Fantasia 2024.05: "Meat Puppet", The Paragon, "Bladder Shy", Scared Shitless, Tatsumi, "AstroNots", Meanwhile on Earth, "Be Right Back", and The Beast Within

Ah, thought I'd be able to run this right around since I'd gotten everything on LetterBoxd, but this is a lot of shorts.

Anyway - guests!

Being a Canadian thing, Scared Shitless! brought some people: From the left, writer/director Brendan Cohen, director Vivieno Caldinelli, producer Lewis Spring, and cast members Daniel Doheny, Steven Ogg, and Chelsea Clark, who all seemed to have a great time making it to the point that when someone asked about sequel plans and one of the producers said something's in the works, Ogg barked a question about who was in it.

No guests for Meanwhile on Earth, but Mitch Davis brought up director Andrew Seaton and DP Matthew Samperi from the accompanying short "AstroNots".

There were actually a lot of guests for The Beast Within - I was sitting directly behind a couple that were whooping at every opportunity and sneaking pictures on their phone - but it was actually a pretty small group up on stage; aside from the host, we've got writer/director Alexander J. Farrell, co-writer Greer Ellison, and producer Alex Chang. It's kind of interesting that, while the movie is in large part being sold to the public with Kit Harrington, most of the questions about the cast and characters centered around co-star Ashleigh Cummings, who is pretty darn terrific here.

(Quick jump to IMDB, and, oh, she was Dot on Miss Fisher? Wow!)

If you're reading this on Wednesday the 31st (Day 14), it's probably my shortest day: It looks like I won't get to De Sève in time for Hell Hole (but it's okay; I haven't exactly love the Adams family's previous stuff), Rats! looks like the sort of thing I don't usually go for, Electrophilia looks interesting but is listed as subtitled in French rather than English, and I saw The Roundup: Punishment a few months back (do these movies just not play Montreal? I think this is the second time this has happened with this series). So maybe just Timestalker!


"Meat Puppet"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

Are high-school and university graduations the same throughout the English-speaking world? It's one of those things where some bits of pop culture tell me that there are differences but others make it look universal, though I hear that's kind of influenced by American pop culture. Anyway, this looks pretty American despite being set in the UK, from what I see, but that's kind of not the point; the point is that Cuba (Máiréad Tyers) and Oz (David Johnsson) are a couple but Oz is kind of immature, tending to sit around his room messing with toys and collectibles unless she drags him away, like she does with a phone call on the day of graduation, only to be tempted again when a delivery person shows up. He thinks it's a statuette he's ordered, but it's a weird puppet, and can't resist taking a look. It's a bad idea; not only does his consciousness enter the little guy, but the thing fuses to his arm, and it looks like his body is dead or dying!

Writer/director Eros V isn't particularly shy about saying what "Meat Puppet" is about - half of Cuba's lines are about Oz needing to grow up and become self-reliant, and there is, in the last bit that is built to get the audience to give a grossed-out howl, a pretty obvious illustration of taking control of your own life even if you're too busy laughing to notice - but that's kind of fine; these are emotional kids probably prone to blurting stuff out and it's the kind of short where everything's so screwy that the sudden "hey, I'm going to bring up this mundane thing!" switch is part of the screwiness, even if there's a puppet curse that you'd think would be more urgent.

And the gags are pretty good. The usual deal with someone in a puppet body - it's weird that this is a trope, right? - is having them be as mobile as a puppet character is, and instead having Oz having to deal with his body's dead weight is quality slapstick. The puppeteers do a decent job of playing things so that he's expressive without looking like Muppet-y flailing is his natural state. And, yes, they build the jokes to an impressive crescendo with quality bits after the climax and through the credits.


The Paragon

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

I really dig the vibe of The Paragon, which pulls off the trick of making one believe that a potentially multiverse-shaking narrative could play out in a small New Zealand town with a slacker protagonist without being so tongue in cheek that the comedy takes over. It's weird and offbeat but not poisoned with self-awareness. That makes it a sort of oddball movie and one where you've got to live with the reaction to your recommendation being "uh…okay". It's fun but in a small way.

