I’ve never much cared for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It has always struck me as a movie that thinks it’s a much cleverer than it is, and at around the point where Meat Loaf’s character dies, it becomes monotonous and boring. Still, it has become a pop culture landmark, and under various circumstances, I had now seen it no less than four times. The damn thing is inescapable.

Rocky Horror devotees will tell you that the way to see the film is at a midnight show in a movie theatre. Not long after the film’s unsuccessful initial run in 1975, 20th Century Fox quietly released it to the midnight circuit, where within a few years it gathered an enormous cult following. Across the continent, people would come see the movie week after week, often dressed as their favourite characters, and watch the movie while performing a colourful sideshow. They would sing along to the songs, chant obscene phrases, and throw toast and toilet paper at crucial moments.

Though not as big as it once was – home video did the revue theatres no favours – the Rocky Horror experience still exists in one form or another in most of the continent’s college towns. In Toronto, the Bloor theatre shows it every once and a while, and it always attracts its loyal band of Toronto cultists.

At the beginning of every Bloor screening of Rocky Horror, a list of ‘virgins’ (those who have never been seen the film at the Bloor) is read out. I confess, my friend and I decided against adding our names to the list, which I suppose is heresy in the Rocky Horror community. Well, to hell with them – if the Bloor won’t let me throw toast because it “brings rats,” they don’t get my name on their stinkin’ list!

Most of the audience had the movie, as well as the Mystery Science Theater 3000-type running commentary, memorized. Much of the commentary and assorted shenanigans has remained unchanged since the 1970s (Brad and Janet are still an “asshole” and a “slut,” respectively), although when Meat Loaf’s character was killed, the audience began chanting, “His name is Robert Paulson!” a clever reference to Meat Loaf’s other major film role. On the stage in front of the screen, a small band of ‘actors’ dressed as the characters acted/lip-synched to the film, and everyone stood up to dance the Time Warp. My friend and I were offered food from the slurry-sounding woman who sat next to us, but we politely passed. It is unwise to accept food from strangers at a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I didn’t find the whole spectacle that much fun, but I will concede that it is possible to find it fun. Perhaps if you’re out with a big group of Rocky Horror fanatics, dressed in fishnet stockings with black eyeliner, and equipped with a complete list of every bit of audience participation. But as merely a curious ‘virgin,’ Rocky Horror at the Bloor is like crashing a party you haven’t been invited to.

It has been said that you’ve never really seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show if you’ve only seen it on video or DVD. Then again, you’ve never really seen it if you’ve only seen it at a midnight show, drowned out by the audience’s salty commentary. Maybe I’m wrong when I say that I don’t like Rocky Horror as a movie, because it isn’t really a movie anymore. Unlike a real movie, it can’t be judged on its own merits, and it can only be fully enjoyed if viewed under exactly the right circumstances and with exactly the right frame of reference. I’m glad I experienced a movie theatre screening of Rocky Horror, but I can’t say that I’m very eager to do it again.

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If you want to experience it for yourself, the Bloor is showing “Rocky Horror” three times in October: on the 26th, the 27th, and 31st.

COMING SUNDAY: Seven-Day Rentals

BATTLE FOR HADITHA
Rating: *** ½ (out of ****)
Cast: Elliot Ruiz, Falah Abraheem Flayeh, Yasmine Hanani, Duraid A. Ghaieb
Director: Nick Broomfield
Screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2007 at the Scotiabank theatre.

SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO
Rating: ** (out of ****)
Cast: Hideaki Ito, Koichi Sato, Yusuke Iseya, Tereyuki Kagawa, Quentin Tarantino, Masanobu Ando
Director: Takashi Miike
Screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2007 at Ryerson.

From “Battle for Haditha”

Picking movies at a film festival is always something of a crapshoot. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t. So far I’ve seen five films at the Toronto Film Festival. Four have been decidedly lackluster, but one has reminded me why going to a film festival can be such a rewarding experience. That film is Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha.

