Thursday, August 20, 2015

Fantasia Catch-up #01: Bridgend, Cruel, Assassination Classroom, Cooties, Teana: 10000 Years Later, Black & White: The Dawn of Justice, The Shamer's Daughter, Extinction, Deathgasm

Remember, folks, as long as we keep Fantasia in our hearts, it can last all year round! Or, at least, for another month or so, if you watched nearly ninety movies in just over three weeks and had no time to write up the full reviews that justify your press pass during the festival.

This was an early weekend punt of sorts - full days of movies on Friday and Saturday and at it early on Saturday and Sunday just doesn't leave a lot of time to get things done. There's some good stuff in there, though - I think I marrked Black & White: The Dawn of Justice on my ballot for "Best Action Movie", while Bridgend stuck with me. I want to know what my teacher friends/family think of Cooties when it comes out, and Deathgasm is something a lot of people will love.

And now, to jump four days closer to the present to look at 100 Yen Love...

Bridgend

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2015 in the J.A. de Séve Cinema (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)

There's a moment early in Bridgend when the main character's father, a policeman just transferred back to the title city after having spent about ten years in Bristol, is shown the wall of the at-that-point twenty-three teenage suicides that have happened in the past few years. He stares at it like there's something he can do, a mystery to solve, but it's suicide, not a serial killer; there's little folks like him can do but try and pick up the pieces.

That's what makes Bridgend - inserting fictional characters into a situation that actually has plagued the namesake town in Wales - genuinely disturbing: Young people who end it all can seem to be outside the capability of mentally-healthy people to understand, but there are hints that they're not so far outside the mainstream as we might think. After all, if the very happy-seeming Sara can get pulled into this situation, seemingly anybody can. There's a twisted culture of no hope and no leaving, and what other way out is there?

Sara (Hanna Hurray) and Dave (Steven Waddington) lived there before, once upon a time, and when they return, she makes friends easily enough - Thomas (Scott Arthur) remembers her from when they were kids, his girlfriend Laurel (Elinor Crawley) is curious about Sara's horse, and the vicar's son Jamie (Josh O'Connor) seems to take a fancy to her. Just hanging out turns into visiting the sites where friends died, memorializing them, and acting out.

Full review on EFC.

Cruel

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2015 in the J.A. de Séve Cinema (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)

The almost-banal serial killer isn't quite a staple of crime fiction but it's not exactly uncommon, either, likely in part because the challenge of creating a character who is simultaneously unremarkable and monstrous is fascinating to writers and filmmakers, even if it often only appeals to a relatively specialized audience. That's the case with Cruel - it's admirable and intriguing, although the story can be a tough nut to crack and swallow.

The killer in this case is Pierre Tardieu (Jean-Jacques Lelté), a nondescript man of no fixed occupation in Toulouse who has killed a great many victims over the years because he is invisible enough to stalk his prey without being remembered before abducting them and keeping them in a hidden basement for weeks or months, then disposing of the bodies in a way that suggests unrelated disappearances. Recently, though, a couple of things have changed: He has included a number of ID cards with his latest victim, alerting the police to a long-active serial killer in their midst, and the owner of a stationery shop where Tardieu has been buying notebooks since he was a kid introduces him to Laure Ouari (Magali Moreau), a music teacher who appears to stir actual affection in him.

Jean-Jacques Lelté has relatively few screen credits, which is the sort of thing that may help his performance as Pierre; he's a blank slate onto which it is difficult to impose familiar characteristics or motive, and the sparse details among the relative blankness that Lelté and writer/director Eric Cherrière create draws the audience in even more. Lelté plays him as a sort of everyman with just the tiniest bit of exaggeration around the edges in most cases, although his detached and asocial nature is noticeable. Sometimes it just comes off as being bored, though - especially noticeable in contrast to the sense of humor that starts to emerge when the police finally start to suspect him of a crime. He's also got a nice chemistry with Magali Moreau, who makes Laure seem a little more tentative than she actually is.

Full review on EFC.

