10 Under-The-Radar Films Not To Miss This Fall

As the leaves change color and the temperatures drop, the Oscar race heats up. While the summer left adults with relatively few choices outside of a couple dramas and some blockbusters that appealed beyond a younger demographic, the autumn movie season more than makes up for the lack of moviegoing choices for mature audiences. However, while many of you are likely anticipating several awards season contenders – Gone Girl, Birdman, Foxcatcher – and likely blockbusters such as Interstellar and the third Hunger Games film, there are some under-the-radar players that could manage to eke out enough attention in theatres (and, for some, On Demand) to capture a little bit of the awards flavor. After all, you never know which titles could be vying for a best foreign language film Oscar or some Independent Spirit Awards. So, on that note, here are 10 under-the-radar films that you should definitely catch this fall. 1) Bad Hair (Nov. 19) Although it did not have a high profile at the 2013 Toronto film festival – yes, this has been waiting for a theatrical release for more than a year – the Venezuelan drama has earned strong marks from critics (100% on Rotten Tomatoes) and looks both powerful and compassionate. Bad Hair focuses on Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano), a precocious child growing up in an urban slum with his mother and baby brother. He wants to straighten his poofy ‘do and look like a long-haired singer in a beauty pageant. Although Junior wants to alter his appearance in time for his school photo, his mom, Marta (Samantha Castillo), fears that he is showing signs of being a homosexual. Meanwhile, Junior is too young to understand why his will to look a certain way is causing such worry for his mom. It is always fascinating to see how different countries take a look at sexual identity and LGBT themes through coming-of-age storylines. Titles like the American indie Pariah, and France's Tomboy and Blue is the Warmest Colour were compelling glimpses of young people navigating their sexuality, honest and rich with emotional detail. Bad Hair, which is in Spanish, should be an insightful view into the sexual politics of citizens from another side of the world. Mixed with what critics rave to be tender, wrenching performances from its cast, including the young Zambrano, this could be one of the most emotionally affecting titles of the year. Mariana Rondon’s drama could also be one of the fall’s most thought-provoking films, and with a limited run set for November, it could be a modest success – especially if the movie, which stands a good change of being touted as Venezuela’s submission for foreign language film, is nominated for an Oscar. 2) Dear White People (Oct. 17) How many films can you name that talk about racial issues in a way that is both honest and funny? The topic of race relations remains prescient in an era when the president is black but the representation of minorities remains a major problem in common society and culture. Thankfully, there is a film that seems to express that anger in a way that is not reactive but sharp and hilarious. Dear White People focuses on an Ivy League university with a small African-American minority. The black students still have to deal with an outsider status that comes to a head when a biracial student (Tessa Thompson), who hosts a radio talk show, starts using the media platform to put down the school’s white student body. Meanwhile, the film boasts a terrific cast of TV staples getting to stretch into feature roles, including Mad Men’s Teyonah Parris and Everybody Hates Chris’s Tyler James Williams. Dennis Haysbert also has a supporting role as the university’s dean. Much of the attention, though, is going toward Tessa Thompson, in what is being deemed a star-making performance. One of the characters in the film is described as what would happen if Spike Lee and Oprah Winfrey had a pissed-off baby. Hopefully, the former’s rage and insight can mix with the latter’s crowd-pleasing sensibility in Justin Simien’s directorial debut. (Simien was voted by Variety as one of 10 Directors to Watch this year.) Dear White People looks pointed, but still fun enough to make anyone laugh at the sad state of racial stereotypes and politics. 3) Felony (Oct. 17) Joel Edgerton is not just a fine actor, but a terrific screenwriter too, as indicated by his feature writing debut, the Australian noir The Square. While he has become a familiar face due to his involvement in projects as diverse as Animal Kingdom, The Great Gatsby and Warrior, Edgerton has some storytelling chops as well. Last September, he debuted his newest script, Felony, at the Toronto International Film Festival. Even with a high-profile cast and rave reviews – including one from We Got This Covered’s Darren Ruecker – it has taken more than a year to leap from the festival circuit to the cinema. A compelling tale of loyalty and police corruption, Felony follows Malcolm, played by Edgerton, an Australian cop who accidentally hits a kid on a bike during a drive home. The two detectives who realize what Malcolm has done take different approaches of how to deal with the situation. Senior cop Carl Summer (Tom Wilkinson) understands Malcolm’s predicament and tries to cover up the crime, while junior cop Jim Melic (Jai Courtney) wants to expose him. Ruecker wrote, in his four-and-a-half-star rave, that Felony is “an absolutely gripping and realistic crime tale.” Given the recent wave of terrific, character-driven thrillers to come from Australia, that