Editor’s note: With Indie Game: The Movie opening up in Los Angeles today as it begins its theatrical run, we thought it only appropriate to re-run this Sundance review, originally posted on January 20. They say to truly be happy you should “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” but what does it mean to take something you love doing and try and make it your career? Or at least something you dedicate the majority of your time to? Those who are writers or make films or music usually get into it because they love reading/writing, movies and music, but there is a caveat to this idea that people do not always realize. Even if you are “pursuing your dreams,” at the end of the day, work is work. It may be more exciting and different than your average 9-5 cubicle life, it is still a job with deadlines, pressure, and stress. Indie Game: The Movie follows three sets of video game creators (Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, creators of Super Meat Boy; Phil Fish, creator of FEZ; and Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid) each at different points in their careers (and the games they are working on) to show not only the process of being an independent game creator, but what happens when you pour yourself into something that you eventually have to leave up to other people to determine its success. None of these creators are in it for the money (although there is certainly money to [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Those of you who read my review of Sleeping Beauty at last year’s festival might remember that I said the film was probably the least sexual film I had ever seen, despite its boob count. I would hereby like to categorically and unreservedly retract that statement in full. Because I have just seen Ulrich Seidl‘s Paradise: Love, a two-hour-long spectacle of supposedly renewed self-discovery through sex tourism that spends all together too much time fascinated with its exotic subjects (both European and African) and too little time asking any of the pressing questions it brings up. The film follows Anna Maria (Margarethe Tiesel), an Austrian single mother, the wrong side of fifty and in a miserable floundering rut that she uses as her excuse to take a solo trip to Kenya in search of good times – a concept those familiar with Seidl would be forgiven for thinking he wouldn’t have any concept of.

Possibly one of the scariest documentaries I’ve ever seen, Sexy Baby explores the over-sexualization of girls and women in the era of the Internet. Directed by Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, the movie analyzes how social media, Internet porn and general pop culture are affecting the sexuality of women through the eyes of its three female subjects. There’s former porn actress Nichole (aka Nikita Kash) who’s trying to settle in to a more conventional life; precocious teen Winnifred, who’s struggling to come to terms with her own image and sexuality; and finally there’s Laura, who, after years of saving up for it, is ready to get the plastic surgery of her dreams – labiaplasty to be specific – so she can finally feel confident. The three stories attempt to answer the same question – what does it mean to be a woman in today’s hypersexual climate? Images that were once behind the curtain at the video store or at the very least hidden under a mattress are now accessible at the click of a finger, and it’s gotten more extreme. Porn isn’t new, but the types of porn we’re seeing, and the way we access it is. And in most cases, kids are seeing it at a much younger age than they used to. And if it’s not hard-core porn, it’s sexualized images in music videos, billboards, and advertising images. Celebrity sex scandals are frequently covered in the mainstream media, and those who find themselves with a leaked sex tape [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Off Label, the new documentary from Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher (October Country), investigates the epidemic of skyrocketing prescription drug use in America – more specifically, how medications are being tested, marketed, sold and used for purposes they weren’t originally intended for, and the toll it takes on human subjects. The film follows seven stories of people who serve as human test subjects – both willing and unwilling – by pharmaceutical companies. There’s a man who’s made his living as a human guinea pig and has just reached the age where he can no longer take part; the middle-aged bipolar woman who takes 18 pills a day with varying degrees of success; the mother of a boy who brutally killed himself when he was put on the wrong medications in a clinical study; and a young Iraq war vet with PTSD who was prescribed a cocktail of drugs instead of getting the treatment he needed. All of these stories are used to make an unapologetic case against the use of prescription drugs for off-label purposes.

Gird your loins, Los Angeles, the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival is coming, and this time, the fest is bringing strippers with them. Lots and lots of (cinematic) strippers. The festival has already announced four titles, which include the North American Premiere of Woody Allen‘s To Rome With Love as the festival’s Opening Night Film, along with Gala screenings for Benh Zeitlin‘s Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lorene Scafaria‘s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and Ava DuVernay‘s Middle of Nowhere, but it’s high time LAFF unveiled their full slate. And what a slate! As announced today, the festival will close with the World Premiere of Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike and will also feature the World Premiere of Alex Kurtzman‘s People Like Us. Other titles announced today of note include Sundance favorites The Queen of Versailles, Teddy Bear, The House I Live In, Celeste and Jesse Forever, Robot and Frank, and Searching for Sugar Man. Additional titles that pop out include Emmett Malloy’s Big Easy Express, Alejandro Brugués‘ Juan of the Dead, Adam Leon’s Gimme the Loot, and Joshua Sanchez’s Four. LAFF also runs a variety of special programs, including Community and Retro Screenings, a crammed slate of short films, and their trademark “Eclectic Mix” of music videos. After the break, you can check out the full line-up for this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, along with synopses for all features and a full list of all shorts and music videos playing at the fest. LAFF runs from Thursday, June 14 to Sunday, June 24. Passes [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

