Still in MTL, but whatever; the Marvel thing will still be playing when I get home.
The big release is obviously Deadpool & Wolverine, with Ryan Reynolds welcoming Special Guest Star Hugh Jackman as a Wolverine from somewhere in the multiverse whom he tries to recruit to fight Cassandra Nova. It's at the Somerville, Fresh Pond, The Embassy, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax 2D/Dolby Cinema/RealD 3D/Spanish subs/Mandarin subs), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including RealD 3D/Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax 2D & 3D/Dolby Cinema/RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax 2D & 3D/Dolby Cinema/RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
Counterprogramming is The Fabulous Four, the latest comedy with a group of older women pulled back together after some time apart; this time it is Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullally, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as bridesmaids for Bette Midler, their college friend. It's at Boston Common and Causeway Street.
The Beast Within arrives at Boston Common for limited shows fresh from Fantasia; it stars Kit Harrington as a father whose lycanthropy is not the only thing straining his family.
If you get up early - it is scheduled for 10:10am matinees, just least-effort four-walling - you can catch The Girl in the Pool at Fresh Pond; it stars Freddie Prinze Jr. as a family man who has to hide his mistress's corpse right before a surprise birthday party. Also in the credits: Monica Potter and Kevin Pollak.
The Olympic Opening Ceremonies will be presented on-screen at Boston Common (Imax Xenon), South Bay (Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (Imax Laser) on Friday, with South Bay, Assembly Row presenting other events on regular screens there throughout the week. Fantasy comedy Man and Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps (starring Greg Steinbruner & Tami Stronach but with a noteworthy set of guest stars/voice actors) plays Sunday and Tuesday at Boston Common. Migration is the matinee show at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay Monday & Wednesday. Blackpink World Tour: Born Pink plays Boston Common, Assembly Row on Wednesday. There's a "Premiere Event" for The Duel at Boston Common, Assembly Row on Wednesday.
The Coolidge Corner Theatre gets maybe the best film from this year's Independent Film Festival Boston, Agnieszka Holland's absurd and tragic film about refugees pushed between Belarus and Poland Green Border.
They also bring back Free LSD, which had a special screening last week, for midnight shows on Friday & Saturday; regular midnights are a 35mm print of Bride of Chucky on Friday and Jennifer's Body on Saturday. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Total Recall, the final "Godzilla vs the Coolidge" battle is Terror of Mechagodzilla on Tuesday - well, sort of, in that they will also be hauling a 35mm projector to the Greenway for an outdoor Science on Screen presentation of Godzilla 2000 - and Sean Wang will be present for Thursday night's screenings of IFFBoston alum Didi before it opens wide next Friday.
Boston Jewish Film will be screening The World Is Not My Own at the Coolidge on Wednesday, with a post-screening conversation, but you have to go to BJF's site for ticketing, as opposed to the Coolidge's.
The Brattle Theatre opens Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger for a limited run from Friday to Monday; the documentary has Martin Scorsese showing the audience what made the pair some of the most important directors in cinema. You can also see it illustrated with The Red Shoes, playing Friday & Sunday afternoons and Black Narcissus on Saturday. They also have I Saw the TV Glow for late-ish shows Friday to Sunday.
The Columbia Musicals this week are big ones, with Funny Girl on Monday and Oliver! on Tuesday. Summer of Sofia continues with a 35mm print of Coppola's remake of The Beguiled on Wednesday while Cruel Summer offers a double feature of Sorcerer & Wake in Fright on Thursday.
Tamil action movie Raayan opens at Apple Fresh Pond and Boston Common this weekend. Bad Newz is held over at both locations.
Midnight Special at the The Somerville Theatre this Saturday is a 35mm print of They Live; Attack of the B-Movies on Sunday is a twin bill of Bride of the Gorilla & The Killer Shrews.
The Capitol picks up Kinds of Kindness and Janet Planet as they give way to Deadpool at the Somerville. The summer vacation matinee this week is Shrek 2.
The Seaport Selects show at The Seaport Alamo this weekend is Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse. There's a preview of Kneecap with a livestreamed Q&A after on Monday, with '84 time capsule screenings of Blood Simple Monday and Beverly Hills Cop on Wednesday.
Landmark Kendall Square is starting to do the surprise previews branded as "Landmark First Look", with the first Boston-area one on Monday. They also wrap the summer music series on Tuesday with Abba: The Movie
The Boston French Film Festival continues at The Museum of Fine Arts with Little Girl Blue.(Friday), The Goldman Case (Friday), The Nature of Love (Saturday), The Taste of Things (Saturday), and All to Play For (Sunday).
The Regent Theatre has a Music Movies & More show on Wednesday with documentary Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande.
The Luna Theater has Robot Dreams (Friday/Saturday), Tuesday (Saturday), Janet Planet (Saturday), Suburbia (Sunday), and a Weirdo Wednesday Show.
Cinema Salem has Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters, Despicable Me 4, and Longlegs from Friday through Monday. The Friday Night Light show is Long Weekend, The Iron Giant plays Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and there's a Whodunnit Watch Party on Wednesday evening.
Outdoor films on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week are Wonka (Friday at Boynton Yards), Elemental (Saturday at the Prudential Center), The Little Mermaid (Wednesday at Greene-Rose Heritage Park in Cambridge), The Goonies (Wednesday at the Charleston Navy Yard), Godzilla 2000 (Wednesday at the Greenway), Finding Dory (Thursday at Seven Hills Park), Frozen (Thursday at The LOT in Dorchester), and Home Alone (Thursday at Boston Landing).
I'm pretty sure that if a hole somehow develops in my Fantasia schedule this week, I'll do something else, but we're talking 25 or so movies here!
As happens at least once during the festival, I'm using an afternoon where I don't have anything to watch at Fantasia for... more Hong Kong action, in this case a movie which would have been at the festival 10 years ago, when Well Go was still dipping their toes into rapid North American releases (and convincing Chinese studios to let them) but now just jumps to North American theaters a couple weeks after playing China. Which I like! It's just unavoidably funny when it happens.
Also, compared to most places I go in Boston, the large soda wasn't quite as large and the nachos were enormous.
I would have liked to have seen and written this up Friday, but for a while Cineplex's site was only showing it playing one show late Wednesday, though they either corrected that or put more shows on. With Deadpool & Wolverine set to swallow every available screen, it probably won't last past Thursday in Montreal and I believe today is the last day to see it back home in Boston.
Hoi Gwaan Zin Sin (Customs Fromtline)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 July 2024 in Cineplex Forum #21 (first-run, DCP)
I try not to be a person who splits hairs between "good" and "fun" movies; a movie which is fun has undoubtedly been executed well. Customs Frontline occasionally makes me reconsider that stance; it is, on balance, pretty darn fun, but it is also the sort of thing that leads to one shaking one's head, because what you can't recommend about it is pretty darn rough.
It opens with an incident on the high seas off the coast of Africa that sets two nations at war, with the mysterious Dr. Raw (Amanda Strang) appearing to sell arms to both sides. Soon, in Hong Kong, a Customs Service boat crewed by senior officer Cheung Wan-Nam (Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau), Chow Ching-Lai (Nicholas Tse Ting-Fung), Ben (Argus Yeung), and Katie (Michelle Wai) will come upon a derelict vessel full of weapons, its captain leaving a dead crew behind. Suspicion that the weapons are Thai in origin brings a team from their intelligence service, Ying (Cya Liu Yase) and Mark (James Kazama). It's highly fraught behind the scenes, as well - Lai used to date Katie, who is now engaged to another man; Cheung has lagged behind his classmates in promotions, likely due in part to dealing with clinical depression and bipolar syndrome, although he has found a loving partner in Athena Siu (Karena Lam Ka-Yan), the head of the agency's Intelligence & Investigations division; Siu and Cheung's boss Kwok Chi-Kung (Francis Ng Chun-Yu) are up for the same promotion. When Lai and Ying discover that the arms moving through Hong Kong are likely being abetted by someone in the agency, that information winds up taking circuitous routes.
With all this going on, the movie is pretty darn good in the way that matters most, in that there are three or four action sequences good enough to get your attention, from Nicolas Tse sparring with a guy who insists on shooting holes in the the inflatable boat they're standing in to Nicolas Tse fighting a small army inside a cargo shop like Jet Li did in Once Upon a Time in China, except that it's under power and destroying piers in Hong Kong Harbor. Tse is credited with fight choreography right alongside "starring" in the opening titles (Alan Ng Wing-Lun, somewhat later), and he's definitely showing off a bit, working on a number of unstable surfaces and the like. Even in the car chases and to a lesser extent the shootouts, it's the sort of action you admire for its invention rather than the sheer amount of firepower (which is substantial).
As for the rest, well, it sort of feels like director Herman Yau and writer Erica Li are too committed to wrecking stuff and melodrama to do the sort of pure propaganda of Dante Lee's "Operation" movies, which this easily could have become. On the other hand, the narrative around its cops with mental health problems is not great, to put it mildly, maybe even bordering on dangerously misinformed for all I know. Jacky Cheung, especially, is chewing all the scenery the the filmmakers serve him at times, kind of putting the lie to lines about how sometimes mental illness is hard to see, and Nicholas Tse's vacillations between being all-business and uncontrollably emotional are more than a bit weird.
