Tag Archives: Indie Film

EIFF 2026 – The Peril at Pincer Point

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EIFF 2026 – The Peril at Pincer Point,
Directed by Jake Kuhn, Noah Stratton-Twine,
Starring Alyth Ross, Dashiell Upton, Isobel Laidler, Jack Redmayne, Jason Hogan, Mat Wright, Mike Mackenzie, Oliver Woolf, Os Leanse

Now here we a delightful wee oddity – and I use the word “oddity” as a positive one. Peril is one of that small but hugely fun trend of really independent movies, the type made by a bunch of friends working together, using whatever money they can scrape together and whatever resources and locations they can get a hold of. Jim Baitte (Jack Redmayne) is a sound designer with problems – he’s a bit shallow but desperate to make his mark in “the industry” (he loves telling everyone he meets he’s “in the industry”), but his colleagues are giving him a rough time over his work so far, which falls short of what the legendary director PW (Os Leanse), is looking for.

Oh, and despite living in the upper levels of a multi-storey flat in London, he finds a crab lurking under his sofa. Which gives him a nasty nip.

After a stormy meeting with Jim’s colleagues, PW sees him and declares he’s the man he need – to the surprise of the same colleagues who had been telling him how bad his earlier efforts were. But PW thinks he sees a kindred soul, someone who will go that extra mile to help him realise his vision. And what’s his vision? Well he wants some sort of sound that’s never been heard before. Oh sure, that’s easy to find and record…

PW also wants the voice of the “sandwich girl” from a previous production, and so Jim is dispatched with his recording equipment to the tiny island of Pincer Point, to find this vague sound PW craves and to find the girl and persuade her to be recorded too. Easy, right?? Except the girl has vanished, and the island is populated by a range of bizarre, oddball characters – imagine some of the odder background characters from Spaced or the village in Hot Fuzz, and the girl, Marina (Alyth Ross) has vanished. And the man, Hollis (co-director Stratton-Twine), who is renting him a place to stay on the island turns out to be the brother of the missing girl.

Not that many seem that bothered about her being missing – in fact Hollis, the town drunk, seems more put out that Jim came to record his sister and not him (“I can do a woman” he complains). In time-honoured tradition he finds out bits and pieces from local characters, such as an old sea dog in the pub, or from Hollis. They all point to an old legend, of Sye Telson, who selects certain people to join his crew for ten thousand years, taking their very souls. And apparently Jim is just the type the captain likes…

 

This was such a good-natured hoot – funny and warm, making the most from its tiny budget, indeed often making something inventive and great out of the lack of big resources. In many ways it reminded me of other Indie flicks I have really enjoyed in recent years, like the fabulous Hundreds of Beavers. And like that film, on hearing the cast and crew talking about it after the screening, you get the impression they had as much fun making this as we had watching it, and that permeates this tiny budget, British indie flick. This is one to watch with a bunch of friends.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2026 – The Arrow at Rest At Every Instant of its Flight

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EIFF 2026 – The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight,
Directed by Theodore Schaefer,
Starring Constance Shulman, Daniel Zolghadri, Gus Birney, Jack Haven, John Early, Roberta Colindrez

The 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival – the oldest, continually running film festival on the planet – kicked off late this week, as Edinburgh embraces its traditional August festival frenzy (the International Festival and Fringe are already going, the Book Festival opens this weekend, it’s insane how many shows and events there are in our compact city in August). Late last night was my first screening for the 2026 edition of the EIFF, and it was a world premiere, no less! Theodore Schaefer brought us a hugely enjoyable Indie flick, with a very long title: The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight.

That mouthful of a title likely refers to one of Zeno’s paradoxes (recorded by Aristotle), which considered the flight of an arrow, something seemingly swift, but, he argued, at any given instant that arrow occupies a fixed space and therefore, within that instant it is not really moving. Given Arrow’s Raymond Carver-style series of individual short narratives, which then start to overlap, this seems appropriate, as, through the various characters and their individual narratives we are seeing individual slices of time, moments offered up for observation, but also, of course, able by the end to see an entire tale, like stepping back from a close look at a detail on a tapestry to take in the entire thing.

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(director Theodore Schaefer, co-writer Patrick Lawler, and actor Jack Haven, talking with the film fest crowd after the screening, pic from my Flickr, click for the larger versions on my Flick stream)

There are three main stories here, at first seemingly not connected, although eventually we will see the threads pulling them together. The woman with a suitcase (Constance Schulman), is possibly the closest to the philosophical arrow of Zeno, in that we glimpse her repeatedly throughout the film, starting with confusing glimpses of her in various spots around the city. Sitting on a bench, by the river, passing a building. Each time, to her shock she sees someone else – passing in a car, leaning out of an apartment window – who looks exactly like her. These form the opening, intercut with rapid scene changes, interspersed with fast-moving glimpses of New York, set to a jazz score, mirroring the Suitcase Woman’s own confusion at what is going on, and reinforcing the central idea that what we interpret as a grander narrative is really made up of frozen moments of time (not unlike analogue film itself, single frames, each capturing a split second of time, then run at speed to create what we see as a moving image).

