Hey everyone! It's that time of year again- that's right, It's the Boston Independent Film Festival! It is going on this weekend at the Somerville and Brattle Theatres, and I will be posting reviews of all the movies I see the day after I see them. Of course, there are far more movies playing than I could ever cover, and many of them are fantastic films. So if you get a chance, go out and see some of the awesome stuff that's playing. This first article cover the psychological thriller Always Shine and the Iranian horror film Under the Shadow (زیر سایه‎‎).

Anna (Mackenzie Davis) is an aspiring actress living in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, her career hasn’t gone anywhere yet, and she’s desperately looking for her big break. Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) is also a Los Angeles actress, although her career is starting to take off after starring in several horror movies and art films. The two women used to be good friends, but the years have taken their toll on their relationship; Anna is jealous of Beth’s success, while Beth has grown frustrated with Anna’s increasingly hostile personality while simultaneously feeling guilty of her own success because she perceives Anna as the better actress. The two of them decide to repair their friendship with a weekend getaway to Big Sur, but once there they realize that the chasms between them may be too wide to bridge, and things only get worse from there…

Always Shine is a psychological thriller by director Sophia Takal. In many ways it is an homage to the classics of the genre, such as works by Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. However, it’s also an interesting commentary upon the perception of women in modern society. Sophia Takal conducted a Q&A session after the screening via Skype, and she talked about how much of the film was inspired by her own difficulty with not living up to what she perceives that society expects of her as a women, of not living up to the feminine ideal. Fittingly, both lead actresses give incredibly strong performances, with Beth and Anna respectively embodying a feminine ideal and a more aggressive female personality. 

Although I can’t say that it is an amazing thriller movie, Always Shine is an excellent commentary on gender roles and expectations. You may be disappointed if you go into hoping for Hitchcock or Lynch, but if you want an intelligent social commentary than you’re in the right place.

Grade: B-

Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her family are living in Tehran during the height of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. She studied as a doctor before the Iranian Revolution, but due to being a member of a now-banned political group while at university, she was unable to complete her medical studies. Instead, she now focuses on raising her daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). After a turning point in the war, her husband is drafter by the army and missiles begin raining down on Tehran, though Shideh stubbornly refuses to leave. Soon though, Shideh realizes it’s not just bombs that she has to worry about…
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Under the Shadow is a horror movie created by Iranian director Babak Anvari. In many ways, my thought about this film are quite similar to that of Always Shine; Under the Shadow is not a great horror movie. Most of its frights come from cheap (albeit effective) jump scares, nothing you haven’t seen in every other horror movie. But it is very interesting in the social and political issues it examines, including the role of women in Iranian society, criticisms of the Iranian government, and the subtle, creeping terror of war which goes beyond soldiers and bombs.

If you’re looking for an awesome horror movie, than maybe look for something else. But if you want an interesting social commentary featuring a nation which we so rarely see films from here in the United States, than Under the Shadow is the film for you.

Grade: B-

​The first Monday in May: one of the days of the year that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is always closed and the name of Andrew Rossi's insightful documentary detailing the creation of the Met’s Costume Institute’s most successful fashion exhibition to date, last year’s China: Though the Looking Glass.

The film opens on the 2015 Met Gala’s red carpet, an annual event intended to raise the entire year’s funds for the Costume Institute; it is slow and ethereal, suspending us in the intersection of the worlds of fashion, celebrity, and art. It is here where they introduce to what seems like the central question of the film: should fashion be considered art?
The film makes its case, arguing fashion as art, following a chronological structure as they count down to the Met Gala and the exhibit’s opening and following the Costume Institute’s curator Andrew Bolton through the curative process of this year’s exhibition. It’s not fast paced, but not slow, either, almost like how you would move through museum, examining each piece, then leisurely stepping to the side while still full of intent.

Despite the fact that the filmmakers seemed to set the story in the film up as if they were arguing fashion as art, I would argue that they were, in actuality, arguing fashion as relevant, as legitimate, as important. And I would argue that they succeeded in just that.