The plot, with the smugglers and their abetters, gets kind of messy as well, with a side trip to Africa and new characters introduced to be quickly killed off. It feels a bit like killing time and taking the longest route from Raw's men stealing something in Hong Kong to trying to smuggle it out. It's hardly fatal, but it's the sort of thing viewers notice rather than rolle with, making them impatient to get back to the good stuff rather than also drawing them into this part of the movie.
Good punches are thrown and vehicles are wrecked in a satisfying enough manner to be worth the price of a ticket. It's not quite old-school-worthy HK action, but it's closer than I expected.
First guest of the day is Naoki Arata (center), whose "The True Shape of a Daisy" is part of the Anime no bento" program. It's a nifty looking film that programmer Rupert Bottenberg found interesting because it was ripped in European folk tales rather than Japanese mythology, to which she replied that a lot of the finding for the film came from a UK-based program, so…
Also on hand were the team from "The Future Is Now" (with programmer Steven Lee on the left): Writer/director/producer Jung Jong-min, actor Koo Jaho, and producer/cinematographer Park Wonjo. They had been at Fantasia last year with a horror short and were eager to come back. They've got some slick chops, so maybe they'll eventually come back with a feature.
After Mononoke the Movie - which has nothing to do with Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, which threw me when programmer Rupert Bottenberg showed a teaser last year (he aims to end the animation section of each festival by showing something he hopes to program at the next, which I suppose is kind of feasible considering that these things gestate long enough that festivals can be in contact early) - I had intended to catch Shelby Oaks, but it was a case where I walked out of the theater and there was already a sizable line, and there's no guarantee with a badge, especially when everyone wants to see it with the director and executive producer and a bunch of other folks on hand.
Ah, well. Neon has picked it up so it will probably play Boston later this year. I hadn't really eaten all day anyway, so it was kind of a relief to go across the street to a burger shop that just happened to be have the Red Sox game on.
Today's plan: The Avenging Eagle, International Science-Fiction Short Films, Ghost Cat Anzu, The Old Man and the Demon Sword, and Mash Ville.
"First Line"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)
Wrote what you know, they say, so this short's creator Tina gives the audience a story of a young animator who is running late with the segment he's been assigned but is nevertheless given a crucial final sequence on a tight deadline by the project's mercurial director.
It's a bit of a love letter to the medium, of course, with careful attention paid to how the work gets done, the flights of fancy possible, and the modest pencil-on-paper origins of what the audience is seeing. What's more intriguing, though, is the way she examines the push and pull of it. People like Mito get hired because they've got talent and creativity and are then pushed into a system that subordinates this to someone else's vision. How do you work as a member of the team but still stand out?
I'm not sure the film really answers this, but it at least makes me think of the question, and certainly feels genuine enough around that.
"Maidens of the Ripples"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)
I feel like this is far from the first time that I've watched an animated short from Japan where two girls draw closer because nobody else understood that they were "different" and had it not be about being gay but (I guess) depressed, to the extent that I wonder if the one is a euphemism for the other in Japan.
At any rate, this one has a teacher giving the class president, Haruka Arima, printouts for frequently-absent Rin Takitani, and while Haruka is initially shocked at how beautiful Rin is with her dyed-blonde hair, she soon finds these times meeting her the best part of her day. They've got more in common than they think, especially as Haruka talks about how she wasn't always a focused, organized student, and in fact that may be a facade that is wearing down.
The story here is the sort I often have trouble relating to, with its teens so cognizant of how heavy everything is and how much emotion they are investing in small things, but I love the art here: Watercolor backgrounds for what appears to be a harbor town and human figures with a pleasing sketchiness, not invested with much in the way of excess movement but not unnaturally still. Creator Michiko Soma knows we're going to be looking at the hair right away and does good storytelling with it: Rin initially appears ethereal and fragile despite calling it her "golden armor" and it feels like an early warning for Haruka about to break down as it gets a bit out of control.
"Yoruwohiraite" ("The True Shape of a Daisy")
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)
This is the first film in the package that feels kind of like a proof-of-concept, with director Naoki Arata introducing some characters and hinting at world-building but stopping short of its characters actually having an adventure. It's one that looks like it could lead to something, though, with "Child of the Night" Nycteris following a firefly through a mysterious door to find a bright, colorful valley and making friends with the boy there, before being pulled back home where her mother (I believe; the relationship is never specified) scolds her.
The story could use a bit more detail - maybe Arata will have the chance to expand it sometime - but mood is nailed very well, while keeping things somewhat mysterious. The nighttime and daylight worlds look very different but Nycteris doesn't look like something pasted onto the wrong background when brought into the daylight, even though the halo around her new friend becomes overpowering to her as the sun fully rises, the world seeming to become a van Gogh-like riot of color. There's a sort of nervy uncertainty in the scenes with her mother, even as she radiates authority; is she a giantess or is Nycteris small, or is Arata exaggerating for effect?
It's a nifty start; I hope we can see more adventures with them.
"Kamigoroshi: Prologue"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)
Another movie about animators, although rather than the nervous fellow working on one small sequence of "First Line", "Kamigoroshi" gives us a capricious god: A wolf-man who takes the figure of a generic girl, then refines her into the figure of a black-clad teenager, breathing memories into her and placing her in a model city. The only trouble is, this city is meant to be the setting for a sci-fi/horror epic, with something above pulling the souls from the other figures, while elsewhere, freedom fighters are breaking out of the model and into the workshop.
Creation and destruction go hand-in-hand with this sort of tactile animation, and really any form of storytelling, as the things you make will eventually be undone, or have violence done to them, even if you like them and would wish them well in real life, and at least in this prologue, Niho Tomoyuki seems enjoyably unrepentant, having his fox-god scoop up his attackers and use their clay to seal the holes they've made, and there's something kind of interesting about how, while he apparently struggles with rebellious characters, other parts of the story go on, which is certainly what the writing process feels like at times.
He does it in snappy, fast-paced fashion, too; while there's a little time given up front to him crafting the heroine, once the camera moves inside the city, there are several things happening at once without dialogue to explain it. He's great at using visual shorthand like the breathing life into his doll segment, and the escape from the model city is nifty for how it uses images often played for laughs as an adventure that quickly veers into horror. I don't know if this pace can be kept up for a full feature, but I'm certainly intrigued.
"Okuninushi and Sukunabikona"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)
Is there a more exciting logo to pop up before a film, whether a feature or, in this case, a sort of micro-short, than that of Science Saru? There's a gleefully cartoony chaos to their work even when they are tackling heavier themes, and "Okuninushi and Sukunabikona" is not them doing that, as it features the two title characters, gods in some local pantheon, making a goofy bet while on a walk. It's silly, sure, but it's also really good character work, sketching these two quickly enough to sell a gag beyond just what's universal. Quality cartooning.
"String Dance" ("Roots") from the film Taisu
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)
Made for another anthology (TAISU) which is apparently not far off, "String Dance" introduces us first to an elfin girl, seemingly alone in a world where trees connect in a wild tangle, north, south, up, and down, living a carefree life flying with her giant bird Mau, before shifting the scene to a castle, where Princess Tesin laments how her father the king has shrunken from the world since the death of the queen. Somehow, a pair of flowers in their respective homes serves as a telephone, and the two become confidantes. Her new friend encourages Tesin to take a stronger leadership position herself, but her city-state is at war, and the attackers…
Of the shorts in the package, this is the one most obviously done with digital tools, and it's got what seems like it must be a deliberately plastic realism at this late date; it reminds me a bit of French comic artist Fred Beltran when he started using those tools later in his career: Uncannily smooth yet nevertheless solid, somehow heightening the sense of depth and the inhumanity of war. For all that it helps to create impressive imagery, it doesn't harm the character work at all; both protagonists are given heightened personality and voice work, but it works, even as their friendship leads to tragedy because they don't know the full story.
That full story is somewhat elided, not just in terms of the audience not getting the full background but in how there's a bit of a fast forward that one might not realize until after the fact (this style is maybe not ideal for showing aging). There's also a reincarnation angle that isn't necessarily extraneous - I can see where filmmaker Shuhei Morita is maybe trying to demonstrate the bond between these two despite everything - but it's maybe one thing too much in a short that doesn't have a lot of time to explain.
Mecha-Ude (Mechanical Arms) Episode 1
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)
Watching something like Mecha-Ude, I kind of wish I had more time for anime and manga, or that the likes of this had been more available in my small town when I was a kid. It's a delightfully dotty sort of premise - there are apparently alien robots that take the form of mechanical arms that can fuse with humans, although it's kept pretty hush-hush, and when young ARMS agent Aki Murasame (voice of Yu Shimamura) tries to liberate one from a lab, it winds up lost, only to be found my mostly-good-hearted teenager Hikaru Amatsuga (voice Toshiyuki Toyonaga). They connect, but it turns out his new hand (voice of Tomokazu Sugita) is amnesiac and pacifistic, which does not necessarily help with two secret agencies after them, culminating in Aki being placed undercover in Hikaru's school.
