Indie Roundup: ‘Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry’

The subject of Alison Klayman’s prize-winning documentary, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” is the portly, bearded artist who through a sense of moral outrage and sheer stubbornness became a perennial thorn in the side of the Chinese government. That is, it was until the spring of 2011 when he turned into an international cause celebre.

Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen talk about ‘Klown,’ the most perversely funny flick of the year

Forget ‘Ted,’ ’21 Jump Street,’ and ‘Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie’; the Danish comedy “Klown” is the most perversely funny movie of the year. Think John Waters directing “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Think “The Hangover” as directed by Lars Von Trier. Actually, that last example isn’t too far from the truth: Von Trier’s Zentropa studio produced the movie. So how funny is “Klown”?

Indie Roundup: ‘Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai’

Japanese director Takashi Miike is one of the wildest, most extreme filmmakers around. His notorious 2001 movie “Ichi: The Killer” is a surrealist-fever dream of blood, bowels, and dismemberment. His 2003 flick “The Happiness of the Kataguris” is a strangely sweet comedy about zombies and murder, and it’s also a musical. And the latter half of his terrific 2011 samurai epic, “13 Assassins,” is so bloody its main characters ended the movie looking like Carrie after the prom. So when it was announced last year that Miike was going 3D for his next film, a remake of Masaki Kobayashi’s classic “Hara-Kiri,” one could be forgiven for expecting it to be a gorefest with lots of eye-gouging 3D gimmickry, a shogun-era “Piranha 3DD” with katana instead of fish.

Indie Roundup: ‘The Imposter’ and ‘Easy Money’

“The Imposter” and “Easy Money” — both getting limited releases this week — feature slippery Europeans in morally murky situations straight out of a novel by James M. Cain.

One night in 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay vanished without a trace from his working-class neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas. Three years later, the grieving family learns that he has been found — in Spain. Nicholas seemed greatly changed: the blond, blue-eyed child returned with a swarthy complexion, brown eyes, and a mysterious French accent. Though Nicholas spun stories of rape and torture at the hands of shadowy military figures to explain his metamorphosis, they proved less and less plausible. He was soon revealed to be a 23-year-old European grifter named Frederic Bourdin.