It introduces the audience to Dutch (Benedict Wall), a tennis player who was good enough to be ranked but not good enough to be famous, at least until a hit-and-run left his leg broken in four places and his bitterness drove wife Emily (Jessica Grace Smith) to an affair with a co-worker. Crashing with his petty-criminal brother Oates (Shadon Meredith), he starts canvassing the town for the very common model of car that hit him, impulsively taking a slip from a poster promising psychic training. The woman who put it up claims he has great psionic potential in part because his heart stopped for six minutes during the accident, but Lyra (Florence Noble) is also frustrated at his insistence on taking easy ways and shortcuts, especially since she needs a disciplined ally to help her find a powerful crystal before it falls into the hands of her evil brother Haxan (Jonny Brugh).

Folks have made much more serious movies with that general description, and The Paragon has stakes, but it's also a comedy that recognizes that everybody in it should be funny in some manner, whether it's Dutch's bluster or the deadpan weirdness of Lyra and Haxan, raised to be psychic warriors by their messed-up father. Even Emily, who could be written and played to be a generic sort of ungrateful shrew or as understandably overwhelmed is written so that Jessica Grace Smith can make her funny in a very specific way. No matter how serious the moment is, there's a joke available, but the characters are also fleshed out enough that there's nowhere to go but the gag. Benedict Wall is very funny as Dutch, but can play it straight and demonstrate just enough self-reflection that his scenes with Michelle Ang don't go as one might expect. Florence Noble's Lyra is socially stunted but not to the point of stupidly following a menu of tics.

The film gets a lot of value out of sort of screwing around, with a lot of time spent on training and resisting it and side quests, and not feeling the need to tire everything together. There's a temptation to make everything interlock too much, or toss in a romance the film doesn't need, or hammer home an obvious theme. These guys don't do that, just telling their little fantasy story with a few jokes and not worrying about making it bigger than it need be.

The filmmakers are also fairly smart about how they deploy modest resources. They don't add visual effects to psychic powers that can work just as well if invisible, and don't tease that there's something bigger and flashier on the way. It helps keep the focus on Dutch, but also keeps the audience able to believe that maybe this has been here all along and there's been no way we could notice it. That may not be the actual primary intent, but it works, a case of pieces that fit together not making one look for the spots where they don't.

All told, The Paragon is fairly modest, but that modesty works for it in ways that ambition might not have. You often here talk of people squeezing a lot out of resources, but this doesn't look like there's that much strain.


"Bladder Shy"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

"Bladder Shy" is one pretty obvious joke - a man who just dashed into a restroom has performance anxiety when someone else stands next to him and, no matter where he imagines himself being instead so that he can loosen up and just go, the other fellow shows up - but it's told well. There are variations full of gay panic or something otherwise uncharitable, but director Joel Goundry, writer/co-star Christopher Duthie, and co-star Mike Tan keep it from ever being mean-spirited or anything much more than folks being used to privacy when they pee.

I'm also kind of amused, after the fact, at how this five-minute short which feels like it all takes place in an ordinary restroom and could be done in an afternoon, probably actually took days or weeks because the small cast and crew was going around to various locations and shooting a few wordless seconds of people standing in or near water. Movie magic by Goundry and editor Dan Perrott right there, and I say that without jest.


Scared Shitless

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

Scared Shitless is what it looks and sounds like and it's good at being that thing, or at least certain parts of that thing: The filmmakers push things a lot less than they could and than they probably should in most cases, to the extent that I wonder if there are harder-edged cuts of this movie in the editing suite, with what a lot of horror-comedy fans might consider the good stuff set aside because the filmmakers found the upbeat vibes working best.

