Last week, Nicholas Bell helped us ring in the new year with our Top 200 most anticipated world cinema items. We also highlighted our Top 25 studio film items and this past Monday, Matthew Roe re-launched the bi-monthly What’s Up Doc? Top 100. This Sunday, and running up to D-Day (an American independent cinema love-fest known as Sundance) we begin our countdown to the top offerings in American indie for 2018.
Below, I supplement one hundred reasons to be enthusiastic for future microbudget (a la Jarmusch’s 1984 film, Stranger Than Paradise), small and medium-sized budget independent film offerings, with a listing of 100 more reasons to champion 2018. Some of these were included at Sundance/Slamdance, some will trickle into SXSW, Tribeca, TIFF, and some will find their home at prestige Euro fest, launch from one of the streaming type services or one of the many U.S. based film fests. While the status of Shane Carruth and the Spike Jonze/Frank Ocean/Brad Pitt projects remain a mystery, most of these films mentioned below and in our top 100 have already seen clapperboard action including a now defunct item (#199 position) that we wish could find an All the Money in the World resolve, a film caught in legal limbo (#200 position), and three made for TV films * . Make sure to visit is on Sunday, follow us on twitter @ioncinema or grab our RSS feed.
#101. Hereditary – Ari Aster
#102. Butterfly in the Typewriter – David DuBos
#103. Burden – Andrew Heckler
#104. Lost Girls – Liz Garbus
#105. American Woman – Semi Chellas
#106. Lying and Stealing – Matt Aselton
#107. The Pervert – Jack Dunphy, Nathan Silver
#108. Zoe – Drake Doremus
#109. Clara’s Ghost – Bridey Elliott
#110. Bel Canto – Paul Weitz
#111. My Dinner with Hervé – Sacha Gervasi *
#112. Fahrenheit 451 – Ramin Bahrani *
#113. Sadie – Megan Griffiths
#114. Mid ’90s – Jonah Hill
#115. Brighton Beach – David Gutnik
#116. Never Goin’ Back – Augustine Frizzell
#117. A Bread Factory, Part Two – Patrick Wang
#118. Honky Kong – Stephen Gurewitz
#119. On the Basis of Sex – Mimi Leder
#120. Beirut – Brad Anderson
#121. A Bread Factory, Part One – Patrick Wang
#122. Arizona – Jonathan Watson
#123. Happy Valley – Barry Levinson *
#124. Monsters and Men – Reinaldo Marcus Green
#125. The Turning – Floria Sigismondi
#126. Ghostbox Cowboy – John Maringouin
#127. Deep Murder – Nick Corirossi
#128. Search – Aneesh Chaganty
#129. A Boy, A Girl, A Dream. – Qasim Basir
#130. Blindspotting – Carlos López Estrada
#131. Furlough – Laurie Collyer
#132. Bushwick Beats – A. Sayeeda Moreno, Chloe Sarbib, Brian Shoaf, Sonejuhi Sinha, James Sweeny, Anu Valia
#133. IO – Jonathan Helpert
#134. Juliet, Naked – Jesse Peretz
#135. The Catcher Was a Spy – Ben Lewin
#136. The Burning Woman – Jake Scott
#137. Two Plains and a Fancy – Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn
#138. Alex Strangelove – Craig Johnson
#139. A Kid Like Jake – Silas Howard
#140. A Name Without a Place – Kenny Riches
#141. The Peanut Butter Falcon – Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz
#142. Puzzle – Marc Turtletaub
#143. White Rabbit – Daryl Wein
#144. Tau – Federico D’Alessandro
#145. Them That Follow – Brittany Poulton & Daniel Savage
#146. The Beach House – Jeff Brown
#147. A Rainy Day in New York – Woody Allen
#148. Dragged Across Concrete – S. Craig Zahler
#149. In a Relationship – Sam Boyd
#150. The Little Stranger – Lenny Abrahamson
#151. Unabomb – Robert Lorenz
#152. The Best of Enemies – Robin Bissell
#153. Corpse Tub – Vivieno Caldinelli
#154. Shadow Girl – Claudia Myers
#155. We Have Always Live in the Castle – Stacie Passon
#156. Behold My Heart – Joshua Leonard
#157. Ideal Home – Andrew Fleming
#158. Jonathan – Bill Oliver
#159. Fast Color – Julie Hart
#160. Kin – Jonathan Baker, Josh Baker
#161. The Pretenders – James Franco
#162. Lucky Day – Roger Avary
#163. How It Ends – David M. Rosenthal
#164. Family Ritual – Radio Silence
#165. Amateur – Ryan Koo
#166. The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter – Jody Hill
#167. Human Affairs – Charlie Birns
#168. The Long Home – James Franco
#169. Hearts Beat Loud – Brett Haley
#170. A Futile & Stupid Gesture – David Wain
#171. Richard Says Goodbye – Wayne Roberts
#172. Lapham Rising – Charlie Kessler
#173. Jobe’z World – Mike Bilandic
#174. Replicas – Jeffrey Nachmanoff
#175. Time Freak – Andrew Bowler
#176. Captive State – Rupert Wyatt
#177. The True Adventures of Wolfboy – Martin Krejcí
#178. The Party’s Just Beginning – Karen Gillan
#179. Billionaire Boys Club – James Cox
#180. The Titan – Lennart Ruff
#181. The World Without You – Damon Shalit
#182. Going Places – John Turturro
#183. Flower – Max Winkler
#184. The Rainbow Experiment – Christina Kallas
#185. Always All Ways, Anne Marie – Zia Anger
#186. Chained for Life – Aaron Schimberg
#187. Tuscaloosa – Philip Harder
#188. You Can Choose Your Family – Miranda Bailey
#189. Shotgun – Hannah Marks & Joey Power
#190. Three Seconds – Andrea Di Stefano
#191. Wild Honey Pie – Jamie Adams
#192. The Philosophy of Phil – Greg Kinnear
#193. Killroy Was Here – Kevin Smith
#194. Departures – Peter Hutchings
#195. An L.A. Minute – Daniel Adams
#196. The Kid – Vincent D’Onofrio
#197. Cruise – Robert Siegel
#198. Rosy – Jess Manafort
#199. Gore – Michael Hoffman
#200. London Fields – Mathew Cullen