NOTE: SOME OF THE TRAILERS LINKED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE NSFW.



Filmmaking, even at its smoothest, is a tricky, challenging process. This holds true for every film made, from Zero Dark Thirty to Dangerous Men. And it is particularly challenging for filmmakers operating outside of the Hollywood studio system. Whether it’s bringing a movie made in Hong Kong or New Zealand to the States or making a dramedy about a goth nun and her family’s crisis in Asheville, North Carolina, getting an independent movie made and released is always going to be hard. As Melodie Sisk, the producer and co-story developer of the marvelous Little Sister says, “Every time (we start a new film) it feels like we’re trying to start all over again.” Independent filmmaking and distribution, she says, is a matter of “scraping and hustling and wanting the movie to get made.” Little Sister, for instance, took three and a half years to put together, and its green light hinged on having recognizable talent attached to it – star Addison Timlin was the pivotal player there, as was co-star Peter Hedges (the author of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, adaptor of About a Boy and father of Manchester by the Sea’s MVP Lucas Hedges).



Once a movie gets made, the questions become what kind of audience will it have, and how can it reach that audience? For Jason Wehling, the producer of Slash, the challenge is that there has been a huge increase in the supply and quality of independent films. “Audiences,” he says, “have infinite choices through platforms that make an individual movie seem less valuable.” And with seemingly infinite choice and the entitlement of some viewers who falsely believe that all their entertainment should be free, making a film that is specific, personal and smaller than the GDP of Rhode Island becomes all the harder. Sisk says that what independent filmmakers need is both “a community of people who want to support indie film” and “something that would allow people to support the film.” “I don’t think indie film is a charity,” she says, “We’re trying to reach people, find an audience.”



And that is where this article comes in. These are, in no specific order, ten smaller movies from 2016 (one of which is from 1973) that demand a wider audience, including where you can watch them and why they are worth watching. They are formally daring documentaries, dramedies, coming of age tales, supreme action epics and hallucinogenic nightmares. They are the products of filmmakers with a deep and abiding passion for their form, and a need to tell these stories. And they are part of an industry that needs widespread support to flourish.

KILL ZONE 2

Directed by Cheang Pou Soi.

Starring Wu Jing, Simon Yam, Tony Jaa, Zhang Jin and Lois Koo.

Available to Netflix Subscribers and available to rent or purchase on Amazon.

Read Evan Saathoff's review here.

Kill Zone 2’s bland US title (its original Hong Kong/Chinese title is SPL II: A Time for Consequences, and it’s a name-only sequel to the earlier SPL: Sha Po Lang, with which it shares a few actors) hides a thrilling, beautifully choreographed exercise in remarkably sweet-hearted martial arts storytelling. The sweet-heartedness is particularly impressive given that Kill Zone 2 is built on a war between Louis Koo’s dying, Evil Bowie-esque villain’s organ theft ring and a desperate, ruthless police force. Its heroes, Wu Jing and Tony Jaa, are not bad men, but they have compromised themselves to the point where both feel compelled to seek redemption. In this case, that comes in the form of gorgeously clear and consistently creative martial arts battles.

Over the course of Kill Zone 2, a cell phone, a truck, a magazine and a pair of broken shackles are put to thrilling, unexpected use. And all the while, its flawed heroes strive to be better than they have been and to do right by Jaa’s sick daughter. It’s a tremendously exciting film, and the balance it achieves between the bleakness of its subject (Koo is diabolically sociopathic here) and the inherent sweetness of its character arcs (Wu and Jaa are ultimately fighting for the sake of a kid with cancer, but Kill Zone 2, never becomes saccharine) is truly impressive.

NUTS!

Directed by Penny Lane.

Starring Gene Tognacci.

Available to Amazon Prime subscribers and available to rent or purchase on Amazon.



