Indy films ,08

Just how independent are you, pal?

With each passing year, as the hybridizing of style and film financing moves on apace, telling the real indy films in distribution from the ersatz becomes harder. Apart from the tiny, shoestring-budgeted pictures that seldom make it out of the festival circuit and into theaters, many of the movies that find their way here are "independent" in name only.

Exceptions? Certainly. And to begin our survey of the 2008 art house landscape, we must first take a look back to late-premiering 2007 indy films that are just now trickling into smaller markets.

Gems like Tamara Jenkins' "The Savages," which opens here Friday, Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," slated for release later this month, and Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" (March), which opened in December for a limited one-week Oscar qualifying run.

Other notable 2007 pictures getting wider release in 2008 include "Caramel" (February-March), debut writer-director Nadine Labaki's much-praised story of five women at a Beirut beauty salon; Chico Teixeira's "Alice's House," which finds drama and pathos in the mundane life of a 40-something Brazilian manicurist; and Chris Chan Lee's "Undoing," neo-noir set in Los Angeles' Koreatown.

There's also a chance we may get one or both of a pair of respected 2007 documentaries little seen outside major markets: "Nanking," Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's powerful, disturbing exploration of Imperial Japanese forces' depredations in the Republic of China's then-capital in late 1937 and early 1938, and an updated version of "Let's Get Lost," Bruce Weber's haunting 1989 doc about jazz musician Chet Baker.

Newbies

Reliable information on independent films beyond the late-winter/early-spring season is unusually sketchy at this point. Where is the usual hype on prestige literary adaptations, offbeat foreign films and lacerating dramas for fall? But we've got the dope on some interesting entries in the weeks to come.

About the last place that a duo of Irish hitmen (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) might look to lay low after a botched job might be a quaint, medieval town in Belgium. No, "In Bruges" (February-March) is not one of those yarns in which the local townsfolk clasp the two to their bosom and they reform. Rather, it's Murphy's Law incarnate: everything that can go awry, does. The eccentric Sundance Film Festival entry marks the feature film directing debut of playwright Martin McDonagh.

Director Michel ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") Gondry returns with "Be Kind Rewind" (Feb. 19), wherein a junkyard worker (Jack Black) accidentally erases every copy of every film in his friend's (Mos Def) video store when his brain mysteriously becomes magnetized. Now he and his buddy set out to remake the films themselves. Think bargain basement renderings of "Back to the Future" and "Jurassic Park." Mia Farrow and Danny Glover co-star.

Artist/author Neil Gaiman's surreal images have lit the screen previously in such films as "MirrorMask," but the latest adaptation of his work, "Coraline" (to be announced), mines its adventure from the ore of a parallel reality. Director Henry Selick ("Nightmare Before Christmas") tells this tale of a young girl who unlocks a mysterious door in her new home and enters a familiar yet fantastical realm.

Adapted from Philippa Gregory's book of the same name, "The Other Boleyn Girl" (Feb. 29) offers a soapy "new twist based on historical facts," and we all know what that usually means. Directed by Justin Chadwick ("Bleak House") the film stars Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn, and Eric Bana as King Henry VIII. It depicts the intense rivalry between Anne and Mary, the latter of whom first caught Henry's eye. Kristin Scott Thomas lends support.

Expect to see a lot of kid-actor-of-the-moment Abigail Breslin this year. In addition to the 2008 mainstreamers "Definitely, Maybe" and "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl," Breslin stars in the indy offering "Nim's Island" (April 4), opposite Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler. The movie's billed as an irreverent family romp reminiscent of "Romancing the Stone."

Dream on

Getting decidedly mixed reviews is Woody Allen's latest picture set in contemporary London, the crime comedy-drama "Cassandra's Dream" (February-March). Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor star as two brothers who, desperate to improve their troubled lives, become ensnared in a sinister situation. Tom Wilkinson is along for the ride.

Originally slotted for release last November, James C. Strouse's "Grace is Gone" (March-April) features John Cusack in a drama of a young father whose soldier wife has just been killed while in the line of duty in Iraq. Unable to break the news to his two daughters, he takes them on a cross-country road trip, hoping to find the right moment.

One fall film on which there is some advance word is "City of Ember" (Oct. 10), Gil Kenan's sci-fi/fantasy of a people who face the dimming of their future when a failing super-generator threatens their amazing world of glittering lights. Bill Murray, Toby Jones, Saoirse Ronan, Tim Robbins and Martin Landau top an intriguing cast.

More Sundance Film Festival favorites to look for in theaters this year include writer-director Courtney Hunt's grand-jury prize for drama winner "Frozen River," about a struggling single mom in upstate New York who joins with a Mohawk woman to smuggle people across the Canadian border; Chusy Haney-Jardine's "Anywhere, USA"; the documentary "Trouble the Water," about the survival of an impoverished New Orleans couple in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; writer-director Jonathan Levine's "The Wackness," starring Ben Kingsley; and the adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel "Choke."

Stay tuned.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.