Independent Films Movies

Having squandered his stint in the spotlight on hard drugs and reckless sex, washed-up Hollywood has-been Joe Scott (Daniel Craig) reflects on the summer of innocence and tragedy that would alter the course of his life after receiving news that his childhood best friend has suddenly died. As he makes his way back to the quiet English seaside village of his childhood in order to attend the funeral, he finds his journey into the past becoming a journey of both redemption and self-discovery as well. Oliver Twist star Harry Eden plays the young version of Scott in a drama also featuring Olivia Williams, Claire Forlani, and Eve. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Actor James Franco co-writes, stars in and directs this stunning drama about two intellectually gifted brothers who take drastically different courses in life. One evolves into a successful doctor while the other leads a roller-coaster, drug-fueled existence.

Director Kari Skogland takes the reins for a Buffalo Gals Pictures production starring Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn as author Margaret Laurence's much-lauded heroine Hagar Shipley. Hagar may by 90, but she not ready to lie down and die just yet. Her decisions stem straight from her heart, and that often alienates her family and friends. When Hagar's son, Marvin (Dylan Baker), takes his mother to look at a nursing home, she takes it as her cue to leave her family behind and set out on one great last journey. Her mission is to locate the seaside home she remembers from her youth, but Hagar's memory is quickly fading, making it difficult for her to distinguish the past from the present. As a young girl, Hagar was set to inherit her father's mercantile empire until she was disowned for marrying a bold young man named Bram Shipley (Cole Hauser). Later, when Hagar's romantic illusions fade and she begins to view her husband with contempt, her decision to deny her children the kind of parental approval that she so badly longed for from her own father provokes a deep hereditary flaw. As she makes her way toward the seashore, Hagar realizes her time is running far too short to make up for a lifetime of unacknowledged mistakes. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

His life seemingly spiraling out of control with no means of pulling out of the earthbound dive, a Dallas powerbroker follows his daughter's punk rock boyfriend for a wild night of youthful mayhem that may just bring him back around if it doesn't kill him first. There was a time when Max Hagen (Tom Wilkinson) had it all, but somewhere between a heart attack, an impending third divorce, and being kicked out of his lavish mansion by his soon-to-be ex-wife Barbara (Janine Turner), everything fell apart. Now faced with the arduous prospect of pulling himself up by the bootstraps and attempting to re-claim his ever shrinking lot in life, Max finds an unlikely ally in the form of his daughter's renegade boyfriend Raff (Nick Stahl), a free-spirited rock-and-roller who may just hold the key to teaching this old dog a few new tricks. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, director Fatih Akin's deeply humanistic, multi-layered drama follows the stories of six people -- four Turks and two Germans -- as they realize the meaning of love while facing the harsh realities of the world we live in. Nejat is a second-generation Turkish immigrant living in Germany. His father Ali is a retired widower. When lonely Ali invites pretty prostitute Yeter to move in with him, Nejat makes no attempt to mask his disapproval. Nejat's opinion of Yeter begins to soften a bit, however, when he learns that she regularly sends tuition money to her daughter Ayten in Turkey. Suddenly, Yeter is dead, the unfortunate victim of Ali's violent temper. In the wake of Yeter's death, Nejat is determined to do the right thing for Ayten, and prepares to travel to Turkey to find the girl. But Ayten is a political activist who has recently fled from Turkey to Germany, where she befriended a German student named Lotte. Lotte's conservative mother Susanne isn't comfortable with her daughter's decision to invite a fugitive to live with their family, and when Ayten is arrested by German police and deported back to Turkey, the rebellious daughter rejects her mother and sets out in search of her friend. Later, in Istanbul, Nejat and Lotte are brought together by fate and Susanne is prompted to reexamine her values while searching for her daughter and being confronted with life on the other side. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Philippe Caland directs and stars in this karmic drama about a hip, new age clothing designer from Lebanon who attempts to engineer redemption after realizing that a mistake from his past may have destroyed his entire future. Amer Atrash (Caland) is a first generation immigrant who's perpetually on the verge of the American Dream. But despite his repeated attempts to achieve financial success, it seems that complications always arise at the eleventh hour that set him directly back to square one. Now, after years of struggling, Amer is set to debut a cutting edge clothing line that could put him on top of the world. When the rug is pulled out from under Amer's feet once again, his efforts to hustle his way through the predicament ultimately amount to naught. Later, when Amer's wife Sherry (Virginia Madsen) admits that she's been feeling neglected and needs time to decide whether it's worth working to save their marriage, the dejected designer tells her a secret that he's never revealed to another living soul. Fifteen years earlier, Amer was involved in an accident that left a man named Phillip Blackman (Forest Whitaker) wheelchair bound. Could it be that all of Amer's current life problems somehow stem back to that one fateful night? Upon hearing Amer's story, Sherry encourages her husband to seek out Phillip and make amends. Later, after locating Phillip's beautiful wife Kitty (Minnie Driver), Amer begs for forgiveness by citing all the bad things that have happened to him since the accident. When Phillip and Amer set out on a journey designed to alter Amer's current state of mind and finally bring him nearer to enlightenment, the lives of both men are profoundly changed in ways that neither could have ever anticipated. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