Ansatsu Kyoshitsu (Assassination Classroom)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2015 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)

Next time I'm in the comic shop, I'm going to have to give the Assassination Classroom manga a look to see what the average chapter length is; even if it's something like 16 pages, I'll bet they're decompressed and some of the best bits are probably four-panel half-pagers. At least, that's what one might expect based upon the movie, which jumps between short episodes and gags so quickly that it feels scattered and never really coalesces as a story that makes sense.

The story it has involves Kunugigaoka Junior High School class 3-E - openly described as the dregs of the school (and roughly equivalent to Grade 9 in North America) - being moved to a separate, run-down building,where they are given a highly unusual home room teacher: A yellow alien (voice of Kanna Hashimoto) with beady little eyes, a gigantic grin, tentacles, and the ability to fly, regenerate, and move at roughly Mach 20. He has already destroyed half the moon and threatened to do the same to the Earth, but to be sporting, he's offered to teach a class of kids how to kill him and give them until the end of the academic year to do it. Somehow outfitted with powerful guns and explosives that will not do lasting harm to human beings, the students - including underachiever Nagisa Shiota (Ryosuke Yamada), and the quite intelligent but combative transfer student Karma Akabane (Masaki Suda), along with oddities like STAR the "Self-Thinking Artillery Robot" - begin each day with a gunfight in hope of scoring a ten billion yen reward. Their teachers include Ministry of Defense representative Tadaomi Karasuma (Kippei Shiina) and Irina Jelavic (Kang Ji-young), who has gone from KGB assassin to high-school English teacher.

That's just a handful of the characters in the movie - it's a classroom of about 25 or 30 students who are all name-checked and given something to do over the course of the film. Whether out of necessity or because it's following the source material, the movie winds up being very episodic, with ten minute bits that sometimes revolve around plans to out take "UT" (for "unkillable teacher") and sometimes make a conventional situation strange by dropping the likes of a smiling tentacle monster and a massive killer robot with the personality of a cheerful schoolgirl into them. The good news is, those bits are funny; between the original manga by Yusei Matsui, the script by Tatsuya Kanazawa, and the direction of Eiichiro Hasumi, they're not just absurd but fast-paced, getting to the punchline well before the gag is beaten into the ground. There's generally at least one good-sized laugh in every set-up, which isn't bad at all.

Full review on EFC.

Cooties

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2015 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)

Allison Pill is carving out a weird niche in terms of sweet elementary school teachers who turn oddly violent between this and Snowpiercer, isn't she? Granted, she's entirely justified here, as anybody in this movie describing kids as "little monsters" would be entirely on point. It's a demented, violent, fiercely funny horror-comedy, and probably more fun than many in that genre because just letting loose on kids actually feels a bit transgressive.

Before getting to that, it's a different sort of horror, with stalled-out writer Clint (Elijah Wood) starting his first day as a substitute teacher in his old elementary school after not making it big in New York and moving back in with his parents. On the one hand, his high-school crush Lucy (Pill) is also a teacher there; on the other, she's dating fellow faculty member Wade (Rainn Wilson), the sort of redneck bully that used to make Clint's life hell. It's not a great day, and that's before some tainted chicken nuggets from a local supplier are served during school lunch, and after the kids eat them... Well, aim for the head.

Tone is everything in a thing like this; as much as I've grown tired of how The Walking Dead often seems to rely on murdering children when it needs to cynically pack an extra punch in a finale episode, this film's makers approach the idea with glee after acknowledging that, yes, this is horrible. It's fun because, in many ways, these fast-zombie kids are the distillation of all the worst things about the worst children - they don't listen, they launch at each other over nothing, they bite, they run and run and run when you're trying to keep track of them, and they get into everything. Cooper Roth plays patient zero - an especially obnoxious brat by the name of "Patriot" (his parents clearly deserve some blame), and between how he establishes himself in the earlier stretches and the willingness of directors Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion to let their zombies have a little personality, he almost feels like he's talking back even when growling while covered in fake blood.

Full review on EFC.

Yi wan nian yi hou (Teana: 10000 Years Later)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, DCP w/ XPand 3D)

Director Yi Li and his crew worked for seven years on Teana: 10000 Years Later, and its looking kind of rough in spots goes to show how crazy the resources Hollywood has at its disposal are and how developed its tools are. The character animation and motion is a very clear step down from American digitally-animated features, and the story seems all over the place, although that might be less familiarity with Chinese legends on my part and a disappointing dub.

