Flavorwire

Indie releases tend to thrive during the months when the multiplexes get dumber — in other words, every month until October, when big studios start putting their muscle behind intelligent Oscar contenders and act like that’s the kind of stuff they’re turning out all year. Point is, our indie preview is a little thinner than usual this month, since quieter movies are basically gunning for the same audiences as your Zero Dark Thirtys and Life of Pis and so on, but there are a few small releases worth tracking down. We’ll run them down for you after the jump.

In Our Nature
RELEASE: December 7
DIRECTOR: Brian Savelson
CAST: John Slattery, Zach Gilford, Jena Malone, Gabrielle Union

“Sometimes people get stuck in patterns,” notes Vicky (Union) early on in Brian Savelson’s In Our Nature, which finds a distant father and son, and their girlfriends, unexpectedly sharing the family lake house over an uncomfortable weekend. The pairings, conflicts, and resolutions are a touch schematic, but it’s a genuine story with a lot of truth, the relationships are consistently believable, and the expected surplus of cringing and quiet resentment get an extra lift from the presence of Slattery, who does loaded, passive-aggressive subtext better than anybody in the business.