EMPIRE MAGAZINE'S TOP 50 INDEPENDENT MOVIES (30 through 21)
30 - Sweet Sweetback Baadassss' Song (1971) - Directed by Melvin Van Peebles
Made for $50,000 and grossing $10 million, Sweetback was financed, produced, written, directed, scored and starred by Melvin Van Peebles and one of the very few Black movies of the '70s to emerge from a completely black artistic sensibility. Obscene, frenzied, painful, the movie sees the titular hero go on the run after stomping a couple of cops unconscious, throwing up a series of violent set-pieces that comment on both Black stereotypes and blaxploitation staples. Showing a whole generation of black filmmakers the way forward, the guerrilla filmmaking and canny marketing campaign also provide pointers for every no-budget filmmaker following in its wake.
29 - Bad Lieutenant (1992) - Directed by Abel Ferrara
As uncompromising and maverick-minded as its director, Bad Lieutenant is certainly the most notorious, searingly emotional and profound of Abel Ferrara's back catalogue of scuzz and sleaze. Starring indie darling Harvey Keitel - in a mesmerising and extraordinarily brave performance - as a seriously corrupt, guilt-ridden, devoutly Catholic cop, this is a breathtaking modern-day parable of sin and redemption that is so hardcore, so unflinching in its portrayal of a man's descent into Hell and his scrabbling attempts to get into Heaven that it simply had to be an independent movie. And we haven't even mentioned the scene where Keitel quite literally pulls over two girls on the freeway...
28 - In The Company Of Men (1997) - Directed by Neil LaBute
Neil LaBute had been a powerful voice in the American theatre for a few years until he turned his hand to cinema, and knocked one out of the park first time out with this bitter, acid-edged , unwavering look at the evil that men do. In this case, the mendacious misanthropy comes from two guys (Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy), both recently dumped, who make a bet to toy with the affections of a deaf woman (Stacy Edwards). It - and LaBute - have been accused of misogyny, but the movie - as impassive as it is - leaves us in no doubt that Malloy and Eckhart are the slime of the universe.
27 - Dark Star (1974) - Directed by John Carpenter
There are those who will argue that Halloween is the better John Carpenter film, more deserving of recognition here. They're right and they're wrong. Halloween is indeed the better film - it was a terrific (in both senses), genuinely scary template for horror for the next decade, while Dark Star is a wildly uneven, low-budget-to the-point-of-impeding-your-enjoyment sci-fi. But the very fact that Dark Star found screens at all, its more creative story content (life onboard the ship being unsatisfactory, the philosophising bomb as a brilliant extension of 2001's self-aware HAL), and the issue that without it Carpenter's career wouldn't exist, gets this over the line.
26 - Lost in Translation (2003) - Directed by Sofia Coppola
Intelligence and emotional honesty are all too rarely elements that make-up a romantic comedy. Sofia Coppola's meditation on romantic and cultural alienation, however, strips out the clichés, tired chat-up lines and drunken sex, leaving us with a simple, touching collision of two lost souls. This was a plum role for Scarlett Johanssen and a long-awaited return to form for Bill Murray, coaxing forth what is arguably the best performance of his entire career. While Coppola made her bones as an indie director with her adaptation of The Virgin Suicides, this original story, with its frank but tender realism and wry humour, remains her crowning achievement.
25 - Drugstore Cowboy (1989) - Directed by Gus Van Sant
Wanna check the indie credentials of Drugstore Cowboy? OK, never mind that Gus Van Sant - perhaps the most indie-centric, experimental film-maker working just outside the American mainstream today - directed it. Never mind that it's a non-judgmental look at drug culture and the mindset of a group of people (led by a never-better Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch) who break into drugstores in order to get their prescription pill high. Never mind that it's a hazily lensed, at times bleak, at times funny and touching, near-masterpiece, always unflinching but never unfeeling. You want to know why Drugstore Cowboy is an indie film par excellence? William S. Burroughs in it. Like, wow man...
24 - Happiness (1998) - Directed by Todd Solondz
A more ironic title you will be hard put to find, as Todd Solondz takes us on a hellish trek through the lives of a string of interconnected misfits. The only thing these people - a phone sex pest and a pedophile among them - have in common is misery. Not exactly the sort of film you go to Disney to get funding for, but that's never been Todd's way. Welcome To The Doll's House is equally eligible in terms of independence, but this is firstly a more accomplished film, plus we're awarding kudos points for keepin' it real after the success of his previous feature.
23 - The Evil Dead (1981) - Directed by Sam Raimi
The making of the Evil Dead very nearly lives up to the movie's tagline, 'the ultimate experience in grueling terror'. In 1979, three Detroit wannabe film-makers - producer Rob Tapert, actor Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi decamped to a disused Tennessee cabin to shoot a horror movie about five kids battling demons. They had precious little money, borrowed equipment, no real clue of what they were doing and - by the end - precious little sanity. But necessity is the mother of invention, and The Evil Dead pulses with it. Virtually every horror film-maker of the last 20 years has cribbed from Raimi's box of camera tricks.
22 - Nosferatu, A Symphony Of Terror (1922) - Directed by F.W. Murnau
Not so much the Granddaddy of indie films, as the mad Great uncle, when F.W. Murnau decided he wanted to adapt Bram Stoker's Dracula, he didn't let legal threats stop him - he just changed the names and made a few tweaks. Murnau's ingenuity (and a court order) gets him in here, but Nosferatu is also one of the best silent films ever made, and one of the creepiest, sound or no. It contributed to making German Expressionism an entire chapter in the cinema history books, and is among the most homaged, pastiched, and parodied films ever made - so indie they had to make an indie film about it.