is no surprise. With Edgerton finally get some time in a lead role and the always superb Tom Wilkinson offering a stellar performance, this should be a powerhouse drama. With police corruption and brutality continuing to be a major topic in North America, Felony’s varying perspectives and moral sides should make the film one of the most complex thrillers of the year. 4) Force Majeure (Oct. 24) When the Academy makes their selections for which films to nominated in the foreign language category in early 2015, do not be surprised to hear Sweden’s name being called. Their selection for the Oscars, the tense comedy-thriller Force Majeure, was one of the hottest titles at the recent Toronto film festival. Oh, and it also scored a big prize at Cannes earlier in the year. Force Majeure is the story of a crumbling marriage between businessman Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli). On a skiing vacation in the French Alps with their young children, the couple stares down an avalanche on the mountainside. While Ebba stays back to protect her children, Tomas bolts for the door. This pivotal event casts a huge shadow over the conflicted father, as he examines his role as a family man. Swedish director Ruben Ostlund directed the incendiary drama Play from 2011, and his latest title manages to explore more thought-provoking questions. Force Majeure is also earning raves for its satirical elements, a merciless examination of masculinity that should be quite the conversation starter. We Got This Covered’s Sam Woolf praised the film’s balance of tragedy and comedy, writing in his review that Ostlund “imbues cringe comedy with technical precision and resplendent visuals that usually have no place within the genre.” A true original with Oscar on its sights, Force Majeure is not to be missed. 5) Leviathan (Dec. 31) Not to be confused with the astounding ethnographic documentary of the same name from 2012, the latest drama from Russian master Andrey Zvyagintsev was once touted to be the frontrunner for the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Although it earned the best screenplay title there, many film critics believe the film was robbed of the top honor. After its sterling reception in Cannes (and more recently in Toronto), Zvyagintsev is being deemed one of the new great auteurs of world cinema. The Russian director’s latest is an ambitious film, inspired by the Book of Job. It centers around a family in rural, northwestern Russia, concerning a legal battle between patriarch Kolya (Alexei Serebryakov) and the town’s mayor Vadim (Roman Madyanov). Vadim wants to buy the land where Kolya’s family has lived for many generations, but the mayor is finding that some big secrets could come to light if things do not go over well. Critics have praised Leviathan for having an expansive visual style reminiscent of Tarkovsky, as well as elements of Hollywood melodrama and sordid Coen Brothers-esque humor. Given the world’s prickly reception to much of Russia’s actions on the political stage and the film’s foregrounding of a divide between the authority and the Russian people, this should be a very topical movie that could define much of the current zeitgeist from that country. The film may be slow and meditative, but its searing look into modern social life in Russia should be an eye-opener. Meanwhile, with a score from Philip Glass, Leviathan should sound as good as it looks. This is another title to not be surprised about if it earns a foreign language film nomination at the next Academy Awards. 6) Listen Up Philip (Oct. 17) Alongside Boyhood, Whiplash and Love is Strange – three titles that should appear on various year-end lists of the best films of 2014 – Listen Up Philip was one of the most acclaimed movies to debut at Sundance earlier in the year. However, do not expect it to catch on with audiences who are not up to spend two hours with a smug narcissist, the title character played by Jason Schwartzman. With his tale of an unrepentant intellectual filled with acerbic wit and a glorified ego, writer/director Alex Ross Perry is outdoing Noah Baumbach at his own game. Schwartzman stars as Philip Lewis Friedman, an author with a major attitude and sense of entitlement about to go on a book tour for his critically-beloved new novel. However, he is going through relationship woes with his girlfriend, Ashley (played by Elisabeth Moss), and a tough friendship with his literary mentor, a Philip Roth-like master novelist and miscreant played by character actor Jonathan Pryce, who does some of the finest work of his career here. Listen Up Philip should be the breakthrough for director-in-waiting Alex Ross Perry. This toxic, dark comedy may not be for everyone, but fans of the scathing early films of David O. Russell and Noah Baumbach should find themselves in good company here. 7) The Overnighters (Oct. 10) One of the year’s most awaited documentary titles after it debuted to rapturous reviews at Sundance, The Overnighters will finally get a release this fall. It may not have the easy appeal of other October films, but this compassionate, compelling glimpse into faith and community in North Dakota could be a major player in the Best Documentary race. The film focuses on a small town as its recovers from the recession. To work on an oil rig in the town of Williston, North Dakota is a second chance for many beleaguered Americans. However, not everyone is so lucky to make a living, and so the town’s pastor, Jay Reinke, tries to help those who are still looking for work, shelter and safety in the program that gives the film its name. The Overnighters is already being heralded as evoking the spirit of John Steinbeck, with an inspiring, contemporary take on the search for the American Dream. Among filmmakers, it is being compared to the works of Errol Morris. It is very easy for a filmmaker to poke fun at religion in the modern world, so it is a relief to see a documentary explore the role of faith in a way that is mature, complex and heartbreaking. 