The three films we caught couldn't possibly have been more different, going from a gut-punch of a documentary to a Korean horror-musical to a low budget American splatter fest. Up first: Asger Leth's punishing Ghosts of Cite Soleil, a film that tracks the lives of two brothers, both gang leaders in the employ of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, living in the poorest region of the poorest city in the western hemisphere. If someone were to make a fictional film that contained the same events captured here it would stretch the limits of credulity, that all of this really happened and that Leth was granted free access is simply astonishing, that such extreme poverty and violence continues to exist in the everyday life of hundreds of thousands of people living just two hours off the coast of Florida is nothing short of shocking. By focusing so tightly on his two characters Leth manages to put a human face on poverty, on violence, on the powers that manipulate the desperate poor for their own gain, and he does it all while refusing to glamorize or apologize for anything the brother do. They are, after all, willing participants in their own fate. It's a stunning piece of work, just go see it.

And speaking of stunning, immediately following the Ghosts screening we ran into Poultrygeist director Lloyd Kauffman who, true to form, made no attempt to look the lady friend in the eye, if you catch my meaning, while explaining how happy he'd be to see her at his movie. Nudge, nudge, wink wink. Poor guy never stood a chance.

Onwards, then, to Midnight Ballad For Ghost Theater, the Korean musical that aimed to be that country's answer to Rocky Horror and both succeeds and fails at the attempt. It succeeds in the sheer style of the thing and in a pair of fantastic musical numbers while missing in an overly long run time and a surprisingly sedate pace. Rather than invite comparison to the American classic the producers would have been better off to let the film find it's own audience at it's own pace because it's a lot of fun on its own terms, the comparison wasn't necessary and leads people to come in with faulty expectations. It's a good time, and recommended, but not likely what you're expecting it to be.

From singing Korean ghosts it was off to explore the old part of Montreal, the part of the city where things stop feeling like part of North America and start feeling like Europe, with all the old stone buildings, narrow cobblestone streets and restaurants speckling the landscape. Montreal's good that way, it's like two distinct cities and experiences in one.

And, finally, Robert Kurtzmann's The Rage, the new splatter picture from the co-founder of the legendary KNB effects house. The crowd seemed, on the whole, to be eating up the deliberately campy and low budget splatter. I was less convinced and more than a little confused about why a man reknowned for his physical effects work -- which is present -- would indulge in so much bad CGI throughout.