21 - Roger And Me (1989) - Directed by Michael Moore
Before the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine and the headline grabbing Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore made a documentary about the closure of the automobile plant in his hometown of Flint, Michigan and the economic devastation that followed it, and it made his reputation. All Moore's polemic skills are apparent here - there's the same sly cross-cutting, the persistent hounding of people determined not to talk to him, and interviews with the sort of 'ordinary' everyday loons that only exist in small American towns. Arguably better than its successors - Moore punctures pomposity in others without appearing pompous himself - this is rabble-rousing stuff.
Made for $50,000 and grossing $10 million, Sweetback was financed, produced, written, directed, scored and starred by Melvin Van Peebles and one of the very few Black movies of the '70s to emerge from a completely black artistic sensibility. Obscene, frenzied, painful, the movie sees the titular hero go on the run after stomping a couple of cops unconscious, throwing up a series of violent set-pieces that comment on both Black stereotypes and blaxploitation staples. Showing a whole generation of black filmmakers the way forward, the guerrilla filmmaking and canny marketing campaign also provide pointers for every no-budget filmmaker following in its wake.
As uncompromising and maverick-minded as its director, Bad Lieutenant is certainly the most notorious, searingly emotional and profound of Abel Ferrara's back catalogue of scuzz and sleaze. Starring indie darling Harvey Keitel - in a mesmerising and extraordinarily brave performance - as a seriously corrupt, guilt-ridden, devoutly Catholic cop, this is a breathtaking modern-day parable of sin and redemption that is so hardcore, so unflinching in its portrayal of a man's descent into Hell and his scrabbling attempts to get into Heaven that it simply had to be an independent movie. And we haven't even mentioned the scene where Keitel quite literally pulls over two girls on the freeway...
Neil LaBute had been a powerful voice in the American theatre for a few years until he turned his hand to cinema, and knocked one out of the park first time out with this bitter, acid-edged , unwavering look at the evil that men do. In this case, the mendacious misanthropy comes from two guys (Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy), both recently dumped, who make a bet to toy with the affections of a deaf woman (Stacy Edwards). It - and LaBute - have been accused of misogyny, but the movie - as impassive as it is - leaves us in no doubt that Malloy and Eckhart are the slime of the universe.
There are those who will argue that Halloween is the better John Carpenter film, more deserving of recognition here. They're right and they're wrong. Halloween is indeed the better film - it was a terrific (in both senses), genuinely scary template for horror for the next decade, while Dark Star is a wildly uneven, low-budget-to the-point-of-impeding-your-enjoyment sci-fi. But the very fact that Dark Star found screens at all, its more creative story content (life onboard the ship being unsatisfactory, the philosophising bomb as a brilliant extension of 2001's self-aware HAL), and the issue that without it Carpenter's career wouldn't exist, gets this over the line.
Intelligence and emotional honesty are all too rarely elements that make-up a romantic comedy. Sofia Coppola's meditation on romantic and cultural alienation, however, strips out the clichés, tired chat-up lines and drunken sex, leaving us with a simple, touching collision of two lost souls. This was a plum role for Scarlett Johanssen and a long-awaited return to form for Bill Murray, coaxing forth what is arguably the best performance of his entire career. While Coppola made her bones as an indie director with her adaptation of The Virgin Suicides, this original story, with its frank but tender realism and wry humour, remains her crowning achievement.
Wanna check the indie credentials of Drugstore Cowboy? OK, never mind that Gus Van Sant - perhaps the most indie-centric, experimental film-maker working just outside the American mainstream today - directed it. Never mind that it's a non-judgmental look at drug culture and the mindset of a group of people (led by a never-better Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch) who break into drugstores in order to get their prescription pill high. Never mind that it's a hazily lensed, at times bleak, at times funny and touching, near-masterpiece, always unflinching but never unfeeling. You want to know why Drugstore Cowboy is an indie film par excellence? William S. Burroughs in it. Like, wow man...
A more ironic title you will be hard put to find, as Todd Solondz takes us on a hellish trek through the lives of a string of interconnected misfits. The only thing these people - a phone sex pest and a pedophile among them - have in common is misery. Not exactly the sort of film you go to Disney to get funding for, but that's never been Todd's way. Welcome To The Doll's House is equally eligible in terms of independence, but this is firstly a more accomplished film, plus we're awarding kudos points for keepin' it real after the success of his previous feature.
The making of the Evil Dead very nearly lives up to the movie's tagline, 'the ultimate experience in grueling terror'. In 1979, three Detroit wannabe film-makers - producer Rob Tapert, actor Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi decamped to a disused Tennessee cabin to shoot a horror movie about five kids battling demons. They had precious little money, borrowed equipment, no real clue of what they were doing and - by the end - precious little sanity. But necessity is the mother of invention, and The Evil Dead pulses with it. Virtually every horror film-maker of the last 20 years has cribbed from Raimi's box of camera tricks.
Not so much the Granddaddy of indie films, as the mad Great uncle, when F.W. Murnau decided he wanted to adapt Bram Stoker's Dracula, he didn't let legal threats stop him - he just changed the names and made a few tweaks. Murnau's ingenuity (and a court order) gets him in here, but Nosferatu is also one of the best silent films ever made, and one of the creepiest, sound or no. It contributed to making German Expressionism an entire chapter in the cinema history books, and is among the most homaged, pastiched, and parodied films ever made - so indie they had to make an indie film about it.
Before the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine and the headline grabbing Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore made a documentary about the closure of the automobile plant in his hometown of Flint, Michigan and the economic devastation that followed it, and it made his reputation. All Moore's polemic skills are apparent here - there's the same sly cross-cutting, the persistent hounding of people determined not to talk to him, and interviews with the sort of 'ordinary' everyday loons that only exist in small American towns. Arguably better than its successors - Moore punctures pomposity in others without appearing pompous himself - this is rabble-rousing stuff.