Not that the story is upbeat to read the bullet points: It opens with a mad scientist (Mark McKinney) fleeing a burning lab after a confrontation about his extracurricular activities goes wrong in the usual way, and then movies elsewhere in Hamilton, Ontario, to introduce Don (Steven Ogg) and Sonny Donohue (Daniel Doherty), a father-and-son odd couple; father Don is a gruff plumber and Sonny, already suffering from chronic stomach issues, has also become a shut-in due to traumatically-induced germophobia. Don figures the way to help Sonny get past that is to have him start coming along on jobs, starting with a regular client who he suspects gets her toilet clogged because she wants attention. Of course, the guy from the opening has an apartment in this building, the thing he brought home has found its way into the pipes, and the nice young lady at the front desk who was a classmate when Sonny could still attend college, Patricia (Chelsea Clark), would kind of like anything weird the Donohues find kept quiet because between her med school tuition and her father's health issues, they really need to sell this building.

The movie is very much more comedy than horror, but more affectionate than mocking, from the old couple doing some BDSM play to how, even when Don and Sonny are introduced getting on each other's nerves, there's tons of affection between them. The filmmakers seem to actually like most of their characters and presume that they're going to try their best - Patricia even sounds apologetic as she delivers the "this deal has got to go through" lines - rather than building up conflict that's going to feel silly soon. Where it's aware of horror tropes, it's aware in the way that actual people tend to be rather than as a winking way to flatter the audience.

It's cheerfully gross, maybe not Steve Kostanski's most creative work as an effects artist, but he and his crew execute the basic tentacle/slug thing well, with all the attendant goop, blood and guts, and severed limbs. I suspect a lot of folks will appreciate that there's plenty of blood and guts but little actual toilet stuff, because that's two different ways of being disgusted. Kind of related, perhaps, is that the film has one of the tamest "naked camgirl gets attacked by a monster in the shower" scene it could, like they're going to kill a lot of people but don't want to be leering creeps while they do it.

Most of the fun, then, comes from the main cast. Steven Ogg casually sells a punch of goofy plumber jokes and has good father-son energy with Daniel Donehy, who also has a fun vibe with Chelsea Clark; they're a trio that seems pretty fun to hang out with and are the right kind of smart to treat this as a problem to be solved without seeming unreasonably capable for three sort of random folks. The building full of potential victims are entertaining right up until they sell being eaten as horrible but also twistedly funny, and the opening scene with Mark McKinney as a schlubby mad scientist (he kind of gives off "dumb Captain Kangaroo" vibes) and Julian richings as the guy looking to steal his work is more or less exactly what one would expect from those particular pros. Nobody seems to be trying too hard, especially once the film is set up and just rolls forward.

Like I said, there's probably a gorier, more exploitative version of this movie that could show up as an unrated director's cut on disc if those were still things, but it would probably have the wrong vibe somewhere and collapse. This is good bloody fun all the way through.


Tatsumi

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

Tatsumi is the sort of crime movie where one is surprised that the veteran criminals don't, at some point, let out an exhausted sigh that the behavior of some loose cannon is just not professional, because, really, that maniac is the real liability. Unfortunately for its characters, maniac loose cannons get stories started and keep them going; you kind of need one to get a crime story this good.

That is not Tatsumi (Yuya Endo), who tries to stay out of the violent part of crime and just stick to keeping things running at the yakuza-controlled docks where the fishing boats come in, calling his boss Takeshi (Ryo Matumoto) "Skipper" and unsentimental in how he treats his meth-addicted brother (Kisetsu Fujiwara). He can't entirely escape it, though - he's still Takeshi's go-to guy for when he needs a body disposed of, and ex-girlfriend Kyoko (Nanami Kameda) is asking for a favor: Her high-school dropout sister Aoi (Kokoro Morita), a mechanic at the garage Kyoko manages for Takeshi, has sticky fingers and a bad attitude, and if Tatsumi could help cool things down, that would be great. Unfortunately, another gangster (Ryuhei Watabe) has even stickier fingers, and when Takeshi sends his maniac brother Ryuji (Tomoyuki Kuramoto) to handle it at the garage, Kyoko and Aoi are witnesses, and Aoi is none too impressed when Tatsumi's plan seems to be "just accept what's coming".

