Highlighting the Best Indie and Art Films in October

2023-10-05 12:11:03

Your Indie and Art Film Highlights in October

H2: Hovering over every film playing in the region during October is the release of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour documentary. There seems little doubt it will be the year’s biggest music doc, but it will be far more than just that. In Cincinnati, it will play at least a dozen theaters—multiplexes as well as the Esquire and Mariemont “art houses.” Business is expected to be especially heavy here, since the singer did two sold-out early-summer shows at Paycor Stadium. Swift and the legions of young Swifties who are mad about her have become a true American sensation. At least for now. The film opens October 13.

The question is, will Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour still create keen interest 40 years from now, when (or if) it’s re-released long after the younger girls and women (and boys and young men) comprising the Swifties have grown into middle age?

If that seems like a silly question, consider this: A newly restored version of Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads concert film that often gets cited as the best rock doc ever, has just been re-released. The late director Jonathan Demme’s film captures the band—especially its charismatic singer David Byrne—in a theatrical yet funky tour in support of their breakthrough album Speaking in Tongues, with its hit “Burning Down the House.” The music in the film still sounds fresh and relevant today long after the band went inactive. (Byrne has amassed an impressive solo career.)

Last week, for its opening weekend (including September 21) at 264 mostly IMAX theaters, Stop Making Sense earned £1.4 million, great for a reissued title. In October, it’s continuing (although not necessarily in IMAX) at such local multiplexes as AMC Newport on the Levee, AMC West Chester, Cinemark Oakley, Regal at Deerfield, and CMX Liberty Luxury. As of now, none of them have the film past October 4. It’s also at two smaller, more intimate art houses: Dayton’s The Neon and Yellow Springs’ Little Art Theater.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

A number of very promising indie/specialty films start off October with a bang, and this one carries maybe the biggest hopes, as it’s made by John Carney, the Irish director who specializes in films with narratives about the lives of musicians. His first, Once, was a tremendous indie hit in 2007 and launched the real-life careers of singer-guitarist Glen Hansard, who played a Dublin street busker in the film, and Markéta Irglová, whose Czech-born flower seller becomes his love interest. It won a Best Original Song Oscar for “Falling Slowly” and was adapted into a successful stage musical.

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Flora mixes comedy and drama and features Eve Hewson (Bono’s daughter) as a single Irish mom quarreling with her troublesome 14-year-old, played by Orén Kinlan. She acquires an old guitar and starts taking lessons from an online American musician (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Much music, comedy, and developing relationships follow as the music starts to have its seductive, long-distance effect. Ann Hornaday, in The Washington Post, said of the film, “Spiky, salty, nervy and dead-to-rights funny, Hewson gives Flora’s deadpan facade just enough cracks to make her vulnerable in all the right places.”

Invisible Beauty

This highly lauded documentary about the Black fashion industry model and agent Bethann Hardison is made by Frédéric Tcheng (Dior and I, Halston). Hardison played a major role in integrating the world of fashion, and she’s an active participant (and co-director) in this film.

According to Peyton Robinson, writing for RogerEbert.com, “Invisible Beauty is a full, immortalized image of Hardison’s influence, her no-nonsense approach, and the love and power of one woman’s desire to thrust the beauty of Blackness out of the shadow cast by the mainstream.”

Dumb Money

This film’s fact-based story about a subversive movement to champion the stock of an underdog company (and make money doing so) makes it well-suited for an art/specialty theater like the Esquire. Its theme has also earned the film comparisons to the 2015 comedy/drama The Big Short, about the kinds of investing that led up to the 2008 Great Recession.

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Directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Seth Rogen, Shailene Woodley, and Paul Dano, Dumb Money is about how fans of the troubled stock GameStop Corp—the mall-based video game store struggling amid the pandemic in 2021—rallied around it by buying stock, thus foiling investors who were buying “short” positions hoping the stock would fall. And, like The Big Short, Dumb Money attempts to be funny, dramatic, and perceptive about the way Wall Street works or fails to work.

Mr. Jimmy

I first mentioned this film in my September movie preview column, and it did technically open here oat the end of the month. It’s a documentary about Akio Sakurai, a Japanese guitarist who has long devoted himself to recreating Jimmy Page’s Led Zeppelin parts note-for-note. Rolling Stone has called Sakurai “a tribute band master.”