An overweight man leaves his fiancée on their wedding day, only to realize years later that she's the one and only woman of his dreams in a romantic comedy that reunites Big Nothing co-stars Simon Pegg and David Schwimmer, this time with Schimmer in the director's chair. It's not easy to win back a woman after leaving her at the altar, but when an out-of-shape man finally realizes just what a mistake he's made, he vows to run a high-profile marathon in order to convince his ex-fiancée that the rich and handsome man she's about to marry isn't the guy for her. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Director/screenwriter David Gordon Green adapts Stewart O'Nan's popular novel to the screen in this feature, which tells the parallel tales of a teenager named Arthur (Michael Angarano) and his onetime babysitter Annie (Kate Beckinsale) -- whose turbulent relationship with her estranged husband, Glenn (Sam Rockwell), leads the small-town waitress down a troubled path. Arthur is a high-school student from a dysfunctional family, and does everything in his power to avoid hanging around the house while mom and dad quarrel. When he's not practicing his trombone and performing with the high-school marching band, Arthur can usually be found bussing tables at the local Chinese restaurant and flirting with older waitress Annie. Annie used to be Arthur's babysitter, and is currently struggling to separate from her former high-school sweetheart, Glenn. But being a single mother isn't easy, especially since the troubled Glenn wants nothing more than to clean up his act and reunite his family.