John Romulus Brinkley is not a name well remembered by history. Penny Lane’s daring, partially animated biography seeks to correct this. Brinkley was a major celebrity in the early 20th century - well known enough that Buster Keaton included a reference to him in one of his pictures - and more importantly a radio pioneer. The massive radio tower Brinkley commissioned in Mexico was one of the largest in the world when it began broadcasting in the early 1930s, and it would later be used by the legendary DJ Wolfman Jack. But Brinkley himself is obscure for a reason. He built his fame and fortune on the claim that transplanting glands from goat testicles into the testicles of human men would cure them of impotence. Later, he said the glands also cured fatigue. And then he said they would cure just about everything else, especially when distilled into an elixir he was happy to provide to his many patients for a reasonable price.

Brinkely was a charlatan par excellence. He was a predatory conman who sold himself as a brilliant outcast who bootstrapped his way to glory. He claimed he was taking risks the ossified medical establishment would never condone for fear they would be inappropriately revolutionary. In truth, he was performing surgeries that did nothing but put his patients at risk for infection and calling colored water a cure-all. Nuts! chronicles Brinkley’s rise and fall through Lane’s incredible formal cleverness. She moves between reenactment and archival recordings, black and white imagery and color, realist and surrealist animation. She frames the story first as Brinkley would have liked it told, and then, in Nuts!’ brilliant last act, as it actually was. It’s a thrilling example of documentary filmmaking where the filmmaking is as interesting as the subject.

ALMOST HOLY

Directed by Steve Hoover.

Starring Gennadiy Mokhnenko.

Available to Amazon Prime subscribers and available to rent or purchase on Amazon.



Note: Almost Holy contains discussions of sexual assault and long-term sexual and emotional abuse, and depicts the aftermath of people being removed from abusive relationships.

Gennadiy Mokhnenko is a Pentecostal priest in the Ukraine. And he is, by necessity, an activist. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it sent a shockwave through its former satellite states, many of which were not prepared to lose their primary source of money, medicine and general stability. The Ukraine saw a titanic surge of homelessness and drug use amongst children, and the authorities, already hobbled by the USSR’s fall, were quickly overwhelmed. Mokhnenko was moved to action. And over the years he and his allies built a single shelter and rehab program in the city of Mariupol into the largest children’s treatment community in the former Soviet Union. His methods range from warm to ruthless. He likes to be called “Crocodile Gennadiy”, after a good-hearted cartoon character beloved by people from his generation in the former USSR. He and his wife have adopted several of the children who came to their center, giving them a stable, loving environment in which they have flourished. Simultaneously, he harasses crooked pharmacists who sell drugs illegally, and some of his methods for extracting children from abusive homes come very close to kidnapping. And while Moknenko does what he can to heal these national wounds, Vladimir Putin sets his designs upon the Ukraine.

Hoover builds Almost Holy from footage he shot while working with Mokhnenko and material from the priest’s archives, creating a 15-year portrait of an activist driven by a mixture of necessity and moral compulsion, one who must ultimately grapple with the limits of his effectiveness as a single person and the extent of Putin’s brutality. It’s a compelling study of a fascinating person, one that does an admirable job articulating how the personal is the political and what it takes to live and work with that through blended footage of Moknenko on the job, the context of Putin’s invasion and the damaged, post-Soviet space of the Ukraine itself. The ending, where these threads come together and Moknenko faces an uncertain future, is haunting.

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS

Directed by Eiichi Yamamoto.

Starring Aiko Nagayama and Tatsuya Nakadai.

Available to Amazon Prime subscribers, Shudder subscribers and available to rent or purchase on Amazon.

Check out Siddhant Adlakha’s review here.

Note: Belladonna of Sandess contains extremely graphic scenes of sexual assault and constant disturbing and surreal sexualized imagery.