Plan C

This new documentary from filmmaker Tracy Droz Tragos and distributor Level 33 Entertainment follows Los Angeles social scientist Francine Coeytaux and her dedicated team from 2018 through 2022 as they seek to educate about the need for reproductive freedom as the pandemic while the overturning of Roe v. Wade start to create obstacles for such access. “Plan C captures the inspiring stories of those who have continued to fight for reproductive justice, including the innovative use of mail-based abortion pills,” according to press notes about the film’s national release.

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The theater’s website calls this an “affectionate tribute to the young masses who continue to flock to the greatest city on earth (spoiler alert: New York City).” In director/writer Justin Zuckerman’s movie, Isadora Leiva plays a young college grad who lives with an older couple in a Brooklyn apartment and becomes involved in their weird, troubled relationship. In its summary, IMDb.com points out, with admiration, that the film was made for less than the rent of the apartment where it was filmed.

What Doesn’t Float

Also set in New York, this ensemble film from director Luca Balser presents seven vignetters about people who become immersed in unforeseen conflicts that test their mettle, quick-wittedness, and survival instincts. Wikipedia, quoting Nylon Magazine, says this of the film: “While the outcomes vary, a unified sense of the city emerges: New York becomes a mirror to the ego reflecting our true character, while the rest sinks to the bottom.”

Another Body

Getting a theatrical release after winning a Special Jury Prize for innovation in storytelling at this year’s SXSW film festival, Another Body is a timely documentary about how a college student seeks justice and an explanation for how someone could create “deep fake” pornography featuring her and then circulate it. Directed by Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn, the film addresses a growing threat that’s been getting increased attention.

Black Barbie

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Cincinnati World Cinema has a busy schedule for October. First up is this new documentary by Lagueria Davis that tells the story of an aunt, Buelah Mae Mitchell, who worked for the Mattel toymaking company for 45 years and long wanted it to introduce a Black Barbie doll. The film covers that quest, as well as the response Mitchell and other African American women had once it was released in 1980. Via word of mouth, this film sold out multiple screenings at Louisville’s Speed Museum Cinema in August.

Nobody Famous

Pozo-Seco Singers were a Texas folk-rock trio that had some lovely songs in the 1960s, like “Time” and “I Can Make It With You.” They got some Top 40 airplay, but not enough that I could ever imagine writing about them in 2023. The group was most notable for launching the productive solo career of one of its singers, Don Williams.

Now Cincinnati World Cinema is presenting a new documentary by Elizabeth Ahlstrom featuring the band’s female singer, Susan Taylor, who now goes by the name Taylor Pie. Telling the story of Pozo-Seco’s experiences in the music world of the 1960s, the film won best documentary awards at Seattle and New Jersey film festivals. Pie will be present on October 21 for a post-screening talk with Dale Farmer.

Teen Apocalypse Trilogy

Speed Museum Cinema presents the landmark Teen Apocalypse Trilogy created by the daring independent filmmaker Gregg Araki between 1993 and 1997. Having earlier become known as a leader of the New Queer Cinema movement, the Los Angeles-based Araki created three influential films centering on the lives of queer teens living as an informal family in L.A. The films deal with their relationships and money shortages as well as their concerns about the AIDS crisis and homophobic society.

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The Speed Cinema is showing the trilogy soon after it played the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in L.A. Here’s the schedule for the Araki films: Totally F***ed Up at 6 p.m. October 13, The Doom Generation at 2 p.m. October 14, and Nowhere at 4 p.m. October 14.

The High Lonesome Sound

Devotees of Kentucky roots music, which is a key component of American roots music, will find a treat with a special free screening of John Cohen’s documentary The High Lonesome Sound. The musicologist and founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers traveled to eastern Kentucky in 1959 to search for the people’s music, and this film is a result. Journal of American Folklore said of the film, “The poignant songs of church-goers, miners and farmers of eastern Kentucky express the joy and sorrows of life among the rural poor. … The sense of reality the film generates, its comprehensiveness, and its powerful photography make it good and useful; what makes it a great film is its great theme, the awe-inspiring dignity, beauty and art of the common man in the face of adversity and hardship.”

There will be a discussion after the film with Nathan Viner of the Filson Historical Society, Center for Cultural Equity curator Nathan Salsburg, and Appalachian musician and educator Randy Wilson.

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