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As Catherine Keener’s latest film hits cinemas, Movies.ie picks its favourite indie gems to get you in the mood

For her fourth film – writer/director Nicole Holofcener has cast her regular/favourite indie actress Catherine Keener as Kate, a successful, socially conscious New Yorker who runs a furniture business with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt). With most of her buys coming from the families of the recently deceased, Kate finds herself felling increasing guilty; with her guilt only heightened as they await the death of their next door neighbour Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert), so that they can annex her apartment.


In an attempt to assuage their guilt, tha pair attempt to get to know Andra and her two grown-up granddaughters – but things don’t quite work out as planned.



LOVELY AND AMAZING






For her second film, Holofcener tackled the plot of three neurotic women. Jane Marks (Brenda Blethyn) is a middle-aged mother with two grown-up daughters and an adopted younger African-American daughter, Annie (played by newcomer Raven Goodwin). When Jane goes into surgery, the daughters find themselves having to bond with Annie for the first time. Meanwhile, the older daughter Michelle (Catherine Keener) tires of trying to sell her bizarre artwork and takes a job in a photo centre in an attempt to convince her irritable husband that she’s ‘grown up’. Holofcener honed her craft writing and directing various episodes of Sex and The City (and we don’t mean the movies) and it shows in a film that truly lives up to its title.

 

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH





Starring Keener and written by oddball Charlie Kaufman, this is one of the oddest and darkest comedies we’ve ever seen. The film supposes that there is a portal hiding behind a filing cabinet in a regular (well, sort of regular) office block that leads directly to the brain of John Malkovich. Anyone who passes through this portal posses poor old John for a short time, controlling his every movement before being spit out somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike. A must for Keener fans.

 

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND





And finally an indie favourite!  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, takes place inside the mind of Joel (played by Jim Carrey) as he tries to stop a procedure to completely remove all memory of his former lover, Clementine (Kate Winslet). This may be a stretch for most mainstream cinema audiences but at its heart, the film is a heart-breaking and touching love story. The fact that the audience can still identify with the love story at the heart of all the weirdness is testament to how good Michelle Gondry’s film is.