Apologies for the one-day delay, but, as it happens, the indie weekend charts changed in the interim. Early on Sunday, estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo indicated that Tarsem Singh's The Fall (Roadside Attractions) won the weekend, but when the figures were tabulated, Lloyd Kaufman's Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (Troma) sneaked into the top position with a take of $10,624 at one theater in Manhattan. Ed Gonzalez of The Village Voice says the film "chronicles what happens when a fried-chicken shack goes up on a Native American burial ground" and called it "a predictably hit-and-miss yukfest."

Doug Pray's Surfwise (Magnolia) surged near the top, grossing $10,304 at another theater in Manhattan. The doc follows a doctor who abandoned his practice to become a surfer and live in a camper, packing along his wife and nine children. All 12 critics whose reviews are listed at Rotten Tomatoes were positive.

The Fall fell to third place, earning $8,845 per screen at nine locations. Reviews were mixed (57% positive, per Rotten Tomatoes), though even the naysayers acknowledged the visual beauty of the film. We've previously pointed to the trailer, posted exclusive stills and a clip, which definitely confirm this impression. In the words of our own Eric D. Snider, it is "a visually stunning fable where a man in a hospital tells a little girl a story, and that story is craaaazy."

With Battle for Haditha, British documentarian Nick Broomfield brandishes his verité techniques for a fictional recreation of the November 2005 killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines. Aspiring to be a modern Battle of Algiers, the film falls far short of that lofty goal, hawking standard-issue characterizations and leaden cause-effect analysis to humdrum effect.

To be sure, Broomfield generates palpable you-are-there immediacy, especially during the final act, when his camera's close proximity to its subjects (American and Iraqi alike) amplifies the mounting mania and fury that's been simmering for the prior hour. Such intensity, however, doesn't come equipped with matching insightfulness, as the depictions of its various players - marines, everyday citizens, and insurgents - are fashioned after now-familiar, simplistic psychological molds and action-reaction dynamics.