Picking up where Doug Pray's 1996 grunge documentary Hype! left off, director Justin Mitchell's Songs For Cassavetes casts a sympathetic eye on the West Coast punk/indie underground scene of the '90s. But where Pray's film documented the schisms that erupted once big money and major labels entered the picture, Cassavetes focuses on acts that chose to forgo a chance at fortune and fame in pursuit of higher, more community-minded ideals. Shot with the striking minimalism of the Decline Of Western Civilization series, an obvious inspiration, Mitchell's film pays homage to the idealistic, participatory spirit of latter-day punk rock through interviews and performance footage of underground heavyweights like Sleater-Kinney and Calvin Johnson. Though the acts documented range from punk-gospel titan The Make-Up to Johnson's oddball dance act Dub Narcotic Sound System to the retro-pop band The Hi-Fives, the groups' philosophies remain frustratingly uniform: Each spouts familiar rhetoric about the evils of selling out and the importance of supporting the local scene. Without the sharp, self-deprecating black humor that characterizes much of the Decline series, Cassavetes runs the risk of preaching to the punker-than-thou converted. The unthreatening, high-minded rock 'n' rollers of Cassavetes even look alike, although the leather-heavy punk-rock uniform of '77 has given way to a preppy, clean-cut look that wouldn't seem out of place on an Ivy League undergraduate. The film's performance segments possess an energy and enthusiasm largely missing from its interviews, however, as the clumsy, intense emotions of adolescence generally play out better in music than conversation. Cassavetes' dour subjects talk at length about the importance of playing music, but when they shut up and play, their passion and commitment resonate strongly. A much more colorful and commercial breed of musical iconoclast is documented in The Cream Will Rise, director Gigi Gaston's unsettling look into the troubled psyche of Sophie B. Hawkins, the songstress behind the mildly risqué 1992 pop hit "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover." Rife with pretension both in front of and behind the camera, Cream begins as a valentine to Hawkins' musical brilliance, but ends as a musical version of Grey Gardens, with Hawkins and her equally eccentric mother engaged in a strange tango of regret and exhibitionism. An amazon with a Kathleen Turner rasp and a sensibility that makes Tori Amos seem like the embodiment of common-sense practicality, Hawkins makes a fascinating and grating documentary subject. Gaston clearly views her as a strong, inspirational figure who transformed her childhood traumas into great art, but Hawkins instead comes off as a loopy, humorless, self-obsessed diva whose music does little to justify her overbearing arrogance. As temper tantrums, navel-gazing, and drawn-out rambles give way to horrifying revelations and accusations, Cream devolves into the worst kind of emotional porn, making Gaston's film uniquely hard to watch.