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5 Indie Movies This Week: Nirvanna: The Band - the Show - the Movie, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, Little Miss Sunshine, & More · Indie Film Weekly

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly, your roundup of new indie film releases for the week of February 13, 2026.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds, and this week our three new theatrical releases include a time-bending comedy that treats friendship like a science experiment, a wild modern fable from a director with a taste for controlled chaos, and an historical drama that lands like a brick wrapped in velvet.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: We also have a sports dock on T Vod that will make you want to run through a wall.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll close with a 20-year-old classic that still makes the family road trip feel like a contact sport.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, please see at least one of these theatrical films in a theater if you can.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Indie movies are built for the room, the shared silence, the shared laugh you did not plan on, and that one stranger behind you who whispers, oh no, like they're warning the characters personally.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: This episode of Indie Film Weekly is brought to you by Circus Road Films, helping independent filmmakers find their audiences since 2006.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Learn more at circusroadfilms.com.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Our first Indie Film in Theaters is a re-release of a film we covered in the fall, but is worth sharing again.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you know the Canadian series, you know the deal.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Two best friends, one obsessive goal.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: They want to book a show at a landmark performance space so badly it becomes a religion.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: The mission gets wrecked this time, however, by a time travel screw-up that drops them into the year 2008, which is the worst possible year to be trapped in if you're trying to fix your life, your band, and your dignity at the same time.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: The movie plays like a string of small disasters that keep compounding.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: A simple plan turns into a new plan, then a cover story, then another cover story to cover the last cover story.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: They keep sprinting from one half-baked idea to the next, trying to force the perfect night into existence.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: The jokes are built around logistics.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you sleep?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get money?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: How do you talk your way past a bouncer?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do you avoid stepping on that exact rake you already stepped on?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: What makes it work is the rhythm.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Setups land, payoffs land harder.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: A throwaway moment early comes back later, and suddenly it's the whole engine of the scene.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And under all the chaos, it is oddly sincere about ambition.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: That mix of confidence and panic.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: The belief that this one gig will fix everything.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever have tried to will a creative dream into reality with nothing but stubbornness and caffeine, you will recognize the look in their eyes.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our second indie film in theaters this week is Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a people in headsets movie.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a time loop into the world scramble that keeps resetting in the least convenient place possible.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: A regular Los Angeles diner where everyone is half looking at their phones and half waiting for the food.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: A ragged stranger storms in with a device strapped to his body.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: He looks like trouble before he even opens his mouth, and then he starts pitching the worst icebreaker of all time.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm from the future, and the future is owned by AI.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: He has done this speech a lot.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can feel the repetition in his timing, like a performer hitting marks he no longer believes in, trying to recruit the exact right mix of random civilians to stop a nearby tech prodigy from flipping the switch.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: What makes it pop is the contrast.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: The premise is huge, but the movie keeps dragging it back to very human habits.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Denial, distraction, the way people glaze over when you say something terrifying in a calm voice.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It also has that Gorserbinsky instinct for set pieces that start playful, then quietly turn into a trapdoor.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: The loop structure becomes a joke, then a strategy, then a kind of exhaustion you can feel in your shoulders.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is manic, sharp, and weirdly sad under the punchlines, like a comedy that knows the clock is ticking and keeps making you laugh anyway.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Our last indie film in theaters this week is Palestine 36.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: It drops you into the heat of the 1936 uprising under British rule, but it does not play like a museum piece.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It plays like a community trying to keep dinner on the table while the world keeps changing the rules at the door.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Anne-Marie Jacquir builds the tension out of lived-in moments, a conversation that stops when footsteps pass outside, a route home that suddenly feels unsafe, a look that says, do not say that here.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: The politics are real, but the story stays locked on people, the ones who want to keep their families intact, the ones who think compromise is survival, the ones who cannot stand another day of being told to behave.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: What lands is how the film treats pressure as something physical.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: You feel surveillance as a presence, not a plot.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: You feel rumors spread, trust thin out, and loyalties get tested in ways that are messy and painfully human.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: No one gets to be purely heroic.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: No one gets to be purely innocent.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: The film keeps asking the harder question, what does order mean when it is enforced on you?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what does resistance look like when you still have to wake up tomorrow and face your neighbors?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's also beautifully paced.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Jacquir lets scenes breathe and tightens the frame when history starts closing in.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of film that hits hardest in the theater, where the quiet moments stay quiet and you can feel the room collectively brace for what comes next.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So in theaters this week, that's Nirvana the Band, the show, the movie, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, and Palestine 36.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our spotlight indie film on TVOD this week is Mighty Oaks.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It follows a group of parents and young athletes in Morgan Hill, California trying to build something that sounds simple until you try it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: A real high school lacrosse program with identity, structure, and pride.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: The movie understands that sports movie usually means championships and slow motion glory, but the real story is the infrastructure, the fundraising, the carpools, quiet pep talks.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment a kid realizes they belong to something bigger than their own nerves.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: What makes it work is how it treats determination as a community sport.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: You see families learning the game alongside the players, and you feel the stakes in the small wins, a completed pass, a practice that finally clicks, a team that stops apologizing for taking up space.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a time capsule of adolescence, the mix of ego and insecurity, the way a single good play can rewire your whole week.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you need a reset from heavier fare, this is a clean, honest watch that earns its uplift.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our indie film classic this week is Little Miss Sunshine celebrating its 20th anniversary.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you've not seen it in a while, what holds up is how precise it is about the tiny humiliations that make a family and the tiny kindnesses that keep one alive.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: The setup is deceptively simple.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: A kid wants to compete in a beauty pageant, so everyone piles into a battered yellow VW bus and drives across the country.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the movie quickly turns that van into a pressure cooker, where every passenger is lugging around their own private definition of winning.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: One person is trying to sell a self-help gospel.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Another is quietly falling apart.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another is furious at the universe.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Another is just trying to be invisible long enough to make it to the next rest stop.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: The genius is how it keeps the comedy grounded in behavior, not jokes.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: The bus will not start unless everyone pushes it.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So they push it.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Again and again, and with every push, the film is basically saying, this is the whole deal.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is family.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: You do the unglamorous work together because there's no other way forward.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: The scenes at roadside diners, cheap motels, and fluorescent lit back rooms are funny because they feel real, like you can smell the coffee and the panic.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when the film goes dark, it does not swerve into melodrama.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: It just lets you feel the moment, sit there, and trust you to feel it.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then it sticks the landing with that final pageant stretch, which is still a minor miracle of escalation and heart.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: It stops being about trophies and turns into something better.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: The family deciding in public to love their kid loudly.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Stream it on Hulu.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that wraps it for the February 13th edition of Indie Film Weekly.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed the pod, please subscribe, leave a rating, and share it with someone who claims they never have time for movies, but somehow has time to watch 14 episodes of a show they hate.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep it curious, keep it gutsy, and keep it indie.