It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly three full years since we were last able to gather together for the Independent Film Festival Boston (or IFFBoston), which is far and away one of the the best film festivals in New England. We already showed off their incredible line-up for you a few weeks ago, and since the festival’s right around the corner — it starts up tomorrow night, April 27, and runs through May 4 — we thought we’d highlight a few important titles for you to check out, given just how great the whole program is this year (it’s hard to choose what to do!).
The festival will still be at some of its usual haunts, which include The Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, The Brattle Theatre in Harvard, and Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theatre, but they’ll also have some screenings at a new venue, the WBUR CitySpace right near the Boston University campus. You can buy festival badges and tickets at their website. Now, let’s get to the choice cuts.
Emily the Criminal
Aubrey Plaza leads the festival’s opening night film, which follows the misadventures of a ex-con who, after struggling to find work, winds up falling in with a group of scammers and running low-stakes credit-card theft jobs for them. Of course things go poorly — haven’t you seen Straight Time? — but Plaza’s captivating and compelling in the lead role and it’s a decent little thriller that made some waves when it premiered back in January at Sundance. Plus, if you go see this one, you’ll get tickets to the film’s afterparty at the Crystal Ballroom in the Somerville Theatre, which means two things: free food, and trying to spot whether or not there are any famous people nearby.
Wednesday, April 27 at 7:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre.
Both Sides of the Blade
Look, we shouldn’t have to sell this to you as hard as the other films on this list. Why? Well, it’s a brand-new film from Claire Denis (Beau Travail, Trouble Every Day, High Life), that stars two of French cinema’s greatest stars, Vincent Lindon and the incomparable Juliette Binoche. It’s a tale of a love triangle between a former pro rugby player (Lindon) and a woman (Binoche) who happens to be married to one of his friends and former admirers. Of course, shit goes haywire and what follows should unfold in the gorgeously dark way that Denis is known for. We haven’t seen this one yet, so we’re hyped as fuck to finally get a chance to see it as it was meant to be seen: at the Brattle, as a part of one of our best local festivals.
Thursday, April 28 at 7 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre.
Flux Gourmet
This Thursday night at the Brattle might be one of the most exciting double-features that IFFBoston has programmed yet: We just mentioned the new Denis, but it’s followed by Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet, which is another fascinating art-horror project from the director of Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy, and In Fabric. This time, Strickland’s returning to the sonic frontiers he explored in Berberian, though with a hefty dosage of surrealist performance art paired with the noise like a fine red going with your steak. To continue the food metaphor, it’s also about an artist in a collective who begins to struggle with stomach issues following his group’s residency at an institution. Will you need a barf bag? Probably not, but it’d be wise to stock up on some Pepto anyhow.
Thursday, April 28 at 9:30 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre.
Cha Cha Real Smooth
Cooper Raiff’s follow-up to Shithouse was one of the big bombshell acquisitions at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where Raiff actually got to have a big premiere for one of his films after SXSW 2020 got canceled due to COVID. And you know what? It was worth all that money that Apple spent to pick this one up. Raiff plays another aimless kid, this time post-college, who returns home to New Jersey and picks up a strange career as a “party starter,” or a hype-man at Bar/Bat Mitzvahs who means to include all the kids in the fun. He falls in love with a young mother (Dakota Johnson) and tries to figure his life out in the process, while also somehow teaching children the Electric Slide. It’s a delightfully warm, funny, and emotional film, and it’s one of the jewels in the tech giant’s cap when it comes to their streaming purchases. It’s certainly at least as good as Ted Lasso, that’s for sure.
Friday, April 29 at 7 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre.
I Love My Dad
This semi-autobiographical film by first-time director James Morosini (who also wrote and stars in the film) was a massive hit at this year’s SXSW, racking up a number of awards from the Festival Jury and rave reviews from all sorts of outlets. We were one of those publications, and if you’re in the mood for a movie that will give you full-body cringes as well as belly laughs, we highly recommend you check this one out. It’s about a deadbeat dad (a scene-stealing performance from Patton Oswalt) who winds up catfishing his son (Morosini) in order to stay close to him after he’s released from a mental institution, and boy howdy does it go to some incredibly awkward places. They say one man’s pleasure is another’s pain, but we’re certainly sure that one man’s deeply uncomfortable quest to reunite with his kid is another person’s great time at the movies.
Saturday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
There really haven’t been that many examples of filmmakers actually being able to take the lemons that COVID provided them and successfully making them into lemonade (Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth is one of the few things that comes to mind), but Sophie Hyde has done so with this sex-work centric comedy. How? Well, casting Emma Thompson as a delightfully priggish school teacher who contracts a sex worker named Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) and letting the two play off each other in an extended and amusing series of conversations is a pretty solid way to at least grab one’s attention. There’s no Zoom or FaceTime to be found here, just boundary-shattering ideas and witty banter. We’d recommend you take mom for Mother’s Day, but she might blush just a little too much, or, you know, turn into a wolf from a Tex Avery cartoon. Do you really want to chance that your mom’s might get stuck as a steam valve? She always told you if you made faces like that, they might just stay that way.
Monday, May 2 at 9:30 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
IFFBoston’s closing night film is the kind of thing you might actually want to bring your kids to, because they’re probably going to go apeshit over the misadventures of this Jenny Slate-voiced critter. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is a family film from A24, based on the series of short films that Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp made back in the day for YouTube, and it’s a lovely combination of stop-motion animation and live-action cinema, provided you don’t have emotional diabetes. That much sugar is sure to send anyone’s metaphorical insulin levels into a spike, and we really don’t want you to have to pull out that emergency copy of The Turin Horse in order to get you level again.
Wednesday, May 4 at 8 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theater.