Iron Man opens this week, and thus the summer movie season has officially arrived. I love a good summer movie as much a the next guy, but this morning I found myself looking back at some of the little films that cropped up during the summer; some of them managed to get a "summer" feel on a much lower budget and without all the advertisement and hype. My absolute favorite summer art house movie has to be Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1999). I saw it three times that summer, and each time I clutched my seat, my heart pounding. I was amazed at how brilliantly Tywker had mapped out his three possible storylines and how lovely the small, quiet interludes were. I loved Franka Potente, and I loved his throbbing score, which practically entered into your bloodstream and pumped up your adrenaline by hand. Every color, movement and cut was designed for maximum effect (I've always been puzzled how Tykwer's movies since have seemed so long and sluggish.)

Also that same summer, John Sayles delivered his baffling adventure/suspense film Limbo, which had several people trapped on an island awaiting rescue and stalked by bad guys. The ending had everybody in an uproar and caused the film to die a quick death. The summer before that one, Darren Aronofsky's debut feature Pi gave me a good dose of sci-fi thrills, as well as a few head-scratching puzzles (which were actually real). 2000 was a particularly bad summer, but John Waters' Cecil B. DeMented provided a mischievous little oasis in the middle of it all. In that film, renegade filmmakers kidnap a Hollywood starlet and force her to be in their indie production; each team member has a tattoo of a maverick filmmaker's name. (I've often wondered which filmmaker's name I would pick for a tattoo? Maybe David Cronenberg...)

One of the greatest living filmmakers, Werner Herzog makes movies with an unquenchable curiosity combined with an intrepid fearlessness. His films brim with a kind of madness in an era when Hollywood wishes to control everything and leech out any unexpected qualities. Herzog's newest film Rescue Dawn (57 screens), starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, has opened to strong reviews and has pulled in over $1 million in U.S. box office. After a career stretching back five decades, it's his first film produced by a Hollywood studio. Though far from selling out, Herzog has brought his unique vision to the otherwise timid and brain-dead mainstream. This is good news for everyone; many Americans will see their very first Herzog film (though his 2005 documentary Grizzly Man didn't do half bad), Herzog himself may qualify for prizes usually reserved for those with half his talent, and his example may reverse an irritating trend that has prevailed for almost a century.

The 64-year-old filmmaker began in the 1960s as part of what would come to be known as the German New Wave, sharing the spotlight with, among others, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders. Herzog made a small splash with his amazing early feature Signs of Life (1968), and followed it up with the peculiar Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) and Land of Silence and Darkness (1971), which delved into the lives of little people and blind-and-deaf people with no hesitation or repulsion. His masterpiece Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) made him an art-house sensation, with its use of the physical, jungle landscape intertwining with man's obsession and insanity. While Herzog continued this exploration of untamed nature and human foibles, Wenders heeded the siren song of Hollywood, while Fassbinder burned out and left a good-looking corpse, well before Hollywood even noticed him.

Michael Moore is not as popular a magician as Harry Potter, but he can still draw a crowd. Sicko made an estimated $2.6 million over the weekend, according to Variety, reflecting a downturn of just 26% from the previous weekend. In view of the expansion by distributor The Weinstein Co. to 756 screens, the relatively small percentage drop-off in box office indicates that word of mouth is good. So far, Sicko has earned $15.8 million, which puts it on pace to overtake Moore's earlier Bowling for Columbine and last year's Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

My Best Friend, the latest from French director Patrice Leconte, had the highest per-screen average among indie releases, chalking up $15,508 each at three screens. Not far behind was Talk to Me, which had an average take of $11,841 from 33 screens in its opening weekend. Also in its first weekend of release on six screens, Interview made an estimated $41,620, while Rescue Dawn averaged more than $9,000 on 38 screens. Introducing the Dwights sank to $2,600 per screen. The weekend's financial stars include You Kill Me ($620,288; cumulative total $1.5 million), La Vie en Rose ($545,693; $6.9 million) and Once ($325,000; $5.0 million). All of these films -- except one -- have been covered at Cinematical, either with reviews or an interview, and I've linked to our coverage so you can have a look at what our critics had to say.

More on Sicko: Kim Voynar just posted her Film Clips column this morning, in which she puts the earnings of Sicko in broader perspective, among other things. As a further point for discussion, Variety notes that The Weinstein Co. avoids box office comparisons to Fahrenheit 9/11 -- and rightly so, as that film was a phenomenon not likely to be repeated -- but then adds its own opinion that Fahrenheit had a topic "much broader in appeal." Is that true for you? Did you see Fahrenheit 9/11 but decide to skip Sicko because its topic isn't as appealing?

