American Independents

American Independents

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American Independents
  • The Childhood of a Leader

    Movie

    Directed by Brady Corbet • 2015 • United States, United Kingdom, Hungary
    Starring Robert Pattinson, Bérénice Bejo, Liam Cunningham

    A child’s angelic face conceals a budding sociopath in the audacious, senses- shattering feature debut from actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet (THE BRUTALIST). A po...

  • Out of the Blue
    Movie + 2 extras

    Out of the Blue

    Movie + 2 extras

    Directed by Dennis Hopper • 1980 • United States
    Starring Linda Manz, Dennis Hopper, Sharon Farrell

    Dennis Hopper’s hurricane-force domestic tragedy is the ’80s answer to EASY RIDER, following troubled youth subculture to its frightening, screaming, self-annihilating extreme. Just out of prison ...

  • Heathers

    Movie

    Directed by Michael Lehmann • 1988 • United States
    Starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Kim Walker

    The ’80s teen comedy gets a deliciously warped and wicked twist in this acidic, ultraquotable cult classic. In one of her definitive roles, Winona Ryder stars as Veronica Sawyer, who becomes pa...

  • The Fog

    Movie

    Directed by John Carpenter • 1980 • United States
    Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins

    Long-buried secrets come back to haunt a small town in this triumph of atmosphere and creeping unease from genre great John Carpenter. Drawing inspiration from the moody masterworks of Val L...

  • Nowhere
    Movie + 2 extras

    Nowhere

    Movie + 2 extras

    Directed by Gregg Araki • 1997 • United States
    Starring James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton

    You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and sh...

  • Girlfight
    Movie + 4 extras

    Girlfight

    Movie + 4 extras

    Directed by Karyn Kusama • 2000 • United States
    Starring Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon

    Bullied by her father at home and feeling adrift at school, Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) finds refuge in an unexpected pocket of her native Brooklyn—a timeworn boxing gym, where she lea...

  • Melvin Goes to Dinner

    Movie

    Directed by Bob Odenkirk • 2003 • United States
    Starring Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price

    Perhaps the finest conversation movie this side of MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ, Bob Odenkirk’s directorial debut invites you along for a stimulating evening of hilarious, engrossing, and disarmingly...

  • Vengeance Is Mine

    Movie

    Directed by Michael Roemer • 1984 • United States
    Starring Brooke Adams, Jon DeVries, Ari Meyers

    Like director Michael Roemer’s prior features—the powerful civil-rights-era landmark NOTHING BUT A MAN and the offbeat mob comedy THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY—this continuously surprising, cuttingly incisi...

  • The World’s Greatest Sinner

    Movie

    Directed by Timothy Carey • 1962 • United States
    Starring Timothy Carey, Gil Barreto, Betty Rowland

    Timothy Carey—the unforgettable character actor whose weird, wiggy energy brought a manic edge to classics like THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY—wrote, produced, directed, and starred in this outrag...

  • Regrouping

    Movie

    Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1976 • United States
    Starring Kathryn Bigelow, Ariel Bock, Marion Cajori

    While Lizzie Borden’s features BORN IN FLAMES and WORKING GIRLS have taken their place as landmarks of feminist cinema, her debut—the fascinating experimental documentary REGROUPING—has gone larg...

  • Frances Ha
    Movie + 3 extras

    Frances Ha

    Movie + 3 extras

    Directed by Noah Baumbach • 2013 • United States
    Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner

    Greta Gerwig is radiant as Frances, a woman in her late twenties in contemporary New York trying to sort out her ambitions, her finances, and, above all, her intimate but shifting bond with her best friend, Sop...

  • Instrument
    Movie + 1 extra

    Instrument

    Movie + 1 extra

    Directed by Jem Cohen • 1999 • United States
    Starring Fugazi

    Filmed over the course of more than ten years, from 1987 to 1998, INSTRUMENT is director Jem Cohen’s visceral, fittingly unconventional portrait of legendary DC punk band Fugazi from their origins through their electrifying prime. Capt...

