Summer Movie Preview: May, 1999

The Thirteenth Floor
Sometime between Independence Day and Godzilla, Roland Emmerich got the green light from Sony to coproduce this sci-fi mind bender with a Mobius-strip story line jumping back and forth between two parallel worlds (one set in 1937 and the other in the present day). Armin Mueller-Stahl stars as a tycoon whose mysterious death gets things rolling, with Craig Bierko and Gretchen Mol trying to make sense of it all.
Bottom line: Sounds confusing. Then again, so did The Matrix. (May 28, 1999)

The Very Thought of You
Add this to the list of summer counterprogramming initiatives: Miramax's import (a British romantic comedy originally titled Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence) stars Joseph Fiennes, Rufus Sewell, and Tom Hollander as Londoners out to woo a visiting American bird (Monica Potter).
Bottom line: The title and release date are still in question, but the very thought of Fiennes (fresh off Shakespeare in Love) has us intrigued.

Plus...

Dusted off for its 50th anniversary, The Third Man, director Carol Reed's classic adaptation of Graham Greene's noir chiller starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, appears in a restored director's cut. In the rerelease of 1965's The Saragossa Manuscript, an 18th-century Belgian engages in some supernatural adventures. Such diverse...talents?...as Joey Buttafuoco and Baywatch's Gena Lee Nolin hone their sketch-parody skills in The Underground Comedy Movie. Blossom's Joey Lawrence dares to eat the worm when he gains psychic powers on a Mexican sojourn in Tequila Body Shots. In Frogs for Snakes, Barbara Hershey is a star involved in foul play with actors who kill for their roles. On the road to the After Life, a group of the newly dead recall their happiest memories. The avant-garde director Stan Brakhage is profiled in this bio-documentary. A musician falls for the singer he made famous in Iris Blond. The traditional marriage of Leila, an Iranian woman, is threatened when she cannot bear children. The drug-dealing foibles of a Copenhagen Pusher aggravate a local crime lord. In Mascara, three women grow closer as they suffer the anxieties of middle age. A tow-truck driver bucks the bureaucracy when a proposed airport expansion threatens his home in The Castle. Love Etc. updates Francois Truffaut's Jules and Jim, about a love triangle between three friends. In Twice Upon a Yesterday, a forlorn Londoner gets to relive a relationship gone wrong. Actress Joan Chen (The Last Emperor) directs Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, about a bold young woman in the days of China's Cultural Revolution. And if you're at all offended by the title of the Star Trek fanumentary Trekkies, then it's probably about you.

Senior Editor: Jess Cagle
Associate Editors: Tracy A. Walsh, Marc Bernardin, Eileen Clarke, Wook Kim
Writers: Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, Kristen Baldwin, Steve Daly, Andrew Essex, Daniel Fierman, Jeff Jensen, Tricia Johnson, Dave Karger, Chris Nashawaty, Joe Neumaier, Joshua Rich, Jessica Shaw, Benjamin Svetkey, Josh Wolk
Reporters: Kristi Huelsing, Allyssa Lee, Karen Mancuso, Leslie Marable, Erin Richter, Lori L. Tharps