Some of the entries on this list are technically 2015 films by way of an earlier international release (Kill Zone 2 launched in 2015 in Hong Kong and China) or time on the festival circuit (Almost Holy toured under the name Crocodile Gennadiy in 2015) but Belladonna of Sadness easily takes the “debatably came out in 2016” crown. It was first released in its home country of Japan in 1973, where it flopped badly and contributed to the close of its studio. It had a very limited European release, which ultimately wound up saving the film from becoming partially lost. At some point, there was an unsuccessful truly baffling attempt by its owners to re-edit it into a family film (if they were to truly succeed in that effort, the resulting movie would have maybe been five minutes long). It was restored by Cinelicious Pics, screened at Japan Cuts and Fantastic Fest in 2015 and finally had an official US theatrical release in 2016. Of all the films on this list, Belladonna of Sadness is easily the most niche, and maybe the biggest argument for why supporting small films is so vital. This is a movie that could easily have been forgotten by history. Instead, Cinelicious recognized an immense value in its nightmarish psychotronic specificity and worked to bring it to the world in its complete form. I’m glad they did, as Belladonna of Sadness is one of the scariest, most thought provoking movies I have ever seen.



Belladonna of Sadness is frustratingly paced, and at times overindulges in trippy, nightmarish, surreal montages. But when its imagery and its story gel, the result is indelible. There are scenes in Belladonna of Sadness that I will never forget, images and ideas that I still grapple with. There is no other movie like it this year, and Cinelicious is to be applauded for their work rescuing it from obscurity and restoring it for a contemporary audience. If you’re comfortable diving into a film as disturbing, psychedelic and psychosexual as Belladonna of Sadness, I urge you to do so.

KICKS

Directed by Justin Tipping.

Starring Jahking Guillory, Christopher Meyer, Christopher Jordan Wallace, Kofi Siriboe and Mahershala Ali.

Available to rent or purchase on Amazon.

Check out Vyce Victus’ thoughts on Kicks here.

Kicks follows Brandon (Jahking Guillory) a boy who desperately wants to live a specific type of black manhood so that he might be treated like a person rather than a target or a joke. He seizes a chance through a pair of the legendary red and black Air Jordan 1s, only to promptly lose them to a particularly sadistic bully named Flaco (Kofi Siriboe). Brandon, infuriated by the assault and encouraged by the mute specter of an astronaut he turns to for courage in times of stress, rallies his best friends (Christopher Meyer and Christopher Jordan Wallace) and sets out to reclaim his shoes. His journey brings him into contact with his estranged, affable, and professionally ruthless uncle Marlon (Mahershala Ali, who has had a great year) and face to face with the frustrating reality of Flaco’s humanity.



Justin Tipping, who co-wrote and directed Kicks, has a fantastic eye and great skill as an empathetic storyteller. Kicks is one of 2016’s best looking films, which is particularly impressive given that this is also the year of Moonlight, La La Land and Arrival, amongst many other gorgeous movies. The coveted Jordans shine in the California sun. Time slows as a car spins in a lot surrounded by cheering onlookers. A lonely little boy watches a VHS tape of All Dogs Go to Heaven in a dark room. The astronaut hangs in space, always seeming slightly detached from everything but Brandon’s gaze. Amidst this gorgeous imagery, Tipping tells a coming of age story that gets why Brandon desperately wants to become someone he believes will be more than a poor, scrawny kid, but understands that the vision Brandon covets is neither particularly healthy nor viable. He considers his protagonist through the prism of Flaco – a man Brandon could very easily become – and the blunt assessment of Marlon, who has very little time for his nephew’s posturing and later attempts to flee from its consequences.



In Guillory, Tipping has a creative partner who successfully navigates a complex character. Brandon repeatedly moves back and forth across the spectrum of adolescence and maturity during his hunt for his shoes, and by design the audience’s sympathy for him waxes and wanes throughout Kicks. He’s a wonderfully dimensional protagonist, and Guillory realizes him beautifully. This is Tipping’s first film, and I cannot wait to see what he chooses to do next, particularly if he and Guillory decide to continue working together. Indeed, it is one of my favorite films of year.

