Out of the Blue.

"Out of the Blue tells the true story of the Aramoana massacre in which, on November 13, 1990, unemployed gun collector David Gray shot and killed 13 people in the sleepy fishing village near Dunedin, [director Robert] Sarkies's own hometown," writes Nick Dawson at Filmmaker. "Despite Sarkies's personal connection to the tragedy, Out of the Blue is a film that tells the story of the horrific events without melodrama or emotional manipulation but gains remarkable, haunting power from the unadorned manner in which it places the viewer in the center of the massacre." And he talks with Sarkies "about the challenge of telling the story of New Zealand's darkest day, his love of Tim Burton's movies and how going without lunch for four years changed his life."

In the Voice, Aaron Hillis asks, "If it's possible to pick around the scab of United 93: Who benefits from this kind of hindsight-free re-enactment?"

Which is precisely the question Matt Zoller Seitz addresses in his review for the New York Times: "[U]nlike [Paul] Greengrass's film, which treated its immense cast of characters like figurines on a diorama and let them blur together in the memory, Blue sketches its people as individuals, often in a few vivid strokes. The result is an inspiring film on a bleak subject, an account of everyday people who struggle to protect their loved ones from horror while processing and judging their own reactions to it."

Posted by dwhudson at October 19, 2007 3:56 AM