That's close to the plot of the whole first episode screened, but it's the cheeky attitude that feels like it will be the real fun here, with Hikaru's general decency tending to include a bunch of hand-wringing about whether something is a good idea or if he's being selfish, contrasted with Aki's jaded pragmatism. There's room for a sort of whimsical cartooniness to "Alma", the big ol' hand Hikaru gets saddled with, compared to the "cooler" snakelike arms others are wearing. We get hints of fun supporting casts and various subplots and conflicts, enough to see that things will probably get more serious, eventually. The animation is slick and the fights nicely kinetic.
Nine-year-old me would have absolutely eaten this up; fifty-year-old me is not going to look to see what streaming service this is on because once you start following one show, there's a million others and I've already got more pop culture on my shelves and Roku than I can get to. I'm sure the audience it's meant for will have a blast, though.
"The Future Is Now"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
At some point, between writing "The Future Is Now' and it premiering at Fantasia, the idea of a big cryptocurrency heist as a motivator in this sort of action/adventure flick went from feeling coolly futuristic to an instant anachronism, and it does something to this short's vibe that I can't quite put my finger on. It's already sort of pushing through on excitement and enthusiasm, only now it's slightly misdirected. The story has Jaho finally being given a tip that will allow him to track down former friend Paul after he stole a fortune in crypto from him a year ago, but the other partner he had expected to help has moved on while the underworld figure that loaned Jaho the money needed for this crypto play back then is ready to move in on both men. I suppose you could substitute any Macguffin, but we're at a spot right now where anything techy enough to make this seem futuristic seems to have an expiration date.
That doesn't really matter, I suppose; the point of the film is the vibe. There's some pretty slick camerawork and well-communicated speed as Jaho drives through the city, with the neon colors popping and most of the story being told in phone calls. It's not hard to see Jaho as a guy with a lot of online contacts but maybe in over his head trying to actually accomplish something on the street. It's rough at spots - there's enough talk to make you aware that the slick veneer is covering a relative dearth of action - and it doesn't quite make up for the could-be-worse-but-could-be-better acting in a way that makes Jaho and Paul reconnecting work.
For a semi-homemade film - the on-screen and behind-the-camera talent appear to be the same folks - "The Future Is Now" is polished and energetic. It could probably be better with a cast that's not also trying to set light levels and handle blocking.
Yonggamhan simin (Brave Citizen)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
I can't really argue that Brave Citizen doesn't commit to the bit, but I can't help but wish it had gone further. Maybe the filmmakers couldn't because they had to thread a certain needle - there have been enough stories and films out of Korea about teachers lashing out at students or using corporal punishment that the filmmakers don't want to be accused of Being In Favor Of That - or maybe I'm just imagining that, but this is a film that does okay for itself being moderately weird when it actually needs to be crazy.
Mooyoung High, we are told, has been recognized as an Exemplary Anti-Bullying School for two years running, but that's a facade - those two years line up with rich kid Han Su-Kang (Lee Jun-young) being suspended, and he's a terror, not just making other kids' lives miserable but avoiding accountability because his parents are rich, connected with the police and prosecutors, and on the school board. His current favorite target is Go Jin-hyung (Park Jung-woo), a good kid being raised by his street-vendor granny. Han is obviously not in the ethics class taught by So Si-min (Shin Hye-sun), a new teacher on a three-month contract hoping to latch on permanently and advised not to make waves. And she tries, but she's also a former rising star in boxing who has also trained in taekwondo and hopkaido, and probably isn't as different from her father and coach who once won a "Brave Citizen" award for standing up to street crime as she'd like to think, and the masks her father keeps in his gym for his young students does offer some anonymity.
I appreciate the filmmakers pointing out that the Su-kang was suspended for two years and this isn't a minor, because it means one can watch the film without being uneasy about his teacher eventually beating the shit out of him, as must happen because otherwise why are you paying for a ticket. On the other hand, it also means getting very impatient to see Si-min beat the shit out of him. It also kind of messed with the structure of the movie; this feels like the sort of film (or comic, as it's based on a webtoon) where the heroine climbs a ladder to get to the final boss, but what's she going to do, beat up a bunch of kids? So you get a kind of static situation until things jump from masked vigilante to pro wrestling tropes (as they kind of have to, because the resolution can't happen somewhere off in the background). It never quite feels right, and the movie is a bit long to have relatively little happening to move things forward.
Maybe if it had been zanier for longer? The filmmakers get a lot of mileage out of Si-min looking the part of a sunny, idealistic young teacher who is actually a skilled martial artist with anger issues in the start, but ease back on that contrast later. It's hilarious, though, and every time the filmmakers go big with introducing a character or showing student reaction, they hit on something that at least kind of works. It's tough to sustain that when you also want to have major stakes and treat a real-life issue with respect, I suppose, but you're already having a teacher pummel a student; might as well stay in that sort of obviously exaggerated zone.
The fun of it is that Shin Hye-sun has a good enough handle that SI-min never seems to be putting on a facade - she genuinely seems cheerful and like someone who has the right attitude to be a teacher with obvious enthusiasm and empathy, just apparently not squeamish about using violence to deal with people who are making things worse for everyone. She's kind of interesting even as the other actors are mostly playing types, although I suspect that the way they jump from terror to poorly-contained glee when Su-kang starts getting a little of what's coming to them helps make Shin's performance work, because it feels like human nature and she's just able to express it more actively.
That active expression (by which I mean fighting) is okay, although as mentioned, one wishes there was a bit more of it, because it's almost all quick encounters between Si-min and Su-kang which can't really have a definitive ending. The final match is a little more pro-wrestling than MMA, which might be a bit of a disappointment, but there's some good storytelling in it as Si-min can't exactly take Su-kang apart because he is bigger and more muscular but she and everybody watching realize that he's probably never been up against someone who knows what they're doing and isn't afraid of upsetting him or his family before.
It works well enough, and when it leans into how the audience knows they shouldn't be in favor of something but enjoys it anyway, it's great fun. It could just use a bit more of that.
Gekijouban Mononoke Karakasa (Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain aka Mononoke the Movie: Paper Umbrella)
Stars? I dunno
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Animation Plus, laser DCP)
I'm not entirely certain what it is that I just watched but I'm glad that I got to see it on the big screen with good sound. It is some amazing animation outside the usual mold and, hey, I knew coming in that this was a spin-off from a cult show and if I didn't get caught up beforehand, that's on me.
Near as I can tell, the Medicine Seller (voice of Hiroshi Kamiya) wanders around feudal Japan looking to slay demons ("mononoke"), but his Exorcism Sword will only unsheathe if he knows the Form, Truth, and Reason that connect them. His latest target is Ooku, a palace that only women are allowed to enter, which has some strange omens about it: A parade normally scheduled to occur before a princess gives birth has been mysteriously delayed, and there are rumors that someone has left the palace unrecognizable. As he arrives, two young women arrive for their first day as servant girls there: Asa (voice of Tomoyo Kurosawa), a serious girl who wishes to be a scribe, and Kame (Aoi Yuki), bubblier and taken with the glamor of Ooku, which she has obsessively studied as a true fan, and immediately find themselves involved in things far more sinister than they anticipated.
I'm going to have to assume that phantom in the Rain has the basic shape of an episode from the Mononoke series, just writ larger and with fancier effects work, because while there's a sort of token effort to say "I've got to do A, B, and C", it feels more like a reminder for folks who haven't watched it since it premiered in 2007 than exposition for newcomers. Maybe there's material from the larger world that informs what's going on; there certainly seem to be a few characters on the outskirts of the narrative. Otherwise, though, it is throwing a lot at the audience and presuming we know how it fits together.
Even without that knowledge, though, a viewer can get caught up. The design of everything is great, very reminiscent of traditional woodcut illustrations, and indeed, you can see grain behind the image, which sometimes ironically makes everything look even less solid, like a floor is actually a pool until someone steps on it. There are wisps that maintain shape and sparks that indicate constant and momentary smells and tastes, and an unnerving tendency to draw eyes as unblinking pupils. This all stands beside psychedelic imagery that mixes better than one might think - the evils being committed are ancient and incomprehensible.
Writer/director Kenji Nakamura does neat things with the pacing, too, sometimes lingering just long enough to make one wonder about something, other times making things eerie with a bunch of quick cuts or ending sequences by slamming closet doors shut on them. Action is fast and almost overwhelming as the traditional imagery is enhanced by digital 3-D renderings and anachronistic electric guitars show up on the soundtrack.
The folks around me who were familiar with the property seemed to love it. It's probably a bit of an acquired taste and a bit of work if you haven't previously done that acquisition, but unlike a lot of anime films picked up from something that ended a while back (such as Rebuild of Evangelion), it never gave me the sensation of being something only for a niche audience that doesn't include me.
I'm not going to reference Fantasia vs Fantasia here every time I hit one of its bits other than to say that, at a certain point, I was considering catching The A-Frame. Glad for what I got, but I hope the other one comes across my path sometime.
Anyway… No guests today, and I did not think to take a photo of the peri-peri poutine I wolfed down as local color. So on to the films, which make an interesting double feature because they somehow have similar pacing issues despite one being very short (76 minutes) and the other being fairly long (178 minutes).