It takes place, as you might figure, ten thousand years after the fall of the old world (presumably ours), with its future Tibet populated by various human tribes and animal people. We meet several groups through Arion, a wandering member of the Ballad Tribe who, along with his granddaughter Joma, keeps the history and legends of the last millennia current. One of the main ones is that of Devil Wu, who sought to harness the power of the old world but was imprisoned in another dimension by the goddess Kelseng - although unbeknownst to Arion and everyone else, Wu is on the brink of escape and has the capability to decimate any tribes that oppose him and enslave the rest.

The version screened was dubbed into English and not particularly well, and that sort of thing tends to emphasize how the facial "acting" of the animation is not exactly state of the art. Digital animation is more like puppetry than making a flipbook, with Teana being decent marionettes compared to Pixar's highly-articulated animatronic robots with sophisticated AI to control crowds: They look pretty good most of the time, and when the final action scenes come, it's pretty clear that the production sprung for some motion capture and the guy performing the zebra warrior knows his martial arts.

Full review on EFC.

Pi Zi Ying Xiong 2 (Black & White: The Dawn of Justice)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival: Action!, DCP)

It feels like it's been a while since I've seen an action movie as dedicated to being thoroughly nuts as Black & White: Dawn of Justice, a sequel that, from what I gather, goes all-out in topping its predecessor by staging one big action scene on top of another, making the stakes as high as possible, and adding a couple extra dashes of personal melodrama into the final act just to make absolutely damn sure that the audience is invested. Even without seeing the first Black & White, action/adventure fans should have a blast.

Wu Ying-hsiung (Mark Chao) became famous for rescuing the hostages on an airplane last time around, although he's the sort of movie cop that creates a lot of paperwork for his superior officers, even when he's not trying, like this morning, when his commute brings him right through a group of highly-trained soldiers of fortune attacking a military convoy. Also arriving at the scene is Chen Zhen (Kenny Lin Genxin), and up-and-coming detective from the Eastern Substation, and they've just begun to team up when, at 10am, a number of bombs attached to wanted criminals explode, sealing off all the bridges and tunnels. Though Ying is still in contact with the people from his division - forensics expert Lan Xi-ying (Janine Chang Chung-ning), uniformed officer Green, and ironically-named computer expert Hulk. They soon discover that one of the suicide bombers is Xu Da-fu (Huang Bo), whom Ying allowed to escape for his help before, and when a lead brings them to a military facility that the elite "Blackhawks" unit is raiding... Well, this is going to be a busy day for Ying, Chen, and Da-fu, and one the entire city will remember if the mastermind behind it has his way.

What are his plans for the city? Well, a little of everything; as Ying and Chen are put through their paces, suicide bombers and hostage situations are only the start of it; despite being the sequel to a hit movie (itself a follow-up to a popular television series), writer/director Tsai Yue-xun throws everything but the kitchen sink in like he'll never get to make another action movie, let alone entry in this series, and apparently casts himself as the villainous mastermind to boot. Just when it seems like Tsai has peaked, he escalates, eventually showing a sort of gleeful disinterest in making an action extravaganza where the mayhem is contained so as not to affect civilians. It's not hard to believe that he might be the guy who pushes a buddy cop movie all the way to something apocalyptic. It's bonkers, but it's a lot of fun.

Full review on EFC.

Skammerens Datter (The Shamer's Daughter)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)

The concept behind Lene Kaaberbøl's "Shamer Chronicles" book series is an interesting one, positing a woman and her daughter with the ability to look into a person's soul and pull out what they are ashamed of. What kinds of problems can you solve with weaponized guilt? How does that play in a situation where people can do horrible things without feeling shame? At the very least, it makes for a tale of swords and (some) sorcery that's different enough to be interesting.

