Indie Picks: At The Movies This Weekend

International poster, Fox Searchlight

We know that many of you will be spending the weekend at Auditorium Shores for the annual Fun Fun Fun fest, but if you aren't going to be rocking out in a park for the next few days there is plenty to see on area screens.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Alamo South Lamar, Regal Arbor)
Sean Durkin's directorial debut is actually one of two cult-related dramas that debuted at Sundance this year that Fox Searchlight acquired (another film, Sound Of My Voice is being held until the 2012 release schedule). One of the most amusing things about being in line to see the Opening Night screening at Austin Film Festival was hearing all of the people around us trying to get the name of the movie right.

Twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Olsen gives a star-making performance as the film's complicatedly titled character. As the story begins, Martha is getting ready to run away from a small cult-based on a farm in upstate New York. What initially began as an idyllic refuge from her life had turned into a dreary existence of mistreatment and borderline sex slavery. When she breaks away and contacts her sister for the first time in two years to rescue her, Martha finds the path back to normalcy to be a difficult one.

The film's editing is exquisite, interweaving Martha's life with her sister with flashback sequences that shows how her time in the cult continually devolved. It's hard to imagine that John Hawkes could be creepier than he was in Winter's Bone, but here he takes it up a few notches as the leader of the cult who romanticizes life on the farm until Martha is hooked, then slowly begins to chisel away at her independence. Durkin does a terrific job of letting the movie slowly simmer, turning up the intensity as it unfolds. Some may be put off by the ambiguous ending, but the journey to get there is truly fascinating.

Also this weekend:
- Violet Crown Cinema opens Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life and Aki Kaurismaki's La Havre. The latter is the first booking in a new partnership with the Austin Film Society called AFS Selects. AFS members receive $2 off their tickets for any screening of this film when purchased at the box office or phone.

- Whole Foods ends their seasonal Sunset Supper Cinema series on the roof of the flagship location tonight at dusk with Harold & Maude.

- Solid Goldblum month kicks off for The Late Show at the Alamo Ritz with 11:45pm screenings tonight and tomorrow night of David Cronenberg's The Fly.