A Decade Under the Influence

It is a sometimes annoying and sometimes amusing habit of major Hollywood studios to greenlight rival projects based on the same high-concept premise—asteroids hitting Earth, volcanic catastrophes, and multiple dramatisations of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. This curiously competitive instinct found a reflection, perhaps unexpectedly, in the snobbish world of arthouse or “independent” cinema at the dawn of 2003.…