Thanks brother! Do you have any 70's recommendations (or even before).. I like going chronologically, comparing, and we seem we have a liking to independent movies. I was told in other forums to avoid "Gummo" but I noticed you had it on your avatar, so I saw it right away
Here's everything I have rated 4/5 or higher on my Letterboxd. I've only been rating for about a year, so it's not a definitive list.
Bertolucci's
The Conformist (1970)
Bergman's
Cries & Whispers (1972)
Zulawski's
The Devil (1972)
Herzog's
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972)
Friedkin's
The Exorcist (1973)
Polanski's
Chinatown (1974)
Coppola's
The Conversation (1974)
Altman's
Nashville (1975)
Zulawski's
That Most Important Thing: Love (1975)
Fellini's
Fellini's Casanova (1976) <= Not a typo lol
Romero's
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Malick's
Days of Heaven (1978)
Oshima's
Empire of Passion (1978)
In regards to independent stuff, I usually don't seek out that stuff purposefully. I think "independent" is a label slapped on any director making challenging, lower budget work.
I actually didn't think that much of Harmony Korine when I saw
Spring Breakers (2012), but I decided to check out the infamous
Gummo (1997) anyway and thoroughly enjoyed it. I then checked out
Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) and find that to be one of the most unique visions that I've ever seen. He's a polarizing director for sure, but some people seem to generally hate him as a person. Here's what Vincent Gallo (a fellow 90s independent director) wrote about him out of nowhere in his King Crimson review:
When a mini-dwarf rich kid from Nashville like Harmony Korine flies first class and moves to New York City’s Soho in his ‘plush safe’ apartment, running around town quoting Godard with lines like, "**** the bourgeois", it’s insincere, it’s calculated, it’s unoriginal, and it’s the worst thing in the world, ‘trendy’. He already knows that he and his boring girlfriend Connecticut Chloe Sevigny are going to be on the cover of ‘The Face’. He knows he’ll get his run at The Angelica and be hip in Japan. But no one will ever make an important film because they saw ‘Gummo’ or ‘Donkey Boy’.
The only impact Harmony Korine will have will be on the lives of the girls he slipped drugs to, got stoned and raped while they were passed out. An autobiographical scenario he chose to include in his average screenplay ‘Kids.' I’ll **** your ass Cary Woods.
He would later cast Korine's ex-girlfriend Chloe Sevigny in one of his movies where she performs fellatio on him on camera for real, so you can tell it wasn't an objective opinion. Herzog for instance loves Korine and starred in Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely after watching Gummo and being blown away.
Anyway, that's kind of off topic. I'm a huge fan of Richard Linklater who I'm sure you've seen movies by. He's probably the biggest American "independent" filmmaker. I guess Lars von Trier, Steve McQueen, and Terrence Malick might qualify as well.
In regards to newer guys, I think Jeff Nichols is one of the best post-2000 Americans. Some of my friends would argue that honor belongs to James Gray (debuted in '94 but took off in the 2000s).
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