Of course, people don't really like Shamers, forcing Melussina (Maria Bonnevie) and her similarly-gifted daughter Dina (Rebecca Emilie Sattrup) to live on the outskirts of their village and are often taunted as witches. But when the king and queen are the kingdom Dunark are murdered and Crown Prince Nicodemus (Jakob Oftebro) stands accused, Mesire Drakhan (Peter Plaugborg), his Weapons Master (Søren Malling), and the rest of the court need to be really sure, sending for Melussina and, later, Dina. When somebody doesn't like the answers the Shamers give, Melussina is scheduled for public execution - which, in Dunark, involves the dragons kept in the dungeon - and Dina winds up on the run, with few allies beyond street girl Rosa (Petra Maria Scott) to help free her mother and bring the king's killer to justice.

As clever as the premise Kaaberbøl came up with (and Anders Thomas Jensen adapted for director Kenneth Kainz), the film version of The Shamer's Daughter, at least, can't help but expose its weakness, especially around the climax, as in a medieval setting where the Shamers can be easily ignored or executed as traitors. It backs itself into a pretty bad corner, especially when one considers that it's presumably trying to tell its young-adult audience that the gifts for which they're taunted make them powerful and that living life without reason for shame is the best path. That doesn't set up a sequel very well, though.

Full review on EFC.

Extinction

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)

Extinction starts off problematically, with a prologue that involves three people doing what seems like the same dumb thing in a row, leading to nearly everybody getting killed by zombies. It's the sort of thing that has the audience bracing for a tidal wave of stupidity, especially when the bulk of the movie winds up being two people living in their old houses but not talking until nine years later. Surprisingly, though, the center of the movie works pretty well.

One of those people is Jack (Jeffrey Donovan), trying to raise a daughter after the zombie apocalypse (which seems to have triggered a mini-ice age for good measure). Monsters haven't been seen for a while, but he's still naturally worried about keeping Lu (Quinn McColgan) safe, including from Patrick (Matthew Fox), the neighbor he considers deeply untrustworthy. Lu, as it turns out, is a bright and curious kid, sneaking out to pet Patrick's dog by the fences. Both Jack and Patrick have been raiding nearby houses and shops and now have to go further out, in their forays, where they find that the cold hasn't necessarily killed the zombies off.

Most movies in the genre will make sure that something undead shows up every fifteen minutes or so, but the filmmakers hold back here, implying that the men are prisoners of their own fear as they are defending themselves against a threat. There's a nifty sort of tension in this center even though not a lot is really happening; the audience gets to mull over the isolation of the situation and the way others react: Jack seems to have purpose in bringing up Lu while Patrick has unraveled, and Lu is a kid despite her situation. There's a bitter note to her seeming healthy development as the audience wonders about it being pointless, but its not overpowering.

Full review on EFC.

Deathgasm

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)

I skipped Deathgasm at Independent Film Festival Boston figuring it would play Fantasia while other things on the IFFBoston schedule might not otherwise play theaters, and the gambit payed off. Not just because the movie played, but because I don't know if the crowd would have been quite so metal in Boston, although who knows; that festival brings out its music fans. The point is, Deathgasm is a movie that plays to its audience and better with one, so keep that in mind.

For a raucous thing, it starts with a downer, as nice-enough teenager Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) is orphaned, and winds up sent to a small town to live with his very religious aunt and uncle. There's a record store in town, though, which introduces him to heavy metal, and where he meets Zakk (James Blake), the town's other metalhead. Soon he's got a major crush on school beauty Medina (Kimberly Crossman), whom Zakk points out is way out of his league, while they start a band with fantasy geeks Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel Cresswell). When Brodie & Zakk find out that a metal legend is living incognito nearby, they go to his house and find the door open, and while they're chased out, Zakk has made off with a piece of sheet music that, when played, apparently can actually raise demons, and while these guys hate their town, they didn't mean to destroy it!

Writer/director Jason Lei Howden does nothing to hide that he is playing on parental fears of Satanism, especially back in the 1980s, with a big part of the gag here being that this movie is a demonstration of how absurd the idea that heavy metal music (or the Dungeons & Dragons that is the other band members' real passion) really can call forth the Devil's armies. Howden has great fun poking at the details of these beliefs, right down to how apparently the ony way to put the things this music did right is by playing it backwards. It's clever, and I suspect that a lot of the bits of the plot the seemed like outside characters tacked on for length would have been much funnier if I knew more about the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, especially how it manifested in the filmmakers' native New Zealand.

Full review on EFC.

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