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5 Indie Movies This Week: Buddy, Idiots, Hard Eight, & More · Indie Film Weekly

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of August 28th, 2026.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This week in theaters, we've got a dark comedy slasher about a beloved children's TV unicorn who may not be as wholesome as advertised.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We've got two very bad drivers, one wealthy teen and a rehab trip that spirals into crime.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a Joe Swanberg relationship drama about love, timing Alaska, and the lives people imagine for themselves.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Quick ask before we move on.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you can see one of these films in a theater this weekend, indie films need early ticket buyers.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I meant to see that after the final showtime disappears.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: On demand, I've got an Australian horror thriller where a beach house celebration turns into a blood-soaked survival night.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And for our classic, we're celebrating Paul Thomas Anderson's first feature, a 30th anniversary crime drama where the real action is not the gambling, but the loneliness around it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Want the written version of these picks each week?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I also published the indie film weekly newsletter.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same five films in a quick read.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sign up at newsletter.circusroadfilms.com.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Our first indie film in theaters this week is Buddy, directed by Casper Kelly.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is a dark comedy slasher built around a 1990s children's television show and its bright orange unicorn host.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Buddy once taught kids lessons about kindness, sharing, feelings, and all the other things that usually come with puppets, songs, and suspiciously cheerful sets.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then the movie asks a very fair question.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: What if the thing designed to comfort children was actually terrifying?
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  SPEAKER_00: Christian Miliotti stars as Grace, a mother drawn into the nightmare surrounding the show, while Tover Grace plays her husband, and Keegan Michael Key provides the voice of Buddy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Kelly is the filmmaker behind Too Many Cooks, so this is not coming from someone with a normal relationship to television nostalgia.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: That is a takes the familiar shape of childhood programming, the colors, the songs, the big mascot smile, and turns it into something wrong.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: The hook is funny, but the reason it works is that children's TV already has a strange dream logic.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Adults in costumes, rooms that do not obey reality, lessons repeated until they become chance, but he just pushes that weirdness into horror.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you grew up with soft plush characters telling you everything was okay, this may gently suggest that everything was not okay.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our second indie film in theaters this week is Idiots.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Directed by Macon Blair, this comedy follows two rock bottom drivers hired to transport a wealthy teenage boy to rehab.
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  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a simple job, which is usually the first warning sign in a movie like this.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr.
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  SPEAKER_00: play the drivers, and Mason Thames plays the passenger, who very quickly turns the trip into something more dangerous, more illegal, and much less likely to be reimbursed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Premise gives Blair a great comic engine.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Two men who are already not exactly winning at life are handed responsibility for someone else's crisis, and then everyone involved makes the road trip worse.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a crime comedy built on bad judgment, class resentment, drugs, danger, and the special panic of realizing the job you accepted may be the thing that finally ruins you.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Blair has a feel for losers who are not stupid so much as overwhelmed by consequences.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: That makes the title funny, but not necessarily cruel.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are people making idiotic choices, yes, but maybe also people who have run out of better ones.
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  SPEAKER_00: The cast helps sell the chaos.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Franco can play Slippery Desperation.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jackson has great grounded comic force, and Thames gives the movie a teen passenger who's not just cargo, but the match tossed into the car.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Our last indie film in theaters this week is The Sun Never Sets.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Directed by Joe Swanberg, this relationship drama stars Dakota Fanning as Wendy, a woman who believes she is happy with Jack, played by Jake Johnson.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jack is older, divorced, and has children.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he wants them to take a break so Wendy can figure out whether she is really okay giving up on a marriage and children of her own.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: That break sends her back into the orbit of Chuck, played by Corey Michael Smith, an ex who reawakens a more spontaneous version of her life, and suddenly seems to want the future Jack cannot offer.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So yes, it's a love triangle, but Swanberg's films are usually less interested in clean romantic math than the uncomfortable middle of decisions.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is about the life you have, the life you said you did not need, and the life that starts looking attractive the second someone asks you to be honest.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Alaska setting gives the movie a strong sense of place, but the real landscape is emotional.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Winnie's not choosing between two fantasy versions of happiness.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: She's trying to understand what kind of compromise would become a life and what kind would become regret.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fanning is a strong fit for that tension because she can play restraint and restlessness at the same time.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So in theaters this week, that's Buddy, Idiots, and The Sun Never Sets.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is Penny Lane is Dead, written by Mia Kate Russell, this Australian dark comedy horror thriller, is set during a scorching summer in 1986.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Penny Lane and her longtime girlfriends head to a beach house to celebrate Penny getting into college, which should mean sun, music, bad decisions, and maybe a few emotional confessions before morning.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead, a prank goes horribly wrong, and the night turns into a blood-soaked fight for survival.
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  SPEAKER_00: The film has an asploitation throwback energy, which means it's not trying to be polite, polished, or especially concerned with keeping the carpet clean.
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  SPEAKER_00: What gives it some kick is the mix of teenage friendship, queer longing, black humor, and sudden violence.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: A beach house party already has built-in danger because teenagers believe they are immortal and adults are usually absent for plot reasons.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here, that freedom curdles fast.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Russell uses the period setting for more than nostalgia.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: The 1980s texture gives the movie heat, attitude, and a sense of being trapped in a world where help is not one phone tap away.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is a nasty little genre ride.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it also has the emotional charge of girls realizing that growing up may not be the scariest thing waiting for them.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can stream it on Shudder.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Our indie film classic this week is Hard Eight, celebrating its 30th anniversary.
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  SPEAKER_00: Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: This 1996 crime drama was his first feature before Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and the whole PTA mythology took over.
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  SPEAKER_00: Philip Baker Hall plays Sidney, an older gambler who finds John, played by John C.
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  SPEAKER_00: Riley, broke and stranded outside a diner near Reno.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sidney takes him under his wing, teaches him how to survive around casinos, and slowly becomes something between mentor, father figure, and mystery.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: When Paultroe plays a person sex worker who becomes part of John's life, while Samuel L.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Jackson brings danger into the picture as Jimmy.
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  SPEAKER_00: The plot has crime elements, but the movie's power is the mood.
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  SPEAKER_00: Quiet rooms, bad carpets, casino light, people speaking carefully because everyone is hiding something.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a small film.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can already see Anderson's gifts, the patience with actors, the eye for damaged people, the sense that one conversation at a table can carry more weight than a shootout.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Philip Baker Hall is magnificent because Sidney's kindness never feels simple.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: It may be grace, it may be guilt, it may be strategy.
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  SPEAKER_00: The movie keeps that tension alive.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Heart 8 is modest compared with Anderson's later work, but that's part of the beauty.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is the firsthand, and he already knows how to play it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can watch it on Amazon Prime.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that wraps it for the August 28, 2026 edition of Indie Film Weekly.
• 8:58
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• 9:01
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• 9:03
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• 9:06
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• 9:09
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• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Until next week, keep it strange, keep it sharp, and keep it indie.