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5 Indie Movies This Week: Trust Me, I’m a Doctor, You Can See Everything, Swingers, & More · Indie Film Weekly

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of October 16, 2026.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: This week in theaters, we've got a doctor who becomes a little too excited about having a celebrity patient.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: We've got an extraordinary documentary about a convicted Silicon Valley founder who invites cameras into her home that makes you question everything they're showing you.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: And we've got an invitation to a party where some of the people who shaped American culture have a few disagreements about how it happened.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Before we move on, pick one of these films and catch it in a theater this weekend.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Bring a friend.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: You can debate it over dinner afterward, which is half the fun of going to the movies and considerably more fun than scrolling until you're too tired to watch anything.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: On demand, we've got two best friends who decide to schedule motherhood together, because apparently coordinating dinner wasn't enough of a challenge.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: And for our classic, we're celebrating 30 years of aspiring actors, borrowed confidence, and the worst series of answering machine messages ever left by a man who thought things were going well.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: What the written version of these picks each week?
1:09
SPEAKER_00: I also published the indie film weekly newsletter.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: It's the same five films and a quick read.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Sign up at newsletter.com.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Our first any film in theaters this week is Trust Me I'm a Doctor, written and directed by Thane Ekanamu.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: This dark comedy stars Cal Penn as Dr.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: Sandeep Kapoor, whose patients include Anna Nicole Smith, played by Abby Cornish.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: After her death, his relationship with her becomes the subject of a criminal case and a tabloid frenzy.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Linda Hamilton plays his attorney.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: What's really interesting is how the film gets him into that situation.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Kapoor buys a medical practice and inherits a famous patient.
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SPEAKER_00: He's supposed to assess her care, but he's also delighted that Anna Nicole Smith knows who he is.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Penn gives you a man with professional responsibilities and a very unprofessional need to be liked.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: There's a revealing distinction in the scenes where they go out together.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: He already knows these places.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: He's been there with his own friends, but arriving with her changes how people look at him, and he enjoys that.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Being her doctor starts to overlap with being someone in her life.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: That gives the comedy something uncomfortable to work with.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: You can understand the attraction of the attention while watching him lose track of why he's there.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: The film's choice to follow Kapoor also gives a familiar celebrity story a different angle.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: We know what happened to Smith.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Here we're watching someone close to her make decisions while still believing he can manage the consequences.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Penn makes that gap between his confidence and his judgment worth following.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: Our second indie film in theaters this week is You Can See Everything.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, this is an extraordinary film.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Thirty days before Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison, she lets the filmmakers into the home she shares with her partner, Billy Evans, and their children.
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SPEAKER_00: You might expect a carefully managed attempt to repair her reputation.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: What makes this so good is watching that attempt collide with filmmakers who become increasingly unsure what they're dealing with.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: Fielder is usually the person making everyone else uncomfortable.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: Here, Holmes can sit through the silences that would have the rest of us confessing to things nobody asked about.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: He keeps looking for a way to understand her.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: She keeps giving him more to look at.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: At one point, he shows her Abbott and Costello's who's on first and tries to explain why it's funny.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: It's an astonishing scene because such a simple exchange becomes impossible to read.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: Is she confused, performing, trying to give him the response he wants?
4:04
SPEAKER_00: You're studying every reaction right along with him.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Then Holmes goes to prison, and the film takes a turn, I would hate to spoil.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: What follows makes you reconsider the access they had, the judgments you made, and Fielder's own investment in this family.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Oppenheim gives the images a beauty that makes the intimacy even stranger.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: You're being invited closer and closer without becoming more certain.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: It's nearly three hours, enormously funny, unsettling, and remarkably inventive.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: The filmmakers keep finding ways to surprise you that also give you more to think about.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: This is a movie to see with someone you'll want to talk to afterward.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Allow extra time for that part.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Our last indie film in theater this week is Once Upon a Time in Harlem.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: In 1972, filmmaker William Greaves gathered surviving figures of the Harlem Renaissance at Duke Ellington's home and filmed them talking.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: His son David eventually completed the film, and what we get is the rare pleasure of hearing people discuss a major cultural movement with the familiarity of people who were actually there.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: They remember the parties, the work, the politics, and one another.
