Michael Moore is back. The pudgy gadfly who gave us the biting anti-corporate hit “Roger & Me” (1989), about his efforts to track down GM chairman Roger Smith, is rolling with “Bowling for Columbine, ” a scathing look at the gun culture in the United States, starting with the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.
Back in May, the movie won a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was the first documentary screened in the main competition in 46 years. On Oct. 4, it begins a theatrical run in New York.
“Bowling” is just one of many foreign and American indies screening here this fall.
Many of them will be at the city’s leading cinema event, the New York Film Festival (Sept. 27-Oct. 13). Some eventually will get commercial runs, others won’t.
One that will is “Auto Focus,” Paul Schrader’s dramatization of the murder of “Hogan’s Heroes” star Bob Crane, in 1978.
Greg Kinnear plays Crane, who apparently had a thing for kinky sex, and Willem Dafoe portrays the pal who was tried for the murder and acquitted. “Auto Focus” opens in theaters Oct. 18.
Here are other indies to look forward to this fall:
* “TED BUNDY” (Sept. 13): Bundy was one sick puppy, as you’ll learn from this chilling dramatization of the notorious serial killer’s life, told from his point of view. Matthew Bright directs Michael Reilly Burke as the killer with the telltale tooth marks.
* “8 WOMEN” (Sept. 20): Francois Ozon’s French comedy features some of the leading Gallic actresses – Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart, Fanny Ardant and Virginie Ledoyen. Oh la la.
* “THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER” (Sept. 25, Film Forum): This documentary, directed by Eugene Jarecki and “provoked” by a Christopher Hitchens book, asks the provocative question, Is Nobel laureate Kissinger a war criminal based on U.S. action in Chile and Vietnam?
* “BETWEEN STRANGERS” (Oct. 4): Edoardo Ponti directs his mom, the one and only Sophia Loren, in the chronicle of three women of different generations. The ensemble cast also includes Mira Sorvino, Gerard Depardieu, Deborah Kara Unger and Malcolm McDowell.
* “ALL OR NOTHING” (Oct. 25): Mike Leigh’s latest examination of the British working class features Timothy Spall, who was so effective in Leigh’s “Secrets & Lies” (1996).
* “FRIDA” (Oct. 25): Salma Hayek has the title role in this portrait of the revered Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo by theater director Julie Taymor (“The Lion King”). Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd and Edward Norton lend support.
* “TALK TO HER” (Nov. 22): Spanish bad boy Pedro Almodovar’s flick, which closes the New York Film Festival, examines the friendship that develops between two men who happen to be caring for two comatose women in a private clinic.