They demonstrated how fashion is a springboard for conversation and thought by using it to organically explore several weighty topics, including the expansion of the definition of art, stereotypes, racism, gender inequalities, shifting gender roles, globalization, sexuality, the power of media, celebrity culture, and more, constantly weaving in and out of the central storyline in several different directions. However, even in all of the deviations, the film never lost focus; the filmmakers always brought it back, always connected each storyline and topic in a successful and effective way. Some of the film’s strongest points even came from the deviations: a powerful direct contrast of Anna Wintour and the 'dragon lady' stereotype demonstrating the empowerment of women in fashion, a brief fashion biography of Bolton in which he leads the audience to reflect on, as he did, the “power of fashion to confront gender and sexuality,” a dissection of “Orientalism” in the West. Each topic has a purpose and a direct link to fashion as a whole and the exhibition specifically.

The film ends with a significant amount of time spent at the year’s Met Gala, returning to the red carpet, allowing the audience to revel in the pomp and spectacle of the event. We follow not only several celebrity guests as the walk through the exhibit for the first time, but also Bolton, in a grand, yet elegant, cinematic moment as he walks through the space of his creation, his obsession for the past eight months. It is a triumphant moment, the entire sequence of events portrayed in the movie leading up to this event concluding in splendor and completeness. 
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The First Monday in May used a cultural event that some could render insignificant and instead proved its relevance by exploring several substantial and culturally relevant subjects, a technique that could cause others to lose focus, but instead was handled here with deftness and care. The filmmakers prove that fashion is more than just fancy, a vapid commodity that says nothing of value about the world we live in. They never lose focus, but instead prove that fashion has the power to incite meaningful and necessary discourse in a way that touches all everyday each time they get dressed.

Rating: A

​Q: Obviously it must’ve been incredible to work with Richard Linklater. Did you ever think that you would get to a place in your career where you would have that opportunity? Because he’s so known for launching careers, so is that something you were hoping for?
 
Blake Jenner: Yeah, going from, you know, first moving out to Los Angeles and like working at a Burger King and a parrot shop (laughs), and auditioning for Best Buy commercials that you get cut out of… It’s pretty incredible to be able to say along with these guys, working with these guys alone, like you never think you’re gonna work with such an awesome group of people, but then you add Rick to the mix, and it’s like a dream. It sounds cheesy, but it’s like a dream come true, one hundred percent. To be able to say that we worked with that director who’s easily one of the greatest directors of our country and time in general…
 
Will Brittain: Totally, I mean, it’s a myth really. It’s a myth to be able to work with directors like that.
 
BJ: Yeah, you always hope, like hopefully I’ll get to work with somebody like that. That would be a dream. But you have no expectations so when it happens, it’s that much sweeter.
 
WB: For me, too, growing up in Texas, Richard Linklater’s THE guy from Texas, you know.
 
BJ: He’s the unsolicited mayor. (laughs)
 
WB: (laughs) One hundred percent. And you know, you look at McConaughey…every Texas actor that’s a male and reasonably athletic, I think, looks at McConaughey and says, “Oh man, that’s what I could do! If only someone found me, I could be the next McConaughey.” And then you get found by Richard Linklater, and you’re like “Fuck! Alright!” So it’s cool. 

Q: So what was the overall atmosphere of being on set? Because the movie was very free flowing and loose and everything.
 
WB: Yeah, probably exactly what you’d expect.
 
Tyler Hoechlin: Yeah, what you see in the movie. We felt like the hard work, if you can really call it hard work because it was so much fun, the hard work was done in the rehearsal process beforehand when we spent a couple weeks with Rick on his property.  We stayed in a bunkhouse, so every morning it was breakfast together, and then we’d do rehearsals for dance or practice for baseball, or we’d do a read-through of the script, some days sticking closer with the script and some days kinda throwing in ideas and thoughts. And we played with that for so long that by the time we actually started shooting, we kinda felt like we had already made the movie. We had done the scenes enough and we knew what, as Rick would call them, our ‘greatest hits’ were, so we knew what we were gonna do. So at that point it was just having everyone else show up, give us the clothes, do the hair, and actually having cameras set up to capture it, so on set it was just fun. 

