Offbeat Touches Enliven Poignant, Moody ‘Dead Man’

The second annual Los Angeles Independent Film Festival opens Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Directors Guild with Jim Jarmusch’s “Dead Man,” a go-for-broke allegorical western starring Johnny Depp as an accountant from Cleveland who inadvertently winds up with a price on his head and on the run with a quixotic Indian (“Powwow Highway’s” scene-stealing Gary Farmer).

Hilarious, silly, facetious, violent, mystical and long-winded, “Dead Man” is finally a poignant lament for the cursed coming of the white man to the West. With great black-and-white Robby Muller cinematography, a moody Neil Young score and an offbeat cast that includes Robert Mitchum and Iggy Pop (in drag), “Dead Man” has cult film written all over it.

Closing night, April 22, is also at the DGA, but the festival unspools at Paramount and Raleigh Studios. Lawrence O’Neill’s “Throwing Down” (Raleigh, Friday at 10:15 p.m) is a potent mix of outrageous comedy and violence that momentarily recalls “Pulp Fiction” only to assert rapidly its originality. Jeffrey Donovan and Kevin Pinassi, a couple of petty Manhattan con men, head for rural Virginia to await the arrival of a fortune in drugs, when they encounter more trouble than they could remotely imagine.

In the aptly titled, heart-wrenching “Squeeze” (Paramount, Saturday at 4:45 p.m.), Robert Patton Spruill brings a bold, visual expressiveness to the plight of a 14-year-old African American (Tyrone Burton) who, like his friends, experiences almost unbearable pressure to enter a life of crime simply to survive on the mean streets of Boston’s Fields Corner neighborhood.

Chris Kentis and Laura Lau’s wonderful “Grind” screens at Paramount Saturday at 10:15 p.m., preceded by Matt Mahurin’s “Mugshot” at 7:30, unavailable for preview but said to be among the best of the fest; it deals with a fateful meeting between a desperate white man and an opportunistic black man. “Grind” compassionately explores a blue-collar triangle as if from within--without condescension and set against the deadliness of factory life.

Paul Schulze plays a likable traditional guy whose life is turned upside down by his low-key but rebellious sexy younger brother (smoldering newcomer Billy Crudup), who becomes entangled with Schulze’s lonely wife (Adrienne Shelley); these three actors and others are terrific.

Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s “Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Robbins and K.O.S.” (Raleigh, Sunday at 12:55 p.m.) spans three years in the daily life of artist-educator Robbins’ Art and Knowledge Workshop in the South Bronx. For more than 10 years the determined Robbins has offered an alternative to the streets for young people with artistic ability.

Absorbing, alternately heartening and heartbreaking, “Kids of Survival” is yet another documentary making clear the enormous amount of sustained effort demanded of those trying to make a crucial difference in the lives of others.

Mo Ogrodnik’s glowing, sensual “Ripe” (Paramount, Sunday at 7 p.m.) more than lives up to its wonderfully suggestive title with its tale of two virginal 14-year-old twin orphans--never mind what happened to their parents--who hit the road, heading for Kentucky with the vague dream of creating their own earthly paradise, but instead end up at the seediest Army base in America.

Yet “Ripe” eschews the merely lurid for a consideration of what coming of age can mean today for thoroughly disaffected young people. Galvanic in its impact, “Ripe” is rightly unsettling--and utterly compelling, and Daisy Eagan and Monica Keena give career-making portrayals as the twins.

For tickets and schedule: Theatix, (213) 466-1767. For further information: Filmmakers Foundation, (213) 937-9137.

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Miracle Plant: In the consciousness-raising “The Hemp Revolution” (at the Sunset 5 Thursday at 10 p.m. and then Fridays and Saturdays at midnight; and at the Monica 4-Plex Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m.), veteran documentarian Anthony Clarke makes a persuasive case for hemp as a miracle plant, ecologically pure and infinitely versatile, and for cannabis, its controversial byproduct, as a crucial medicine for treating glaucoma and many other ailments.

Information: (213) 848-3500, (310) 394-9741.