In the main strands we see a pair of younger people, including Violet (Gus Birney), bored with their lack of prospects, working in an arcade, dreaming of some way out, even if it involves committing a crime, while in another, we see a woman, Sinopia (Gus Birney again), a professor, in the middle of an affair, but questioning her life and her choices, especially of her committing to her fiancée for a possible wedding. The final main strand sees Jade (Birney again, really earning her pay here!), this time a hustler, a gambler and a pickpocket, but one with a conscience – after picking some wallets in a busy bar she finds one with a suicide note in it, and follows the person she lifted it from, in an attempt to help.

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Arrow is one of those films where summarising some of the plot really doesn’t do it justice, however. This is one of those little jewels that Indie cinema sometimes offers up to movie lovers, it’s a film to experience. Not that the overlapping structure of the stories isn’t important, but it’s more about experiencing it and the way the different angles of the different stories keep changing our expectations and our notion of what is happening, which I found very satisfying (I’m sure some might find it annoying, but it worked beautifully for me).

Director Schaefer, co-writer Patrick Lawler and actor Jack Haven (who you may recall from the excellent I Saw the TV Glow, which I reviewed here previously), were on hand to chat to the audience after the premiere, and their talk reinforced the impression I had from the film itself, that this was a labour of love. Shot on 16mm film stock, giving it a grainy edge with its black and white film, and the jazz score, the fast-moving intercut scenes of the city between events, it reminded me very much of a lot of avant-garde films from the 1960s and 70s, when film-makers were playing with what you could do with the medium.

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And indeed at the after-film talk, Schaefer confirmed that they were very much inspired by those older films from the 60s and 70s US indie scene, French New Wave and especially some from Eastern Europe, such as the Czech New Wave, while the choice of analogue 16mm, black and white film with the jazz score just suits the New York location perfectly. An absolute delight for Indie film fans.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews : A Desert

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A Desert,
Directed by Joshua Erkman,
Starring David Yow, Kai Lennox, Sarah Lind, Zachary Ray Sherman, Ashley B. Smith, Rob Zabrecky, S.A Griffin

Alex Clark (Kai Lennox) is a middle-aged, fine-art photographer, an artist who had some success with his work earlier in his life, but is now struggling, both to recapture that success, but also to tap once more into that spark that he thought made younger him a better photographer. Leaving his wife Sam (Sarah Lind) behind, he drives off solo into the Great American West, taking in those huge, sun-baked, geologically rich landscapes that have inspired so many film-makers, from the classic John Ford Westerns to contemporary road movies.

Many of the places he passes through suit his melancholy, reflective mood – few communities, just the odd scattered dwellings, lots of empty remnants of previous human habitation, such as long-abandoned cinemas, workspaces, old , ruined homes and more, which he explores, and photographs with his large film camera. He seems almost as lost as the abandoned places he visits and shoots – like them he once had purpose and drive, now he is struggling to see if he can recover those aspects of himself. Lennox plays this weariness, but subtly softens it, with the occasional glimpse or fleeting expression crossing Alex’s face as a particularly photographic scene or beautiful view presents itself, and we see him brighten momentarily.

Phoning home, he leaves a voice mail for his wife saying what he had been shooting, adding that for a change he took a portrait of a local, and that perhaps one of his problems is he usually focuses so much on landscapes, not people. Unfortunately he’s not going to get much time to see if he can modify his approach to life and his work, because he encounters Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and Susie Q (Ashley Smith), who are in the motel room next to his. An encounter leads to them inviting themselves into his room, and right from the start you know this is not going to well. Smith gives Susie a constantly amused but dangerous look, like a cat playing with a mouse who doesn’t even realise it’s in any peril, while Sherman’s Renny just drips menace, all skinny, wiry muscle, greasy hair, dangerous eyes, radiating a look that is like a mix of young Ethan Hawke crossed with Charles Manson.

Minor Spoiler Alert: this next part happens fairly early on in the film, and is integral to the later events, but you may not want to know before seeing it, as it involves something happening to a major character.

If you’re still with us after that spoiler warning, there’s a major shock as Renny, exuding a simultaneous mixture of chumminess and threat (some excellent acting by Sherman), takes Alex to an abandoned home he claims he was born in, that he may want to photograph, before suddenly turning ferociously violent, stabbing him again and again and again. The switch from almost laid-back, semi-stoner slouch to vicious murderer is a huge shock to the system, especially given the slow-burn pace of the film until then (it’s also a film that, especially in the first third, lets the cinematography do most of the talking, with very little dialogue). And of course, that’s part of the point, and damn, it is effective.

