Fruitvale Station

New Year’s Eve, 2008. Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) wakes up feeling something special in the air, and he resolves to turn his life around. Fruitvale Station tells the true story of the events on New Year’s Day, 2009 that would shake San Francisco to its core.

Oscar Grant, a hard-working 22-year-old San Francisco resident, has been waiting for the opportunity to cut ties with his criminal past, and now on the eve of 2009 he resolves to do so. He wants to be a better son to his mother (Octavia Spencer), a better partner to his girlfriend (Melanie Diaz), and a better father to his daughter (Ariana Neal). He just feels like today is his day, but he soon realizes that change doesn’t always come easy. After meeting up with some friends on the train, he gets into a confrontation with an old enemy and a BART officer shoots him in cold blood.

Fruitvale Station won both the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature and the 2013 Sundance Festival Audience Award for its portrayal of the tragedy that befell Oscar Grant on January 1, 2009. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, Fruitvale Station will be released into limited theaters on July 12, 2013. This Weinstein Company drama also stars Ahna O’Reilly, Kevin Durand, and Chad Michael Murray.

 

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Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by feature film newcomer Benh Zeitlin and written by Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar, took the recent Sundance Film Festival by storm, winning both the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Dramatic, and the Excellence in Cinematography Award for U.S. Dramatic. Hailed as “stunning,” “magnificent,” “magical,” and “unforgettable,” Beasts of the Southern Wild is both a magical tale and a hero’s journey.

Set is a part of the Louisiana Delta swampland known as “the Bathtub,” Beasts stars newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis as six-year-old Hushpuppy, a courageous girl who lives with her hard-drinking father, Wink (Dwight Henry). In a film that does a marvelous job of portraying the bond between father and daughter, Wink’s tough love prepares Hushpuppy for a time when the universe itself seems to unravel.

When Wink contracts a mysterious terminal illness, the world seems to start to spin out of control. Temperatures rise and the ice caps melt – unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs (which some critics have likened to “prehistoric giant warthogs”) that are ready to terrorize the populace. With the waters rising and Wink’s health failing, young Hushpuppy sets out alone on a search for her lost mother.

Beautifully shot on Super 16-millimeter film, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a truly unique film that defies stereotypes, managing to be at once mythological, anthropological and apocalyptic.