Hell, heists and hairpieces

>> From Jack the Ripper to Harry Potter, the season promises a mixed bag of movies

by MARK SLUTSKY

The cinematically dismal summer of 2001 is drawing to a close, with the reek of A.I., Tomb Raider, Planet of the Apes and various other big-money crap-outs finally dissipating. Now begins the movie fall, traditionally a time for studios to start releasing their Oscar bids, their prestigious literary adaptations and beautifully lit stories of love and healing. This season's plate is full of such "quality" offerings, but also of a score of intriguing and unusual alternatives, and some exciting looking bigger-budget pics. Not to mention the Festival of New Cinema and New Media, Image & Nation, the Goethe-Institut's Brecht retrospective and some other assorted Montreal-centric movie-friendly events.

Around town

First, the local stuff: prominent on any moviegoer's calendar this autumn should be two of Montreal's most interesting movie festivals, Image & Nation and the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media. Image & Nation, now in its 14th edition, runs from Sept. 20-30 and features an impressive 100+ titles this year. Some of the catalogue's stand-outs are Julie Johnson, with Courtney Love and Lili Taylor, Sandi Simcha Dubowski's doc Trembling Before G-d, which deals with homosexuality in the Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities (and features music by John Zorn), an adaptation of Brendan Behan's memoir Borstal Boy with Michael York, and something called The Attack of the Giant Moussaka. The full program is available at www.image-nation.org.

The Festival of New Cinema and New Media (Oct. 11-21) hasn't released their program yet, but as it's the fest's 30th anniversary, expect some arty and experimental surprises. You might also want to check out an event being put on by the independant-minded, online Reel Film Festival, Sept. 28-30 at the Just For Laughs Museum. The show will apparently feature DJs, live shows, and artists in pretty much all media, not to mention the latest film from experimental pioneer Stan Brakhage.

As well, the Goethe-Institut presents L'Atelier Bertolt Brecht, a series of films based on the German playwright's works and life, featuring some rare film material from his workshop. The series runs until Dec. 7. Finally, on the Montreal front, local filmmaker Denis Langlois presents his new flick, Danny in the Sky, about a young man who believes his destiny is to be a model. Apparently the entire cast is composed of non-professionals--well, it worked for The Bicycle Thief.

Oscar hopefuls

On the Hollywood front, expect to see a lot of uplifting dramas featuring big stars hit the theatres as the year-end deadline for the big awards shows draws closer. Critical fave Kevin Spacey continues his decline into mediocrity (which he started with last year's miserable Pay it Forward) with two Oscar-friendly releases. Most nauseating-seeming is October's K-PAX, which teams him up, unfortunately, with the great Jeff Bridges. Spacey plays Prot, a mental patient who believes he's an alien. Bridges, his psychiatrist, is skeptical until he notices the amazing effect our Prot is having on the other patients. Does anything sound worse than that? Spacey also appears in the Christmas release The Shipping News with Julianne Moore, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, directed by Lasse Hallström, who's carved out quite a niche for himself making tasteful, expensive-seeming movies (The Cider House Rules, Chocolat) for Miramax.

Another talented actor stuck in what looks to be a lousy heart-warmer this fall is Kevin Kline, who stars in Life as a House, out in October. He's an architect with a fatal disease who re-discovers himself and his family by building his dream house. Looks really Oprah-friendly, this one.

Cameron Crowe returns with some serious star-power with December's Vanilla Sky. Lovebirds Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz star in this re-make of Alejandro Amenabar's Open Your Eyes (which also featured Cruz). Production on this one has been pretty hush-hush--but how hush-hush could it be, considering the original (a kind of tortured riff on Matrix themes) came out just a few years ago? And what's really the point of re-making such a recent movie? And what's with that crappy title?

Speaking of Oscar-friendly, badly titled December flicks, Russell Crowe appears in A Beautiful Mind, based on the true and very interesting story of mentally ill math genius John Forbes Nash Jr. But with a title like that and Ron Howard at the helm, I wouldn't get your hopes up. Earlier that month has Will Smith appearing in the titular role in Michael Mann's Ali, as in the boxer Muhammad. This one might actually be good--Mann is a terrific director and his last movie, The Insider, showed him to be really at the top of his form, especially when dealing with that big masculine drama thing.