It also suddenly pulls you away from what you thought was one of the lead characters – now his wife becomes involved, hiring a private eye Harold Pallandino (David Yow), a man almost the epitome of the rumpled-suit, down on his luck Shamus. Despite his shabbiness, he does succeed in tracing Alex’s steps to the motel he took a room in, and several of the locations he visited, before giving into some of his own, old vices (the type, we learn from another detective, that got Harold kicked off the police force years before), leading Sam to head out to the desert to investigate for herself, but this will lead her into the very same danger her husband found himself in…

However, this neo-noir storyline, interesting as it is, is really only a part of the draw of A Desert – the visuals are as important here, and there is some gorgeous cinematography from Jay Keitel. As you’d expect, some of this takes the shape of the rich landscapes and colours the desert towns and their surroundings offer (and the contrast between the few human figures and that vast, beautiful but lonely landscape), but also the more mundane and worn parts of this world are made to look fascinating and beautiful here.

An abandoned cinema looks amazing, both visually intriguing but also echoing that melancholy of Alex, something that has seen better days but once had happy purpose, but retains a certain kind of beauty even in decay. Even a simple night shot, the camera gazing at the motel, the two rooms side by side, Alex in one, Renny and Susie in the adjoining one, a symmetrical pattern of doors and windows, both in their own rooms but watching the same film on TV, the flickering light creating identical patterns on their night-time windows. It’s only a moment, but it’s a beautiful shot and hints at the depth of care lavished by Erkman, Keitel and the rest of their crew on each frame of footage.

It’s a beautifully shot film, that has echoes of some of those 80s and 90s American road movie, Indie films, with elements of the noir, running on a slow-burn, low dialogue approach, which makes the sudden moments of action and violence all the more powerful.

A Desert is available on UK and Irish digital platforms from Blue Finch Film Releasing, from November 24th

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: seriously cool Indie film-making with Gazer

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Gazer,
Directed by Ryan J Sloan,
Starring Ariella Mastroianni, Renee Gagner, Jack Alberts, Marianne Goodell

Sometimes, when you get sent a press release for a movie that you otherwise know nothing about, it just pings your film radar. Gazer did that with me, and I’ve learned to listen to that intuition – I am glad to say that yet again that ineffable vibe you sometimes just get for certain works has again steered me to a total gem of an Indie film. Frankie (Ariella Mastroianni), who also co-writes the film, is the main character, and she plays Frankie beautifully, giving us hints of the inner anguish and turmoil through small movements and expressions (the camera often lingering on her face in close-ups, as if pushing the viewer to see the world from her perspective), a person who seems fairly quiet, introspective, but you can feel the tension within, radiating from her (kudos to Mastroianni’s acting chops here).

Frankie has dyschronometria and some other degenerative neural impairments – one aspect of this is that she can easily “zone out” and lose track of passing time, totally missing minutes, hours or more. Bright screens inflame her neurological condition, so her low-tech, analogue tech fix is to use an old-school Walkman and a series of specially recorded audio cassettes to help her focus (with labels like “work” “going to the doctor” etc). Like the protagonist of Baby Driver, she always has her earphones plugged in, but it isn’t hot beats to fight tinnitus, its her own voice telling her to focus, to look around, alerting her to how long is left on the tape.

Another coping mechanism is looking around her and trying to observe things closely – a low-rise apartment block opposite her work in a petrol station is a good candidate, letting her watch people passing in front of their apartment windows. However, when she thinks she sees something untoward happen through one window, it will lead to more trouble for her when one of the inhabitants, Paige (Renee Gagner) sees her and follows her to a support group for those who have lost loved ones to suicide (Frankie’s husband is dead, but the flashbacks of her muddled mind leave us doubting if it was suicide or something else).

Paige has a proposal for her, needing her help, but is she on the level, and even if she is, can Frankie actually help? Desperate for cash to see her young daughter again (now a ward of her mother-in-law) before her condition gets worse, she may have to go for this chance.

As you can imagine, this put me in mind of Guy Pearce’s character in the brilliant, early work from Christopher Nolan, Memento, and indeed Sloan’s film wears a number of its influences on its sleeve, but always in a way that doesn’t jar but simply works, adding to the atmosphere. In addition to Nolan, there are moments that nod to Lynch and even Cronenberg (especially Existenz and Videodrome), while the film also had me thinking of other American Indie flicks I’ve loved, like Hal Hartley’s work. It really is seriously independent too – Sloan financed the tiny budget himself, and shot on 16mm in a grimy looking New Jersey, and between that, Mastroianni’s performance, and the untrustworthy narrator approach, this is a highly compelling slice of excellent US Indie film-making. Highly recommended.

Gazer is in UK cinemas now

This review was originally penned for Live For Films