The Top 10 Indies of Summer 2007 (Part 2)

5. Sunshine - Director Danny Boyle continues to expand his horizons with his latest feature, Sunshine. The film is an epic sc-fi odyssey chronicling the dramatic challenges standing in the way of a team of brilliant scientists on a mission to reignite the dying Sun and save Earth from certain doom. The enthralling measure of atmospheric brilliance that Boyle brings to this outer space thriller transforms a potentially hokey sci-fi setup into a metaphysical masterwork. The ultimate threat for these characters isn’t really any looming technological or biological disaster. It’s the devastating frailty of the human psyche. Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, and Michelle Yeoh star.

4. Rescue Dawn - Werner Herzog dipped back into his well of inspiring stories to make Rescue Dawn, readapting his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly into a feature length narrative drama about prisoners of war in Laos during the early stages of the American conflict with Vietnam. Christian Bale stars as the resourceful, goodhearted Dieter, an American Navy pilot who crash lands during his very first mission. He eventually befriends his fellow prison inmates, including Jeremy Davies and Steve Zahn in the best performances of their respective careers, and begins hatching a plot to make an escape. Bale is the real standout here. He gives what is perhaps the greatest performance by any leading actor in a feature so far this year and along the way he reaffirms his status as one of the most versatile and committed actors of his generation

3. Rocket Science - You’ve just got to love Rocket Science. Jeffrey Blitz directs this tale of high school betrayals and debate team drama with a pitch-perfect seriocomic tone and a sharp eye for detail. In an age where teenage awkwardness is its own multi-million dollar brand, Rocket Science stands out as the most painfully honest look at misspent youth in at least the last decade. Credit is also due to its cast of brilliant young actors, including Reece Thompson as the unlikely, stuttering would-be debate champion and Anna Kendrick as his complex mentor with mysterious motives.

2. The Nines - The Nines is the best mind bender in years, something of a mixture between the sensibilities of Donnie Darko and Adaptation with an even more elaborate, cheeky surreal world at stake and even richer philosophical questions at its hidden core. Ryan Reynolds and Hope Davis lead a troupe of actors playing 3 different characters in 3 different stories that each overlap and bleed into one another in surprising ways. Part L.A. satire and part puzzle box mystery, consider it David Lynch-lite or maybe a heavier, headier cousin to the work of Charlie Kaufman. What’s particularly satisfying is that the film forgoes some of the more frustrating inconclusiveness of both of those fine talents’ many works. It’s less of mood piece than a hindsight revelation. In the end, the core of the film is revealed and all the pieces come together. Everything that seemed inexplicable gets explained and all the ambiguity that existed before evolves into perfect clarity. It’s a conclusion that’s outrageous and unforeseeable but never feels like anything close to a cheat.

1. Once - Once is a breathtaking film of simple beauty that threatens to revolutionize an entire genre. The musical has long been the muse of those aspiring to spectacle productions and glamorous song and dance routines. Once is just the opposite. It’s a lovely little gem of almost no budget that features fairly ordinary musicians singing sparse songs in drab, authentic locales in and around the streets of Dublin. Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard of The Frames star as two street musicians who meet one another by chance and have a passionate musical fling in which they express increasingly more personal feelings to one another over several days of musical collaboration. It’s the movie musical reinvented for the modern culture of indie rock, iPods, and DIY filmmaking.