I also saw Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django. Let’s get that one out of the way first.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Takashi Miike has directed over 70 films since 1991 (including short subject, direct-to-video, and made-for-TV). From 2001-2002 alone, Miike directed 14 films. His sizable cult following in North America owes its existence to two of his most stomach-churningly violent films: the excellent Audition (1999) and the appalling Ichi the Killer (2001), his only two pre-Django feature films I have seen. For further information, I offer to you this interesting passage of his Wikipedia page:

“It should be noted that, despite his somewhat notorious reputation, Miike has also proven himself to be capable of directing lighthearted children’s films (Zebraman, The Great Yokai War), touching period pieces (Sabu), and subdued, moving pictures such as the road movie The Bird People in China. His dabbling in every sort of genre and emotional range is a testament to his versatility as a director, though a lot of his output is genre-defying. For example, The Happiness of the Katakuris is an unconventional farcical musical-comedy-horror involving a bizarre claymation sequence, zombies and b-movie pastiches.”

Sukiyaki Western Django strives to be a sort of Japanese Kill Bill, with its lightning pace, cartoon milieu, and endless pop culture references. It is an English-language western with an all-Japanese cast. English is clearly everyone’s second language, and some cast members seem to be saying their lines phonetically. Sukiyaki Western Django’s main joke is to have Japanese actors struggle with lines like “A reckon it’s a bouncing baby boy” and “You be whislin’ Dixie.” This is a joke that wears thin very fast.

The impenetrable plot involves a gunslinger (Hideaki Ito) who comes to a small western town, Yojimbo-style, to find two separate clans – the Heike Reds and the Genji Whites - in a battle over hidden gold. To further enlighten you on the plot, I find myself turning helplessly to Colin Geddes’ description of it in the official TIFF film guide. He helpfully reports that it also involves, “a devoted wife turned whoring widow; a love child produced from a red and white tryst; an injury-resistant sheriff; and a town matriarch with a secret.” Did I mention it also features some gratuitous scenes with Quentin Tarantino as a Clint Eastwood-type cowboy? Yes, Quentin Tarantino acts in this film. Don’t all line up at once.

This is a crazy, fast-paced spectacle of a movie, with some stunning action scenes and gorgeously colourful production design. The problem is, it’s an empty spectacle. Miike pays homage to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci, but forgets that those directors genuinely loved the kitschy pop culture they emulated instead of regarding it with smug superiority. Kill Bill was a comic book, yes, but Tarantino allowed his actors room to create characters the audience could care about, while Miike, by having his cast speak awkward English, is perversely trying to keep their characters two-dimensional and keep the audience distant. Some will undoubtedly compare Miike’s film to two-dimensional spoofs like Kung Fu Hustle and Army of Darkness, but I hasten to point out that those movies were actually funny, while Sukiyaki Western Django spends its entire running time trying to get laughs from Japanese people saying, “I reckon.”

Ultimately, Sukiyaki Western Django is an exhausting experience. This is not a film you become involved in – it isn’t funny or engaging. Rather, it’s one that you’re supposed to watch with a cool, hip sense of ironic detachment, sitting in the audience and saying to yourself, “Aren’t I cool for laughing at this?” How could anyone enjoy such a self-conscious time at the movies?

Thankfully, I also saw a real movie yesterday. Nick Broomfield, the great documentary filmmaker who directed Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer and Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, made his first stab at dramatic filmmaking with the 1989 sex thriller Dark Obsession, which opened to scathing reviews and dismal box office. On his website, Broomfield confesses, “Yep, well, what can I say. A great cast, a great producer, writer and cinematographer…but I think I kind of screwed it up.” After seventeen more years in the documentary genre, he returned to fiction filmmaking with the gritty, cinema verite Ghosts (2006).

Broomfield’s newest scripted work, Battle for Haditha, is a powerful, timely film that ranks among his best. It’s based on the true story of the November 2005 massacre in Haditha, Iraq, where a roadside bomb planted by an insurgent exploded, killing one US soldier and wounding another two. Overwhelmed by anger, the other soldiers allegedly killed some 24 Iraqis that day, including women and children. How timely is Battle for Haditha? So timely that the trial, as of this writing, is not yet over.

I went into Battle for Haditha expected a fairly simple condemnation of the Iraq war, but what Broomfield has created is infinitely more complex. While the film does not excuse the soldiers’ actions, it understands them, and paints all the characters – Iraqi and American – as genuine human beings. At the centre of the film is a stunning performance by Elliot Ruiz as the soldier who quickly comes to regret his actions. Ruiz has only two other acting credits – before turning to film, he was a US marine – but his performance is naturalistic and deeply felt. Broomfield’s direction is also top-notch; the massacre scenes, which are as harrowing as any film of recent years, show that Broomfield’s documentary experience makes him ideal for this material. There are times when there is no discernible difference between Broomfield’s staged scenes and the news footage on CNN.