Today's plan: Anime no Benton 2024, Brave Citizen, Mononoke the Movie, and Shelby Oaks
Kokuhaku Confession (Confession '24)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 19 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
The film takes a solid tight-space thriller premise as you can get and wrings everything it can out of it and then - maybe because it's so pared down that it needs to be stretched out - doesn't quite know when to stop. There was an "oh come on!" from the audience and the guy wasn't wrong, but it's hardly the first horror movie that has tried to get a couple different endings in, and by the time it gets there, it's done pretty well.
It opens pretty much in media res: Mountaineers Asai Keisuke (Toma Ikuta) and Ryu Ji-yong (Yang Ik-joon) are on their annual trek up the mountain where their friend Nishida Sayuri (Nao Honda) disappeared during their senior year of college 16 years ago, but a storm has swept in and Ji-Yong 's leg is injured. As he urges Asai to save himself, he confesses that he killed Sayuri. It turns out that a cabin offering shelter is very near, and Asai is able to save Ji-Yong, but it's one thing to get something off your chest when you think there are no more consequences, and quite another when it looks like you now have a life to spend in prison.
The set-up is good enough that a filmmaker doesn't necessarily have to get too fancy here. Director/co-writer Nobuhiro Yamashita points out that the pair have left their packs behind, lets the audience get know the cabin where they will spend the rest of the movie, then exploits how familiar the space is afterward. He hurts the pair enough to wince, and to keep things from resolving too quickly - Ji-Yong is hobbled and Asai is somewhat snow-blinded - but not so much that they're seeming to survive fatal injuries so often that the fight doesn't mean anything. It's kind of fun seeing this the day after another film the director has in the festival, since Swimming in a Sand Pool is as far as can be from this, genre-wise, and he's clearly having fun doing all the horror things: There are a few good jump scares, axes coming through walls, and nasty-looking tumbles. It's urgent enough that one isn't necessarily worried about much beyond the present moment, although there is something simmering.
It gives the small cast something to do beyond the physical, at least, with Yang Ik-joon getting to go wild, ping-ponging between sorrow, paranoia, and crazed violence, getting to chew scenery both as he attempts to manipulate his way to safety and eliminate the one person who can now rat on him. Toma Ikuta turns in solid work as Asai, handling the running and climbing and having his eyes bug as an axe nearly splits his head with aplomb, and adding in just enough twitchy nervousness to make later revelations about the relationship between Asai and Sayuri not come out of nowhere.
It's a bit surprising that Nao Honda has what amounts to an extended, almost wordless cameo, enough to make me wonder if there were more flashback scenes or appearances of Sayuri as a ghost or hallucination at some point, but decided that the core of the film was the two men in the cabin with everything else a distraction. That knocked it down to 76 minutes, including some very slow-walked credits, and while I appreciate that there's not padding throughout, the finale does feel less like cool twists than "how we get to feature length". You risk deflating everything that the audience enjoyed this way, but it never really falls apart.
Get past the one groaner moment, which they at least use a bit better than most, and you're left with a pretty darn good duel movie (maybe the best since 2LDK) that doesn't water itself down to hit a certain runtime.
Le comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo '24)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
This adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo likely doesn't set a record for the use of "X Years Later" intertitles, even among movies where it's not a gag, but it does lead to some thoughts about how such things are deployed, and how maybe an adaptation like this - grand enough that it can streamline Alexandre Dumas's novel less than others - highlights just what a tricky thing "X Years Later" is in a movie.
It starts in 1815, with merchant sailor Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) rescuing a woman who will only give him the name of Angèle (Adèle Simphal) from a sinking ship. It angers the ship's captain, Danglars (Patrick Mille) but impresses the owner Morrel (Bruno Raffaelli), who fires Danglars and installs Edmond as the ship's new captain. His future set, Edmond proposes to his love Mercédès Herrera (Anaïs Demoustier), a cousin of the family that his father serves and which sponsored him at the Naval Academy, unaware that its scion and his friend, Fernand de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon) also loves her. He is also unaware that Angèle was loyal to the exiled Napoleon, and Danglars intercepted a letter, which he uses to frame Edmond as the same, and Fernand sees the chance to be rid of a rival by refusing to vouch for him to prosecutor Gérard de Villefort (Laurent Lafitte). Edmond is imprisoned for four years before he encounters Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), who has been patiently digging an escape tunnel for six, and who gives him the secret location of the treasure of the Knights Templar on the isle of Monte Cristo, a treasure that will allow him to pose as the fabulously wealthy Count. Recruiting Angèle's hidden son Andre (Julien De Saint Jean) and Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), the daughter of one of Fernand's foes, he arrives in Paris, intent on destroying the three men who betrayed him, although his thirst for vengeance may blind him to how Albert (Vassili Schneider), the son of Fernand & Mercédès he has Haydée seduce, is an innocent she may find herself not hating.
It's a grand story spanning twenty years adapted into a movie just a hair under three hours, and the first half especially is an absolutely fantastic presentation of the basic premise which everyone knows: It opens with a terrific scene of swashbuckling maritime adventure, builds Edmond up as a tremendously likable hero even as it makes him blind to the developing resentments in a way that doesn't scan as foolish hubris, then knocks it all over and presents the Chateau d'Ilf prison as a specially dehumanizing sort of hell to escape. It's terrific right up to the point where Edmond discovers the treasure.
And then, after 4 years/6 years/1 year later, it starts to feel like filmmakers Alexandre de La Patellière & Matthieu Delaporte (who also wrote last year's two-part The Three Musketeers adaptation) are not just jumping past the repetitive parts, but things of real import. In particular, so much of the second half of the movie rests on Haydée that her just appearing in the story, alternately fully-formed and enigmatic, makes the film wobbly in a way that the first half was too singularly focused to be. de La Patellière & Delaporte have to give exposition rather than show Edmond discovering what has happened to his former friends and adversaries while he was imprisoned and/or creating his new persona, and there are missed opportunities to make him more tragic.
It picks up as Edmond's plans reach their climaxes, at least, in large part because Pierre Niney is a pretty great Count. He sells the young and earnest Edmond and lets the audience see what remains of him as time turns him hard and vengeful, the seed of a sort of self-delusion that allows him to think he is delivering justice rather than revenge. There's something similar going on with Anaïs Demoustier, who makes the audience believe in how the carefree girl of the start grows into a woman wise enough to never lose track of who she was before. And while the way the story is built demands Anamaria Vartolomei fill in a fair amount vai her portrayal of Haydée, she up for it, making her a young woman who has maybe not completely settled into her final form despite events that forge her similar to those of Edmond, intelligent and observant enough to be his conscience if he'd let her, with enough charisma on top of her beauty to pull every scene she's in in her direction. It's a well-cast film from top to bottom, but those three are the ones that make the whole thing work.
The film also looks and sounds amazing, with a bombastic score by Jérôme Rebotier which keeps the energy up rather than exhausting the audience over 178 minutes. There's a great sense of location, especially in the first half, as the ship, Marseilles, the manor, and the prison all feel like they represent something formative for Edmond, and there's grandeur and scale throughout. The two best action pieces are on either end - the underwater rescue feels like the middle of dangerous seas despite likely being a lot of digital effects, and the final swordfight between Edmond and Fernand is a great balance between elegant fencing technique and how people actually trying to kill each other with swords will make it something ugly.
I wonder, a bit, if this might have worked better as a television or streaming series, where every break is an opportunity to pause and reset rather than worry about what one has been missing. There's a whole movie's worth of entertainment here, though, and it may be a bit greedy to ask for more.
So here's the thing, or at least a thing, about coming up to Montreal for the full length of the Fantasia International Film Festival: Booking a stay for that long might mean you wind up in a got-a-bed-and-shower-and-that's-good-enough hotel in a neighborhood with a lot of empty storefronts (which is every neighborhood these days), when you look out the window, there's art.
Anyway, I got here in plenty of time and picked up a badge, but probably should have bought a ticket for opening night film Bookworm earlier, but that's on me. It's okay; writer/director Ant Timpson has a lot of friends and fans at the festival and I'm sure the seat went to someone who was really psyched to see it. It gave me a little time to eat, lay in a few supplies, and then catch Swimming in a Sand Pool. That'll leave a hole in the schedule later, but okay.
Then it was across the street for 4pm.
Not the stars of 4pm, but programmer Steven Lee with "98%" director Byun Changwoo and star Park Yun. I might have liked to hear them talk about their film a bit more - I think a little bit might get lost in translation - but it's kind of rare for shorts to get that sort of post-film focus, even if it weren't a long short before a long-ish film that started late because, as mentioned, Ant Timpson has a lot of friends and fans and the previous film in the theater ran long.
Today's plan is to see if there's any place around here playing Customs Frontline and then live in Hall for the short feature Confession and the long feature The Count of Monte Cristo.
Swimming in a Sand Pool
* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
Swimming in a Sand Pool has Interesting pedigree, with the director of Linda Linda Linda taking on a script adapted from a teenage girl's school play, which feels like it should probably hit with more impact than it does for me. Obviously, teenage girls might feel differently. Japanese teen girls, doubly so.
