Thursday, May 15, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: Evading the movie matrix

Indie flicks offer thinking filmgoers hope amid summer movie mayhem

By Anthony Allison and Jeannette Catsoulis

The story so far: In a shady netherworld that seems uncannily like real life, a malevolent machine controls the minds of unwitting citizens. Harnessing dishonest, misleading brainwashing techniques, it bamboozles the benighted populace with a soporific matrix of images and noise that sends sentient beings right into the arms of Morpheus. Mercifully for the future of the gene pool, a plucky band of rebels, led by neo-phyte cinephiles, fights gamely back against insuperable odds.

"I'm waiting to be impressed," groans Sean Connery in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The world-weary Scottish septuagenarian, whose on-set battles with director Stephen Norrington have grist-fueled Hollywood's rumor mill for months, could be speaking for thinking moviegoers everywhere. Sure, you'll obediently line up for The Matrix Reloaded. And yeah, you'll be impressed by the freeway chase sequence.

But consider this onslaught coming at you like a hundred Hugo Weaving clones, from here to that seeming eternity, Labor Day: 14 sequels, two prequels, three remakes, five TV and comic book spinoffs, a film that sounds like a sequel but isn't (28 Days Later) and another movie based on a Disneyland attraction (Pirates of the Caribbean). And you'd be forgiven for groaning too.

Of course, studio bosses will never acknowledge the concept of "familiarity breeds contempt," while patrons obediently line up for the same old cinematic pap. (In 2001 and 2002, six of the top 10 grossing movies were released in the busy summer schedule.) Yet there still are plenty of alternatives to the All Sequels All the Time megablockbusters crowding the nearest gigantiplex. Here's our guide (as usual, release dates are subject to change):

Indie rebels

As the line between independent and mainstream films becomes increasingly blurred, here at the Mercury we keep things simple by defining "indie" as anything with a budget lower than Robert Downey Jr.'s rehab expenses (or coke bill, whichever is greater). While this formula sometimes results in the inclusion of some pretty expensive films, we nevertheless feel it accurately reflects the renegade spirit of independent filmmaking.

With or without the encouragement of illicit substances, two prominent American actors have charged into the directing arena this summer, both with steamy thrillers set in exotic locations. John Malkovich's The Dancer Upstairs (May 23) is an ambitious Latin American political drama starring Before Night Falls' Javier Bardem as a dogged police lieutenant on the trail of a violent revolutionary. The delectable Laura Morante (The Son's Room) is the ballet teacher whose pas de deux gets in the way. Even more ambitiously, the usually low-key Matt Dillon directs, co-writes and stars in City of Ghosts (June TBC), as a con man in search of his fugitive partner (James Caan). The hunt takes him to Cambodia (where actual filming took place) and a backwater of troubled expats, including Gérard Depardieu as a massively sweaty bar owner--proving Dillon's heart of darkness to be more eccentric than Coppola's and more surreal than Conrad's.

Also struggling with reality is Billy Bob Thornton in Levity (May 30), playing a paroled felon seeking forgiveness from the sister of the boy he murdered 23 years earlier. The absolute antithesis of its name, Levity is beyond grim, though the wonderful cast--led by Holly Hunter and Morgan Freeman--does much to alleviate the pressure. No such relief is available in Manic (May 23), an agitated psych-ward melodrama set in the juvenile wing of a mental institution where teens with anger issues are medicated and analyzed. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (TV's "Third Rock from the Sun") is surprisingly effective as a prickly loner in this refreshingly direct look at the fickleness of recovery and the damage inflicted by loving families.

The family at the heart of the chilling Icelandic drama The Sea (June 27), is far from loving, having King Lear as its model and revenge as its motivation. Gifted filmmaker Baltasar Kormakur (101 Reykjavik) charts the dynamics of a harrowing family reunion, orchestrated by a selfish father determined to torture his variously warped children with his refusal to sell the family business. Featuring rather more sea but considerably less venom, the sun-drenched Respiro (July TBC), has the loose sexiness (Valeria Golino in paper-thin frocks) and fiery temperament (Vincenzo Amato in wife-beater shirts) we've come to expect from Italian cinema. Based on an old Sicilian legend, Emanuele Crialese's film stars Golino as a young mother in a small fishing village whom everyone believes is crazy because she refuses to conform.

Scott Baio can relate. In The Bread, My Sweet (June 6), the former Chachi is a high-powered businessman by day and a biscotti baker in the predawn. Torn between the joy of firing people and the smell of fresh cannoli, he decides to marry the sultry daughter of his terminally ill neighbor--apparently to allow director Melissa Martin to film a big fat Italian wedding. Only those with a seriously sweet tooth will want to sit through this manipulative mess. Yet the very sweetness of Raising Victor Vargas (May TBC), a naturalistic romance featuring the tenement-dwelling adolescents of the Lower East Side, may be its greatest strength. Not much more than a kid himself, 27-year-old writer-director Peter Sollett's charming debut has a dreamy warmth and two young stars (Victor Rasuk and Judy Marte) brimming with charisma and the heady urgency of first love.

