Indie Picks: At The Movies This Weekend

Jacob Wysocki & John C. Reilly in Terri (sxsw.com)

Summer blockbusters are still taking up most of the area's screens, but a handful of micro-indies are hitting town. These are films that can live and die by word of mouth. We encourage adventurous film lovers in Austin to give one of these smaller pictures a shot this weekend and support the booking of movies that don't have the advantages of commercial advertising campaigns.

Terri (Regal Arbor)
Azazel Jacobs had a hit at Sundance and SXSW earlier this year with his second film. John C. Reilly stars with Jacob Wysocki and Creed Bratton ("The Office") in this quirky comedy about an awkward overweight teenager living with his uncle and trying to survive his tormented high school existence.

Project Nim (Regal Arbor)
Nim Chimpsky was the basis of an extended research project at Columbia University examining the capacity of animal communication. Once Nim was two weeks old, the young chimp started to live 24 hours a day with a human family and was raised to learn American Sign Language.

Director James Marsh (Man On Wire) has made a documentary about the experiment using large amounts of archived footage which looks at the ethical and emotional experiences between Nim and his human trainers. For more information on the film, you should check out the excellent Fresh Air episode from NPR that features Terri Gross sitting down with Marsh and two other members of his film crew.

Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times) (Violet Crown Cinema)
Winner of the Best European Film award at last year's Cannes Film Festival, this is the second feature for director Michelangelo Frammartino. This is undoubtedly the most art-house pick you can make this week. You'll likely immediately know if it's for you if you are excited at the prospect of watching a predominately wordless pseudo-documentary/philosophical meditation about a goat herder. No less than Roger Ebert called it "a serene and beautiful film." Violet Crown is screening it only at 1:50 and 7:40 each day for the next week.