It has four teenage girls arriving at their school swimming pool, drained with sand on the bottom. Arriving first, Miku (Reina Nakayoshi) puts earbuds in and practices and Awa dance on one of the lane markers; she's soon joined by Chizuru (Mikuri Kiyota), star of the girls' swim team and choosing to lay on her stomach and practice her strokes rather than go cheer the boys' team on at Nationals. Neither wants the other to watch what they're doing. They're joined by Kokoro (Saki Hamao), focused on beauty and boys, and Yui (Sumire Hanaoka), the outgoing senior captain of the swim team. PE teacher Ms. Yamamoto has brought Chizuru and Kokoro here during summer vacation to have them sweep the dirt out of it as a way to make up the swimming class they skipped, retreating to a classroom as the girls get more talking that sweeping done.
The "kids hanging out" genre is a venerable one, and this one is certainly interesting for how (original?) writer Nakata Yumeka was a student when writing it, which likely cuts down any "40-year-old man trying to capture how 15-year-old girls talk" complaints. Still, it's mostly a film that seems content to bounce these young women off each other, hinting a bit at connections to one another and an offscreen boy, but eventually building to a really good line and a pretty good speech, such that it eventually gives the impression of the rest of the movie being reverse-engineered to get to those specific lines as much as feeling like where these characters go. It ends up being about the idea of girlhood but not so much about these girls.
I like the performances, and how the casting and the body language captures what these girls represent and what we know about them; for all this is still very much a play with more people talking rather than doing, there's palpable physicality to it. Reina Nakayoshi's Miku has a dancer's grace and the sort of body insecurity that goes with it, there's physical strength but social awkwardness to Mikuri Kiyota's jock, and a confidence tinged with hostility to Saki Hamao's Kokoro. These girls are all dealing with powerful emotions but very seldom become clichés of teenagers who are just constantly overpowered by their hormones, a sense that they've started figuring out who they are but are also just starting to figure out how being women affects that.
The story may have started life as a high-school play - you can see the convention of the individual entrances in the first act once you know what to look for, and a kind of clunky bit of explanation or two toward the end - but that likely gives Yamashita a fair amount of room to create it as a movie, playing around with what's going on above the pool and within it, occasionally going afield to see what the other girls are doing as they leave others to have one-on-ones. One thing I'm curious about is the sound design, where you hear the baseball team practicing in the adjacent athletic field more or less constantly throughout (the dust they kick up is why the pool needs to be swept) and it's a nifty sort of metaphor for how boys are becoming this insistent background noise in a teenage girl's head even before the film makes it explicit.
There's enough going on that I wonder if the film might have been stronger with a different translation; it's got some abrupt transitions and "now we're going to talk about gender" bits that don't quite play well in subtitles, enough to make one wonder if underlining those points is giving others short shrift. Oh, and I kid, but minus a couple points for how it looks like none of them have ever swept a floor in their lives, though. I feel like even the surliest teen is going to accidentally clear more dirt just leaning on their brooms.
"98%"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Théâtre Hall) (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
"98%" is the type of short film you get when a horror fan with strong passions gets behind the camera: Earnest, passionate, and happy to use some nasty violence to make its point, but maybe needing a little filling out. Like the idea, like the enthusiasm, not entirely sure this is the best way to put them together.
It opens with the uncomfortable, to say the least, end of some sort of video shoot, with ringleader Jung-min (Joo Young Woo) taunting one of the disabled participants the she's just made him able to do more, before cutting to him about to shoot another one, expecting to pick one person up but instead seeing Eunhye (Park Yun), who isn't visible handicapped - she's a knockout, actually - but who does have some pretty severe hearing loss. So he shifts the sort of exploitation he's planning, but soon finds that it's not wise to try and get Eunhye to do something she doesn't want.
When you start to break "98%" down and parse it, it's easy to come out with "well, that's problematic" as a take-away, but that's not really it's issue - horror is supposed to be problematic, pushing into extreme cases where, yes, the disabled often have to debase themselves and sacrifice their dignity to survive and their revenge is awful but viscerally satisfying. I don't know that what is done to Jung-min feels right, even emotionally, but it doesn't have to. It probably also doesn't matter that the tone and structure of it has issues - maybe it does better without a priming bit of violence in the beginning? - or that it's the most conventionally attractive that gets to fight back. It hangs together well enough, but it's maybe messy in enough ways to nudge past "horror is allowed to be messy".
4PM
* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Théâtre Hall) (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
There's an early temptation to look for something that will make 4pm more complicated or twistedly rational than it is, but the filmmakers are often able to resist it so that what twists are there remain simple, enough that I suspect a second viewing would not actually change its weird, darkly comic pleasures as it usually does. The movie is what it means to be, and that's plenty in this case.
Professor Jeong-in (Oh Dal-soo) and his wife Hyeon-sook (Jang Young-nam) are not quite ready to retire, but they're maybe trying it on for size with Jeong-in's one-year sabbatical, having bought a house in the country on the water and found the place suits them. Intending to be neighborly, they attempt to introduce themselves to the doctor who lives next door, Yook-nam (Kim Hong-pa), a cardiologist who mostly does house calls rather than working out of an office. He's not home when they call, so they leave a note asking him to visit any time, which he does at 4pm the next day. It's weird and uncomfortable for the newcomers, though, as he tersely answers questions, imposes on their hospitality, and occasionally just stares ahead saying nothing until he leaves abruptly at 6pm. Then, the next day, he does it again. And again. What game could he possibly be playing?
And while the source material for this Korean movie comes from Belgium - a novel by Amélie Nothomb adapted for the screen by Kim Hae-gon - it's hard not to think of Poe when watching it as Jeong-in's narration, ready to embrace the protagonist's worst impulses, certainly makes it feel like a cousin to "The Tell-Tale Heart", a man talking himself into murder. There's something more to it, though: It's hard not to get the sense that this Kim and director "Jay" Song Jeong-woo are examining the fragility of the social contract: Yook-man breaks it by being singularly, deliberately unreasonable, and Jeong-in, an intelligent and urbane person, doesn't exactly know what to do with that. He can't bring himself to break social norms in response, so he tries to outsmart Yook-nam, politely laying verbal trap that should either get Yook-nam to respond like a reasonable person or disengage in defeat, immediately considering escalation to violence. Yook-nam, meanwhile, knows that Jeong-in intends to be reasonable, and his ability to not be bound by that lets him keep pushing. It's a tight little microcosm of a lot of confrontations today, where bullies exploit that most people do not want to be bullies.
Not that Jeong-in is entirely or even primarily a victim here; the filmmakers aren't exactly being subtle by showing him reading a book titled "The Infinitely Evil Nature of Man" (or maybe they are, given that the title is in English). Perhaps there's something inherent and inevitable about where Jeong winds up trying to go; he's got the inner monologue of someone quite willing to treat this sort of thing as inevitable in the sort of way that doesn't necessarily include himself until he must. He constructs the narrative that makes him the least guilty, with the sort of sophistry that half-convinces.
It works in part because what's going on is so absurd; the film is constructed to let one laugh at the audacity of Yook-nam's bad behavior and the stumbling awkwardness of Jeong-in and Hyeon-sook responding to it, and the filmmakers and cast tend to sell it as flummoxing rather than cringe. Kim Hong-pa gives Yook-nam a wily boundary-pushing energy that feels like it could be innocent fun until it veers hard in the other direction, and Oh Dal-soo does nice work in alternating between smug and put-upon manners. Jang Young-man maybe doesn't get to participate quite as actively in the part of Hyeon-sook, but she does kind of nail how the person who just wants to stay out of it can feel simultaneously sensible and cowardly. Song is also canny in how he takes great care to not make this feel like a loop where the gag is repetition, finding different ways to shoot scenes (I love an overhead shot that rotates like the hand of a clock jumping to the next tick). It feels more like an escalation than a slow burn even though it's mostly passive-aggressive.
It may be too much; by the end: There is a bit of a sense that someone didn't know how all this would keep evolving and took the quickest path. There are laughs from the film's final absurdity, but also a sense that the movie needed to end somehow and this is as good a way as any.
I'm out of town for Fantasia and figuring to love every minute of it, but nevertheless wish I could be around for at least one series this weekend
The good folks at The Brattle Theatre are celebrating 50 Years of The Million Year Picnic, a comic book shop more or less across the street from the theater and where I get an excessive amount of paper product weekly; it's believed to be the oldest continually-operating shop of the sort in the country and run by good folks. The series kicks off with a double feature of Crumb (35mm) & Ghost World on Friday; separate shows of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (35mm), "The Picnic" (a new short doc about the place by former employee Vincent-louis Apruzzese), and Robot Dreams, with original comic creator Sara Varon in person play on Saturday; and Sunday offers single shows of Black Panther, Nimona, Persepolis, and Tank Girl.
It's back to the vertical schedule after that. The Columbia musicals are a double feature of Pal Joey & Rock Around the Clock, the latter on 35mm film, on Monday and Bye Bye Birdie on Tuesday. They start the "Summer of Sofia" series on Wednesday with Sofia Coppola's two latest, Priscilla & On the Rocks, while "Cruel Summer" starts on Thursday with A Streetcar Named Desire & Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Thursday is also Art House Theater Day, with this year's selection a 40th Anniversary restoration of The Terminator, with a pre-recorded interview with James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd afterward.
