This got us thinking – what are the best indie movie soundtracks of all time? It’s probably impossible to make a perfect list; after all, there are hundreds of indie films (more than anyone could watch in a lifetime) but in our long history of film reviewing, here are a few soundtracks that stick out in our memories.

Garden State

Perhaps the most stereotypically indie of all indie films, 2004′s Garden State includes a soundtrack hand-picked by director and lead actor Zach Braff. It sets the tone for indie films to follow by combining up-and-coming bands such as The Shins with classic acts like Simon and Garfunkel. Braff also defined the indie soundtrack ethos when he described his soundtrack as an old school mix CD.

Super Size Me

Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary, in which he famously eats nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days, opens with a group of schoolchildren singing the classic camp song “Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut.” He salts and peppers his film with instantly recognizable pop culture favorites such as “Fat Bottomed Girls,” “Yummy Yummy Yummy,” and “Pusher Man.” Even if you only listened to the soundtrack and skipped the movie, you’d still know exactly what Morgan Spurlock thinks about the fast food giant.

Juno

2008 indie favorite Juno shared the irresistible joy of band The Moldy Peaches with the world. Director Jason Reitman chose the Kimya Dawson/Adam Green guitar-folk duo after asking star Ellen Page what she thought the titular character would listen to.

Juno’s soundtrack helped revive nerd-folk guitar as a legitimate music genre, and the final scene of lovebirds Ellen Page and Michael Cera jamming out on their front porch inspired hundreds of teenagers to sign up for online guitar lessons. It’s no coincidence that now famous acts like Julia Nunes and Danielle Ate the Sandwich all came of age when Juno aired.

High Fidelity

A movie about music is bound to include an amazing roster of bands and musicians on its soundtrack, and High Fidelity delivers. The track is jammed full of the greatest acts in music history, including Elton John, Aretha Franklin, the Velvet Underground, Queen, and Elvis Costello. High Fidelity‘s soundtrack works both as an emotional commentary as well as one of character Rob Gordon’s famous “best of” lists. One only regrets that High Fidelity was released in 2000; who knows what might have made it on the soundtrack had it been remade today.

Moonrise Kingdom

Any of Wes Anderson’s films could make it onto a best soundtrack list, but 2012′s Moonrise Kingdom stands out as my personal favorite. As a child raised on classical music, including a stint in the movie’s featured opera Noye’s Fludde (I played a monkey), I appreciated the subtle use of classical music as a way into the two young characters’ thoughts and emotions. Before children are old enough to develop musical tastes of their own, they are dependent on the musical tastes provided by their parents, and I, too spent a childhood with Mozart and Britten as earworms. It was an excellent choice that would have been sullied had Anderson elected to use pop music of the era instead.

So, what did we get right and what did we miss? Which films go on your best indie soundtrack list, and which music artists did you discover through independent film?

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

By the end of the 1970s Stanley Kubrick had established himself as a brilliant director, having released acclaimed films like Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon. But when The Shining came out in 1980 reviews gave the impression that Kubrick’s love affair with critics had ended. Even Stephen King said he hated it and that it failed as an adaptation of his novel. It failed to earn a nomination for a single Academy Award or Golden Globe, but did land a few Razzie nominations. Since then viewers and critics alike have grown to love The Shining. Roger Ebert, for example, pulled a 180 on his original opinion of the film and ended up slapping it on his list of “Great Movies”. Today, most seem to consider The Shining just as much of a classic as anything else Kubrick made during his celebrated career. Some obsessives, though, think of it as more than just a great horror flick and insist that the film hides secret messages and meanings. But, does it really?

Room 237 is a “subjective documentary”. It basically consists of just over one hundred minutes of clips from Kubrick’s The Shining with various narrators doing their best to convince the watcher that their understanding of the movie is the correct one. I have always enjoyed film analysis. To me, staying up until the early hours of the morning reading pages and pages of reviews dissecting movies to ridiculous degrees sounds like quite an enjoyable evening. In fact, I have spent more than one evening doing that very thing for The Shining. Needless to say, I thought I was exactly the kind of niche audience Room 237 aimed for, so I watched it the first chance I had.