As I stood in line outside the Hot Docs screening of the Rick Springfield documentary An Affair of the Heart, I overheard the couple in front of me tell their neighbors they’d been following Rick Springfield around the world for 12 years. I remember thinking, “12 years? Really? For the guy who sang ‘Jessie’s Girl’?” Little did I know that was only a small taste of what was to come. When I got inside I couldn’t help but notice this was not your average documentary festival crowd. Where usually there are pale intellectuals, all around me were middle-aged women, eyes awash with excitement and in some cases, just about bursting with joy. I knew I was in trouble when the woman next to me declared she was going to faint and promptly burst into tears. Oh, and did I mention Rick Springfield was in attendance? As I learned during the movie (what I could hear between the screams and catcalls form the audience), Rick Springfield has elicited this kind of emotion from his fiercely devoted fan base for 30 some odd years. To some of us he might seem like another mullet-sporting 80s pop footnote, but to a select group of dedicated fans, he’s a larger-than-life character who’s been a constant in their lives since they were teenagers.

This contest is now closed. All winners will be receiving an email. Thanks! In filmmaker Lee Kirk‘s directorial debut, The Giant Mechanical Man, a love story unfolds between two directionless thirtysomethings whose unhappy lives are only exacerbated by their professional failures. Jenna Fischer‘s Janice has just taken on yet another dead-end job selling concessions at a local zoo, where Tim (Chris Messina) has also recently had to take a job as a janitor, seeing as how his main job (being that titular “giant mechanical man” as part of a street performance) doesn’t pay the bills. The film recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and we’re pleased to present an exclusive clip from the film here on FSR. In this scene, the two cross paths on the job and begin to form a bond. In celebration of The Giant Mechanical Man‘s Tribeca premiere and subsequent theatrical release, we are also giving away five (5) signed posters from the film. To win one (1) signed poster, all you have to do is jump down into the comments section and let us know about the worst job you’ve ever had. Please also provide your email address in your comment so that we can email winners. This contest is only open to U.S. residents. The contest will close Sunday, April 29th, at 9:00PM EST. The winners will be chosen at random from those who reply in the comment section, and they will receive a signed poster from The Giant Mechanical Man, as described [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Inspired by an moving true story, Travis Fine‘s Any Day Now may be set in the ’70s, but the story’s elements feel like a story ripped from today’s headlines. The film stars Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt as Rudy and Paul, a happy (though closeted) couple who discover something truly unexpected in their neighbor’s apartment – teen Marco (Isaac Leyva), abandoned by his drug-addicted mother and left to his own devices. Even worse? Marco has Down syndrome, and no one else in his life is able or equipped to handle his needs. Except Rudy and Paul. The pair eventually take in Marco and begin to form a happy and stable family together. But when their arrangement is discovered, and Rudy and Paul’s relationship is outed, it kicks of a legal battle that will decide just who Marco really belongs with. With a compelling story and an extremely talented cast (that also includes Frances Fisher), Any Day Now should emerge as one of the highlights of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. After the break, check out the exclusive poster debut for Any Day Now, along with a batch of new stills from the film.

It’s back to the Big Apple with another batch of some of the most compelling titles that this year’s Tribeca Film Festival has to offer. This time around, we’re zinging over to Thailand for an eye-opening spin on the crime noir (no other film this year will make you want to invest in a helmet more), before zipping back to the U S of A and over to the left coast for two films about life in Los Angeles, relationships on the rocks, and cinematic twists that both surprise and sustain. Which one of these films marks the voice of an exciting new independent director and which will leave audiences begging for more, of all things, gimmicky behavior? As is the best part of all film festivals, let’s discover something new. Check out our latest batch of mini-reviews for Headshot, Caroline and Jackie, and Double or Nothing after the break.

With the Tribeca Film Festival in full swing, it’s time that Los Angeles’ own Los Angeles Film Festival pipe in with still more of its lineup, all the better to get left-coasters pumped for their own festival. Earlier this month, LAFF announced that Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love will open the festival, and that announcement is now followed by the release of the first of three of the festival’s Gala titles. Those Galas will include Benh Zeitlin‘s Beasts of the Southern Wild, the World Premiere of Lorene Scafaria‘s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and Ava DuVernay‘s Middle of Nowhere. Beasts was considered the break-out hit of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, so its appearance at another large festival is not a surprise, but it sure is a pleasant announcement for Los Angeles (the film was recently picked to play in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes). The film also made it on to our Most Anticipated Movies of the Summer list, as it will open on June 29. You can check out Kevin’s review of the film from Sundance, if you’re into that sort of thing.

