopt and become a mother.

Far apart at first, these lives overlap in that hyperlink way popularized by movies such as Babel and Syriana, but in this case the collisions are not so much a matter of chance or fate as it is of deep connections having to do with motherhood, and all revolving around the character of a social-working nun (“Mother Superior,” representing Mary, the Holy Mother?) played by Cherry Jones with appealing compassion. If such nuns were the rule rather than the far-apart exception, we might all be tempted to convert to Catholicism.

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Perhaps only New Yorkers can fully appreciate the unique but not uncommon real estate transaction that underlies Nicole Holofcener’s fourth feature film Please Give. Successful dealers in trendy midcentury modern furniture, Kate and Alex have leapt at the chance to purchase the apartment next door, allowing them to expand their own… just as soon as that adjoining apartment’s elderly tenant vacates the premises, a process which in places other than Manhattan is known as dying.

This civilized death watch may be at the heart of Kate’s compulsive guilt, or not. Played by Holofcener muse Catherine Keener (who has starred in all four films) with her usual intelligence and razor wit, Kate is both open and judgmental, destructive and compassionate, blind and perceptive, conflicted and utterly believable. Holofcener’s work has always explored a particular strain of modern woman—one who occupies a place in a privileged and finely parsed world, albeit uneasily.

Kate is affluent but ashamed of her affluence. And although her affable husband Alex (Oliver Platt) assures her it is fine, she feels guilty about buying the furniture of dead people and selling it at a steep mark-up in her chic store. She walks around with rolls of cash to hand out to the homeless (or those she perceives to be homeless), while arguing with her teen daughter Abby over the ethical problem of $200 jeans for high schoolers.

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While most eyes are on Austin, Texas this week for SXSW, many people on the East Coast eagerly await a closer show as this year’s Tribeca Film Festival kicks off on April 21st. The festival is mainly for indie pictures, rather than the larger, blockbuster films, but is also a great place for up-and-coming directors and writers to showcase their work.

With the festival coming up in just over a month, they are already rolling out this year’s schedule and have announced the first 34 films out of a total of 85 feature length and 47 shorts screening at this year’s fest. Among the titles were those submitted to the World Narrative and Documentary competition, as well as the Showcase and Special Events.

Some of the titles look to be quite intriguing, and could include some of the bigger names of the next decade. Be sure to check out the first 34 films to be announced after the jump, and keep it here, as we bring you extensive coverage of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

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