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A unique, almost unclassifiable mixture of ghost story and poetic mood piece, writer/director Steven Peros's FOOTPRINTS opens on a dazed young woman (Sybil Temtchine) who comes to her senses in the forecourt of the Chinese Theater, then follows her as she wanders up and down the boulevard trying to piece together who she is, how she got there and what her future might be. Besides the Chinese, the film touches on many familiar landmarks (to Angelenos, at least) of the real, geographical Hollywood: the Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood Book & Poster Company, the Scientology Center, tour guides and street performers. In that sense FOOTPRINTS is very much a movie about the actual Hollywood, a gaudy and more than slightly seedy neighborhood where people live and work. Peros shows a real knowledge and affection for the neighborhood: you can almost smell the exhaust coming off the boulevard and hear the sounds of people jostling and hawking up and down the street.

On a deeper level, though, FOOTPRINTS is about the Myth of Hollywood, the dreams and delusions that young hopefuls bring there. Dreams that sustain them through years of rejection and disappointment, and dreams that in the end can break them. In an extremely savvy bit of casting, Peros draws on two Hollywood survivors -- actor H.M. Wynant (a familiar face to fans of classic 1950's and 1960's TV from appearances in "The Wild Wild West," "Playhouse 90," "Perry Mason" and many others) and actress Pippa Scott (THE SEARCHERS, AUNTIE MAME, "The Virginian") -- to play key roles in the story. Wynant and Scott both lend a quiet grace and rueful charm to their parts, and when they talk about Hollywood you get the sense it comes from a lifetime of hard experience.

It's not too much of a stretch to compare the film to THE WIZARD OF OZ, with Temtchine's lost, amnesiac lead character standing in for Dorothy as she wakes up in a strange wonderland filled with sometimes helpful, sometimes sinister characters, and trying desperately to find her way "home," wherever that may be. FOOTPRINTS is also a ghost story of sorts (although definitely not a horror film) -- and especially in an indie film world too often filled with overly literal, kitchen-sink dramas, it's really refreshing to see an independent film that's as poetic and haunting as this one is.

Monte Hellman remains one of America's greatest living filmmakers, director of metaphysical classics like TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971), arguably the ultimate American Road Movie, COCKFIGHTER (1974) and a handful of others. Like the masterful Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice (whose classic THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE Hellman gives a nod to in ROAD TO NOWHERE), it's something of a crime that Hellman has directed as few films as he has. So there's great reason to celebrate with the arrival of ROAD TO NOWHERE, his first full feature in over 20 years.

Hellman being who he is, ROAD TO NOWHERE is as dense, poetic and mysterious as anything he's made since probably THE SHOOTING in 1968. In fact, his new film is likely his most challenging ever -- but that shouldn't put you off. On the surface, it's the story of a real-life murder-suicide connected to a Southern politician -- a mystery which gets inextricably entangled with the making of a film about the tragedy directed by a moody, obsessive filmmaker (Tygh Runyan, who also played the moody, obsessive Stanley Kubrick in Hellman's "Stanley's Girlfriend") and starring a beautiful, opaque actress (Shannyn Sossamon, in easily her strongest and most rewarding performance to date). Add to this an almost infinite rogue's gallery of characters including veteran actors Cliff De Young and John Diehl, a wry extended cameo from Italian pulp cinema icon Fabio Testi (from Hellman's CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37) -- and you have the strangest Hall of Mirrors this side of THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI.

If you struggle to make "sense" of the plot, you'll probably miss the point -- since one of the major themes that emerges in ROAD TO NOWHERE is the impossibility of ever making sense of anything. (Hence the title: the Road leads Nowhere, but that shouldn't stop you from taking the journey.) Hellman uses a similar narrative strategy as in his classic TWO-LANE BLACKTOP where about halfway through the story the actual race stops mattering. In ROAD TO NOWHERE, the question of who committed the murder (or whether there was a murder at all) slowly drifts away in a Sargasso Sea of false leads, flashbacks and unanswered questions. What's left is Hellman's portrait of monstrous artistic obsession and some of his most intense and erotically-charged filmmaking ever, played out in long, lingering scenes between Sossamon and Runyan. There's also a bit of M.C. Escher here, like walking up a staircase only to find yourself at the bottom of another staircase, and another ...

If you're looking for an easy ride, then you should probably look elsewhere. But if you want to wander off-road, into the mysterious and inexplicable Zone (to quote from Tarkovsky's STALKER) where nothing is as it seems -- then Monte Hellman's ROAD TO NOWHERE is for you.

A highly entertaining and dreamlike little thriller, I KNOW WHO KILLED ME is essentially a modern-day film noir about a horrific crime and a victim (Lindsay Lohan) who turns out to be someone very different than we think she is. There are horror film elements in the movie -- a hidden serial killer with a fetish for glass knives and amputations; a spectacular climax straight out of a Dario Argento movie -- but this is basically NOT a horror film, and that may confuse and/or disappoint a number of viewers who expect one from the title and advertising which bring to mind something like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER etc. Lohan, in a nifty dual role, gives a very credible performance throughout, and I encourage anyone who sees the film to put pre-conceptions aside and try to look at the movie, and her work in it, with fresh eyes. This is also a very female-centered story, one that hinges on the interior world of its young protagonist -- that in itself makes the movie a unique piece of work. The real discovery here, though, is director Chris Sivertson who more than delivers on the promise of his earlier film, the incredibly disturbing drama THE LOST (see it when it comes out later this year.) I KNOW WHO KILLED ME is much more of a mainstream, commercial movie than THE LOST, but that's not a bad thing -- this is a genre film, pure and simple, and within the rules of that terrain, Sivertson & Co. deliver a strange and hypnotic little mystery that confounds expectations at every turn. Highly recommended for both the movie and for Sivertson's work as director.