Most critics didn't love it, but for the second week in a row, viewers streamed in anyway. Still playing at just two theaters, Joshua Seftel's comedy-drama War, Inc. (First Look), starring John Cusack, averaged $12,100 per screen to continue its reign at the top of the indie weekend box office chart, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. That gives it a two-week total of $78,700.

Among new specialty releases, Leonard Klady at Movie City News reports that Tom Kalin's drama Savage Grace (IFC Films) made $11,150 per screen at the two theaters in New York where it opened. Julianne Moore stars in a suffocating period piece about a twisted mother/son relationship. You can read more about it in the reviews by Nick Schager and Kim Voynar.

Jody Hill's comedy The Foot Fist Way (Paramount Vantage) opened in four theaters and earned $8,550 per engagement, according to Mr. Klady. Patrick Walsh offered up a mostly positive review on this "character study about a character you'd never want to meet," a children's Tae Kwon Do instructor who goes off the rails when his wife cheats on him.

Jeffrey M. Anderson described Giuseppe Tornatore's The Unknown Woman (Outsider Films) as "a restless, panicked, devastating emotional roller coaster, meticulously planned and executed like a razor." The film follows the travails of a woman who leaves the Ukraine to look for work in Italy. It made $6,000 at one theater in Manhattan.

Adapting real life stories for the big screen is a dangerous proposition. Play too fast and loose with the truth and you stand accused of insensitivity and arrogance; remain too slavish to the facts and you might end up with a deadly dull drama. Inspired by a hit and run automobile accident with a bizarre twist, director Stuart Gordon and screenwriter John Strysik walk this tightrope with finesse, concocting an original, deadly serious, blackly-comic thriller.

Stuck begins by following the basic outline of what happened in Fort Worth, Texas, in the fall of 2001, which I've written about before. In short: a nurse, high on drugs, smashes into a homeless man, who lodges in her car's windshield. She drives home, parks in her garage, and goes to bed, leaving the man bleeding -- and stuck. The film quickly veers away from the facts of the case, though, transforming into a deeply-felt meditation on personal accountability in an age of irresponsibility. It grows more and more outrageous, nearly fishtailing out of control, before righting itself and delivering a walloping conclusion.

Mena Suvari stars as the out of control caregiver, here renamed Brandi, and Stephen Rea is her moral counterweight as the down on his luck Tom. For her part, Brandi isn't so much immoral or amoral as she is incredibly self-centered.

We've been following the House of Re-Animator story for a little while now, but the project seems to be officially dead and buried at this point. According to a recent Fangoria piece, director Stuart Gordon was unable to get the funding for his splattery political satire, and now that George Bush is about to leave office -- the premise wouldn't exactly feel all that fresh. So while the Re-Animator series may live on in one form or another, it won't be going in this particular direction. Darn.

But in the same article, Mr. Gordon announced that he's just about to start casting for his adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's Thing On the Doorstep. While this short story is hardly one of Lovecraft's most acclaimed efforts, I think it's a damn solid little terror tale. Production on Doorstep will begin this summer. (Oh, and Gordon's Stuck opens this May, and if it plays near you, I'd say check it out.)

The second edition of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival gets underway Thursday night. Among the dozens of films premiering for local audiences, Stuart Gordon's Stuck, inspired by real-life events that transpired in nearby Fort Worth, stands out like a sore thumb to me. The film received some good reviews when it premiered in Toronto last fall; our own Scott Weinberg called it "more of a twisted thriller than an out-and-out horror movie ... [with] a sly and simple streak of social commentary." But my interest lies in issues beyond the film itself. Namely, can fictional depictions of real-life stories affect people like secondhand smoke?

One evening in the fall of 2001, twenty-something nurse's aide Chante Mallard partied at a club, drank some alcohol, split a tab of Ecstasy, smoked some marijuana, left the club, accepted a ride from a friend, picked up her car at her friend's apartment, and climbed into her gold Chevrolet Cavalier. A few minutes later, she hit a man on a dimly-lit highway. She was a mile and a half from her house in southeast Fort Worth, Texas.

Gregory Glenn Biggs flew into her windshield head-first. Mallard headed home. Badly injured, bleeding profusely and stuck in the cracked windshield, the hapless Biggs pleaded for help. Mallard pulled into her garage, got out of her car, closed the garage door, and went to bed. Biggs died.

How many times has this happened to you? You spend the evening drinking and doing drugs, and as you precariously drive home, you hit a pedestrian, leaving him embedded in your windshield. You figure he's dead, so you leave him where he is, park the car in the garage, and hope nobody finds out.

I think we've all been there. Iconic horror filmmaker Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator) made a movie based on the idea, Stuck, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and has now been acquired by Image Entertainment for U.S. release. Sister company ThinkFilm will release it theatrically next spring, and then Image will handle the DVD sales.

The film stars Mena Suvari as the driver and Stephen Rea as the victim. The story has him not quite dead after all, and understandably P.O.'ed when he realizes she's left him out in the garage, stuck to her windshield, to die. Cinematical's Scott Weinberg, who knows horror like Rosie O'Donnell knows pizza, reviewed Stuck at Toronto and said: "Backed by a pair of very fine lead performances, several colorful background players, a quick pace, and a handful of truly memorable scenes, Stuck might just be Stuart Gordon's best flick since Dagon -- or even From Beyond."

Furthermore, it's "a surprisingly smart flick that starts out slowly and gradually explodes into a darkly satisfying finale."

It's based on a true story, apparently this one, which happened in Fort Worth. But Snopes, the indispensable urban-legend-cataloging site, shows that the Fort Worth incident is by no means unique. This confirms what I've always suspected: there are a lot of really scary drivers out there.