The big release this weekend is Twisters, which scans as mostly a remake of Twister with Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell as a book-smart scientist and an amateur tornado chaser in the middle of an exceptionally crazy season. Lee Isaac Chung of Minari directs, so it's at least cool to see him get a big budget. It's at The Museum of Science (Omnimax Fridays/Saturdays), the Capitol, Fresh Pond, The Embassy, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Xenon/Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon/Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser/Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
Also opening is Oddity, a British horror movie where a medium with an antique shop full of cursed objects uses a horrific mannequin to investigate her twin sister's death. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row; in an odd quirk of scheduling, its American run will probably be finished by the time it's the very last film to play at Fantasia.
The NeverEnding Story has anniversary shows at Boston Common, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards on Sunday and Monday. There's a mystery preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row on Monday. The Secret Life of Pets has Monday & Wednesday matinees at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay. Some of the early shows of Deadpool & Wolverine at Boston Common (Dolby Cinema) and Assembly Row (Dolby Cinema) on Thursday are "Fan Events".
The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, and Boston Common open Widow Clicquot, which stars Haley Bennett as a young woman in an arranged marriage who soon came to love her husband, taking over his wine business after he dies and building it into something nobody would have expected from a woman at the turn of the 19th Century.
Also opening at the Coolidge and Boston Common is National Anthem, with Charlie Plummer as a handyman who meets a group of unconventional rodeo performers and falls hard for one while trying to learn things about himself.
Midnights at the Coolidge this weekend are All About Evil (Friday) and Office Killer (Saturday), with the After Midnite crew also hosting an outdoor double feature of The Wicker Man & Midsommar at Rocky Woods. Sunday afternoon has a special screening of Free LSD, an oddity made by the band OFF! with members Keith Morris 9who stars) and Dimitri Coats (who directs) on hand for a Q&A afterward. Tuesday's Godzilla vs The Coolidge feature is Godzilla vs. Hedorah, and Thursday's Big Screen Classic is Dirty Dancing.
Boston Jewish Film will be screening Between the Temples there on Wednesday, and you have to go to BJF's site for ticketing, as opposed to the Coolidge's.
Three new films from India open at Apple Fresh Pond this weekend: Bad Newz (also at Boston Common) is a Hindi-language romantic comedy about two Punjabi men and a Hindu girl who gets pregnant after a one-night stand; Darling is a Telugu romance, and Birthday Boy is a Telugu-language comedy about five friends whose overseas birthday party goes awry.
Indian 2 continues at Fresh Pond (Tamil), Kalki 2898-AD continues at Boston Common (Hindi).
Customs Frontline, at Causeway Street, is a Hong Kong action film from the insanely productive Herman Yau starring Nicholas Tse and Jacky Cheung as officers who come upon a weapons-smuggling operation.
Koren thriller Escape.continues at Causeway Street.
The Somerville Theatre has Texas rap drama Lost Soulz on the main screen Friday Night, and a new restoration of The Lavender Hill Mob on Saturday & Sunday. Saturday's midnight special is John Carpenter's The Thing, playing on 35mm film. This week's "Hot Summer Nights" shows, presented with IFF Boston, are Risky Business (Monday), Body Double & Jagged Edge (Tuesday), and Fatal Attraction (Wednesday), with all but Body Double listed as screening on 35mm film.
The week's animated matinee at The Capitol is Kung Fu Panda.
The Seaport Alamo opens horror film Crumb Catcher, but just for one matinee per day.
The Seaport Selects show for this weekend is Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels. Also on the rep calendar are The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Sunday/Tuesday), Crimes of Passion (Monday), Starman (Wednesday), and a return engagement for The People's Joker
The Museum of Fine Arts continues their Boston French Film Festival with The Animal Kingdom (Friday/Tuesday), Auction (Saturday), Toni (Sunday), and All Your Faces (Sunday). Tuesday's show of The Animal Kingdom is outdoors and free.
The Tuesday Retro Replay musical movie at Landmark Kendall Square is Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The Lexington Venue has Widow Clicquot, Despicable Me 4, and Thelma and is open Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
The West Newton Cinema opens Widow Clicquot and keeps Fly Me to the Moon, Despicable Me 4, Thelma, Inside Out 2, and Janet Planet (not playing Monday & Thursday).
The Luna Theater has Robot Dreams (Friday/Saturday/Sunday), Tuesday (Saturday/Sunday), Janet Planet (Saturday/Sunday) and a Weirdo Wednesday Show.
Cinema Salem has Twisters, Despicable Me 4, Longlegs, and Inside Out 2 from Friday through Monday. Cruel Intentions plays Saturday afternoon and Teseracte players present Rocky Horror that night.
Outdoor films on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week are Back to the Future (Friday at the MIT Open Space), The Marvels (Saturday at the Prudential Center), Elemental (Kendall Urban Garden/Wednesday at Rindge Avenue Upper School in Cambridge), Jaws (Wednesday at the Charleston Navy Yard), A League of their Own (Thursday at the Lyman Estate in Waltham), Good Burger (Thursday at the Argenziano School in Somerville), and Clueless (Thursday at BostonLanding).
If I see any of these, it'll be finding a local theater playing Customs Frontline, but I'll be busy seeing as much as the good folks at Fantasia can shove into my eyes.
I think I've written one of these curtain-raiser articles in my twenty years or so of blogging about movies, mostly because in the days & weeks leading up to a festival I am desperately trying to make sure I'm ahead at my day job and not leaving a bunch of blogs I want to write in limbo while I let my thoughts on them get (in this case) three weeks fuzzier. Plus, for festivals especially, I often enjoy having just the vaguest idea of what a film is about and allowing myself to be surprised. Also, I'm not really sure how much of my mostly-not-in-Quebec readership is going to drop everything and make a trip north of the border or be especially eager for my coverage.
This year is a bit different - my day job has gone through some changes, the chances that I'll be able to show up at the last minute and stand a good chance of getting in look a bit lower, and I'm more at peace with just dropping a quick reaction on my Letterboxd page and not writing another four paragraphs, so I'm not really "behind" most of the time. And, let's face it, it's not like I don't spend a week or two before this festival looking at the website, trying to figure out what I can see and where the tough decisions are going to be.
I once wrote a preview about how to form a plan of attack for a film festival (now, sadly, only visible on the Internet Archive); so instead of highlighting the obvious stuff every other curtain-raiser will, let's look at the toughest places where I want to see multiple films, but can't. Your conflicts, even if you're up in Montreal for the festival, will likely be much different, as I am able to make full use of the weekday afternoon screenings in the smaller de Seve theater, and will dismiss some genres that others may not - but then, this is at least partly a preview for what I'll be covering here, as opposed to the entire festival, so it's perhaps only right that I highlight the stuff I'd like to cover, but can't.
(I am, sadly, going to mostly ignore the Fantastiques Week-Ends programming at the Cinéma du Musée and much of the repertory material at the Cinémathèque québécoise; both are often more than my meager French can handle!
Round One: 4pm vs The A-Frame vs Confession
4pm plays Thursday, 18 July 2024 at 9:30pm in Hall The A-Frame plays Thursday, 18 July at 9:30pm in de Seve and Friday, 19 July at 5pm in de Seve Confession plays Friday, 19 July at 6pm in Hall
4pm presents a Korean take on a Belgian mystery story, with the sort of problem that seems like a weird irritant (a neighbor comes to call at 4pm and will not leave until exactly 6pm) that escalates into something unnerving and possibly dangerous; The A-Frame starts with high-concept science as quantum tunneling seemingly allows a woman in danger of losing her hand a chance to be fully healed; and Confession has a friend who thinks he is about to die in a mountain snowstorm confess to a horrible crime, only to have things become more complicated when they are able to find shelter.
All three are thrillers, but you can only choose two, itself a thriller-like conundrum. Even though it is quite short, Confession potentially bumps up against Carnage for Christmas; on the other hand, director Nobuhiro Yamashita has a strong track record (Linda Linda Linda) and a nice cast. The A-Frame is a small indie, but the festival has enough faith to give it two slots, and English-language films are easier to find on North American streamers later.
I will probably go with 4pm on Thursday and Confession on Friday, even if The A-Frame is the sort of indie sci-fi thing I'd like to see more of.
Round Two: Mantra Warrior: The Legend of the Eight Moons vs International Science Fiction Showcase 2024
Mantra Warrior: The Legend of the Eight Moons plays Sunday, 21 July 2024 at 1:50pm in Hall
The International Science Fiction Showcase 2024 plays Sunday, 21 July 2024 at 2pm in de Seve
Last year, Fantasia played a classic animated version of the Ramayana; this year, it's a new one, with Mantra Warrior coming from Thailand and, like Kalki 2898-AD earlier this year, extending the story to the far future, with this version including battle mechs! The annual Sci-Fi Shorts program, meanwhile, has seven short films from six different countries, and if the order listed on the website holds, it looks like it will start with high-concept comedy, push through satire, and finish with a visual knockout that references Soviet fantastik cinema.
I missed the animated Ramayana last year, so I'd really like to catch Mantra Warrior, but the Sci-Fi showcase is a must-see, and I'm actually glad to see it playing early enough in the festival this year that I'll be able to write it up without my brain being full!