SLASH

Directed by Clay Liford.

Starring Michael Johnston, Hannah Marks, Tishuan Scott and Michael Ian Black

Available to rent or purchase on Amazon.

Check out Meredith Borders’ review of Slash here.



Slash begins on a ruined alien world. Vangaurd, (Tishuan Scott) a mercenary hired by the galaxy’s powers that be, engages in battle with the Kragon (Lucas Neff), the warlord who poisoned the planet’s air and made slaves of its people. They trade blows, evenly matched until the warlord unleashes a powerful hallucinogen, a drug that drives his opponent to… begin passionately making out with him. Cut to the real world, where a boy named Neil (Michael Johnston) writes slash fiction of his favorite YA science fiction series both for the sake of the fic itself and to try and cope with his world. He is uncertain of his sexuality, driven to write but convinced that it is not worth anything, and the stability of his home life is questionable at best. His already shaky status quo is further disrupted when his classmates get ahold of his notebook and seek to cruelly mock him, only for a girl named Julia (Hannah Marks) to step up and defend him and his work. A year older than Neil, Julia seems confident in her own skin and comfortable with her nerdery in a way that he believes he will never be. In truth, she is similarly uncertain of her sexuality, caught in a relationship with a truly crummy boyfriend and maintains a distant but explicitly fraught relationship with her very religious mother. The two develop a deep friendship on their shared passions. It is subsequently tested by their mutual immaturity, an unspoken competition between the two, and an intimacy that neither is comfortable with or completely understands.



Slash’s greatest strength is the chemistry between Johnston and Marks. The pair work well together, particularly when Neil and Julia begin testing the exact nature of their relationship. They’re one of my favorite cinematic couples of 2016. Slash also earns marks for allowing their relationship to evolve in as complex a fashion just as it begins. I don’t know what will happen to Neil and Julia after Slash’s credits roll, and that feels exactly right.

BLOOD FATHER

Directed by Jean-François Richet.

Starring Mel Gibson, Erin Moriarty, Diego Luna and William H. Macy.

Available for rent or purchase on Amazon.

Check out Andrew Todd’s review of Blood Father here.

Blood Father opens with Mel Gibson in an AA meeting, telling the other attendees that he has hurt a lot of people and is working to make up for it where he can. He is John Link, an ex-con with a bloody, brutal past. Now he runs a tattoo parlor out of his trailer. Link is haunted by Lydia, the daughter he knows he failed as a parent. But he gets by. And then Lydia, coming down off a bad high and certain she has killed her rotten, cartel prince boyfriend Jonah (Diego Luna), calls and asks for his help. Granted a chance to atone for some of his failures, Link agrees. Unfortunately, Jonah’s cartel doesn’t take kindly to his demise, and so father and daughter must go on the run, pursued by a gang of vicious, murderous goons. Both must reckon with how they have spent their lives, and Link must put all the tricks he learned during his own time as a murderous goon to use.



Gibson's participation in Blood Father is a potential dealbreaker, and one that is completely understandable. Consider that context how you will, and act as you must. As far as his performance goes, he’s fantastic as Link, a formerly lousy human being trying hard to be good and succeeding almost despite himself. He works well with Moriarty and William H. Macy, one playing a struggling reflection of who he was and the other a mellowed out foil he aspires to be. This is a very fine character piece, one with appealing redemptive arcs for Link and Lydia and heightened by director Jean-François Richet’s clean, spare action and the careful invocation of Gibson’s iconic time as Mad Max Rockatansky. There is a moment in Blood Father where Gibson fires a sawed-off shotgun from a motorcycle, and it is truly thrilling.

IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE

Directed by Ti West.

Starring Ethan Hawke, John Travolta, Taissa Farmiga, James Ransome, Karen Gillan, Burn Gorman and Jumpy the Dog.

Available for rent or purchase on Amazon.

Check out Jacob Knight’s review of In a Valley of Violence here.

