You’ll want to seek out these under-the-radar movies featuring Andrew Garfield, deadpan Swedes, one of Ryan Reynolds’ best roles in years, and a mummified foot.
Finders Keepers
The Orchard
I dare you to find a better movie this year about two men fighting over a preserved human limb. Finders Keepers starts off as the too-strange-not-to-be-true story of North Carolinian Shannon Whisnant, who bought a barbecue smoker at a storage auction and found, to his surprise and delight, that there was a mummified severed foot inside it. The body part in question turned out to belong to John Wood, who had to have it amputated after a plane crash and who decided, for reasons he does eventually explain, to hold on to it. Despite having lost track of it for a while, he would like it back — but Whisnant, a man with an enterprising spirit and an admirable sense of shamelessness, sees his find as a path toward local fame and fortune.
If this all seems like the stuff of a "redneck reality" show, well, it sort of was — a ruling on the dispute was ultimately made by television's own Judge Greg Mathis. But for all of its slickness, this documentary by Bryan Carberry and J. Clay Tweel isn't content to be merely quirky. Instead, the film looks past the outrageous argument between the two men to examine the addiction, poverty, and loss in their personal histories, revealing them to be far more than the caricatures they're initially drawn as (and in Whisnant's case, that he plays into) on the news.
Where to see it: Finders Keepers is now playing in limited release (here's a list of theaters) and will be available for rent on iTunes and on VOD after Oct. 1.
Mississippi Grind
A24
Ben Mendelsohn, the crumple-faced Aussie actor who provided the fascinatingly dark heart of the first season of Netflix's drama Bloodline, is just as unsettlingly good in this more genial gambling movie from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the writer/director team behind Half Nelson. Mendelsohn plays Gerry, who leaves his shambles of a life in Iowa behind with alarming but maybe understandable ease after befriending a charismatic drifter named Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) at a casino.
The two are perfect for each other, which means they're also heartachingly terrible for each other, enabling each other's vices as they travel south and pit their luck and too much money on games of chance. Both are determined to see the other as at least a little magic, but Mississippi Grind never fails to let the shabby desperation of their reality shine through. It's an easygoing road movie always teetering on disaster, even if it never quite gets there, and in pairing up with Mendelsohn, Reynolds does some of his best work, using his considerable charm to only sometimes successfully mask his character's uncertainty and emptiness.
Where to see it: Mississippi Grind is now playing in limited release (here's a list of theaters), premieres on VOD on Oct. 13 and will come out on Blu-ray and DVD in Dec. 1.
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