THE INDIE 500

By RICHARD CORLISS

All right, now, have we had it with blockbusters? It's true, we paid only $6 or $8 to see the Judge Dreddfuls and the Waterworlds Without End, not the $80 million or $200 quillion the studios ponied up, but a lot of us still feel taken. All those tough-guy movies wore us down and knocked one another out. But now that the big boys have slunk away, adventurous viewers are seeking a late-summer tonic in independent cinema.

The films can be made for $7 million (Desperado) or less than a million (Living in Oblivion). They may be based on plays (Jeffrey, from Paul Rudnick's comedy) or novels (Nadja, from Bram Stoker's Dracula). The stars may be esteemed actors (Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects) or the director's girlfriend (Maxine Bahns in The Brothers McMullen). Some sing, the others don't. But all prove that films can be intimate as well as epic, that off-Hollywood is one destination for films of the next century.

In several of these miniature movies, familiar motifs recur . Even independent films can be dependent on trends.

1. It's Tarantino time. The popularity of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction--the first independent film to earn more than $100 million at the U.S. box office--will midwife plenty of melodramas with Tarantino's signature plot: men in groups and on a heist, talking until the dark night of the soul gives way to a red dawn.

A solid twist on Tarantino Cheek is The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. The film echoes Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, but with less hysteria and a more intricate plot. For its quintet of thieves lusting for the big score, The Usual Suspects convenes five scarred souls, including a chatty gimp (Spacey) and an anguished antihero (Byrne). In California on a quick job, they run up against a vicious, unseen ganglord named Keyser Soze-a name that has the smolder of Satan in it. One by one, the thieves ...

No, it's far too snarly a skein to unravel here. The Usual Suspects flatters you into thinking you're thinking, sorting out the dead ends and red herrings, when you are really being toyed with by an intelligence as devious as Soze's. For those who don't care whodunit, the film has superior skulking by some wonderfully actory actors and brings high-wire wit to its high-gloss gamesmanship.

2. It's only a movie, Ingmar. Independent movies, like first novels, used to be autobiographical rites of passage. Now, too often, they are about making an independent movie, a format that quickly surrenders to ego and ennui. So Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion pleasantly surprises by its cunning. DiCillo's modesty is also his happy arrogance, for this is an indie movie about the filming of exactly three shots in an indie movie.

Director Nick Reve (Steve Buscemi) is trying to shoot a mother-daughter chat, a love scene and a dream sequence. Well, maybe they're all dream sequences: Reve? What's that French for? Or all nightmares, because everything goes hilariously wrong. The boom mike dips into the frame. The dwarf feels he's being exploited. Then there's movie star Chad Palomino (James Le Gros), an idiot hunk who unaccountably thinks he's a creative artist; imagine Kato Kaelin mistaking himself for Dustin Hoffman. The film is funny without pushing it and is acted with a deft, manic touch.

3. Find a new ethnic group. Half the stud heroes in action films have a surname beginning with Mc-, but there aren't many films about Irish Americans. Really Irish ones, with the guilt and the corned beef and the weekly Mass and the guilt. Edward Burns--writer, director and co-star of The Brothers McMullen--means to fill that gap with this frail fable of three Long Island siblings (Burns, Jack Mulcahy, Mike McGlone) and their romantic angst. They talk, soulfully. They fret, winsomely. They annoy, a lot.

The Brothers McMullen might be the bad movie Nick Reve is trying not to make. The acting is mostly stodgy, especially by the family trio. Burns' dialogue reeks of the page; it's cluttered with more adjectives than a D+ student paper. And when the specter of clunky writing isn't hanging over the actors, the shadow of a boom mike is.

4. For Pete's sake, have fun! Paul Rudnick lives to be giddy . Court jester of the Plague Years, the gay playwright-essayist has brought his romantic comedy about aids (you'll have to take our word for it) pretty successfully to the screen. Jeffrey faces its antsy audience head on: when two men kiss, we see a shot of two movie-house couples, the guys gagging, the girls enthralled. Under Christopher Ashley's direction, Steven Weber is beguiling as a '90s Candide. He gets suave support from Patrick Stewart and a scene stolen from under him by Nathan Lane.

5. Everybody light up! In indie films every character, it seems, puffs on a cigarette--as a tribute to the tortured heroes of film noir, a gesture of offhand rebellion, a sacrament of elegance and fatalism. There's an entire movie--quite a bad one, full of unwontedly tortured acting and a wildly wrong camera style--called Smoke. That in turn spawned a companion film, the much better Blue in the Face, to be released in the fall. Both revel in the outlaw ecstasies of tobacco.

In Michael Almereyda's Nadja, smoking is one of the few pleasures a vampire can take without harm. The Dracula family has come to New York City, and Nadja (Elina Lowensohn) is a kind of Lydia Languish of the undead, striking fashionable poses as she plants her teeth in a few sweet necks. With her bleached face, impossibly high forehead and black hood, Lowensohn looks like Death in The Seventh Seal, only cuter.

Though this film's Van Helsing (lank, loopy Peter Fonda) sleeps inside a grand piano, Nadja is a fairly close reading of the Stoker tale. What distinguishes it is its serenely mannerist glamour. Almereyda shot parts in glorious "Pixelvision"--with a toy camera that gives the most garish images the patina of a dreamscape. Nadja is beyond a midnight movie; it's a late late show for the artistic couch potato.

6. When in doubt, do it again. A few years ago, Robert Rodriguez made the tamale western El Mariachi for an impossibly low $7,000. Now he has made a sequel--for 1,000 times the budget, which is still nothing to Hollywood accountants. This time it's called Desperado. The avenging guitarist is played by actual movie star Antonio Banderas, but he's still a reluctant gunaholic. ("Bless me, Father," he confesses, "for I have killed quite a few men.") Salma Hayek, a Tex-Mex houri with soulful eyes and bosoms till Tuesday, is the sex interest. And Living in Oblivion's Buscemi drops by to give Desperado the Indie Seal of Approval.

Rodriguez has gone from backyard to back lot in one jump, but he hasn't lost his pizazz as director and editor. The picture is great kinetic fun--an explosion of pop talent. As El Mariachi says, "It's easier to pull the trigger than to play a guitar--easier to destroy than to create." Rodriguez does both. Scaling the studio wall with this vigorous remake, he proves he can be both an artist and a hired gun. His future will be fun to watch.

There's nothing radical about most of these independent films; they're call-ing cards for directors with Hollywood dreams. They take old-fashioned genres and show the big boys how to do it in an even more old-fashioned way: small, smart and cheap. For these pictures are the soapbox racers that dare to compete against the sleek but bland big-studio vehicles. And who wouldn't prefer the Indie 500 to Hollywood's Formula One?