Weeks have stretched into months, and many of us are still spending a lot of our time inside, staring down an ever-shrinking queue of must-see movies. So it’s time to take some chances again, going beyond streaming platforms’ carefully curated front-page recommendations to check out less obvious choices: gnarly genre films, riveting documentaries, indie dramas and more of what’s hiding in the back rooms of your subscription services.
‘16 Shots’
Late on the night of Oct. 20, 2014, a Chicago teenager named Laquan McDonald was shot (16 times) and killed by Jason Van Dyke, a police officer with 20 previous allegations of misconduct. Local media dutifully reported the official version of events — that McDonald was carrying a knife and had charged officers “in a crazed condition” — but in the weeks and months that followed, details emerged about not only the actual events of that night, but also the nearly successful attempts by police officials to cover it up. Richard Rowley’s 2019 documentary, as gripping as a political thriller and as currently relevant as the nightly news, meticulously pieces together how this shocking shooting upended the city’s entire power structure.
‘Gook’
The 1992 Los Angeles uprising, also prompted by police brutality (and political indifference to it), provides the setting for this fictional story of two Korean-American brothers and their interactions with the members of the African-American community where they work. The writer and director, Justin Chon, constructs much of the film as a laid-back, day-in-the-life story in the style of “Do the Right Thing” — with similar tension bubbling underneath, ready to boil over.
‘Bushwick’
Urban unrest also brews in this 2017 action thriller, with Brittany Snow as Lucy, a young woman on a Little Red Riding Hood-style mission to her grandmother’s house, interrupted by an armed rebellion in the streets of Brooklyn. Dave Bautista co-stars as a Navy vet who becomes Lucy’s unlikely ally, as the pair attempts to navigate their way to the “green zone” while unraveling the mystery of who is shooting in the streets, and why. The direction, by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, is effectively stylized, playing out as a series of floating, unbroken shots — perhaps to divert our attention as they unpack the explosively timely political subtext.
‘I Am Evidence’
When more than 11,000 untested rape kits were discovered in a dilapidated warehouse in Detroit in 2009, citizens were shocked — not just by the number or the conditions, but also by the choices that had clearly been made about which kits were worth the limited funds and resources of the police. Trish Adlesic and Geeta Gandbhir’s tough, emotional documentary looks at the sloppiness, oversight and outright incompetence that allowed those kits — and similar backlogs in Cleveland and Los Angeles — to go ignored for years. It also tells the stories of the women victimized in those cases, finally glimpsing the possibility of justice and closure.
‘The Party’s Just Beginning’
“What I really want to do is direct” is a cliché for a reason. Plenty of fine actors have harbored the urge to step behind the camera and have done so with varying degrees of success. But few have displayed such a keen filmmaking sense, so immediately and strikingly, as Karen Gillan (of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Jumanji” films), who writes, directs and stars in this 2018 indie, set and shot in her native Scotland. Dramatizing the rough days and reckless nights of a hard-partying young woman still mourning the loss of her best friend, “Party” moves like a freight train, nimbly shifting gears from tragedy to comedy to reluctant romance.
‘Starfish’
A young woman returns to her hometown for the funeral of her estranged best friend and finds herself drawn into a paranoid web of patterns, signals and disappearances in this haunted mix of character drama and brainy sci-fi from the writer and director A.T. White. It’s thrillingly unpredictable, with atmosphere to burn and a leading performance by Virginia Gardner that’s impossible to forget.
‘Super Dark Times’
The opening scenes of this ’90s-set high school indie unfold like an observational drama, displaying a good ear for the pop culture chatter and ill-informed sex talk of teenage boys. But then it takes a turn, with a horrifying accident that leaves one boy dead and two friends at the mercy of fear and paranoia. The plot thickens, the ripple effects widen, and the boys’ nightmares intensify. For his feature debut, the director Kevin Phillips leans a bit too much into conventional thriller territory in the clutch, but for most of the film, “Super Dark Times” is an unsettling exercise of merciless dread. And its characters are so grounded and recognizable that the inevitable violence lands with unexpected power.
‘The Villainess’
The opening sequence of this 2017 actioner is such a stunner — a breathless, ultraviolent eight-minute one-killer-takes-on-an-army set piece — that you wonder how the director Jung Byung-gil can possibly top it. Improbably, the hyperkinetic climax, a bone-cracking sequence on a speeding city bus, does just that. But “The Villainess” offers more than empty thrills. Though best explained to Western audiences as a South Korean gender-flipped “John Wick,” the narrative that plays out between those memorable book ends has a potent emotional core and a complex dual timeline structure, explaining exactly how the ruthless killing machine at the story’s center became who (and what) she is.
‘In a Valley of Violence’
After masterfully reanimating the conventions of ’80s slow-burn horror in “The House of the Devil” and “The Innkeepers,” the writer and director Ti West tried his hand at spaghetti westerns with this sadly underappreciated effort from 2016. Ethan Hawke is sturdy and reliable as ever as the conflicted gunslinger who ruffles the wrong feathers in a border town, but the most noteworthy performance comes from John Travolta, with a terrific turn as the conflicted local lawman.
‘A Field in England’
Ben Wheatley’s 2014 freak show mashes up period drama, war movie, surrealist drug trip and fever dream, as a quartet of deserters from the English Civil War make the ill-advised decision to enjoy a feast of mushrooms with a stranger. The result is, by leaps and bounds, the strangest film on this list — and that’s saying something.
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June 24, 2020 at 10:23PM
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