Unfortunately the majority of the film feels more like a sit down with a group of conspiracy theorists as opposed to a serious work of film analysis. One narrator, for example, talks at length about how the film parallels the myth of the Minotaur. Her theory seems based entirely on a poster of a skier in the background of a scene that kind-of-sort-of-but-not-really looks like a Minotaur. Another narrator, perhaps the looniest of the bunch, attempts to convince the viewer that The Shining proves that Stanley Kubrick helped fake the moon landing footage. The only analysis of the bunch that I think holds any water whatsoever asserts that the movie has an underlying theme that deals with the slaughter of the Native Americans by European immigrants. Plenty of imagery throughout the film supports this notion, and the dialogue makes pretty direct references to it a few times. The owner mentions that the hotel stands on an Indian burial ground, and the ghost butler talks about the “white man’s burden” to Jack Torrance previous to Torrance going on a rampage and attempting to kill his family. But even the man presenting this interpretation goes off the deep end by spending way too much time talking about cans of baking powder and promotional tag lines used on movie posters in Europe. What is it with these people and posters, anyway?

To director Rodney Ascher’s credit, he does not endorse any of the interpretations presented in Room 237. Based on an interview he did for Complex magazine, he seems to think that the subjects of his film reach way past that which Kubrick originally intended. If you take into account that the subjects of the movie are closer to being obsessive lunatics than serious film critics, Room 237 changes dramatically and becomes much more intriguing and charming. Shortly into the film I stopped wondering whether Kubrick really meant to plant any of the ideas presented by the narrators and instead started thinking about the narrators themselves. Do these people constantly talk about their Shining-based conspiracy theories to their friends? Do they have any friends? What do they do for a living? Do they seem normal most of the time, or do they come across as just as strange at work as they do in Room 237?

Even though I think just about everything presented in Room 237 is rubbish, I enjoyed watching it. At first I found myself disappointed in the lack of quality analysis, but I ended up having a good time listening to the crazy conspiracy theories. If you want to delve into some quality critical dissections of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, you should probably skip this movie. But if you find yourself in the mood to put yourself in the head of a handful of crazy people all obsessing over their strange takes on a horror movie that came out in 1980, Room 237 is the perfect movie for you! I don’t foresee many films on the horizon that will fill that niche better than this one does, so you should probably go ahead and watch this one.

Room 237 is available to rent or purchase from a number of different places, including Amazon Instant Video and Google Play Videos.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The Hit Squad introduces a Spinal Tap-esque washed up old rock band, vividly brought to life in luxuriant 8-bit-style animation. While Blundell’s pitch name-checks classics of the decade including Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop as influences, the film’s fundraising page at IndieGoGo.com references Family Guy, and based on the available clips The Hit Squad’s tone is closer to Seth MacFarlane’s  modern acerbic animation than the heyday of Dan Akroyd and Bill Murray. It might hark back to days of yore, but perhaps it can’t entirely shake itself free of its own time.

Whatever its final content will be, there is certainly plenty for the ‘80s connoisseur here. Anyone who has played the likes of Maniac Mansion should feel at home with the clunky blocks used to depict The Hit Squad, and the soundtrack manages to reference the excessively stirring movie scores of yesteryear while simultaneously feeling as though it would be right at home in the background of one of Mega Man’s stages.

In exchange for donation to their project, Blundell’s team offers rewards ranging from DVDs of the finished product (which, depending on your level of donation, could be the most expensive DVDs you’ve ever bought!) to a sort of blocky immortality by means of putting a pixelised likeness of you in a background cameo.

It’s too early to tell how the finished product will turn out; as with all movies, much of it will depend on the quality of the script. It does, however, nail the 1980s gaming aesthetic effortlessly. If The Hit Squad has whetted your retro appetite, you can learn more at its IndieGoGo page.

© 2012, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.