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There are certainly strategies worse than going all-in on New York City neighborhood flavor to sustain a crowd-pleaser. It isn’t just the power of location shooting, but also the access to a vast array of untapped, scruffy actors living in the area. Put a bunch of them in a van with a pizza and that could be solid enough foundation for a film. It could even be called something simple — like “Caper.” Does it really need to be more complicated than that?

Perhaps not always, but definitely here. Writer-director Dean Imperial loses on such a gamble with his tedious feature debut, which tracks an unhinged night of escapades between a bunch of poker buddies. Some of them are pushing middle age, several are even a few years past it, but they’re all about to turn juvenile. One of their compadres (Ron Palais) is spiraling toward suicide after erroneously...

"That's what friends are for," as the saying goes, but it's something that gets more difficult with each passing decade. You know what they say — one of Jesus' biggest miracles was being a 30-something man with 12 good friends. For those who are already in their 30s, 40s, or even 50s, hopefully you still have a posse that's close-knit enough to save your sorry butt if you happen to pull something idiotic at such a seasoned age. Yes, the new indie comedy Caper, premiering at this year's SXSW, suggests that you don't have to be Gen Z to pull a whoopsie and send an accidental text to the wrong person, potentially yielding horrifically dire consequences. That's because the text itself could be classified as something Merriam-Webster defines as a "sext." Ever heard of it? You can figure it out if not.

And what's even sillier about the outrageous premise of Caper...

There’s still one week left in Oscar season, but the film calendar waits for nobody. Days after Hollywood descends upon the Dolby Theater to see who emerges victorious from this year’s awards race, the independent film world will turn its attention to Austin when the 2025 SXSW Film and TV festival kicks off next week. The lineup is filled with major premieres, from headliners starring A-list talent to indies that could serve as launchpads for the next wave of exciting voices.

One of those films looking to make its mark on festivalgoers is Dean Imperial’s “Caper,” for which IndieWire can exclusively debut the trailer. A comedy about all of the opportunities that technology creates for men to misbehave, the sex comedy follows a group of friends who spend a night trying to ensure their gross private communications don’t bring down their careers by falling into the wrong hands.