Interesting alternatives

Now, the good news: there are actually a few really genuinely exciting and unusual movies slated for this fall that promise some interesting alternatives to the latest Miramax luxury pic. Already playing in the States, and hopefully opening here soon is L.I.E., the debut feature from writer/director Michael Cuesta. An apparently extremely unsettling picture about a pedophile (played by the great Brian Cox) and his relationship with a lonely 15-year-old, L.I.E. has garnered an NC-17 rating and a whole heap of controversy. Also coming up fairly soon is Under the Sand by François Ozon, whose Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes attracted a lot of attention here last year. Mature Franco-Anglo sex symbol Charlotte Rampling stars.

One of the fall's most intriguing entries is Richard Linklater's awesome-looking Waking Life. Shot all on video and then run through a computerized rotoscopic-animation process, the movie has Dazed and Confused's Wiley Wiggins wandering from encounter to encounter with various philosophizing characters (including Steven Soderbergh, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke), trying to figure out whether he's dreaming or not. Could be a real stoner's delight, this one. October also sees David Lynch open Mulholland Drive, a movie based on a pilot for a TV show of the same name that ABC declined to pick up. So Lynch shot some new footage for his flick, a loopy-looking L.A. mystery starring Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring and turned it into a feature. Look out for familiar landmarks in David Mamet's Montreal-shot Heist, starring Gene Hackman, Rebecca Pidgeon and Sam Rockwell. This one looks to be a good ol' House of Games-style "who's conning who?" flick with lots of thieves, double-crosses etc.

Speaking of treachery, the Coen brothers return this November with the black-and-white blackmail flick The Man Who Wasn't There, starring Billy Bob Thornton, James Gandolfini and Frances Mcdormand. Thornton plays a barber and, fittingly, apparently everyone wears a hairpiece of some kind in this one. Martin Scorsese returns this December with his big-budget Gangs of New York, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, an epic saga about the huge bands of street toughs who would war in Manhattan in the 19th century. Please, oh Lord, let this one be good. Fans of Wes Anderson's brilliant Bottle Rocket and Rushmore are doubtlessly already squeamish with anticipation over The Royal Tenenbaums (Dec.), a tale of a family of dysfunctional New York genius types, with Gene Hackman (for his second exciting role this season), Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Anjelica Huston, Luke Wilson and Anderson regular Kumar Pallana. Stiller also appears (with Tenenbaums co-writer Owen Wilson) in his male-model comedy Zoolander, due out the end of this month.

Rings and stones

Not all the pulse-pounding content is saved for the summer--studios save a bunch of event movies to liven up the serious fall roster and especially for the big holiday-season moviegoing bonanza. Perhaps the most anticipated movie of the year is Peter Jackson's first installment in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring (to be released Dec. 19), which stars Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler and a bunch of others. This is the movie to hopefully fill the Star Wars and Indiana Jones-size hole in adventure cinema. Hopes are also high for the sure-to-be-lucrative Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Nov. 16), based on the almost universally loved children's book, which, despite being directed by Chris "Bicentennial Man" Columbus, might turn out to be a really solid kid's pic. This one's also the first in a series--apparently the sequel begins shooting the day after the movie's release.

Comic book fans are already talking about From Hell the new flick from the Hughes brothers based on Alan Moore's graphic novel about Jack the Ripper. Johnny Depp plays a London police inspector and Heather Graham is the prostitute he befriends (Oct. 19).There's also a battery of war and spy-themed movies coming out, like Tony Scott's rather unimaginatively titled Spy Game, which has Robert Redford and Brad Pitt as CIA operatives involved, no doubt, in some dangerous shit. Redford also appears as a disgraced general locking horns with prison warden James Gandolfini in The Last Castle, directed by The Contender's Rod Lurie (Oct. 12). John Woo takes a stab at the war-movie genre with Windtalkers, with Nic Cage, Christian Slater, and Mark Ruffalo, and look out for Arnold Schwarzenegger, if you care, battling the baddies who killed his wife and son in Collateral Damage.

Maybe most enticing among all of these, though, is Steven Soderbergh's take on Ocean's 11. A re-make of the Rat Pack casino heist flick, 11 features a deluxe ensemble of stars--George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts among them--and early reports say this is one thrilling, supremely enjoyable caper flick. Look for it in December.