In a Valley of Violence opens with Ethan Hawke’s drifting deserter Paul and his beloved dog Abbie counter-robbing a corrupt priest of his supplies after the priest tries to steal his horse. Paul aims to make for Mexico, but stops in a town the priest warns him is a haven for sin and vice. There he strikes up a brief friendship with Mary-Anne, a good-hearted young innkeeper (Taissa Farmiga) who struggles with a profoundly frustrating older sister (Karen Gillan) and her wretched beau Gilly (James Ransome of The Wire, admirably slimy). When Gilly baits Paul and gets knocked out for his troubles, the hellions swears revenge. This ends badly for everyone.



In a Valley of Violence has a protagonist unlike any I have ever encountered in a western. Ethan Hawke’s lonely drifter Paul has some superficial similarities with the great antiheroes of the form in terms of visual style and venality, but I cannot say I’ve ever seen a Western protagonist with self-loathing that manifests in quite the way it does here. Paul is a deeply unhappy, ultimately cowardly man who is only moved to action by a despair so complete that it overrides his need to escape. And when he crosses that line, he does not become a thrilling hero or a legend, he becomes genuinely frightening. He is relentless, remorseless and utterly determined in a fashion that I have never seen, not quite like this. I’d attribute it to writer/director Ti West’s past work in horror, which he uses to good effect here when building suspense and balancing tone. It’s also a rare treat to see Travolta this engaged, and his multiple confrontations with Hawke are the picture’s highlights. Except for, possibly, Jumpy the dog.

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE

Directed by Taika Waititi.

Starring Julian Dennison and Sam Neill.

Available for rent or purchase on Amazon.



Taika Waititi’s vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows was not only extremely funny, it was a very well made film. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a dramatic leap forward for Waititi, and if he keeps up this level of quality, he will certifiably be one of the great filmmakers. Wilderpeople’s tonal balance is impeccable, moving from comedy to drama and back precisely when it needs to, escalating and deescalating as appropriate and climaxing in one of the clearest, cleanest, most creative car chases I have seen put to film. It’s simultaneously empathetic and constantly, screamingly funny, particularly as the friendship between Hec and Ricky develops and deepens whilst both remain resolutely themselves – Hec the gruff bushman, Ricky the creative, cynical city kid. This is as warm and wonderful a movie as any made this year, and in the specificity of its setting and its characters it creates what I believe will be a lasting and universal movie. It is, like Kicks and the final movie in this list, one of my favorite films of the year.

LITTLE SISTER

Directed by Zach Clark.

Starring Addison Timlin, Keith Poulson, Ally Sheedy, Peter Hedges, Barbara Crampton, Kristin Slaysman and Molly Plunk.

Available for rent or purchase on Amazon.

Check out Jacob Knight’s review of Little Sister here.



Addison Timlin is Colleen, a young nun in training on the verge of taking her first vows. She’s committed to her service, but struggles with an estrangement from her family. Her relationship with her mother (Ally Sheedy) is particularly strained, as both believe the other has thoroughly let them down. When Collen learns that her brother Jacob is released from a military hospital after being severely disfigured on his tour of duty in Iraq, she decides to borrow her Reverend Mother (Barbara Crampton)’s car and go home, in the hopes of being there for Jacob and potentially resolving some of her past.



Little Sister is not a movie with shouting and big tearful moments of healing. It’s a movie with a goth nun lip-synching to GWAR (so it does have shouting, just not that sort of shouting) and maiming a baby doll to reach out to her withdrawn brother and contains moments of realization and reconciliation that read as genuine. It's a wise movie, one that treats its characters with dignity and compassion. Timlin’s Colleen may just be my favorite character of 2016, committed to her faith while embracing her past as a goth. She is also an all too rare example of a character for whom religious faith is extremely important without being an excuse for her to condemn the world or a reason for the movie to mock her. Little Sister is one of the reasons I wanted to write this article in the first place. I strongly urge you to check it out.