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SPEAKER_00: They interrupt, they disagree about what the Renaissance accomplished and whether it ever really ended.
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SPEAKER_00: Nobody seems especially interested in giving us a neat paragraph for a textbook.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what makes this film so engaging.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: A name you might recognize from a painting or a book becomes a person with a particular voice, a sense of humor, and an opinion about what someone else just said.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: The filmmaking lets you enjoy that exchange.
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SPEAKER_00: Split screens keep more than one person in view, so you can watch someone listening while another guest talks.
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SPEAKER_00: Photographs and paintings connect the conversation to the work without taking us away from the gathering for too long.
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SPEAKER_00: And there's something moving about the time involved.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: These people are looking back from 1972.
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SPEAKER_00: We're looking back at them.
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SPEAKER_00: David Greaves is finishing the footage his father cared so much about.
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SPEAKER_00: Yet the conversation itself remains lively and immediate.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Someone makes a point, somebody else objects, and suddenly 50 years doesn't feel like much distance at all.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: So in theaters this week, that's Trust Me, I'm a Doctor.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: You can see everything, and Once Upon a Time in Harlem.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is Let's Have Kids.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: Directed by Adam Shitaikel, this comedy stars Karen Gillen and Zoe Chow as Emma and Phoebe, lifelong friends who decide to get pregnant at the same time.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: They've been through everything together, so naturally they assume they can arrange this part too.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: What I like here is the affection inside that slightly unreasonable plan.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: They want their children to grow up together.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: They want someone who already knows them beside them for something unfamiliar.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: It's a lovely idea, right up until it becomes an expectation that both people have to fulfill.
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SPEAKER_00: The film gives the friendship the kind of attention usually reserved for the marriage.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Em and Phoebe have a shared history, assumptions about their future, and a lot invested in continuing to be each other's person.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: When their lives start moving differently, it feels personal, even when nobody has done anything to the other.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: It's a great subject for comedy because close friends can be both generous and possessive.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: You want things to go well for someone.
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SPEAKER_00: You would also prefer those things to happen on a timetable that leaves your relationship intact.
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SPEAKER_00: Gillen and Chow are at the center of a cast that includes Sam Richardson, Max Greenfield, and Mary Steenbergen.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: The friendship gives the pregnancy story its particular complication.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Having a baby is already a major adjustment without feeling that you're letting your best friend down by doing it.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Let's Have Kids is available to rent or buy on demand.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Our indie film classic this week is Swingers, celebrating its 30th anniversary.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: Directed by Doug Lyman and written by John Favreau, who also stars.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: This is a Los Angeles movie that understands how much of going out involves driving somewhere else because the place you're in apparently isn't happening.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: Favreau plays Mike, a struggling actor still hung up on his ex.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Vince Vaughn's Trent takes him to Vegas, where they try to look like high rollers until Mike discovers he's sitting at a$100 minimum blackjack table.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: That's the movie's relationship with glamour in miniature.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: They know how they'd like to enter the room, then somebody tells them what it costs.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Back in LA, they play video hockey, compare career disappointments, and head out again.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Ron Livingston's Rob has played Hamlet, but now he's considering work as goofy.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: These details make the guys recognizable as actors who spend far more time discussing work than doing it.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: And the film understands how they borrow confidence from movies.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: They talk about Scorsese and Tarantino, then get their own reservoir dogs walk.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: In their heads, they're already the guys on the poster.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: The answering machine sequence is still excruciating.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Mike leaves a message, hears something wrong in it, and then calls back to clarify.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Favreau makes each new call seem briefly reasonable.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: You know he should stop.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: He almost knows he should stop, and that tiny difference becomes several minutes of magnificent humiliation.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: But when Mike meets Heather Graham's Lorraine and they dance, he finally has something to do besides explain himself.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: After all the advice about how to appear confident, it's a pleasure to see him actually enjoy someone's company.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: Vaughn gets the lines everybody quotes.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: Favreau gives those lines someone vulnerable to land on.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Together they make the bravado funny and the friendship worth caring about.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And that wraps it for the October 16, 2026 edition of Indie Film Weekly.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: If you want to support the show, do the simple stuff.
10:16
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10:18
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10:21
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10:24
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10:28
SPEAKER_00: Until next week, keep it restless, keep it curious, and keep it indie.