Indie film Smother is getting underway with Liv Tyler, Dax Shepard and Diane Keaton signed to the flick. Inferno Distribution will finance and produce the pic with Jay Roach's Everyman Pictures. The script was penned by Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio, and is about a 30-something guy who is fired from his job just as his wife wants to have a baby and his overbearing mother moves in with them. Di Meglio will make his directorial debut with the film. The scribes have another project in IMDb listed as Untitled Rasmussen and Di Meglio Project, about a "Southern father meeting his three daughters ethnically diverse boyfriends for the first time at Thanksgiving." That project has been sold to Warner Bros and David Dobkin (Shanghai Knights, Wedding Crashers) attached to direct.

The Pleasure of Your Company, which premiered at Toronto, has been picked up by MGM for North American distribution. The romantic comedy, written and helmed by Michael Ian Black, stars Jason Biggs (American Pie) and Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers, I Heart Huckabees). MGM also recently acquired Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, and is set to distrib The Weinstein Company's Bobby and Harsh Times.

Speaking of the Weinsteins, TWC has also pegged Tony Leondis to helm animated CG pic Igor, which will focus on a mad scientist's assistant. Script is being written by Chris McKenna. Leondis previously scribed other animated flicks including The Prince of Egypt and Home on the Range.

Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont, currently listed on IMDb as writing and directing an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, has optioned rights to the book Rescue Me, He's Wearing a Moose Hat : and 40 Other Dates Over 50, a comedic memoir by Sherry Halperin about her misadventures reentering the dating world after being widowed at the age of 51. Halperin will co-produce on the project.

(Ed's note: All links to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter stories require a subscription to read the full piece, but you can get a free 14-day trial from Variety.)

There's a shot late in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn that is on par with anything the master has ever produced. An emaciated, bewildered Christian Bale stands slightly to the right of center-screen. The top half of his torso is visible, and he's wearing a tattered flight suit, rendered grey by the dirt and grit of months of imprisonment. Behind Bale, almost filling the screen, is the Laotian jungle, an impenetrable curtain of giant leaves and dense shadow. Bale is slightly out of focus and the jungle behind him more-so; as we gaze upon it, the shot morphs from a recognizable image into a flood of colors and emotion -- there must be 20 different shades of green on display, and everything looks a little too bright to be real. It's a magical, breathtaking moment, and the kind of thing fans of Herzog have come to expect from his films. The problem is that there are no more like it in Rescue Dawn, a disappointingly by-the-numbers effort from a filmmaker of rare and true genius.

Just hours before it was to be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, MGM (with the fest's first notable buy) acquired all North American distribution rights to Rescue Dawn, written and directed by Werner Herzog. In the pic, Herzog (who seems to have a knack for telling survival stories) brings us the real-life story of Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), an American pilot whose plane was shot down during a top-secret mission in Viet Cong territory at the start of the Vietnam War.

After he's taken hostage, tortured and held in some sort of POW camp along with other captured prisoners, Dengler plans a daring escape, only to realize the jungles around them are just as dangerous. Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies also star, with MGM planning a December 2006 theatrical release. For more on Rescue Dawn, stay tuned for Martha's TIFF review coming up later this week.

The people behind the Toronto International Film Festival have released yet another list of titles that will be featured at this year's event, the great majority of which are world premieres, added to the slate to increase TIFF's profile as a film market. Festival co-director Noah Cowan believes the fact that filmmakers are choosing to debut in Toronto rather than at major European festivals is a sign of TIFF's rising status, and says that he's fielded calls from major American distributors about nearly every film on this list.

Among the most interesting films on this latest list are: Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, a fictional version of the story told in his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly; Fay Grim, Hal Hartley's long-awaited follow up to Henry Fool; Scott Caan's second directorial effort debut, The Dog Problem; This Is England, Shane Meadows' story of a boy who becomes a skinhead in 1980s England; the rather frightening-titled Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show, a documentary that "chronicles the personal and professional journeys of four rising comedians as they traverse the country on a tour bus with Vaughn"; Alatriste, the Viggo Mortensen-speaking-Spanish flick we told you about last year.

This year's TIFF runs September 7-16.

In 1997, Werner Herzog made Little Dieter Needs to Fly, a documentary about Dieter Dengler, an airman who was shot down over Laos during the Viet Nam war. Dengler was held captive, tortured, and later escaped, and the film tells his story by taking him back to the site of his experiences. The memory of Dengler clearly stuck with Herzog, because he's now made Rescue Dawn, a fiction version of the story that stars Christian Bale. The film isn't due for release in the US until March (oddly, given Herzog's international stature, it's only been picked up in the US), but Gibraltar Films released a short trailer this weekend - yep, it looks grim.

I'm a massive Herzog fan, but I'm try to temper my expectations for this one - though 2005 has been a great year for him because of the success of Grizzly Man and the two other highly praised documentaries that hit the US this year, his recent fiction films have just not been very good. Hopefully Rescue Dawn will be a turning point rather than just another disappointment.

[via AICN]