What’s always most exciting about film festivals is the range of different films available for watching and enjoying – all within the same period of time, and often in the same venues. That’s just as evident as ever in this year’s Tribeca Film Festival line-up, a festival that has kicked off with The Five-Year Engagement, will end with The Avengers, and will show over 200 films in between. Our first round of Tribeca reviews only highlights that variety of films, as it include a French actioner, an true American independent, and a dramedy about ladies of the night. After the break, check out mini reviews for Sleepless Night, Supporting Characters, and Elles – all very different Tribeca Film Festival films, and all films likely to find their own unique audiences in the Big Apple and beyond.

Editor’s note: With Darling Companion opening this week in limited release, we thought we’d unleash Dustin’s review from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, originally posted on January 30, for you to take a bite out of. Woof. The opening night film at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival has always been a walk-away; generally an under-cooked indie with no distribution and little shot at getting into general theaters. So why kick a film when it’s down? There’s not a lot of value in heaping negative criticism on a new filmmaker who will likely go on to bigger and better things with more experience. That said, the 27th year of Santa Barbara’s festival brought a heavyweight opening night player in writer/director/producer Lawrence Kasdan, and his Sony Pictures Classics distributed Darling Companion. Basically, fair game. Darling Companion is the story of Beth Winters (Diane Keaton), her spine surgeon husband Joseph (Kevin Kline), and the dog that  brings them together. Or at least, it tries to be about them while clumsily pulling viewers into unnecessary side stories that aren’t particularly interesting. The film suffers on every level, but prominent among its faults is an odd pace that steals away any reason to invest in any of the characters, the spotty narrative, or the wholly expected and unsatisfying ending.

This contest is now closed. All winners will be getting an email with prize details. Desperate for that film festival experience, but didn’t plan ahead to get tickets? Want to see the best of what the Tribeca Film Festival has to offer? Live in New York? Have we got a giveaway for you! Here at Film School Rejects, we’re pro-film festivals, and we want our own dear readers to share in the experience – that’s why we’re giving away a special pack of screening tickets for you and a guest to take in not one, not two, but three whole films this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival. Our special ticket pack include two tickets each for: Benji on Friday, April 20th at 6PM, Rat King on Friday, April 20th at 11:30PM, and Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal on Saturday, April 21st at 11:30PM. To win the ticket pack, which includes 2 passes to each film (got that? you win, you get six tickets?), all you have to do is jump down into the comments section and let us know which film you’re most looking forward to checking out in beautiful Gotham (you can crib from the Tribeca Film Festival film guide right HERE). Please also provide your email address in your comment. This contest is only open to U.S. residents, and we’re going to have to ask that you’ll actually be in New York City to use the tickets. The contest will close tomorrow, April 20th, at 1200PM EST. The [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

With the Tribeca Film Festival kicking off today, it’s high time we dove into our coverage of New York City’s hometown fest. To that end, it’s our great pleasure to debut the first poster for writer-director-producer Jenny Deller‘s Future Weather, the multi-hyphenate’s first feature, which will have its world premiere next week. The film centers on young Lauduree, a lonely teenager who has a serious interest in environmentalism and nature and who is already worried about the effects of environmental disaster on the world at large. But it’s Lauduree’s world that is about to be turned on its head, when her shiftless single mom leaves her for sunshiny California. Abandoned, alone, and terrified, Lauduree comes under the care of her grandmother, who comes with her own pack of issues that shouldn’t serve much comfort to the already fragile Lauduree. The film stars a wonderful cast of known and new talent, including Lili Taylor, Amy Madigan, Perla Haney-Jardine, and Marin Ireland. The film has already racked up the accolades, having received a grant from Women in Film in 2011 for post-production, three grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the 2009 Showtime Tony Cox Award for Screenwriting from the Nantucket Film Festival in 2009. You can learn more about the project and watch a few clips from the film at their Kickstarter page. Check out the full poster for Future Weather after the break, along with a batch of new stills from the film.

Editor’s note: With Girls premiering on HBO this weekend, we thought one of Kate’s favorites from SXSW was in need of a re-run. This review was originally posted on March 13, as part of our SXSW Film Festival coverage. Multi-hyphenate Lena Dunham has previously hit SXSW with two unique efforts – in 2009, with the debut of her ambitious, lo-fi Creative Nonfiction, and follow-up in 2010 with the controversial Tiny Furniture, which earned the Narrative Feature award in that year’s section. Dunham’s work has proven polarizing – some people admire her self-effacing and very personal brand of filmmaking, while others balk at her navel-gazing style. Returning to SXSW this year, Dunham again brought along a personal project about self-effacing, navel-gazing, shaky-legged twenty-something girls in the big city, but this time Dunham is serving as star/writer/director/producer on a television series, HBO’s Girls, produced with Judd Apatow. And while her previous works might not have the sort of widespread appeal that a television series would require, Dunham’s Girls is wickedly hilarious, quite accessible, and it proves that Dunham’s in-character pronouncement that she could be the voice of her generation is not far off – at all.

