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FIRE DOWN BELOW
America's favorite bullying Buddhist, Steven Seagal, is an EPA agent hunting toxic-waste-dumping bad guys in Appalachia and doling out his special brand of neck-snapping, tree-hugging justice. ''Obviously, it's an issue that's important to me or I wouldn't have done two major environmental movies,'' says Seagal, who tackled similar themes in 1994's On Deadly Ground. The good news: Kris Kristofferson, who was all redneck tooth and menace in Lone Star, plays the heavy. (Sept. 5)
THE TEARS OF JULIAN PO
''It's definitely not his regular heartthrob-Broken Arrow-buff-guy thing,'' says costar Robin Tunney (The Craft) of Christian Slater's role as a loner stranded in a small village. The townspeople are convinced he's up to no good and badger him. Finally, out of frustration, Slater blurts out that he is there to kill himself -- a declaration that changes his life. This darkly comic fable comes from first-time writer-director Alan Wade. (Sept. 5)
INTIMATE RELATIONS
The journalistic euphemism for sex in '50s England provides the title for this tawdry-as-the-headlines romp, starring Julie Walters as a frump falling hard for her dim-witted-hunk houseguest (Rupert Graves). Her daughter's nosiness and hubby's seeming obliviousness lead to...bloodletting. So what is it -- dark comedy or noir? ''Noirish dark comedy,'' says director Philip Goodhew. (Sept. 5)
KICKED IN THE HEAD
''There's a period a lot of people go through in their mid-20s when their whole life goes up in flames,'' says cowriter-director Matthew Harrison, who tests that theory in a black comedy about a 25-year-old New Yorker (Kevin Corrigan) who loses his job, girlfriend, and apartment. Who can stanch the bleeding? Airline stewardess Linda Fiorentino. Not an unreasonable proposition. (Sept. 12)
GOING ALL THE WAY
Two Gen-X actors known for very contemporary sex comedies -- Jeremy Davies (Spanking the Monkey) and Ben Affleck (Chasing Amy) -- team up as a pair of young Korean War vets returning home to 1950s Indianapolis. First-time director Mark Pellington's adaptation of Dan Wakefield's 1970 novel shows that Amy-chasing and monkey-spanking were just as popular back then. (Sept. 19)
THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS
In this J. Crew catalog of a drama, four siblings (including Julianne Moore and Noah Wyle) return to Maine for Thanksgiving with Mom (Blythe Danner), Dad (Roy Scheider), and loads of literal and metaphorical baggage. Rookie writer-director Bart Freundlich began Myth with back-to-back sex scenes ''just to prove I was allowed to. Then it took me 50 pages before I had any clue what this thing was about.'' (Sept. 19)
THE LOCUSTS
Test audiences have been, no pun intended, buzzing about the graphic on-screen castration of a bull in first-time writer-director John Patrick Kelley's noirish romance set in rural Kansas. ''There was no real castration of any kind done, thank God,'' insists Vince Vaughn (Swingers, The Lost World). A sex scene between Vaughn and Ashley Judd in a pickup truck reportedly earned the film an NC-17 rating, but an MGM rep says the film is rated R, and the scene is still intact. (Sept. 26)
