Where Have All the Indie Hits Gone?

We’re now in the thick of the fall movie season, but you wouldn’t know it from how skimpy the box office is, or how muted the chatter. Simply put: Where have all the indie hits gone?

Not so long ago, the slate of buzzy, critically acclaimed prestige movies that opened during the fall added up to something like the indie version of blockbuster season. There’s a reason the movie calendar was arranged that way. Critically acclaimed films tended to open in the last part of the year because that’s when they did well . And the trend crystallized in the ’90s, when Harvey Weinstein transformed the old awards season into the awards-industrial complex (welcome to your life, actors and directors who now have to spend five months on the road-to-the-Oscars campaign trail).

But the days when a buzzy