Newsletter: Indie Focus: Celebrate with ‘The Purge: Election Year,’ ‘Life, Animated’ and ‘Microbe and Gasoline’

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

I just want to briefly stump again for a number of movies that opened recently and are still in playing. “Swiss Army Man,” “The Neon Demon,” “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” and “Wiener-Dog” are all terrific theatrical experiences that benefit from being seen that way. No one is allowed to complain there is nothing good at the movies without having given at least one of them a look.

We had a great screening and Q&A this week with “Captain Fantastic” writer-director Matt Ross. We’ve got some more events coming up soon. Check events.latimes.com for more info.

Nonstop movies. Movies nonstop.

‘The Purge: Election Year’

This July 4th holiday we ask ourselves: Would the founding fathers have been fans of good, grubby action movies? “The Purge” series is now up to a third entry in the unexpected franchise. The movies have touched a raw nerve with viewers, capturing an air of discontent that has only been growing stronger during the recent political cycle. So writer-director James DeMonaco decided to go all-in and just make “The Purge: Election Year” about an election in a world where one night a year all laws are off.

As Justin Chang wrote in his Times review, “Pitting a heroic female presidential hopeful against a shadowy cabal of gun-toting one-percenters, this is a crudely opportunistic, engrossingly pulpy extension of a franchise that, as ludicrous as its setup has always been, seems increasingly in step with the violent absurdity of the times.”

In the New York Times, A.O. Scott added, “While the stated moral may be that violence is terrible, the visceral message is that it’s a lot of fun, and Mr. DeMonaco is an able, if not always terribly original, painter of nightmarish, sanguinary tableaus. … ‘The Purge: Election Year’ takes itself just seriously enough to provide the expected measure of fun — a blend of aggression, release and relief. A lot of people die, but no one really gets hurt.”

In the Village Voice, Bilge Ebiri added, “the sights and sounds of the earlier films felt like monsters from our collective Id, disturbingly familiar and compelling. Ironically, DeMonaco is releasing this new one into a real-life political environment of unnerving tension and gonzo theatricality — but in some weird way, the previous films felt more prescient than this new one.”

Academy Award-winning documentary director Roger Ross Williams, left, sits with Owen Suskind, an autistic young man who is the subject of Williams’ documentary “Life, Animated.”

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times )

‘Life, Animated’

The heartwarming new documentary “Life, Animated” by Roger Ross Williams is based on the book by Ron Suskind about his son Owen and how the family has dealt with Owen’s austism. In particular, the movie focuses on how Owen has used animated Disney films as a filter to see and understand the world.

“Everybody runs around with characters and scenes in their heads,” Ron Suskind recently said to The Times’ Rebecca Keegan. “But Owen had to take it to almost a theoretical extreme. How much can we live off of movies as our guide? How much of the meaning and essence and life can you draw from these entertainment products?”

In his review of the movie, Kenneth Turan said of Owen’s struggles: “His remarkable story is so unusual you would dismiss it out of hand if it were fiction, but the documentary ‘Life, Animated’ demonstrates that it’s completely true.”

The film has been well-received/reviewed overall since its premiere earlier this year at Sundance, but in a review in the New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis wrote that the emphasis on Owen and animation creates a situation in which ”the limited template these stories provide for navigating the world is a bruise that Mr. Williams declines to press too hard.”

‘The Innocents’

Based on a true story and directed by French filmmaker Anne Fontaine, “The Innocents” is a WWII story about the collision between people of faith and the ravages of war. When a group of French nuns suddenly become pregnant, the truth becomes a mystery to be unraveled.

In his review for The Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, “‘The Innocents’ soars above its seeming contradictions. … A gripping psychological drama based on events more than half a century old, it has inescapable contemporary echoes. Laced with intensely emotional situations, it refuses to force the issue by pushing too hard. And it proves, yet again, that though moral and spiritual questions may not sound spellbinding they often provide the most absorbing movie experiences.”

In his review for the New York Times, Stephen Holden noted how “‘The Innocents’ is most interested in exploring how the atrocities test the sisters’ religious faith.”

For the LA Weekly, April Wolfe added, “If there’s a war movie we haven’t seen enough of yet, it’s one from the female perspective, one that further obscures who the good guys and bad guys really are. In Anne Fontaine’s moody feature ‘The Innocents,’ even the nuns are gray.”

‘Microbe and Gasoline’

Michel Gondry is a filmmaker of such singular invention and vision that he has become something of a genre unto himself, and recent films from “Swiss Army Man” to even “Life, Animated” evince an influence from his blend of whimsy and melancholy. But he’s also not done yet and has recently been making films back in France, including his new teenage road movie “Microbe & Gasoline.”

For The Times, Katie Walsh noted: “There’s an immensity to the small dramas of this awkward in-between stage, where Microbe and Gasoline revel in no longer being boys, but not yet men. Gondry brings a sense of heartfelt nostalgia, pathos and humor to this portrait of a short, unique adolescent moment.”

At Film Comment, Jonathan Romney called Gondry “one of the most likable, but also one of the most frustrating of contemporary filmmakers” and said “Microbe & Gasoline” “is among his simplest films; after some of his recent excesses, it feels like his detox movie. It’s a fond, unfussy, affable, and extremely casual comedy about two French teenage boys — and, given that it’s set in Gondry’s own home town of Versailles, it looks for all the world like an autobiographical work.”

Writing for Time Out when the film played at last fall’s New York Film Festival, David Ehrlich said, “From its mundane beginnings to its melancholy closing grace note, ’Microbe and Gasoline’ is such a wonderfully touching film because it remembers the urgency of wanting to get older without growing up.”

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