2014 has not been a very good years for successful documentaries; among limited releases, the highest-grossing title is Tim’s Vermeer. Without many high-profile players for the Oscar, expect a strong push from critics, and distributor Drafthouse Films, throughout the season. Filled with sympathy but also story surprises – that reviews for this title do a good job of hiding – The Overnighters should be a major players for the Documentary Oscar. 8) Pride (Now playing) While American cinema is full of stories of uplift, no country knows how to make an earnest, inspiring crowd-pleaser quite like Great Britain. Films like Billy Elliot, Made in Dagenham and Kinky Boots – all of which were turned into hit stage musicals – are tales that use the struggles from working-class communities to launch into stories of adversity and artistic expression. The newest title to fit this mold seems to be Pride, a new fact-based comedy from director Matthew Warchus. Pride looks at a bond between two kinds of English citizens marginalized by Thatcher’s conservative government in the early 1980s: the gay community, shunned by the mainstream due to the AIDS crisis, and miners, who were striking a bid to thwart the government’s plans to close the pits. Two groups that at first seem divisive end up working together to help the miners’ union. The festival favorite boasts some of the most distinguished English actors working today – Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy, Dominic West, Paddy Considine – and some of the country’s rising stars, including George MacKay, Ben Schnetzer and Sherlock’s Moriarty, Andrew Scott. It's earned a lot of strong word-of-mouth from showings in Cannes and Toronto and in his review of the drama, We Got This Covered’s David James writes that its “kind of political earnestness is rare in modern mainstream cinema.” For a season filled with heavier films baiting for awards love, Pride could be this year’s Philomena: a riveting true story punctuated by sharp comedy that stays in theatres for months. 9) Still Alice (TBD December) Julianne Moore has received four Academy Award nominations during her career, for turns as varied as a porn star in Boogie Nights and a miserable housewife in The Hours. Fresh off a win at Cannes for her fierce performance in David Cronenberg’s upcoming Maps to the Stars, she may be courting Oscar gold come next February – but for her performance in a completely different film. Based off a bestselling novel by Lisa Genova, Still Alice tells the story of Alice Howland, a respected Harvard professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Genova’s novel tells the story from Alice’s perspective, as she loses her memory and her connection to her husband and three children. Besides Moore’s rave reviews, Alec Baldwin is receiving some of the finest notices of his career for his performance as Alice’s husband, John. Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish round out the principal cast. Still Alice will see a limited one-week run in December to qualify for early 2015’s awards season before widening into release in January. While much of the buzz around the Best Actress race seemed to fall around Reese Witherspoon (for Wild) and Felicity Jones (for The Theory of Everything), a rousing reception at TIFF has put the odds in Moore’s favor. With such a remarkable career without an Oscar win, if the film connects with audiences with the same vigor that Genova’s novel connected with readers, expect her name to be called at various awards ceremonies. 10) The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya (Oct. 17) The 19th title from Studio Ghibli and an instant frontrunner to take home the Best Animated Feature award at the next Oscars – given that Big Hero 6 does not pull in front – Princess Kaguya could be one of the last films North Americans see from the studio in some time, until it returns from a hiatus. It is also the first title from Grave of the Fireflies director Isao Takahata in 15 years, which should mean this drama packs quite the emotional punch. Bridging the gap between magic and realism in a way that Studio Ghibli knows best, Princess Kaguya tells the story of Okina, a bamboo cutter in rural Japan who finds a small creature in a grove. This creature grows to become Kaguya (voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz in the English dub), who grows at a speed the rest of the village is unaccustomed to. As she becomes a woman, Kaguya must deal with her magical abilities in a very dark world. Actors such as Lucy Liu, Beau Bridges, James Marsden and James Caan round out the English voice cast. The film is inspired by an old Japanese folk tale and could be the swan song for its revered animation master. The look is vastly different from the brightness and tidiness of Miyazaki’s filmography, but has a textured, hand-drawn quality that should make its visual presentation one-of-a-kind. Although the film did not perform to par with Ghibli’s other films in Japan, strong reviews and a surefire spot in the Animated Feature category could earn Kaguya some love in foreign markets.