5 Indie Movies This Week: I Want Your Sex, The Samurai and the Prisoner, Boyhood, & More

This week on Indie Film Weekly, Glen Reynolds highlights five indie films worth knowing about: three in theaters, one on demand, and one classic.

🎥 Indie Film Reviews:
I Want Your Sex (2026)
The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026)
Jimmy (2026)
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (2024)
Boyhood (2014)

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Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of July 31st, 2026. I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds. This week in theaters, we've got a Greg Iraqi comedy thriller with an HR nightmare of a job offer. We've got a 16th-century Japanese castle siege with a rebel lord, a prisoner, and a mystery inside the walls. And we've got a black and white portrait of a young James Baldwin finding his voice in Paris. Quick ask before we move on if you can see one of these in the theater this weekend. Early tickets are how indie films prove they belong on the schedule. On demand, I've got a moving documentary about a young man whose online life was richer than his parents ever knew. And for our classic, we're celebrating a theatrical re-release of a 12-year indie experiment that actually watched a kid grow up. Want the written version of these pics each week? I also publish the indie film weekly newsletter. It's the same five films in a quick read. Sign up at newsletter.com. Let's dive in. Our first indie film in theaters this week is I Want Your Sex, directed by Gregor Rocky. This is a comedy, drama, and mystery thriller about Elliot, a young man whose life changes when he lands a job with Erica Tracy, a famous artist and provocateur. Erica is played by Olivia Wilde, and Elliot is played by Cooper Hoffman. The setup is classic Iraqi territory. Desire, power, fantasy, embarrassment, and people making decisions that probably should have been run past three trusted friends and a therapist. Erica does not just hire Elliot to answer phones or stretch canvases. She pulls him into her creative and sexual orbit, and the film follows what happens when a young man's fantasies become part of someone else's art project. The final is in the danger of the situation. Elliot thinks he's stepping into the life he wanted, but he may also be stepping into a performance where he does not know the rules. And this gives him a perfect playground, the art world, celebrity, youth, and the hilarious belief that desire will make things simpler. It premiered at Sundance, which feels right. This is the kind of movie that wants a crowd that can laugh, gasp, and then wonder whether everyone on screen needs better boundaries. Our second indie film in theaters this week is The Samurai and the Prisoner. Directed by Kyoshi Kurosawa, this period mystery is set in 16th century Japan and centers on Lord Murashiga Araki, who rebels against the tyrannical nobnaga Oda, and finds himself trapped inside his own castle under siege. That is already enough stress for one man. Then a series of crimes inside the walls turn the castle into a locked room pressure cooker. Murashige has enemies outside, possible traitors inside, and not a lot of time for leisurely detective work. His unlikely ally is Kanbe Kuroda, a brilliant strategist being held prisoner in the dungeon. So naturally, the guy in chains may be the one person sharp enough to help solve what is happening upstairs. The setup gives the film a great mix of sword era politics and murder mystery mechanics. Every conversation carries the weight of rank, fear, and self-preservation. Gurusa was best known for modern dread, but that sensibility can travel beautifully into a period story. A castle under siege is already a haunted house, if you light it correctly, and make everyone suspicious enough. Masahiro Matoki plays Murashige, and the role asks for arrogance, panic, and intelligence all at once. If you like historical drama with intrigue instead of just pageantry, this is a strong pick. Our last indie film in theaters this week is Jimmy. Directed by Yoshade Owens, this is a narrative feature imagining the young life of James Baldwin in Paris, newly arrived from New York in 1948. The film does not try to cover the whole life, which is a relief, because the cradle to grave genius montage can be a very dangerous neighborhood. Instead, it narrows in on a formative moment. A young writer arrives in a new city, carrying talent, anger, fear, ambition, and the need to breathe outside the limits America placed around him. Shot in dreamy 16mm black and white, the film takes a speculative approach, looking at what Baldwin may have experienced as he began the process of becoming a writer the world would later know. That makes the movie less a standard biopic and more a mood piece about exile, freedom, race, sexuality, and the strange courage of starting over in a place where no one has decided who you are yet. Paris is not treated as a magic cure. It's a space where a young artist can listen to himself differently. The pleasure here is seeing a film, trust atmosphere and interior life. It's about the early heat before the flame, the period when a person is not yet a monument, just a young man walking the streets, watching, absorbing, and turning survival into language. So in theaters this week, that's I Want Your Son, The Prisoner, and Jimmy. Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is The Remarkable Life of Ebolin. Directed by Benjamin Ree, this documentary tells the story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who died at twenty five from muscular dystrophy. His parents believed his life had been mostly isolated, shaped by illness and the limits of his body. After his death, they discovered something they had not fully understood. Mats had built a rich life inside World of Warcraft, where he was known as Ebeln. He had friends, relationships, conflicts, jokes, routines, and a community that knew him not as a diagnosis, but as a person with a full inner and social world. The film reconstructs that online life through animation and conversations with the people who knew him there. And that is where it gets you. It's not a technology is magic story. It's a story about how connection can show up in forms families may not recognize at first. It's moving without being manipulative, and it quietly challenges the idea that a life has to look a certain way to be meaningful. You can watch it on Netflix. RED filmed classic this week is Boyhood, directed by Richard Linklater. It is back in theaters and it remains one of the great long game experiments in American independent film. Linklater shot the movie over 12 years with the same actors, following Mason from childhood into young adulthood. Eller Coltrane grows up on screen not through makeup, not through casting tricks, but because time actually passes. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke play as parents, and part of the power is watching them age too. The film is not built around huge plot turns. It's about birthdays, school years, moving houses, family fights, bad haircuts, stepfathers, first crushes, music, road trips, and the thousand tiny moments that make a life feel like a life. That is also why it sneaks up on you. You keep waiting for the big scene. Then realize the big scene was a kid in the back seat, or a parent trying to stay calm, or a teenager realizing the world is not arranged for his comfort. The production fact is still wild. Twelve years, same cast, one fictional life shaped by actual time. You can feel the risk in every ordinary moment. If you missed it in theaters, this re-release is the right way to see it. The big screen gives all those small changes room to breathe. And that wraps it for the July 31st, 2026 edition of Indie Film Weekly. If you want to support the show, do the simple stuff. Subscribe so you don't miss next week. Share it with one friend who likes being early. Rate it because it helps the apps take the show seriously. Then leave a quick review, even one sentence helps. Until next week, keep it curious, keep it unruly, and keep it indie.