|
It’s always exciting when a director returns to Midnight Madness with his new film. Takashi Miike’s premiered so many of his films in the program since Fudoh in ’97 that I’ve lost count, Christopher Smith returned in ’06 with Severance after Creep played just two years before, Dario Argento returned last year for a fourth time with Mother of Tears, and the list of returned directors goes on and on including Shinya Tsukamoto, Johnnie To, Peter Jackson, Tsui Hark, Wilson Yip, and Scott Reynolds.
This year’s Midnight Madness program includes two directors making their first return trips. The first is Prachya Pinkaew (‘03’s Ong-Bak) with his new muay-thai action-fest, Chocolate, and the second is JT Petty (‘06’s S&Man) with his haunting western, The Burrowers.
If Chocolate is on par with Ong-Bak (and word has it that it might even be better) the roof of the Ryerson theatre is going to have its roof blown off on Midnight Madness’ closing night. I’m anticipating the whole program but Chocolate is up near the top of my list.
JT Petty’s The Burrowers isn’t going to blow the roof off like Chocolate. It’s still coming down, don’t worry. With its gorgeously shot western landscapes, and subterranean monsters, The Burrowers is going to burn a giant hole in the roof at its leisure. When an early synopsis for the film hit the net, horror fans seemed to have dismissed it as a Tremors knockoff. Don’t do that. It’s so much more. I think that both S&Man and Soft For Digging are fantastic films but neither prepared me for the beauty, performances, and bassassery of The Burrowers. If you must use Tremors as a reference point when discussing the film, then think of it as The Searchers if the natives were the tremor monsters and if John Wayne was Clancy Brown.
Also to note is that Calvaire (MM 2004) director, Fabrice du Welz returns to TIFF this year with his sophomore film, Vinyan, which is in the Visions program but was also programmed by Colin Geddes. Don’t miss it. As well, as I mentioned in a prior post, Kim Jee-woon (00's The Foul King) has made the leap from Midnight Madness to the fancy red carpet, Roy Thompson Hall treatment of the Gala program with his new film, the kimchee western, The Good, the Bad, and the Weird.
|