With this year’s Cannes Film Festival quickly coming round the bend, now’s as good a time as any to officially start the FSR pre-festival coverage, and as if by magic, perhaps sensing that I was about to do so, the good folks on the south coast of France have announced that Tim Roth will lead the jury of the festival’s secondary competition. The Un Certain Regard competition seeks to offer films with some intriguing hook or selling point, setting a different tone to the main competition and occasionally unearthing some genuine gems thanks to its agenda of championing new talents. It is that competition that the British actor, famed for such roles as Reservoir Dogs and lately Lie To Me, will preside over, perhaps bringing his own stamp to affairs. So, we can probably expect violence and facial intensity to play a big part – and if Roth’s own The War Zone is anything to go by, we can also expect another trip down the abuse avenue that featured so heavily in the films screened last year.

Los Angeles’ hometown film festival, the aptly-titled Los Angeles Film Festival, returns to downtown La-la Land this summer and, if the festival’s first programming announcement is any indicator, Angelenos are in for a real treat this year. The festival has just announced their Opening Night Film, which is set to be the North American Premiere of Woody Allen‘s To Rome With Love. We’ve got quite a bit of love for the film already – it just popped up on our Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2012 list at number 16 (beating out stuff like G.I. Joe, Battleship, and Step Up Revolution) earlier this week – and Allen has again assembled a great cast for a (hopefully) charming story of love, Italian style. The film stars Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, and Ellen Page, and will open in theaters on June 22. This year’s festival will again be centered in downtown Los Angeles, with its central hub at the sprawling L.A. LIVE complex. The fest will run from Thursday, June 14 to Sunday, June 24. Passes are currently on sale to past Festival attendees and Film Independent members, and they will be available to the general public on April 22. General admission tickets to individual films go on sale on May 29. Keep your eyes peeled for more on-the-ground Reject coverage of LAFF as we creep ever-closer to downtown’s best summer event.

Editor’s Note: This review first ran as part of our SXSW coverage on March 11, but The Hunter is hitting limited theaters this week. The Hunter is a film of surprising scope and intimacy. On the outside, it’s a basic “dangerous hunting” tale, but on the inside, it’s a story of a man, said hunter (Willem Dafoe), connecting with people on an emotional level for what might be the first time in his life. That reeks of hokiness, but with with an assured directorial hand, most of the drama is calm and collected. A lot of that stems from Dafoe, giving the sort of high caliber performance we’ve grown to expect from him. Martin David is a hunter of the illegal sort, and he’s given quite the challenge: get a sample from a Tasmanian tiger. Not an easy task. When we’re introduced to Martin, he’s shown in isolation, completely out of place in a snazzy hotel room. After his hunting services are acquired by a biotech company, Martin heads down to an unfriendly Australian town to seek out the tiger. He stays at a broken family’s home, where he ends up having to look after and connect with two children whose father may or may not be dead. You see the cold Martin get humanized by the children, as expected – and it’s affective, due to Dafoe.

This year’s SXSW may be over, but it’s certainly not forgotten. Another week of barbeque, buddies, beer, and – oh yeah – movies down, and we’re still recovering, both in terms of remembering everything we saw and attempting to pry ourselves out of our stretchiest of pants. As with any film festival, the stunning depth of films available to watch has resulted in a solid handful of serious favorites. This time around, our twelve favorite films of the festival include big studio comedy, intimate documentary, the best action film in years, true independent features, and even a picture made entirely on cell phones. Take a look at our twelve favorites from this year’s SXSW after the break.

Woosh! You hear that sound? That’s the air finally making its way back into my brain after 10 days of the taco-eating, famous people elbow-rubbing, beer-chugging, and back-to-back movie-watching one happens to experience at South by Southwest. I’m sure you’ve been reading the Rejects’s extensive coverage of the all-encompassing festival of exhaustion (even I have some opinions to share shortly), and have been living a bit vicariously through each of us. Let me tell you now, it was just as great as you would imagine. Being a Texas native, SXSW is one of my absolute favorite film festivals, and I’m lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to watch it grow to some pretty epic proportions over the past eight years. SXSW Film prides itself on having a bountiful lineup of films from the tiny directorial debuts to the star-laden big budget features audiences stand in line for over two hours to see. While it does succeed at being a taste marker for new talent, the festival does have a tendency to execute lackluster panels. Of course, this isn’t a huge priority for the over 20,000 people attending, but for a lady obsessed with sex-positivity in cinema I have to admit I was over the moon thrilled when I discovered the fest had finally booked a sexy-time movie panel. Brought together by the fabulous Lisa Vandever, director of the all erotica film festival Cinekink, the “Bringing Sexy Back: Where’s the Line Today?” panel introduced me to a pair of directors who [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]