Six Low-Budget Films that Will Change Your Life

It’s 9:15 on a lumpy Wednesday night, dinner was boringatoni, and I can feel my brain oozing out the remnants of today’s caffeine – any efforts to tackle my English 45A essay would constitute a morally unjustifiable insult to William Blake. It’s movie time!

I shuffle through the iTunes store, craving a Hollywood fix, but in my blunted state, I can’t pick. Precious seconds of procrastination slip by, wasted on indecision. Do I want a Disney favorite or a steely spy thriller? Will this promising romcom be $2.99 of wasted time? A few old favorites come to mind, but I’ve seen them before. Maybe I’ll settle for another Best Picture? In moments like this, as my heart rate rises and my self-esteem plummets, low-budget films have saved my life.

These independent projects are drastically different from their red-carpet counterparts, and as a genre, they are unfailingly reliable. They may not be tiramisu or strawberry shortcake, but no one ever regretted a homemade snickerdoodle.

There’s nothing wrong with big-name movies. I have soft spots for Lord of the Rings and 27 Dresses. Spielberg. Anything with Bradley Cooper. Any Zimmer score. The black-tie productions that win year after year at the Oscars flaunt costumes and special effects. They showcase the talents of elite composers, actors, and directors. They can launch rockets, raze Times Square, and build worlds. And it’s beautiful.

But the manpower behind these films, the sheer number of people involved in all stages of the process, generates a sort of incoherence, or, um… glossiness. Remember group projects in middle school? Getting six people to agree on a skit about mitosis took the better part of three weeks. Reconciling the distinct visions of every producer, director, writer, editor, composer, actor, artist, and technician in a thousand-odd cavalry requires a lot of compromise. And that compromise means that each individual scheme for a film gets whittled down. Collaboration smooths out the inherent design flaws of a single perspective, but too much collaboration results in a watered-down jungle juice variety of imagination.

Hence, glossiness.

A hefty price tag compounds the issue: name-brand marketing of big-wig directors, actors, and producers may promise more than the insipid film can deliver.

An unassuming low-budget film, on the other hand, doesn’t advertise glitz, and has no pretensions to perfection. Best of all, at least for an English major, a low budget film relies on the story. Even if Avatar served up a plot from the canned goods section of Whole-Foods, the special effects kept us hooked until the end. Maybe Jaws lacked a meatier message, but we closed our eyes and listened to bass. And even if we walked into the theater knowing the end of The Amazing Spider Man… well, it’s Andrew Garfield.

Low-budget films do not have the luxury of sugar-coating the asinine or mollifying expectant reviewers with glitz. Oftentimes a single person or a group of pals comprise the writer-director-producer triumvirate, so the story maintains its direction and intent throughout. The actors can’t inject a media personality into their character; talent is everything. The sets boast the organic bumps and bruises of DIY; there are no artists to go back and sprinkle assembly-line props with designer scuffs.

More importantly, low-budget films usually can’t afford to set these stories in fantastical worlds. They need to shoot hard, deep, and true stories against an everyday backdrop. They bring out the best side of the mundane, the perfectly deficient human element of hairdryers or apples or Tabasco.

Here are 6 relatively low-budget films that might change your life. Or at least, your Wednesday night.

#6. Short Term 12

Budget: less than $1 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99%

Summary: Grace and boyfriend Mason, foster care bureaucrats at a special facility in Los Angeles, struggle to provide necessary support for a house of troubled youth. Crisis after crisis threatens the survival of both their charges and their relationship, especially when the arrival of teenage Jayden stretches the emotional and physical resources of human workers in an inhumane system to their limits. A former foster kid herself, Grace identifies with the newcomer, and her efforts on Jayden’s behalf prove cathartic as she faces her own demons.

 

#5. Frances Ha

Budget: $8.3 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Summary: Frances is a mediocre dancer, a mediocre friend, and a mediocre lover who keeps faith – at times, blindly – despite New York City’s shortage of housing and money. The film’s wonder lies in its ability to capture the everyday trials and blunders of a terrifyingly normal person. We hate Frances, we fear her, so of course, we love her.

 

#4. The Fall

Budget: Tarsem Singh (director) paid out of pocket.

Rotten Tomatoes Score: N/A

Summary: This dark horse starts off in the aftermath of “a fall.” Young Alexandria breaks her arm and ends up in a 1920s LA hospital. Various escapades throw her in the path of Roy, a stunt-double with two fractured legs, a mountain of debt, and a hopeless infatuation for a gorgeous actress. Roy strings together a story for Alexandria, and although the film follows five heroes in their fantasy quest against Governor Odious, no green screens were used. Boldly combining its allegorical, intellectual elements with pure whimsy, The Fall delivers shocking plot twists that far outweigh a somewhat homemade appearance. Just call it rugged, like Lee Pace.

 

#3. Amelie

Budget:  $10 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

Summary: Quirky in the extreme, Paris-dwelling Amelie sets out to return a box of antique childhood treasures to its original owner. The intersection of a myriad of lives transforms this enterprise into a broader exploration of fate, human interaction, and the magic that happens when an isolated, eccentric young woman dares to ask more from the real world. The double-digit budget ($10 million) almost disqualifies Amelie from the list, but this French film bubbles with all the off-beat personality of its less-expensive cousins.

 

#2. Cinema Paradiso

Budget: $5 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

Summary: In 1940s Italy, fatherless Toto latches on to Alfredo, the curmudgeon who works as a projectionist at the local movie theater. The years bring young love, old age, and new loss, anchored by the cinema and the eternal optimism of the movies. Seen through the eyes of a middle-aged Toto, the story offers a profound exploration of disenchantment, impermanence, and endurance.

 

#1. Beasts of the Southern Wild

Budget: $1.8 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

Summary: This mercilessly raw coming-of-age story redeems courage, love, and the tenacity of the human spirit by embedding these clichés in its pint-sized protagonist, Hushpuppy. The grisly life she shares with her father in a flooded bayou restored my faith in people, and better still, made me want to feel that faith again. It is tough and tender like Southern cooking. Tear-jerker, soul-coffee, must-see.