Indie Focus: Taking off with Fall Sneaks and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’

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

As summer turns to fall at the movies, we spent the week looking back. Ryan Faughnder took at the look at how things went for the studios this season. (A: Not well.) Steve Zeitchik looked at the unusual number of titles that premiered at Sundance in January and opened in theaters in August. (Regular readers of this newsletter will recognize a lot of them.)

I wrote a broader look at the box office for independent films this summer. While “The Big Sick” was a clear success, there were many other movies that seemed popular and were much talked-about in the media but not hits at the box office. It’s an unusual moment.

Next week we’ll be writing from the Toronto International Film Festival. For a sneak peak, here’s Josh Rottenberg’s preview of the Telluride Film Festival, which features some of the same top-line titles that will be playing at TIFF (and that we’ll be talking about all through awards season).

We also are hard at work on lining up some screenings for the fall prestige season. To find out more and for updates on future events, go to events.latimes.com.

Fall Sneaks

Sunday we published the Fall Sneaks movie preview section, covering what’s coming up over the next few months.

Meredith Woerner met the cast members of “Thor: Ragnarok” who are new to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including actresses Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson and Rachel House, along with director and actor Taika Waititi.

“You’ve got to understand that Taika Waititi the actor is an incredible person to work with,” Waititi explained. “When Taika Waititi the director comes across someone like that, it just seems appropriate to give that actor a bit more time to show what they can do.”

Rottenberg took a look at the designs of the upcoming “Blade Runner 2049.”

Amy Kaufman met Jeff Bauman, the real-life inspiration for Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in “Stronger.”

Zeitchik spoke to Richard Linklater about his “Last Flag Flying.”

Sonaiya Kelley spoke to cinematographer Mandy Walker about the shoot for “The Mountain Between Us.”

Tre’vell Anderson spoke to Emma Stone and Billie Jean King, the woman Stone portrays in the upcoming “Battle of the Sexes.” The film is about King’s notorious 1973 tennis match with Bobby Riggs.

Zeitchik also visited the set of the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s “It,” and spoke to actor Bill Skarsgard about taking on the role of evil clown Pennywise. “There is something inexplicable about Pennywise, and it should be that way,” Skarsgard said.

Emily Zemler talked to Domhnall Gleeson about the four films he has coming out this year — “American Made,” “Goodbye Christopher Robin,” “Mother!” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

As Gleeson said, “Every time you take a job there’s a point halfway through where you just think, ‘I’m screwing this up for everyone.’ But that’s happened on enough jobs that have turned out well where I know it’s part of the process. You learn you just have to keep working.”

Glenn Whipp looked at upcoming releases through the lens of awards season. Whipp also spoke to author Brian Selznick about adapting his own book, “Wonderstruck.”

I spoke to writer and director Angela Robinson about exploring the story behind the creation of the character of Wonder Woman in “Profesor Marston and the Wonder Women.”

I also spoke to Ben Stiller about his performances in the upcoming films “Brad’s Status” and “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).” Stiller is revealing something deeply emotional in both films, as he said, “I’m at a place right now where I’ve wanted to get to for a long time personally in terms of where I know the work that I’m doing is just about something that I find personal and creatively challenging and that’s it.”

‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’

Among the most exciting releases this week is the 40th anniversary celebration of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in a new 4K restoration. (That means it should look really good! I’m going to see it myself over the long weekend.)

The movie is of course about aliens visiting Earth from outer space, and it goes without saying that the special effects are still dazzling all these years later. But what really sells the story is its fantastic cast, including Richard Dreyfus, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr and Francois Truffaut.

The Times reprinted our original 1977 review of the film by the mighty Charles Champlin. He said of the film “despite its scope ‘Close Encounters’ stays light on its legs, mystical and reverential but not solemn. It is a warm celebration, positive and pleasurable. The humor is folksy and slapstick rather than cerebral, as if to confirm that our encounter is with a populist vehicle.”

At the New York Times, J. Hoberman wrote a new essay on the film, noting “Like ‘Star Wars,’ which had its premiere approximately half a year before ‘Close Encounters,’ Mr. Spielberg’s film drew on the science-fiction movies and TV shows of its director’s childhood. But where ‘Star Wars’ transported viewers to a distant galaxy, ‘Close Encounters’ brought representatives of that galaxy to Earth — more specifically suburban Middle America.”

‘Goon: Last of the Enforcers’

The 2011 hockey comedy “Goon” shouldn’t have bene entirely a surprise, as filmmaker Michael Dowse has long been making unassumingly terrific films. The movie has amassed something of a cult following in the years since and so now we are given a sequel, “Goon: Last of the Enforcers.” Directed by Jay Baruchel — who co-wrote both the original and the sequel — the new film has a cast that again features Seann William Scott, Liev Schreiber, Alison Pill and Baruchel, with the additions of Wyatt Russell and Elisha Cuthbert.

In his review for The Times, Michael Rechtshaffen didn’t much care for the new film, noting that Baruchel “hasn’t found the energetic balance between the crude, the slapstick and the sweet that made the previous [movie] an unassuming treat.”

The Times’ Jen Yamato spoke to Baruchel about his directing debut. As for the responsibility of making a hockey movie of his own, he said “I do feel the weight of being the steward of the greatest sport the world ever came up with. I grew up with a love and admiration for it, so I feel an obligation to portray it as electric and terrifying and exciting and beautiful, and all these sometimes contradicting things that make hockey what it is.”

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