Fall Preview 2003

Fall Movies

• Look ahead: September | October | November | New York Films

New York Stories

Five fall films that could (and do) happen only in Gotham.

Party Monster

(Photo: Courtesy of Strand Releasing)

Party Monster
September 5 (Killer Films)

Club kid James St. James (Seth Green) narrates the true story of his best friend and rival Michael Alig (Macaulay Culkin), a misfit from Indiana who rose in the early nineties to become the shockingly costumed (think diapers and bloody wedding gowns) king of the Limelight and the downtown club scene, then spiraled out of control and murdered his drug-dealing roommate, Angel Melendez (Wilson Cruz). Also starring—who else?—Marilyn Manson and Chloë Sevigny.

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In the Cut

(Photo: Brian Hamill)

In the Cut
October 22 (Sony Screen Gems)

Piano director Jane Campion rescues Meg Ryan from romantic-comedy hell with this sexy thriller, adapted from Susanna Moore’s 1995 bestseller about a lonely English professor (Ryan) who strikes up a steamy affair with a homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) investigating a brutal (and possible serial) murder Ryan may have witnessed near her East Village home. Naturally, Ryan starts wondering if her new lover may indeed be the killer—and if she might be next..

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Duplex

(Photo: Darren Michaels)

Duplex
September 26 (Miramax)

In Danny DeVito’s follow-up to Death to Smoochy, a manipulative real-estate broker (Harvey Fierstein) sets up a young couple (Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller) in their dream house, a gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone. But the pair develop homicidal tendencies when they discover that the old lady who lives in the rent-controlled apartment upstairs—who blasts Hawaii Five-O all night, accuses Stiller of being a pervert, and sics the cops on him—isn’t dying soon of natural causes..

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Pieces of April

(Photo: Teddy Maki)

Pieces of April
October 17 (United Artists)

Katie Holmes stars as a 21-year-old free spirit who invites her estranged family over for Thanksgiving after learning that her mother (Patricia Clarkson) has breast cancer, only to find herself scurrying around her Lower East Side tenement looking for a place to cook her bird. Along the way, she encounters, in turn, an African-American gourmet, a family of Chinese immigrants, and Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes, the proud owner of a brand-new, self-cleaning convection oven..

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Anything Else

(Photo: James Bridges)

Anything Else
September 19 (Dreamworks)

Woody Allen’s latest look at New Yorkers and their neuroses casts him as a mentor to Jason Biggs, a young joke writer who can’t let go of the destructive people in his life, including an agent who keeps upping his commission (Danny DeVito), a girlfriend who can have sex with everyone but him (Christina Ricci), and his girlfriend’s midlife-crisis mother (Stockard Channing), who’s decided to become a lounge singer and move in with him. This time (happily), Woody doesn’t play the love interest.