Latest / Indie Film Weekly / 5 Indie Movies This Week: O Horizon, Stop! That! Train!, Waking Life & More

Transcript

5 Indie Movies This Week: O Horizon, Stop! That! Train!, Waking Life & More · Indie Film Weekly

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of June 12th, 2026.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This week in theaters, we've got a magical realist romance where a grieving neuroscientist gets a chance to talk to her dead father again.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a full tilt camp disaster comedy on a high-speed train headed for trouble.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got a hand-drawn anime Odyssey that follows one hero across a hundred years through a whole stack of identities.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Quick ask before we move on if you can see one of these in a theater this weekend, please do.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Indie films don't get a long runway, and those opening weekend tickets are what keep the show times from disappearing.
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  SPEAKER_00: On demand, I've got a quiet Japanese thriller that starts like a town meeting and ends like a warning.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And for our classic, we're going into a rotoscoped dream walk that turns late night brain spirals into cinema.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Want the written version of these picks each week?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I also publish the Indie Film Weekly Newsletter.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same five films in a quick read.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sign up at newsletter.com.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Our first film in theaters this week is O Horizon, directed by Madeline Rotzler.
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  SPEAKER_00: It follows a young neuroscientist who keeps trying to keep her life moving while grief keeps yanking her backward.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her father has died, and she's holding together the way a lot of high-functioning people do.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Busy schedule, forward motion, don't sit still long enough to feel anything.
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  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, she's stepping into a new romance and making a serious career discovery.
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  SPEAKER_00: So her world is already overloaded with change.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Then an emerging technology appears that allows her to speak with her father again.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not metaphorically, not through a dream, a real conversation with the voice she thought she'd lost.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: The comfort is immediate, and so is the destabilization.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because once you can keep talking, you don't have to accept goodbye.
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  SPEAKER_00: The film treats that like both a gift and a trap, and it plays the emotional stakes honestly.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maria Bacolova carries the role with a mix of intelligence and vulnerability, and David Strathairn gives the father a presence that feels specific, not saintly.
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  SPEAKER_00: The fun is that the movie has warmth and humor even while it's wrestling with something heavy.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not a tech movie.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a what are we doing to ourselves when we refuse to let go movie?
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's a strong big screen pick.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Our second indie film in theaters this week is Stop That Train, directed by Adam Shanckman.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is a disaster comedy that shows up in full glam and refuses to tone it down for anyone.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tess and Dee Dee are best friends working as train stewardesses, stuck on a dreary route where the main event is a broken vending machine.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: They finally get upgraded to the glitzy Glamazonian Express, which is basically the good China version of public transportation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the universe says cute and drops a catastrophic storm.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The train is in real danger of derailing and crashing into Los Angeles.
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  SPEAKER_00: So Tess and Dee Dee have to team up with snobby first class attendants and a wildly theatrical president to save the day.
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  SPEAKER_00: The joy here is commitment.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is playing it straight inside an absurd world, which is exactly how camp works.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a wild ride of Prattfalls attitude and escalating chaos, and it understands the basic truth of group travel.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: When things go wrong, your worst enemy is not the weather, it's the person who thinks they should be in charge.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you want a theater crowd movie that's basically a party with a plot, this is it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our last film in the theaters this week is Jinsei.
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  SPEAKER_00: Written, directed, edited, and entirely hand-drawn by Ruyo Suzuki.
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  SPEAKER_00: This animated drama follows one hero across a hundred-year chronicle spanning past, present, and future.
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  SPEAKER_00: In each chapter, he's called a different name, and it becomes different versions of himself, including a J-pop idol, an outcast, a leader, and an oracle.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: The story begins with a chance encounter with a transfer student that pushes him toward idol training and kicks off a search for self-identity.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: What makes the film stand out is the scale versus the intimacy.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's huge in timeline, but it keeps returning to a very personal feeling.
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  SPEAKER_00: The pressure of being labeled, the temptation to perform, the fear of becoming someone else's idea of you.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's also an undeniable craft flex in how it was made.
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  SPEAKER_00: One person doing this much work means every frame has intention.
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  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel factory built.
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  SPEAKER_00: It feels lived in and obsessive in the best way.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you like animation that aims bigger than comfort and nostalgia, this is a great theatrical pick.
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  SPEAKER_00: It wants your full attention and it earns it.
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  SPEAKER_00: So in theaters this week, that's O Horizon, Stop That Train, and Jinsei.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is Evil Does Not Exist.
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  SPEAKER_00: Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, it starts in a rural village near Tokyo where Takumi and his young daughter live in a modest, grounded life, gathering wood, water, and wild wasabi for a local restaurant.
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  SPEAKER_00: The rhythm is calm and specific.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the village learns a lamping site may be built nearby, marketed as an escape for city people who want nature without inconvenience.
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  SPEAKER_00: What follows isn't a screaming match.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a slow tightening.
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  SPEAKER_00: Practical questions become moral questions.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Water, waste, noise, and safety stop being abstract when it's your home on the line.
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  SPEAKER_00: Two representatives arrive to smooth things over, and the film becomes a study in how bureaucracy talks when it needs something from you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hamaguchi's skill is that he makes the tension physical without doing thriller tricks.
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  SPEAKER_00: You feel the stakes in small pauses and careful sentences, and you start to sense that the damage may be unavoidable even if everyone claims to mean well.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's quiet, sharp, and it stays with you.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can rent it on Apple TV, Amazon, or Fendango at home.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Our indie film classic this week is Waking Life, celebrating his 25th anniversary.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Directed by Richard Linklater, it's an animated rotoscope dream walk where a young man keeps floating from one conversation to the next, never quite sure if he's awake.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Each encounter turns into a mini debate about consciousness, free will, death, love, and why humans can't stop narrating their own existence.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: The plot is basically wander, listen, spiral, repeat.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I mean that as a compliment.
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  SPEAKER_00: The animation makes the world feel like it's breathing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Faces bend, rooms drift, sidewalks ripple, like reality's one bad thought away from dissolving.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's great about a Richard Linkletter film is it isn't pretentious about being heady.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's curious, it's playful, is the cinematic version of that friend who says, one question, then keeps talking for two hours.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had a day where you looked around and thought, is this real?
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  SPEAKER_00: This is your movie.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can rent it on Apple TV, Amazon, or YouTube.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that wraps it for the June 12th, 2026 edition of Indie Film Weekly.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to support the show, do the simple stuff.
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  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe so you don't miss next week.
• 7:44
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• 7:48
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• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then leave a quick review.
• 7:53
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• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Until next week, keep it curious, keep it brave, and keep it ending.