For many of us floating around the middle-age mark, first love was something that happened only to the accompaniment of The Supremes and Otis Redding. In the where-are-they-now documentary Only the Strong Survive (TBC), filmmaking couple Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker (The War Room) go searchin' for some of the pillars of soul, discovering many--like The Supremes' Mary Wilson and Sam Moore of Sam and Dave--still belting out the oldies before appreciative audiences. And French pop legend Johnny Hallyday, famous for quite a different kind of music, makes an amazing appearance in the French fable The Man on the Train (L'homme du train, June 13). Hallyday plays a menacing gangster who fatefully crosses paths with a retired teacher (the delightful Jean Rochefort) and discovers they both have secrets.

After getting down on his knees to peer at bugs in Microcosmos (1996), actor-director Jacques Perrin takes to the air for Winged Migration (July 11), a breathtaking look at the migratory habits of more than 50 species of bird. Filming for four years on all seven continents, the movie's amazing footage of avian formations required hundreds of crew members to operate cameras mounted on everything from gliders to balloons. Equally impressive in its logistics is The Legend of Suriyothai (Aug. 8), a Cecil B. DeMille-sized epic about a beautiful Thai princess choosing between true love and an arranged marriage. Written and directed by a genuine prince of the Thai royal family, and backed by Coppola himself, this 16th century extravaganza bustles with bare-breasted Amazons, elephants galore and more wives than the suburbs of Salt Lake City. You have been warned.

Back home, and 10 years after he became a Big Brother to 13-year-old Stephen Fielding, filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams) caught up with the straggly haired victim of dysfunction and foster care abuse. His courageous, mesmerizing documentary Stevie (May 30) was the result.

Writer-director Karen Moncrieff also shows a sharp eye for the details of adolescence in Blue Car (June TBC), the fragile tale of a young girl (Agnes Bruckner) and her supportive high school teacher (Limbo's David Strathairn). Tasteful and intelligent, the movie plays like a lesson in the avoidance of predictability, helped by stunning performances and that rarest of commodities: a good story.

The story related in Owning Mahowny (July 25) is interesting, if only because this salutary tale about compulsive gambling is true. Richard Kwietniowski's film is based on Gary Stephen Ross' book Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony. And although Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as a nerdy bank exec with a serious gambling problem doesn't equal the endearing haplessness of Richard Dreyfuss in Let It Ride or George Segal in California Suite, Minnie Driver is suitably pathetic as Phil's doggedly supportive girlfriend. Unfortunately, fellow Brit John Hurt, as a laughably unconvincing Atlantic City casino boss, fails to revive the magic of his last film with Kwietniowski, Love and Death on Long Island.

Not since Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey explored love and death in New Zealand, in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, has a female lead in a Kiwi flick elicited such paeans as Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider (June 20). In Niki Caro's film of Witi Ihimaera's novel, Keisha plays a teenage girl fulfilling her destiny as the leader of a modern-day Maori tribe.

Meanwhile, in present-day Park City, Utah, another teen, Nikki Reed, wowed the Sundance crowd with Thirteen (Aug. 20), which she co-wrote at age 13 (with director Catherine Hardwicke), about a 13-year-old (Evan Rachel Wood) who, to mom Holly Hunter's dismay, spirals into a life of drugs, sex and petty crime thanks to the influence of her best "friend" (Reed).

Since melting moviegoers' hearts as Amélie Poulain, Audrey Tautou's doe-eyed charm has gotten old (in God Is Great, I'm Not and He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not). L'Auberge espagnole (Aug. TBC), in which Audrey teams with director Cedric Klapisch (the whimsical When the Cat's Away) and a bunch of multinational students in a Barcelona apartment, looks marginally more promising.

A promising alternative to Tinseltown's tame TV adaptations is Cowboy Bebop: The Movie--Knockin' on Heaven's Door (May 30). In this (English-dubbed) spinoff from a successful Japanese anime series, space cowboy Spike Spiegel (voiced by Steven Jay Blum) has to save a 22nd century Martian colony from destruction by a dastardly villain.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, three sisters try to prevent their gay brother from marrying and thereby inheriting the family's house in Portugal. Paula van der Oest's Dutch comedy Zus & Zo (literally, "This and That," June 20) was a somewhat incongruous Oscar nominee for best foreign language film. And perhaps the presence of Iberian hunk Javier Bardem (The Dancer Upstairs) in Mondays in the Sun (Aug. TBC) explains why Fernando Leon de Aranoa's drama about unemployed shipyard workers in northern Spain froze out Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her, as Spain's submission in the foreign lingo Oscar race.

Finally, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's Sundance sensation American Splendor (Aug. 15 TBC) is an unorthodox biopic of comic book artist Harvey Pekar, who's played by actor Paul Giamatti but also appears in the film.