Round Three: Ghost Cat Anzu & Dark Match vs Not Friends & The Old Man and the Demon Sword (vs Mike Flanagan)
Ghost Cat Anzu plays Sunday, 21 July 2024 at 4:15pm in Hall Not Friends plays Sunday, 21 July 2024 at 4:35pm in de Seve and Tuesday, 23 July 2024 at 12:15pm in de Seve Dark Match plays Sunday, 21 July 2024 at 6:30pm in Hall The Old Man and the Demon Sword plays Sunday, 21 July at 7:15pm in de Seve
Mike Flanagan's Artist Talk is at 5pm in the Cinéma du Musée
Ghost Cat Anzu is an anime about a young girl dropped off with a relative in a seaside resort, with said cousin a giant anthropomorphic cat spirit. Not Friends is a Thai coming of age film with superficial similarities to Dear Evan Hansen - an opportunistic teenager tries to use the recent death of someone he barely knew to his advantage - but promises a twistier story. Dark Match has the Wolfcop crew team with former WWE champion Chris Jericho for a tag-team matchup with the fate of the world in the balance. The Old Man and the Demon Sword is a micro-budget film from Portugal where the town drunk winds up bound to a demon sword and must defeat monsters. Mike Flanagan is a talented filmmaker who first came on my radar at Fantasia with Absentia and has gone on to bigger things, from being the go-to guy for Stephen King adaptations to streaming reimaginations of horror classics.
It's not, strictly speaking, a tag-team match; Not Friends overlaps Ghost Cat Anzu and Dark Match, but you could pair Ghost Cat Anzu and The Old Man and the Demon Sword and have time to sit down for dinner in between. Ghost Cat, it's worth noting, is co-directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita, who also directed Confession and Swimming in a Sand Pool at the festival this year. If one of the things you really like about film festivals is seeing filmmakers, then it's a bit of a shame Flanagan's talk and Dark Match overlap, because the latter has a ton of the cast and crew scheduled to be there, including Jericho. Myself, I figure on doing the full Yamashita slate and am more interested in Old Man than Dark Match, and will catch Not Friends a couple days later.
Round Four: Frankie Freako vs Things That Go Bump in the East 2024
Frankie Freako plays Wednesday, 24 July 2024, at 6:45pm in Hall
Things That Go Bump in the East 2024 plays Wednesday, 24 July 2024, at 7pm in de Seve
Frankie Freako is the latest bit of madness from Steve Kostanski, in which a dorky man desperate to prove himself cool to his wife and boss accidentally throws a party with alien monsters. This years "Bump in the East" collection has seven films representing six different lands, half animated and half live-action, including oft-neglected areas like Mongolia and Sri Lanka.
This, I can't lie, is a tough one! A package like "Bump in the East" is part of what I go to film festivals for, an hour and a half of short films movies that have unique styles and satisfy my curiosity about what creeps people out around the world. On the other hand, Kostanski, working with a lot of the old Astron-6 crew even though they have officially all gone solo (and will probably bring friends even if he's the only guest listed), makes films that kind of demand to be seen with an audience ready to scream and shout, and while I suspect there could be another chance for that at the Boston Underground Film Festival in March, that's an awful long time for a film to stay on the festival circuit in the 2020s. I'll probably see whether Frankie is sold out and head across the street if it looks like I'm not getting in.
Round Five:Don't Call It Mystery vs Hollywood 90028
Don't Call It Mystery plays Friday, 26 July 2024, at 4:30pm in Hall Hollywood 90028 plays Friday, 26 July 2024, at 5:15pm in de Seve as part of the book launch for Heidi Honeycutt's I Spit on Your Celluloid
Two very different crime stories overlapping here: Don't Call It Mystery is an adaptation of a popular shojo manga with Masaki Suda as a college student who is pulled into a family conflict by a young woman who sees he has the makings of a great detective. Hollywood 90028 is a transgressive serial killer story being given a new restoration and re-release for its 50th anniversary.
Given that I have already passed up two opportunities to see Hollywood 90028 closer to home - it has has midnight screenings at the Coolidge and also played a multiplex - I'll almost certainly go for Don't Call It Mystery, which sounds like its' very much my thing.
Round Six: Penalty Loop vs The Dead Thing
Penalty Loop plays Friday, 26 July 2024, at 7:15pm in Hall The Dead Thing plays Friday, 26 July 2024, at 7:15pm in de Seve and Sunday, 28 July 2024 at 12pm in de Seve
Penalty Loop comes from Japan and has a man trapped in a time loop as he tries to kill the man who murdered his girlfriend, with the latter having enough deja vu to fight back, and even more going on behind the scenes. The Dead Thing follows a couple who, after a blind date where the man ghosts the girl, reconnect only to discover that there is something dark underneath. They may be in similar genres, but they seem to have different vibes.
Though The Dead Thing has a second screening, it's got its own overlap issues. This one feels like it could be a toss-up decision at the time.
Round Seven: Killer Constable vs Capsules 24 vs From My Cold Dead Hands vs Heavens: The Boy and His Robot vs Out of the Shadow vs KIZUMONOGATARI: Koyomi Vamp vs Steppenwolf
Killer Constable plays Saturday, 27 July 2024, at 1pm in de Seve
Capsules 2024 plays Saturday, 27 July, at 1:30pm in Hall From My Cold Dead Hands plays Saturday, 27 July 2024, at 3pm in de Seve and Sunday, 4 August 2024, at 9:20pm in de Seve Heavens: The Boy and His Robot plays Saturday, 27 July 2024, at 3:35 in Hall Out of the Shadow plays Saturday, 27 July 2024, at 5;05pm in de Seve and Tuesday, 30 July 2024, at 12:30pm in de Seve KIZUMONOGATARI: Koyomi Vamp plays Saturday, 27 July 2024, at 6:15pm in Hall Steppenwolf plays Saturday, 27 July 2024, at 7pm in de Seve and Friday, 2 August 2024, at 3pm in de Seve
Killer Constable is a new restoration of a Shaw Brothers classic with Chen Kuan-tai as a swordsman who gives no quarter tasked with recovering a treasure only to find both his men and the criminals are pawns in a larger game. Capsules 2024 is a collection of six animated shorts from China and its Billibilli platform. From My Cold Dead Hands is a documentary on American gun culture. Heavens: The Boy and His Robot is a Singabporean sci-fi adventure about a young man tasked with piloting a mecha during a war between Earth and a now-independent Mars. Out of the Shadow is one of the recent waves of Hong Kong flicks featuring a new wave of stars, in this case showing a young masked avenger just starting out. KIZUMONOGATARI: Koyomi Vamp reconstructs a tough-to-find anime trilogy into one film about a teenager who rescues a dismembered vampire woman and may come to regret it. Steppenwolf is a Kazakh action thriller that pairs a bone-breaker cop with a traumatized mother to find her missing son.
Though this looks like a Saturday battle royale even before you get to the awards presentations, panel discussions, and repertory/locally-focused screenings at other events, this is more frightening on the schedule than in reality, at least if one can make the secondary screenings. The big conflict is Killer Constables and Capsules - the former will likely be easier to see later via a new Arrow Video release but it's made for the big screen and will probably be a blast with a kung-fu loving crowd, while the latter is made for small screens but might be hard to find outside China aside from the festival. I'll probably hit Capsules and stay in Hall all day but look longingly at the folks lining up across the street.
Round Eight: Teasing Master Takagi-san vs Brush of the God
Teasing Master Takagi-san plays Sunday, 28 July 2024, at 1:30pm in Hall Brush of the God plays Sunday, 28 July 2024, at 2:30pm in de Seve
This slot is particularly tough, offering two apparently-light-hearted features from Japan: Teasing Master Takagi-san is a romantic comedy where a man must deal with the return of the best friend he had a crush on in high school after ten years abroad, who still knows how to push his buttons. Brush of the God is a love-letter to kaiju adventures where the teenage granddaughter of a recently-departed movie modelmaker must travel to a mysterious island and prevent a dragon from escaping and destroying humanity. That one is made by a long-time artist in monster-movie costume departments directing his first feature at 88.
Awfully difficult choice for fans of Japanese film here! A lot of us are absolutely ready for a cute romantic comedy by this Sunday (usually the festival's midway point, but a little closer to the end this year), but Brush certainly sounds charming! I'm going to try and punt my choice until the day, although the early second screening of The Dead Thing (which just clips the start of Teasing) may play into it.
Round Nine: Born of Woman 2024 vs The Umbrella Fairy
Born of Woman 2024 plays Sunday, 28 July 2024, at 4pm in de Seve The Umbrella Fairy plays Sunday, 28 July 2024, at 4:15pm in Hall
Born of Woman is the festival's annual shorts block that showcases female filmmakers, this year including 8 films from 5 countries. It should be noted that this is far from a means of ghettoizing these films; since the program's premiere, I've noted that most Fantasia short programs run pretty close to 50/50, and these are often films that are more specifically focused on having a woman's perspective The Umbrella Fairy is an animated film from China which takes the spiritual belief that every object develops a soul and follows the two that sprang from a sword and an umbrella made from the same piece of jade.
