Catching up on indie

Back in college I feel like I used to watch a lot of independent films, probably because they were pretty accessible with Cornell Cinema and cinemapolis in Ithaca and the Little Theatre up in Rochester when I was working for Kodak. Recently though, I've been slacking on that front, so over the holidays I borrowed a couple from the library.

The Squid and the Whale - Set in Brooklyn in the 80s, it's basically a study of divorce in a family with two sons. The father, Bernard, is a writer, college professor, and intellectual elitist, and Joan, the mother, has just embarked on her own literary career that's set to eclipse Bernard's. The divorce results in split loyalties in their two sons: the older son, Walt, pretty much idolizes Bernard and takes his side strongly in the divorce, while the younger son, Frank, would rather stay with his mother. After the divorce, Joan begins dating Frank's tennis instructor who calls everyone "brotha," Bernard invites one of his female students to stay in his spare room, and the sons kind of self-destruct. Walt starts acting more and more like his father and tries to pass off a Pink Floyd song as his own at a school talent show, and Frank acts out by smearing some not-so-pleasant substances around his school. The characters all seem crazy and the story seems like it's going nowhere but it's still a pretty good movie, thanks to some great acting and a lot of really funny lines. This is generally what indie movies do: they're serious and funny and ridiculous all rolled up into one. Not a lot happens but there's some great acting and writing here. By the way, the title refers to a display in New York City's Museum of Natural History (one of my favorite museums in the whole world) in which a huge squid and whale are frozen in battle.

Me and You and Everyone We Know - I'm kind of at a loss for words for how to describe this movie. The cast is a mix of loosely connected characters, all of which are quirkier than the last. There's Christine, the aspiring performance artist who drives an cab service for the elderly. There's Richard, the department store shoe salesman who's just separated from his wife. There are Richard's sons, who type up pictures made of punctuation marks and go to adult chatrooms. There's Sylvie, the 10-year-old girl who's collecting kitchen appliances for her "hope chest." There are Heather and Rebecca, two middle schools girls that are obsessed with sex and egg on a semi-creepy neighbor. A lot of pretty supremely cringe-worthy things happen in the movie, but it all manages to be sort of strangely sweet. I think it's helped out by the great score, composed by Michael Andrews, who also did the score for Donnie Darko.