Beyond the Multiplex

Feb. 23, 2006 | We've got another foreign-language Oscar nominee this week -- a dynamite film from South Africa -- along with an important political documentary, one of the best in the recent wave. But before we get to all that: Warm-weather readers, I am humbled. Never again will I suggest that you are too blissed out to enjoy the latest in angst-ridden cinema, or that certain herbal crops rumored to be available in our great nation's milder climes have rendered you too mellow to leave home on someone else's schedule.

No, such calumnies have been laid to rest. My call for the best art-house theaters in pleasant climates has been impressively answered. Central Florida has been heard from, and the Kona Coast of the island of Hawaii has been heard from. Texas has been heard from, many times in fact. New Mexico has checked in, and so have some unlikely locations in California. (I will indeed strive to convince you that the Golden State is not entirely or even mostly populated by Merlot-sloshed, hybrid-driving bobo aesthetes, but we'll leave that for another occasion.)

Thanks to all who submitted, and I've got potential nominees for weeks ahead. But as they used to say on the "Highlander" TV series, there can be only one. Well, OK, there can be two. The people's choice award this week clearly goes to the Alamo Drafthouse, a mini-chain of seven independent theaters in and around Austin, Texas. The numerous readers who suggested this primarily mean the original downtown Alamo (which I'll get to see in person in a couple of weeks).

Now, the Alamo is clearly awesome: It has a full menu of food and drink served unobtrusively at your seat, and wireless Internet in all auditoriums. (Nothing like this exists yet in New York; the tradeoff for getting to see every art film early is being penned up inside venerable, uncomfortable theaters like hogs in a boxcar, and sold stale popcorn and scorched coffee at prices that would make the sleaziest cruise-ship director blush.) The downtown Alamo's film fare is bracingly eccentric, even as yuppified as Austin has reportedly become. In the next week you can see "On the Waterfront," "Flashdance," "976-EVIL," "The Muppet Movie," "The Spook Who Sat by the Door," "Candy," "The Memory of a Killer" and the Texas Indie Music Video Festival.

But, people: The Alamo is one of the nation's most famous movie theaters, and while it's in Texas, it beats at the very heart of independent Texas culture, something much fiercer and stranger than a milquetoast like George W. Bush could ever imagine. I was looking for someplace much less expected, found in a town where Volvos and Brie are still experienced as rare and puzzling phenomena. And here it is: the Enzian Theater in Maitland, Fla.

No, I'd never heard of Maitland, Fla., either. It's just outside Orlando, a few miles from Walt Disney World. Go half a mile past the end of Lee Road on South Orlando Avenue, just past the train overpass, and there you are: at a luxurious dinner cinema locally renowned for its fine food and willful programming decisions. (Reader John T. Harrell claims the proprietors will cancel an engagement if the film becomes "too mainstream," although this apparently did not apply to "Fahrenheit 9/11" or "Super Size Me.") Right now the Enzian is showing "The White Countess," with "Caché" and "Tristram Shandy" to follow. The Enzian's 20-year survival, as its Web site boasts, is proof that "even in a community as mainstream as Orlando, there is an audience hungry for new voices in independent film." Get there early, and order me the pasta with Gulf shrimp and blue crab.

Next page: Forgiveness for a killer?