Indie Focus: Looks at faith, fury and food in 'Little Sister,' 'Fire at Sea' and 'Tampopo'

By Mark OlsenStaff Writer

Oct. 30, 2016 12:05 AM PT

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

Among the many reasons to be excited by the early success for the new film “Moonlight,” which opened to the best per-screen average of the year last weekend, is that it has been inspiring such sensitive, nuanced and varied writing. It’s a movie that stands up to repeat viewings and deeper dissection. (Which is good, as it’s looking like we’ll be talking about it for quite a few months!)

We’ve got a lot more screening and Q&A events coming together for awards season. For more information, check in with events.latimes.com

‘Little Sister’

Zach Clark is a filmmaker for whom I personally have an unabashed affection, as he turns out sharp, smart, sincerely original films that I find joyous and infectious. His latest, “Little Sister,” is a serio-comic look at family, friendship, religious faith, maturity and how your inner goth-punk teen self never fully goes away. Starring Addison Timlin as a young woman about to take her vows to be a nun returning home to tend to her injured war veteran brother (Keith Poulson) and passive-aggressively overbearing mother (a rollicking Ally Sheedy), the film builds a startling emotional clarity.

In his review for The Times, Gary Goldstein called the film “darkly poignant” while lauding its “largely gentle approach to a series of small, evocative and well-played moments.”

In the New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis called it “a strange, spiky movie that refuses to beg for our affection … [that] molds the classic homecoming drama into a quirky reconciliation between faith and family.”

At the New Yorker, Richard Brody called the film a “fierce, tender and grandly visionary story of a broken family in broken times.”

At the LA Weekly, April Wolfe noted the specifics of the film’s setting during the lead-up to the 2008 presidential election, as “Clark taps into a tumultuous period of our recent history, when we were rolling the dice for even a hint of hope.”

SAGIndie featured a nice interview with Clark about the trials and tribulations of contemporary moviemaking as a true independent working at the margins of the mainstream. As Clark said, “Part of continuing to make movies is hopefully that they get a little bigger and reach a few more people every time.”

Clark is also a frequent contributor to the Talkhouse website, including his recent charming chat with John Waters.

‘Fire at Sea’

It may have seemed unusual when earlier this year the jury of the Berlin Film Festival, headed by Meryl Streep, gave their top prize to “Fire at Sea,” Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary on the refugee crisis on the island of Lampedusa. Judging by the high praise of the film’s reviews, the prize was no fluke. Italy has also selected the film as their submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In his review for The Times, Kenneth Turan noted how the film “goes about its business in a quiet way, with unobtrusive yet powerful simplicity, using an unconventional structure and cinematic artistry to make its points.”

Gianfranco Rosi directed the movie "Fire at Sea."

At the New York Times, A.O. Scott added of Rosi, “He doesn’t bear witness — an overused and often presumptuous idea. He observes, with humility and precision. Instead of raising awareness, he cultivates alertness.”

At the Village Voice, Bilge Ebiri untangled the way in which Rosi portrays the contrasts in life between residents of the island and refugees, noting “there is nothing natural or commonplace about what these people are going through. The breach between these two worlds is part of Rosi’s formal and moral gambit.”

‘Tampopo’

Directed by Juzo Itami, the 1985 film “Tampopo” was an international arthouse hit, a comedy about a struggling noodle house that was billed as a “ramen western” to underscore its playful attitude toward genre and serious attitude about the importance of good food.

In his new review for The Times, Justin Chang noted: “Naturally, too, ‘Tampopo’ demands to be experienced on at least a partially filled stomach — not so empty as to turn the film into a torturous deprivation exercise, but not too stuffed to enjoy the bowl of ramen noodles that will almost certainly be your first post-screening meal.”

In The Times’ original review by Sheila Benson, she wrote, “Itami plays with the form of his film like noodle dough, stretching it, snapping it, hanging it out to dry. … What’s delightfully unsettling about ‘Tampopo’ is its lubricious mix of the sensual and the satiric; no sooner do we settle ourselves for one when the other comes along to knock the props out from under our expectations.”

‘Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer’

Though not strictly speaking a horror movie, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” is among the most terrifying and disturbing experiences I have ever had in a movie theater. So whether with Halloween in mind of not, the 1986 movie from John McNaughton is being re-released, its vivid portrait of a murder spree being loosed onto unsuspecting minds anew. Michael Rooker and Tom Towles as the film’s despicable lead characters are indelible.

In his new review for The Times, Robert Abele noted that “the overall tone of quotidian horror, despite the occasional dated stylistic touch, remains powerfully disturbing, a vision of evil that’s man-sized, random and unexamined.”

In her original review for The Times, Sheila Benson wrote: “A nightmare killer wearing steel talons or a hockey mask and carrying a chain saw is too easy for McNaughton’s purposes. He doesn’t want to scare us; he wants to horrify us profoundly by the debased quality of life around us and to suggest our own part in that debasement. And he succeeds only too dreadfully well.”

Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.