Fall Movie Preview: September

Buzz A likely art-house hit; its high-profile slot opening the New York Film Festival will help.

Last Man Standing
Starring Bruce Willis, Bruce Dern, Christopher Walken, William Sanderson, David Patrick Kelly, Ned Eisenberg, Karina Lombard, Alexandra Powers
Directed by Walter Hill

When is a remake not a remake? The 1964 Clint Eastwood Western A Fistful of Dollars is generally regarded as a gloss on Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai epic Yojimbo. But although Standingbegan when producer Arthur Sarkissian optioned remake rights to Yojimbo, director Hill insists, ''I'm not remaking Kurosawa's movie — that would be a foolish endeavor. It's a rather free adaptation.'' New Line first wanted to turn the tale of a freelance warrior into a sci-fi flick; instead, Hill set it in a 1930s Texas town, where a Man With No Name (Willis) plays two warring mobsters against each other. Sounds like Yojimbo to us — and to Willis, who reportedly got $16.5 million for the role. ''This movie is more like Yojimbo than Dollars was,'' says the actor. ''You could draw a straight line from Greek tragedy to Yojimbo to this film.'' (Sept. 20)

Buzz Die Hard 4 it ain't. But in a very uncompetitive month, it could be the last action movie standing.

Also in September

Big Night

Campbell Scott (Dying Young) and Stanley Tucci (Murder One) turn a family-run Italian restaurant in '50s New Jersey into a delicious metaphor for the battle between art and commerce. Winner of Sundance's best-screenplay award, it's the ultimate movie-and-dinner date, although the cast itself (which also includes Minnie Driver and Isabella Rossellini) got heartily sick of all that prop food: ''Eventually,'' admits Scott, ''it got pretty funky.'' (Sept. 20)

Caught

Edward James Olmos (American Me) and director Robert M. Young reunite for a noir thriller about a couple (Olmos and Maria Conchita Alonso) who take in a mysterious drifter who arrives at their New Jersey fish market. The low-cost film was shot speedily and — a greater rarity — in sequence. ''The production was so lean that we could move very quickly,'' says Olmos. ''We were maybe in one truck.'' (Sept. 25)

Feeling Minnesota

Somewhere between action movies and rock gigs, Keanu Reeves managed to squeeze in a darkly comic little indie about two brothers with the hots for the same woman (Cameron Diaz). Says first-time director-writer Steven Baigelman, ''I think he decided to do this movie for the same reason he turned down Speed 2.'' Which was why, exactly? (Sept. 13)

Fly Away Home

First came a 20/20 story about a Canadian artist who parented a group of geese. Then came Hollywood, which made it a father-daughter story with Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin. ''I saw the 20/20 piece and said, 'Oh, my God, if we can get remotely close to it...''' says Daniels, who gives the film a thumbs-up: ''It grabs you.'' (Sept. 13)

Mouth to Mouth

Moviegoers had a bad connection with Spike Lee's Girl 6, but Miramax hopes its Spanish-language comedy about a struggling actor working at a phone-sex line will get audiences hot and bothered. ''In Spain everybody loved it,'' says Aitana Sanchez-Gijon (A Walk in the Clouds), who plays a seductress. ''We'll see. Maybe people here will laugh in different places.'' (Sept. 6)

Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent

This still-timely Victorian-era terrorist drama is based on the novel said to be among the alleged Unabomber's favorite books. But director Christopher Hampton (Carrington) actually wrote the script in 1992. Featuring Bob Hoskins as an agent provocateur, Patricia Arquette as his wife, and an uncredited Robin Williams, the $7 million production (shot in 7 weeks) taught Hampton the most crucial rule of directing: ''Get on with it.''

2 Days in the Valley

Writer-director John Herzfeld patched together an eclectic ensemble (Danny Aiello, Jeff Daniels, Marsha Mason, Teri Hatcher, Glenne Headly, James Spader, Eric Stoltz) for his tale of 10 mostly depressed denizens of the San Fernando Valley who become linked after the murder of a philandering husband. Says Herzfeld, ''It's a twisted comedy that starts out dark and slowly brightens.'' (Sept. 27)

Plus

The Leopard Son tracks the growth of a baby feline, with narration by Sir John Gielgud and music by Stewart Copeland of the Police. A brutal update of ''Little Red Riding Hood,'' Freewaystars Reese Witherspoon (Fear) as a Grandma-bound youngster accosted by an abusive child psychologist (Kiefer Sutherland). Rosie Perez plays a taxi dancer in a dead-end relationship with has-been TV actor Harvey Keitel in Somebody to Love. Director Michael Corrente takes on David Mamet's American Buffalo, with Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz as poker buddies whose friendship goes out the window as they both attempt to find a stolen buffalo-head nickel. A hustler, a gardener, and a former baseball player compete for a married bartender (Lara Flynn Boyle) in The Big Squeeze. A straitlaced foster mother (Whoopi Goldberg) takes in a young orphan — and his imaginary friend — in Bogus. Sweet Nothing, which has already had a brief theatrical run in New York, follows a couple (Mira Sorvino and I Shot Andy Warhol's Michael Imperioli) torn apart by drug addiction. In Brother of Sleep, an Austrian villager's love of music distracts him from the affections of his best friend's sister. An L.A. male prostitute, played by ex-Madonna boy toy Tony Ward, is pursued by a journalist in Hustler White. A woman's fascination with death leads her to take a job cleaning up after murders in Curdled, costarring William Baldwin and Angela Jones. And following A Perfect Candidate, yet another documentary covers Oliver North's senatorial campaign: Ollie's Army chronicles the James Madison University College Republicans' failed attempts to elect their notorious hero.

The Fall Movie Preview was edited by Mark Harris and written by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, Kristen Baldwin, Jess Cagle, Steve Daly, Mitch Frank, Jeff Gordinier, Marion Hart, A.J. Jacobs, Dave Karger, Dana Kennedy, Gregg Kilday, Kate Meyers, Chris Nashawaty, Degen Pener, Jessica Shaw, Benjamin Svetkey, Caren Weiner, and Chris Willman.