Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

Here’s a review of the film I wanted to see but couldn’t. Sounds great!

**update** Yay!

Ooh, I just discovered that the Midnight Madness blog at the TIFF07 site has video up of the post-Stuck Q&A!

And remember, kids, look both ways before you cross the street. And don’t drink and drive.

A veteran documentary filmmaker, Englishman Nick Broomfield has brought a dramatic treatment of a true story to TIFF this year. And his experience in documentary filmmaking serves the film well: it feels so authentic that you forget it’s drama. Battle For Haditha tells the story of what happened in Haditha, when Iraqi insurgents planted a roadside bomb that killed one marine and injured two others. The marines reacted by killing 24 Iraqis–none of whom had anything to do with planting the bomb.

Lending authenticity is the shooting location in Jordan and the cast–most of whom are non-professionals–which features two major characters who are played by ex-marines who served in Iraq. It really couldn’t feel more real.

The beauty of this film (if I can use that word to describe a film about such a horrendous event) is that it is perfectly balanced. It shows the perspectives of all three sides (the American marines, the innocent Iraqi citizens, and the Iraqi insurgents), and I didn’t find the story pitched in any particular direction. It’s as honest and admirable a look at war as I’ve seen. Very nice work by Broomfield.

Such a confusing title. I mean, both of them make sense. I’ve overheard a lotta people calling Stuart Gordon’s new film “Struck” but it really, truly is Stuck.

If I were still living in Tronna, the quickest no-brainer for me would be to buy the Midnight Madness programme package. The films in that series are my cuppa and the audiences are a blast. Tuesday night reminded me of the midnight screening of The Descent at the Tower Theatre in SLC at Sundance ‘06. I was a volunteer at that theatre and my shift ended as soon as we’d gotten everyone seated for that screening but I stuck (er…) around because I wanted to see it. I swear the guy who sat behind me musta left a stain on his chair. Man, he just screamed his head off throughout the entire film. He was as entertaining–and startling–as the film was! And a coupla nights ago at the Ryerson Theatre there was a very similar vibe as the audience screamed and moaned and laughed and cheered.

As I’ve already mentioned, Stuck is based on a true story. In the Q&A after the screening (which, incidentally, was the first screening of the film that he’d attended with an audience and I hafta assume he was pleased with the reactions it got), when asked why he chose this story, Gordon claimed it was because reality could be much more horrific than anything you could imagine. He said that he and screenplay writer John Strysik kept pretty close to the truth for the first half of their script but then they decided they wanted to see the way the story shoulda turned out. (So you won’t be spoiled if you know that, in reality, Gregory Biggs–stuck in the windshield of Chante Mallard’s car–bled out in her garage, over a period of three days. Three days during which his life could’ve been saved. Dig on that a while…)

And Gordon plays it the way I’d hoped he would–with the blackest of humour leavening the gore and the grotesque inhumanity. This is helped along by some very effective and often darkly comic performances by Stephen Rea (”Tom”) and Mena Suvari (”Brandi”).

Like Romero’s film, Gordon’s pokes a sharp stick at the sometimes stunning self-absorption of modern North American society. I think his story draws more blood than Romero’s. And I don’t mean just in the fx department (although his film is definitely more uncomfortable to watch–f’r'instance, everyone was moaning and squirming in their seats when Tom tries to extricate himself from the windshield wiper… gahhhh). I mean, here we have what seem to be perfectly normal people who do unspeakably cruel things because to do otherwise would inconvenience themselves (Brandi might lose a promotion in the nursing home where she works, and her neighbours might be discovered as illegal immigrants).

I really loved this film. I suspect it will end up being my favourite screening from this year’s festival. It may end up being my favourite Stuart Gordon, film, too.

Oh. And it was all shot in Saint John, New Brunswick. Cool.

Got back to the hotel at 3am after having been to the Midnight Madness screening of Stuart Gordon’s latest film, Stuck, and, before I tuck myself into bed, I just gotta say it was verrrrrrry entertaining! Even better than I thought it was gonna be. Had a blast! More later… need to sleep.