Back at school, Arthur and pretty classmate Lila (Olivia Thirlby) have been bonding over their mutual love for all things geeky. Though the casual friendship shows promise of evolving into something more when Lila expresses her true feelings for Arthur, he can't help but becoming distracted by his chaotic family life: his father is moving out of the family home, and his mother is doing everything in her power to maintain some semblance of normalcy. Realizing that happiness is fleeting as his family becomes shattered and Annie experiences a series of distressing encounters with Glenn, Arthur gradually begins to fall for Lisa despite his growing cynicism concerning long-term relationships. Later, on a cold winter morning, Glenn and Annie's past catches up with them in a blinding flash, and the lives of everyone they know are suddenly and irrevocably changed. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Academy Award-winning actress Helen Hunt makes her feature directorial debut with this adaptation of Elinor Lipman's best-selling novel about a Philadelphia schoolteacher (Hunt) whose long-lost birth mother (Bette Midler) reappears at the very moment her daughter is careening into a midlife crisis. Abandoned by her husband (Matthew Broderick) and still grieving the death of her adoptive mother, the emotionally fragile teacher enters into a relationship with the father of one of her students just as her biological mother, an eccentric talk-show host, appears on her doorstep attempting a reconciliation. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon), which constitutes celebrated Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's first French-language picture, represents both an homage to Albert Lamorisse's beloved 1956 short The Red Balloon and an expansion of that earlier picture. Hou begins with Lamorisse's central conceit -- that of a mysterious red balloon tracking a lonely young French boy around the city -- and broadens the story to weave an extended meditation on urban isolation and dysfunctional, slightly broken Parisian lives. The red balloon here acts as a kind of observer to a little boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu), who lives with his harried mother, Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) -- a voice actress in a puppet theater -- in a cramped flat in the City of Lights. Simon spends the majority of his time away from Suzanne, accompanied by a Chinese film student, Song (Song Fang), who baby-sits. From time to time, Suzanne recognizes her neglect of young Simon and then overcompensates with sporadic bursts of affection and devotion. She remains far more concerned with the pressures of her daily life -- specifically, the problems wrought by her downstairs tenant (Hippolyte Giardot) and by Simon's ere-estranged father -- than with the emotional state of her young son. Meanwhile, Song finds the parallels between the suddenly emergent red balloon and the plotline of the Lamorisse short rather mesmerizing, and films young Song with the balloon to underscore this point. For the most part, Hou foregoes major story developments and simply uses screen time to witness the interaction of Song, Suzanne, and Simon as they live out existences of quiet despair. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Based on author Laura Kasischke's novel The Life Before Her Eyes, House of Sand and Fog director Vadim Perelman's provocative study of memory, morality, and conscience stars Uma Thurman as the guilt-ridden survivor of a harrowing, Columbine-like high-school shooting. To any outsider, Diana (played as a young girl by actress Evan Rachel Wood) and Maureen (Eva Amurri) were polar opposites; Diana was always questioning authority, while Maureen quietly went about fulfilling the expectations of her devoutly religious family. Yet it was precisely theses differences that drew the two girls to one another and found them gradually growing to become best friends. As with any anxious high-school student, Diana and Maureen both existed in that strange grey zone between childhood and adulthood that found them constantly pondering the endless possibilities that awaited them in the outside world. Flash forward years later, and Diana's (played as an adult by Thurman) life isn't anything like she imagined it would be as a young girl. As Diana's traumatic past gradually comes into focus, it soon becomes obvious that she was profoundly affected by a pivotal event that occurred just prior to her high-school graduation. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Growing up in small-town Italy during the '60s and '70s, brothers Accio (Elio Germano) and Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) embody and celebrate opposing political stances, but share an impassioned love of the same woman that threatens to drive them to blows. Director Daniele Luchetti's political comedy Mio Fratello È Figlio Unico (aka My Brother Is an Only Child, 2007) observes the brothers over the course of 15 years, against the ever-shifting backdrop of tumultuous Italian sociopolitical history. During that time span, the siblings' loyalties will fluctuate; they will endure arguments and quarrels, and find themselves separated by the ravages of time and circumstance and reunited magnetically by the wisdom of age. In time, they will come to a firmer and clearer understanding of not only the differences but the similarities that they harbor. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

When the Ceremonial Police Band of Alexandria, Egypt, journeys to a gig in Israel, they can hardly anticipate getting stuck in a rut. But upon arrival at the Israeli airport, their hosts and transportation fail to show. So begins first-time director Eran Kolirin's fish-out-of-water comedy The Band's Visit (aka Bikur Hatizmoret, 2007). Trapped in a middle-of-nowhere desert town, the group members try to figure out what to do and where to go. In desperation, two of the musicians -- conductor Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai) and playboy Haled (Saleh Bakri) -- accept an invitation from sexy café owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) to bunk at her residence, and seemingly within no time, the unlikeliest of interracial (Israeli-Palestinian) romances begin to blossom -- not only between Tawfiq and Dina, but between Haled and local wallflower Papi (Shlomi Avraham), whose night together at a roller disco turns into a veritable comedy of errors. Meanwhile, the remainder of the bandmembers room with local resident Itzik's (Rubi Moscovich) family, which produces overwhelming conflict and innumerable tensions. As the days roll on, the co-mingling of Egyptian bandmembers and Israeli residents imparts each individual with insights into his cultural identity and that of the others. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi