[CUFS_Professor's Film Blog] Indie Movies

Now I can say 'Buffalo 66' is my favorite indie movie out of thinking a lot of what to choose from so many indie films I like.

Billy(Vincent Gallo) is not the type of kidnapper we can generally envision. It is odd that his kidnapping Layla(Christina Ricci) is getting to be all justified for some reasons, at least in my perspective. Billy went to jail just for the crime he had not commit but his friend did. As soon as he got released from prison, he kidnapped Layla, a tap dancer who he met at some bar, just to use her in a way of forcing Layla to pretend to be his fiance. For him, at the very least, the fake would make a representation of his having lived a normal life to his parents by whom he has never been loved. Strangely, Layla is getting into Billy's insecurity and starting to love him the way he is. Minding these factors allows a room for us to feel sympathy for the protagonist.

How Vincent Gallo(the director and screenwriter of Buffalo 66) cleverly showed Billy's being insecure and hypersensitive is owing to the camera work making Billy usually out of focus, the one who's supposed to be in the center of a frame. Even when he has a full shot, he looks too fragile in a scene to think him as the one holding a hostage.

Some of my favorite scenes are when Layla's tap dancing out of the blue in a bowling alley with lights out as if she were on the stage. One hilarious moment of the movie is when they're about to take a picture in a photo booth. Billy asks Layla to pretend a happy decent couple but when she tries to kiss him or do some silly he reacts aggressively to her getting her off of him, which brilliantly signals that he's never been loved by anyone before.

Thanks to this blog's post, I got to see this movie again in my DVD and was able to have different ideas about it in a more critical method that I've learned in a movie class I currently attend. Thank you for reading.

Layla's Tapdancing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZL_3PDh_K4


Buffalo 66 Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1duitd-N1Us

I can't let this my favorite genre go with just one comment. Here are my two recommendations. One is Simple Man(1992) directed by Hal Hartley. I watched it a long long time ago and also has a dvd of it. I just immediately fell in love with this movie the minute I saw the scene of the three main casts dancing with 'Kool Thing' by Sonic Youth. The scene also made me buy the Sonic Youth's album [GOO]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqUSTpL8RHo

The recent Korean indie film I've watched was 'Jane in a dream'. The English title is just [Jane] but the original one is what I've translated [꿈의 제인] but not sure if it's correct. I saw this as one unique indie movie mixed with some queer and teenage dramas with no specific purpose to give audiences a clear message. And I actually like the way of this movie's portrait. Hope you can get a glimpse of [Jane] through Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XJUC-UStYo