  • Farewell Amor
    Movie + 6 extras

    Farewell Amor

    Movie + 6 extras

    Directed by Ekwa Msangi • 2020 • United States
    Starring Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Zainab Jah, Jayme Lawson

    In her luminous feature debut, filmmaker Ekwa Msangi chronicles a broken family’s journey to wholeness with empathy and insight. Seventeen years after his family was separated by the civil wa...

  • Basquiat

    Movie

    Directed by Julian Schnabel • 1996 • United States
    Starring Jeffrey Wright, David Bowie, Dennis Hopper

    Julian Schnabel’s tribute to his friend and fellow painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is less a conventional biopic than an impressionistic, sensory immersion into the much-mythologized downtown-Manh...

  • Metropolitan
    Movie + 7 extras

    Metropolitan

    Movie + 7 extras

    Directed by Whit Stillman • 1990 • United States
    Starring Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Taylor Nichols

    One of the great American independent films of the 1990s, the surprise hit METROPOLITAN, by writer-director Whit Stillman, is a sparkling comedic chronicle of a young man’s romantic misadven...

  • Powwow Highway

    Movie

    Directed by Jonathan Wacks • 1989 • United Kingdom, United States
    Starring A Martinez, Gary Farmer, Joanelle Romero

    The road-movie genre gets a lyrical twist shot through with Native American spirituality in this bittersweet portrait of two Cheyenne men on a journey through the American West and...

  • Sam Now

    Movie

    Directed by Reed Harkness • 2022 • United States

    Sam Harkness was fourteen years old when his mother, Jois, abruptly disappeared. Tracking cryptic clues of her whereabouts years later, Sam and his half brother—director Reed Harkness, who has been making short films with Sam since childhood—head ...

  • De Lo Mio
    Movie + 1 extra

    De Lo Mio

    Movie + 1 extra

    Directed by Diana Peralta • 2019 • United States
    Starring Sasha Merci, Darlene Demorizi, Héctor Aníbal

    Sibling bonds are both rekindled and tested in the achingly alive feature debut from Diana Peralta. Rita (Sasha Merci) and Carolina (Darlene Demorizi), two high-spirited sisters raised in New Y...

  • Scorsese Shorts

    1 season

    Criterion Collection Edition #1030

    This compilation of five early short films by Martin Scorsese offers a fascinating window onto his artistic development. Spanning the years from Scorsese’s time at NYU in the mid-1960s to the late ’70s, when he was emerging as one of the era’s most electrifying...

  • The Watermelon Woman
    Movie + 11 extras

    The Watermelon Woman

    Movie + 11 extras

    Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
    Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie Walker

    The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye s...

  • The Doom Generation
    Movie + 2 extras

    The Doom Generation

    Movie + 2 extras

    Directed by Gregg Araki • 1995 • United States, France
    Starring James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathon Schaech

    Gregg Araki takes a road trip to hell in this wild, meth- and fast-food-fueled joyride through the margins of a menacing American wasteland. When they inadvertently link up with a dangero...

  • The Comfort of Strangers

    Movie + 5 extras

    Directed by Paul Schrader • 1990 • United States
    Starring Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson

    Two couples are drawn into a dark psychosexual vortex in Paul Schrader’s stylish take on the erotic thriller. Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson are a British couple hoping to repa...

  • Party Girl

    Movie

    Directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer • 1995 • United States
    Starring Parker Posey, Anthony DeSando, Guillermo Díaz

    Nineties indie queen Parker Posey is at her effortlessly cool best in this irresistible comedy, a time capsule of the era’s Manhattan club scene. She stars as Mary, a hard-partying ...

  • Milford Graves Full Mantis

    Movie

    Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
    Starring Milford Graves

    This portrait of renowned percussionist and founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz Milford Graves finds him exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. The film draws the viewer through th...