Battle for Haditha has two more screening at the festival: Thursday at the Scotiabank at 3:15 PM, and Saturday at the ROM at 9:00 AM. It is well worth a ticket.

Could I dissuade you from seeing “Sukiyaki Western Django” if I told you this man was in it?

GEORGE A. ROMERO’S DIARY OF THE DEAD
Rating: * ½ (out of ****)
Cast: Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Shawn Roberts, Amy Lalonde, Joe Dinicole, Scott Wentworth
Director: George A. Romero
Screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2007 at Ryerson.

I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen an audience as pumped for a movie as at last night’s midnight screening of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead. The Ryerson theatre, as far as I could tell, was completely sold old, with a considerable section of the audience dressed as zombies. They performed a pretty inspired chant:

“What do we want?” “BRAINS!”
“When do we want it?” “BRAINS!!!”

When Colin Geddes, the Midnight Madness programmer, introduced George A. Romero, the king of the zombies himself, there was a massive standing ovation. Later, it turned out that Romero’s fellow horror auteur and certified best-friend-forever, Dario Argento, was in the audience, building excitement more. During the film, there was applause at most of the really gory zombie killings, as well as knowing laughter whenever a character was about to do something stupid (no, don’t talk to that slow-moving figure behind the curtain!).

Romero himself is a certified living legend, having pioneered the zombie subgenre with Night of the Living Dead (1968), one of the best horror films of all time. He returned to the genre three times with the alleged sequels Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), and the big-budget studio production George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005). Following the box office failure of Land of the Dead, he has returned to his low-budget roots with George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, which is not a sequel but rather a reboot (not that the first four films contained many linking threads). It is also his weakest zombie movie to date.

The plot is monotonous and predictable. A group of college students making a mummy movie hear on the radio that the dead have risen. They hop into an RV and head for a sanctuary. When they get to wherever they were going, they find zombies. Repeat. Romero paints these characters with broad strokes, and almost none of them make an impression (except one – more about him later): it just doesn’t feel like there’s much at stake when the zombies begin to attack. Speaking of zombie attacks, there are some good, gory ones here and there – dig the one that gets his skull burned with acid – but my pulse never rose, and compared to the savage intensity of the recent 28 Weeks Later, this feels downright sedate, not to mention all-to-familiar.

Romero has never been an especially good director of actors. The young cast members of Diary of the Dead don’t humiliate themselves, per se, but they say their lines with a stiff awkwardness. It’s all too obvious that they’re reciting memorized dialogue. The strangest cast member is Scott Wentworth as the middle-aged British professor, whose accent sounds like Dr. Smith’s from Lost in Space. His character is in charge of giving ominous pronouncements, and he evoked a few titters from last night’s audience. Is Wentworth’s performance supposed to be taken seriously, or is it an attempt at high camp? Either way, it doesn’t work within the context of the film.

Romero is known for infusing his zombie films with social commentary – Dawn of the Dead famously attacked consumerism by having hordes of zombies mindlessly going to a shopping mall, “an important place in their lives.” Romero said in last night’s Q&A that he was interested in dealing with a culture that, with the proliferation of websites, video cameras, YouTube, and blogs, gives everyone the power to be a reporter. An interesting target, but in the film, Romero does little more than point out that an increasingly democratized media exists. He is slightly more effective when dealing with his lead character, who insists on filming everything around him for future generations, even at the cost of his friends’ safety. Incidentally, this would be a good time to point out that Diary of the Dead is seen almost entirely through the perspective of our hero’s camera and some stolen surveillance footage – a cinematic device not, Romero swears, inspired by a certain Blair Witch Project.

While George A. Romero isn’t the subtlest of social satirists, he’s probably close to the best that the horror genre has. I fondly remember the scenes in the Bush-era Land of the Dead where the zombies break into an upper-class sanctuary, with Dennis Hopper, playing the Trump-like overlord, yelling, “You have no right!” Romero has said in interviews that he would like to try an all-out zombie comedy, and a change in tone might be the way to offset the staleness developing in Romero’s work. As it stands, Diary of the Dead is a stiff.