As much as I often want to catch Born of Woman, it's often in challenging slots and attracts enough guests that I know it will run long; and that's why I will probably catch The Umbrella Fairy, because otherwise I may not make it across the street to A Samurai in Time, uh, in time.
Round Ten: Baby Assassins: Nice Days vs Cube
Baby Assassins: Nice Days plays Tuesday, 30 July 2024, at 6:45pm in Hall Cube plays Tuesday, 30 July 2024, at 7:15pm in de Seve, including an award presentation to Vincenzo Natali
Baby Assassins: Nice Days is the third entry in a series that is kind of sensibly being cranked out fast, before its young stars no longer pass for teenagers/recent high school graduates, this time sending them on a vacation where they wind up competing with another assassin on a job. Cube is a Canadian sci-fi/horror classic with a number of people inside a metallic environment where each room will attempt to kill them in spectacularly bloody fashion, with director Vincenzo Natali on-hand to receive the festival's Canadian Trailblazer award.
It's not as tough a call as if Natali had been presenting a new film - I'm sure that someone like Vinegar Syndrome or one of their partner labels will have a really spiffy 4K disc out later this year and the new restoration will probably play a local theater - but I'd have liked to see him talk about it. Still, the Baby Assassins series is a ton of fun with an audience, with the second film better than the first (this one promises to be even better) and the bursts of outstanding fight choreography between slacker comedy are top-tier, so I will likely go with that.
Round Eleven: Timestalker vs In Our Blood vs A Legend
Timestalker plays Wednesday, 31 July 2024, at 7pm in Hall In Our Blood plays Wednesday, 31 July 2024, at 7:10pm in de Seve and Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 3:15pm in de Seve A Legend plays Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 4pm in Hall
Timestalker is a dark romantic comedy where a woman's pledges to love a man in her next life and they keep dying horribly, written by/directed by/starring Alice Lowe (Prevenge). In Our Blood is a thriller in which a documentary filmmaker goes to meet her estranged mother, only to have the latter vanish in a city known for people disappearing and turning up dead. A Legend reunites Jackie Chan with writer/director Stanley Tong, playing an archaeologist with a dream connection to a previous age, which blurs as he and his team explore a glacier and the finds preserved within.
How is this Alice Lowe's first feature as a director since Prevenge? At any rate, that jumps it to the top of my list. On the other end, I'm a little leery of A Legend - it was delayed from a Lunar New Year release - but I also suspect that Well Go or someone else will get it in American theaters soon after this screening, so I will likely go for In Our Blood during the Saturday slot.
Round Twelve: Jour de chasse vs CineMaposa 2024
Jour de chasse plays Thursday, 1 August 2024, at 7pm in Hall
CineMaposa 2024 plays Thursday, 1 August 2024, at 7:10pm in de Seve
Jour de Chasse is part of Fantastiques Week-Ends but also a film that played SXSW earlier this year, with Nahéma Ricci as a sex worker left alone in the woods who meets up with some men on a bachelor's weekend who subject her to hazing to remain with them and get back to the city, even as things go completely sideways. CineMaposa is a program of four South Korean genre shorts, from a girl meeting someone online with the intent of committing suicide together to a woman who buys a robot replica of her late father.
It's kind of a tough call - it's great to support the local filmmakers and there are English subtitles listed, but some of the South Korean films look slick too. The local showcase is usually a pretty raucous good time, though.
Round Thirteen: Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In vs Collective Delusions 2024
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In plays Thursday, 1 August 2024, at 9:15pm in Hall
Collective Delusions 2024 plays Thursday, 1 August 2024, at 9:30 pm in de Seve
Walled In is the latest from Soi Cheung, with an all-star cast including Louis Koo,Sammo Hung, RIchie Jen, Philip Ng, and more in a period gangster epic taking place in the Kowloon Walled City. Collective Delusions is a collection of 13 underground/outsider films from 7 countries, likely the oddest shorts program of the festival.
It is, in that way, sort of a litmus test on what one is here to see - the big mainstream Hong kong action movie a week before it's scheduled to release in North American cinemas or a sampling of short films from singular voices you might never hear again? Not going to lie, in this case I'm going with Walled In; Cheung's last couple, Limbo and Mad Fate, have been highlights of recent eidtions of the festival.
Round Fourteen: Azrael vs Self Driver vs 100 Yards
Azrael plays Friday, 2 August 2024, at 7pm in Hall Self Driver plays Friday, 2 August 2024, at 7pm in de Seve and Sunday, 4 August 2024, at 12:30pm in de Seve 100 Yards plays Sunday, 4 August 2024, at 1:35pm in Hall
Azrael is a nasty-looking bit of action/survival horror, taking place in a post-apocalyptic world where many have gone mute and a woman played by Samara Weaving must escape plans for her human sacrifice and rescue her lover; it's directed by E.L. Katz and written by Simon barrett. Self Driver is a thriller about a man who takes a job driving for a secretive rideshare company, getting in way over his head. 100 Yards is the new film from Xu Haofeng, a maker of meticulously-researched and obsessively-detailed martial arts flicks, in which the son (Jacky Heung) and the greatest student (Andy On) of a martial arts master confront each other on who takes over his school.
On the one hand, Well Go has picked up 100 Yards for distribution, but it's the sort of niche thing that can fall through the cracks if it's a busy week, especially since Xu can be an acquired taste. Azrael also has distribution, but Republic isn't great at getting things into theaters all the time. Self Driver is super-indie and thus this may be the only chance to see it on the big screen. I suppose it depends on my mood come the 2nd, but I'll probably go for Azrael and Self Driver.
Round Fifteen: House of Sayuri vs Black Eyed Susan
House of Sayuri plays Friday, 2 August 2024, at 9:30pm in Hall Black Eyed Susan plays Friday, 2 August 2024, at 9:35pm in Hall
Here we have two thrillers suitable for a late night slot: House of Sayuri is a J-horror comedy where a family moves into a haunted country house, and much to the teenage son's surprise, his grandmother seems most effective in confronting the supernatural. Black Eyed Susan is an edgy thriller about a man hired to push a sophisticated BDSM sex-doll with impressive AI capabilities to its limits (or would that be his). Scooter McCrae's first movie in two decades is shot on 16mm film and has a soundtrack by Fabio Frizzi.
Personally, I'm kind of squeamish, so I'll probably be in House of Sayuri.
Round Sixteen: Hanu-Man vs Sunburnt Unicort
Hanu-Man plays Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 12:30pm in Hall Sunburnt Unicorn plays Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 1pm in Hall
Hanu-Man is a big Telugu-language action-comedy that played theaters back in January, starring Amritha Alyer as an minor rascal who winds up with a gemstone that gives him superpowers and attracts the attention of both criminals and the city's local superhero. Sunburnt Unicorn is a Canadian animated adventure about a kid stranded in the desert after a terrible automobile accident. It looks like the kind of thing that's made for children but is, in retrospect, really freaky.
The last Saturday matinee of the festival feels like a good time for either of these things. I'm wary of getting drawn into another Indian movie universe but may choose Hanu-man over Unicorn if it looks to be sold out ahead of time.
Round Seventeen: Circo Animato 2024 and Love & Pop vs The Killers
Circo Animato plays Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 5:30pm in de Seve The Killers plays Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 6:45pm in Hall Love & Pop plays Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 7:30pm in de Seve
Circo Animato is the annual animation program - well, the main one! - this year featuring 17 short films from 9 countries covering all manner of subjects and genres in all manner of styles, whether traditional, digital, or stop-motion. The Killers is a South Korean anthology film with four tales of murder from up-and-coming filmmakers. Love & Pop reaches back to 1998 for Hideaki Anno's first live-action feature and one where the animator played with what new digital cameras could do.
I want to see The Killers badly - the structure reminds me of another Korean animated film I saw at the festival early on and which I still bring up regularly (The Neighbor Zombie), but in a genre I like much more! But Circo Animato is a cornerstone, and the description of Love & Pop has me very curious.
Round Eighteen: Wake Up vs Me and My Victim
Wake Up plays Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 9:45pm in Hall Me and My Victim plays Saturday, 3 August 2024, at 9:45pm in de Seve
Wake Up is the latest film from the makers of Turbo Kid and Summer of 84, the former in particular a huge hit at the festival; this one has six activists looking to deface a premium retailer by sneaking in after hours, only to discover that they are trapped in there with a monstrous, murderous security guard. Me and My Victim is an entry from the Underground section whose makers use it to chronicle their odd relationship that started online and remains rooted in that sort of virtual acquaintanceship even as they become collaborators and lovers.
I know myself by now - I am not going to stay awake through an Underground film at 10pm near the end of the festival; it's never happened and I always feel like I'm taking the seat of someone who wants it. So I'll be across the street seeing how RKSS applies their manic energy to the slasher genre.
And then, a surprising number of repeats on Sunday the 4th, the final day of the festival. There may, of course, be other screenings added whether new, more showtimes, or the like, or announcements, but even on a slightly truncated schedule this year, these 40 films and short packages are just a part of what's on offer.
So Bon Cinéma, and if any of you are in MTL over the next three weeks, hope to see you at the festival!