Q: In terms of the preparation for these roles, I feel like with a big cast like this it could’ve been easy to kind of lose a face in the crowd. But everybody has such a distinguished personality which I found really great. Was that there immediately with the script, or was that in the rehearsal process and you got to bring parts of yourself to it?

WB: Absolutely the latter, and that’s a tribute to everybody. Not just to the guys who didn’t have that many lines, which were many because there were probably only four or five characters that were like bigger characters, but also a tribute to the guys who were the bigger characters who were wise enough and generous enough to realize that their lines would be better served if someone else said them. Or that their moment would be better served if someone else were included in it, which really speaks to the humility of everyone involved.

BJ: And everybody understood when a line was given to somebody else, or when something was cut down...everybody was there for each other. There’s not one person in the whole rehearsal process that was like, “That’s mine! I want that, that’s gonna be my line.”

TH: Coming from baseball, I can always throw a baseball metaphor in there (laughs), but it’s kinda like that. It’s like everyone wanted to be the role player, and no one wanted to be the guy to come up and hit the homerun, like everyone was happy to be the guy that put down the sacrifice.

BJ: It was just as satisfying to help someone shine as it was to shine yourself. 

Q: Did any of you play sports in high school or college, and did you have a similar experience to what you showed in the movie? Did it reflect what you actually experienced or was it different in any way?

TH: I played baseball through college, so this was kinda going back to the glory days for me and reliving it, and having a little bit more fun than I had in college. I was the very, very focused athlete. You know, I would party on my one party day that we had, but I was also like okay, if I don’t have class, I’m in the batting cage. So this was time for me to do that with a little bit more fun. 

WB: I was a pretty good football player in high school and a pretty good track athlete, but I was a terrible baseball player (laughs), so I stopped playing that around the age of fourteen. So it was nice to like come back in and play baseball, and also get taught baseball by guys like Tyler...because he could have [played pro ball].
Q: For each of you, what do you think the movie is sort of, at its core, about?
 
TH: I think it’s not being afraid of being who you are. My favorite line in the movie is Willoughby’s line to him (points to Jenner) when they’re shooting pool, which is just like, “Be weird!” He’s like, you know, (All three of them recite in unison) “Always bring who you are, never who they want. That’s when it’s fun.” I thought that’s such a great, new way of saying “be yourself,” because it is, it’s so much more fun when you embrace who you are and what you are as opposed to trying to fit into some box that somebody else might put you in. You thrive that way. So to me, that’s the theme that always hits me the hardest when I watch it.
 
BJ: Yeah, I completely agree with him. It’s like, you know, life is much, much more fun and you get more out of it when you’re not just watching yourself and monitoring what you’re saying or how you’re being or where you want to fit in… And I also think, there are two things I always say and I could be completely wrong but this is what I get out of it: It’s just so timeless and it shows that all the external things change, clothes change and music changes and all that stuff changes, but growing up and finding out what you love, finding out who you are, having a good time with your friends, that never changes. And also, I always say, ‘cause I think everyone here has their times when they’re like focused about the future or thinking about something they regret from the past or something. And what’s cool about this movie is that there isn’t such a huge plot, there isn’t like a car crash coming down a waterfall and there’s mermaids that are gonna catch you and like make out with the dudes in the car… You know, it’s like a slice of life where you just can’t help but be there with the guys, so it’s really like a testament to how important it is to live in the now nowadays with how connected we are and how easy it is to get distracted. 

I had a great time talking to these guys - the three of them are immensely kind and talented. Go see Everybody Wants Some!!, in theaters now!