All the horror fans love Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, and the really hardcore horror fans are also well-versed on titles like From Beyond, Dolls, Fortress, Dagon and King of the Ants. Hell, even Gordon's relative misfires (Robot Jox, Castle Freak, Space Truckers) are more entertaining than most genre fare. Plus the guy's a well-respected stage director in Chicago, a close personal friend of David Mamet, and a filmmaker who sometimes steps away from the gory stuff and delivers a really crafty flick like Edmond.

So clearly I'm a fan of the guy's work. And when I saw that the Toronto Midnight slate was offering the director's latest project, I was pretty psyched indeed. (It doesn't hurt that the slate also includes new offerings from guys like Romero and Argento, but I'm digressing like a geek.) Anyway, Stuart Gordon's latest film is a welcome return to his old genre stomping grounds. More of a twisted thriller than an out-and-out horror movie, Stuck is still more than generous with the thrills, chills, and gooey gore-spills. Plus it has a sly and simple streak of social commentary, which adds a satisfying dash of subtext to a brutally bizarre story.

Start injecting caffeine into your veins, boys and girls, because the first eight Midnight Madness titles have been revealed for the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. The biggest name title has got to be George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, in which the esteemed documenter of the dead goes back to his roots and tells a zombie origin story. Produced independently, Romero follows a kid named Jason (Joshua Close), who "obsessively films the madness" all around him as the dead return to life. I liked Land of the Dead, but I'd love to see what Romero does without studio interference.

Stuart Gordon is the other name director in the program and he's represented by Stuck. Not a traditional horror film, it's inspired by a true incident in which a nurse in Fort Worth, Texas (not far from where I lived at the time) struck a homeless man, drove home, parked in her garage, went to bed, and patiently waited until morning before calling the cops -- all with the hapless, bleeding man stuck in her windshield. Gordon has fictionalized the story, added some black humor, and cast Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea. Again, this sounds like it could be deadly good.

Also screening: Wilson Yip's Hong Kong action pic Flashpoint, starring Donnie Yen; highly-praised Japanese superhero comedy Dainipponjin; Xavier Gens' blood-soaked thriller Frontière(s); French "madwoman attacks trapped pregnant woman" suspense flick À l'intérieur; futuristic Japanese animated action film Vexille; and British gore-fest The Devil's Chair. Complete descriptions are available at the festival's site; you can also follow along with programmer Colin Geddes' blog. Two more titles are yet to be announced for Midnight Madness, which kicks off Friday, September 7.

[ Via Twitch ]

Mena Suvari is Stuck in a really really really bad situation. She has cornrows, a difficult job as a nurse practitioner and has just hit Stephen Rea with her car. The first trailer for the Stuck thriller is being hosted on Bloody-Disgusting. It's definitely bloody and the cast happens to include some of my favorite actors -- have you ever seen Stephen Rea not play someone interesting? And I've appreciated Mena Suvari since her very brave performance as the dirty-mouthed yet inexperienced teenager in American Beauty.

Aside from Suvari's terrible imposition, the trailer shows Rea going from one horrible moment to the next. It seems like the kind of bad day that every person wishes they could sleep through. Suvari is a hard working, party girl -- a personality conundrum? -- who appears to want more responsibility at work but puts everything in jeopardy after striking Rea with her car. What happens next could mean death for Rea and a huge cover up for Suvari in order to keep her life running smoothly.

Stuck is written and directed by Stuart Gordon. -- the director who brought us Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, a far cry from his 'not for children fair.' Gordon is also responsible for Dagon and 1985's medical school experiment gone bad, Re-Animator. Stuck premiered last month at Cannes Film Festival -- its wide release date has yet to be determined.

A while back we heard some juicy little rumblings about the possibility of a new Re-Animator sequel called House of Re-Animator, which would be both a gore-strewn horror flick AND a tongue-in-cheek satire of today's political scene. But it seems like director Stuart Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna and actors like Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton might have a new plan: Re-Animator Part 4 as an episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror series! It's so crazy it just might work!

Mr. Gordon is, of course, a modern master of horror, and he previously worked on the Showtime series when he presented his Dreams in the Witch-House and The Black Cat adaptations. (H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, respectively.) Dread Central learned of the (potential) news while chatting with Ms. Crampton at the Texas Fearfest last weekend. (I was also in attendance at the event, and the DC guys aren't kidding when they say that Ms. Crampton is as lovely today as she ever was. In a room full of Jasons and Leatherfaces, Barbara Crampton was the only one who made me a little nervous.) Obviously this project is nowhere near a done deal, but it seems like a great way to kill a few birds with one stone. The fans get a new (if slightly smaller) entry in the Re-Animator series, and Masters of Horror gets a fresh episode that would guarantee a pretty strong viewership. Bring it on!

Just over a month ago I shared with you the news that genre favorite Stuart Gordon was about to get rolling on an odd-sounding thriller called Stuck -- and I promised to bring you casting news when it became available. I really did! "Stuck begins production in New Brunswick next week. We'll let you know if any cool casting news hits the 'net." See?

Well anyway, some of the aforementioned casting news has indeed hit the 'net, and here's what we got: Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea. She'll play a young woman who smashes into a homeless man with her car, only to find him irretrievably lodged within her windshield. So she drives home with the guy "stuck" there, parks her car in the garage, and waits for the poor dude to die. Nice, eh? Gotta love good ol' Stu Gordon.

More than a dozen other actors have also been named as Stuck employees, but Rea and Suvari are easily the biggest names in the cast. Check out the rest of the actors at Bloody-Disgusting.com, which is where I originally found the information. Obviously.