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NOTE: If some of the newscasters’ voices in the film sounded familiar, they should have. According to Romero, Quentin Tarantino, Stephen King, Wes Craven, Guillermo Del Toro, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost make voiceover cameos.

CHACUN SON CINEMA (TO EACH HIS OWN CINEMA)
Rating: ** ½ (out of ****)
Cast: Takeshi Kitano, Jeanne Moreau, David Cronenberg, Lars von Trier, Josh Brolin, Arsinee Khanjian
Directors: Theo Angelopoulos, Olivier Assayas, Bille August, Jane Campion, Youssef Chahine, Chen Kaige, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, David Cronenberg, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Manoel de Oliveira, Raymon Depardon, Atom Egoyan, Amos Gitai, Alejandro Gondalez Inarritu, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Aki Kaurismaki, Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano, Andrei Konchalovsky, Claude Lelouch, Ken Loach, David Lynch, Nanni Moretti, Roman Polanski, Raoul Ruiz, Walter Salles, Elia Suleiman, Tsai Ming-liang, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou

Screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2007 at the Visa Screening Room (Elgin).

The directors of “Chacun son Cinema” at Cannes.

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, the festival’s president, Gilles Jacob, commissioned a project that would be any film snob’s dream: he hired 36 of the world’s best directors to direct 34 three-minute films about moviegoing to be collected in an omnibus film called Chacun son Cinema (English title: To Each his Own Cinema).

Screening now as part of the Toronto festival, one more segment has been added, this one by David Lynch, who did not complete it in time for Cannes. At the screening I attended, it was tacked on at the beginning. It had no title or end credits, but…well, it was David Lynch, all right.

Chacun son Cinema will inevitably be compared to this year’s Paris je t’aime, which also had short contributions from a roster of international directors. It suffers in comparison, perhaps because Paris je t’aime was about love and Chacun son Cinema is about film, and, well, love trumps film every time. The hit-to-miss ratio is disappointing: there are some wonderful segments, a few disasters (I’m looking at you, Theo Angelopoulos, Youssef Chahine and Jane Campion), and a lot of underdeveloped stuff in between. 34 films are also just too much, and I can’t say I was saddened to see the film end.

Perhaps it would have been more satisfying if Gilles Jacob cut down the list of filmmakers to about twenty, and gave them more room to breath. I suspect that with a few extra minutes, many of these directors would have been able to develop their ideas more successfully. I also wish Jacob hadn’t been so strict on the rule of setting the films in and around movie theatres, and more about film in general. After 34 segments, you get tired of looking at those damn seats and projectors.

Is Chacun son Cinema successful? Not really, but is it worth seeing? Considering the talent involved, certainly, and there are plenty of scenes that are good enough in their own right to justify the experiment. A few favourites: the Coen brothers’ World Cinema, with Josh Brolin as a cowboy-type who “enjoyed the hell out of Climates”; Takeshi Kitano’s hilarious One Fine Day, about a farmer’s ill-fated trip to a run-down theatre; Occupations, by an unusually funny (and violent!) Lars von Trier; Roman Polanski’s Cinema Erotique, about an unfortunate misunderstanding at a porn film; Hou Hsiao-hsien’s simple, evocative The Electric Princess House; David Cronenberg’s self-explanatory The Suicide of the Last Jew in the World at the Last Cinema in the World; and Raymon Depardon’s Open-Air Cinema, the segment that perhaps best captures the appeal of filmgoing.

Unlike Paris je t’aime, I can’t see Chacun son Cinema having much appeal to anyone who isn’t fanatical about film, but if its line-up of directors makes you drool, you’ll probably find it a worthwhile if slightly disappointing diversion. Ironically, for a film that exalts the joy of going out to a theatre, this is a film that will greatly benefit from the chapter-skip function of DVD.

COMING TOMORROW: Film festival review of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead

CAPTAIN MIKE ACROSS AMERICA
Rating: ** (out of ****)
Cast: Michael Moore
Director: Michael Moore
Screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2007 at Ryerson.