My first TIFF07 screening is George Romero’s independently-produced return to the “little” zombie movie. (Incidentally, “little” is the adjective for “movie”; these are not gonna be midget zombies.) In advance of the screening, I know only a little about Diary of the Dead. Films in the horror genre are ones that I prefer to approach as “blind” as possible. What I do know is that it employs a plot device similar to that of The Blair Witch Project (and–as it occurred to me while I was watching it–the upcoming JJ Abrams-produced monster movie which may or may not be called Cloverfield): it’s all shot first-person by people who are living through the events depicted. (And here’s a word of warning–if you are susceptible to nausea caused by herky-jerky hand-held camera-work, take a seat towards the back for this one.) The other thing I know about this film is that Romero is going back to square one, zombie-lore-wise. Unlike, say, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead, this one takes us back to Night of the Living Dead, when the existence of the walking dead was new and mysterious and not a fait accompli within the world of the film.

Your toughest assignment, if you choose to see this film and are as familiar with film zombie lore as I am, will be to forget as much as you can before the opening credits roll. If you can take your mind back to the first time you ever saw Night of the Living Dead, that would be perfect. And this goes straight out to you, Constant Reader ZombieKillah: these are Romero zombies. They are not quick like bunnies. They shamble. They lurch. They flail. You can outrun the fuckers if they don’t catch you unawares and chew a hole in your neck before you even know what’s happening and what the hell that awful stench is. (There are more than a few inside-jokey references within the film about how slow these things are, which were appreciated by the audience I was in.)

Basically, this is Night of the Living Dead circa 2007 instead of 1968.

Because this is a Romero zombie movie, it operates on more than one level. (Think back to the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Was there anything below the surface on that one? Not that I noticed.) Sure, on the surface, it’s about the walking (or, rather, shambling) dead coming you get you, Barbara. But it’s also got something to say about the society in which it takes place. Like it or not, the mediafication (yeah, okay, I made that up–so?) of our society means that many people would rather point a camera at an accident than lend a hand. The urge to exercise those 15 minutes of fame that some wit once said we’d all get means there’s a YouTube, a MySpace, and who doesn’t have a blog? *ahem* While it often feels like we are ruled by the media, the truth is that just about anyone can tell a story to countless people all over the world, thanks to that series of tubes which is bringing you this very review at the moment.

And so, yeah, we have a YouTube and a LiveLeak, a MySpace and a Facebook, reality tv ad nauseum, and ev-er-y-fuck-ing-bod-y has a blog. When something happens, somebody is there to record it. If a tree falls in the forest, somebody’ll be there to shoot it on D8 and post it on their MySpace site so the whole world can access it. In fact, the film within the film–called The Death of Death–has a MySpace page where it’s being posted as the director cobbles it together (don’t bother searching… it’s not there… I already checked). He is thrilled at the thought of 72000 hits in less than an hour. Pffft, as if a film would have a MySpace page. So where, say, Dawn of the Dead was a satire about consumerism or Land of the Dead tweaked the Bush administration’s collective nose, this one satirizes the media saturation we’re all soaking in.

But it’s also a B-film, so the dialogue gets a little cornball, the performances a little over-the-top, and the special fx are not on the grand scale to which you may have become accustomed. I’m alright with that. Like I said, this is more like teeny-budget Night of the Living Dead than big-budget Land of the Dead. As long as you don’t go in expecting the latter, you’ll be fine.

Honestly, though? I hate to say it, but… meh. I can understand Romero’s urge to go back and start from Go and re-imagine what a zombie plague might be like if it hit in 2007, but I dunno… it felt like the read on our society was a little obvious and heavy-handed, I guess. And the only character I actually cared about in this film was the deaf/mute Amish farmer. That dude fuckin’ rocked.

I prefer his first pass at the tale. They’re coming to get you, ZombieKillah…