Joe Swanberg makes films a little off the beaten path and that’s his charm. His latest effort, Digging For Fire, is a weird trip down the rabbit hole for Jake Johnson and Rosemary DeWitt, as they portay the seemingly normal, seemingly pedestrian married couple who unknowingly spend a few days way outside of their element. Together they are mostly fine, and deal with issues we all face. Apart, however, these banal individuals are faced with a number of what if? moments that has them looking, digging rather, for something they think is missing in their lives. You never know what you’re going to get with an independent film as ambitious…
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G-S-T Review…Drinking Buddies
Drinking Buddies offers a refreshingly candid look at relationships from the perspective of the romantic comedy genre. While the film explores similar themes and questions around relationships and monogamy that we’ve seen from director Joe Swanberg’s films in the past, Drinking Buddies is something special. Arguably his best film yet, he accomplishes something rarely found in feature films today, that perfect mix of indie Art House feel and mass appeal. It’s not so obscure that it alienates the general audience, but it also avoids being formulaic. It’s the culmination of Swanberg’s mumblecore roots combined with a narrative structure (or lack there of) that works to create a story utterly authentic…
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[OCFF Interview]…’Drinking Buddies’ Director Joe Swanberg
Arguably his best film to date, prolific, independent filmmaker, Joe Swanberg, says he worked harder on Drinking Buddies than on any other film. Swanberg says it’s a movie he made with “a deep desire to connect with an audience, and that hasn’t been true of a lot of my movies.” “I’ve had a couple of big changes in the past couple of years in terms of how I make movies and what I want to put out into the world,” says Swanberg. Whose friend and fellow filmmaker, Madeleine Olnek, influenced some of these changes after sharing her philosophy on filmmakers and comedy. “She said to have the ability to make comedies and not…