I find Michael Moore to be a fascinating figure, partly because he’s someone whose true personality remains invisible, despite the thousands of hours of publicity he has done. However, there is no shortage of personas. There’s the naive hick trying to get his way into an interview with Roger Smith or looking incredulously at Canadians who inform him their healthcare is free. There’s the angry, impassioned speaker at numerous anti-Bush rallies, condemning his enemies in a style that calls to mind a Bible-thumping Evangelist. There’s the underdog-championing “man of the people,” or, conversely, the sinister, fact-twisting narcissist. Or, if you happen to see him after a film festival screening of one of his movies, there’s the humble artist who’s overwhelmed that he’s just received his millionth standing ovation and confesses that he hates seeing himself on a 40-foot screen. Aw, shucks, folks.

I confess that I don’t really like Michael Moore very much. Oh, sure, I agree with his politics, enjoy his bumbling screen persona, admire his movies, and get swept up in the wave of publicity they inevitably inspire. I also think he’s a shameless liar (I was going to sugarcoat that, but no, it’s true) who’s not above using the fear-mongering and fact-fudging he claims to deplore in “the bad guys,” and who always smacks of insincerity.

But there’s something about his presence that is seductive. When he came out on stage at the Ryerson theatre for the world premiere of his new movie, Captain Mike Across America, he talked with the patented fake modesty of his that, I admit, is endearing. And the man is funny - when saying that Sicko is now the third highest-grossing documentary of all time, he cracked, “All that stands between Sicko and Fahrenheit are those fuckin’ penguins.” Man, I truly forgot that I didn’t like the guy.

The post-film Q & A session, though, was definitely a reminder. He launched into a long, rambling monologue about the people who have made a cottage industry out of debunking and challenging (or, according to Moore, “lying about”) his work. “I’m even getting it from Canadians now,” he said, perhaps referring to Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine’s quite good film Manufacturing Dissent. “I’ve come to the conclusion,” he said, “that if you hear anything about me in the media, you should assume it’s a lie.” Then he added, “even if it’s good,” perhaps so that his lovable image would remain intact.

He also defended himself against a critic who allegedly said that Captain Mike Across America was good, but that there was too much of Moore in it. “That’s like having a U2 concert film and not having Bono in it.”

Well, “Mike,” I’m sad to say it, but you are indeed one of the problems of the film. Programmer Thom Powels, in his note in the official TIFF schedule, called the film, “a reminder that a new political force emerged on those campuses.” The Internet Movie Database quotes Moore as saying it depicts, “the birth of a new political generation.” Alas, the film Moore has made is not about the new political generation. It is about Michael Moore, crusader for justice, man of the people, impassioned activist, and all-around awesome guy. The working titles for this film were Uprising and The Great ’04 Slacker Uprising, but the film is not about any ‘uprising.’ It is about Captain Mike, as the new title so humbly states.

The film follows Captain Mike on his 2004 ‘Slacker Uprising’ tour, during which he visited college campuses in 60 cities in the waning days of the election campaign to “save John Kerry and the Democrats from themselves.” Moore’s aim was to convince college students who normally wouldn’t vote to get out to the polls. Along the way, his tour had a number of special guests, including REM, Viggo Mortenson, and Roseanne Barr.

Captain Mike Across America comes billed as, “One filmmaker’s failed attempt to change things.” We see Moore lecturing the press about how his films are the only place where Americans can find the truth about their government (the liberal crowd at the festival applauded, as expected). Moore gets in trouble with Republicans who claim that his give-aways of free clean underwear and Raman noodles to audience members who pledge to vote amount to bribes. Moore is condemned by dim-witted Republican protesters, who call him a communist and claim George Bush follows God (oh, those stupid Republicans!). Moore, Moore, Moore, Moore….

This is probably Moore’s least-compelling film from a cinematic point of view. It plays not so much like a movie, or even a concert film, as a highlight reel. The film builds little momentum as it goes along, and it has virtually none of the drama that characterized his previous films. The pacing essentially never changes. There are some good moments, including a genuinely hilarious scene where Moore offers up some alternatives to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads (“If John Kerry really loved his country, he would have died”), and if you’re a Moore devotee, you’ll find it mildly interesting, but if you’re not, there isn’t much to keep you riveted.

A fascinating film could easily be made about the Slacker Uprising tour (well, actually, one has – Manufacturing Dissent – but never mind). If Moore had concentrated more on the “Uprising” and less on the good ol’ ringleader “Captain Mike,” the film could have been a unique look at the future of America and a glimpse into the minds of its young citizens. Instead, Captain Mike Across America presents us with one nation, under Mike.