Gangster narratives use the word "family" a lot, and without necessarily tipping his hand that much, writer/director Hiroshi Shoji casts a critical eye on this: Sisters Kyoko and Aoi are polar opposites and get on each other's nerves but also clearly love each other more than anything else; it can also be easy to miss that Takeshi and Ryuji are actual brothers as opposed to just being in the same gang, or at least lose sight of that. Mostly, it's Tatsumi grappling not so much with his own sins but seeing a reflection of his own screwup brother in Aoi. Skipperrepeatedly speaks to how the yakuza is family, but eventually Tatsumi comes to realize that that's not a measure of loyalty, but something that has caused him to treat other relationships as similarly transactional, or at the very least conditional.

It's a good background and way to add some uncertainty to a nastily grinding story of characters who can't run but are almost certainly overmatched if they choose to fight back, let alone seek revenge. Despite not being constantly beset by new dangers, things move fast enough that Aoi can't change out of her bloody hoodie - the film's take on mob violence is that it relies on overwhelming force by people who know what they're doing, and someone like Aoi getting a blow in is pretty lucky - and there's just enough time to watch Tatsumi and Aoi show the wear of their situation. It helps show how, maybe, Tatsumi was worn down in a similar way.

Yuya Endo is impressive in how he gets that across, because Tatsumi doesn't particularly change aspect or the habits of a lifetime, instead just seeming to realign what he considers worth fighting for and maybe feeling a little better about who he is in the film's later moments compared to his feeling on the subject earlier, even if it comes with regret. His hard, overly practical manner clashes nicely with Kokoro Morita as Aoi, whose emotions are always right on the surface and whose immaturity is allowed to be frustrating rather than innocent. She plays off Nanami Kameda's Kyoko well, as does Endo - there's familiarity between these two but also little doubt about why it ultimately didn't work out, despite their both being smart, practical people. Of course, Tomoyuki Kuramoto steals nearly every scene he's in as Ryuji and isn't particularly subtle about it; he's a mad dog where one is never quite sure just how tightly Takeshi is holding his leash, speaking with a raised voice most of the time and with a tendency to push his head forward a bit, getting further into personal space to show there's nothing stopping him from getting further. It's the sort of vicious gangster performance that could wear itself out, but is present just long and often enough to keep the audience from getting the least bit sentimental about the enterprise.

It's the sort of energy that lets this feel like a road movie at times even though nobody ever gets very far on a map: It matters in which direction Tatsumi turns the wheel regardless of how far he's going.


"AstroNots"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

This is another short that has one really joke, but where "Bladder Shy" was looking to repeat, "AstroNots" is seeing how well it can be drawn out. It starts with the first manned mission to Mars about to launch, and as Mission Control runs down the checklists, pilot Abraham Adams (Aaron Glenane) confesses to Commander Thomas Collins (Adam Dunn) that he's spectacularly unqualified, somehow having BSed his way through various tests and gotten lucky on others. Collins knows he should abort the mission upon hearing this, but not only would that likely end the program, he's a descendant of Michael Collins, the man who stayed in the orbiter while Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, and the idea of also being so close but forgotten is something he can't bear.

Dunn and Glenane are also credited as writers, and one can imagine the writing process as one of sitting around and riffing, trying different ways to crack each other up and challenging each other to figure out ways in which the whole thing doesn't work and which snappy answers are funny enough to become dialog and lead to something else. Somewhere in there, they figure out just what will keep things going for long enough to get to a near-perfect deadpan punchline, just really tight comic scripting.

It's good work all around, getting the right level of panic and recognizing that this gag calls for a reaction shot and this one should linger. Comedy direction and editing seems like it must be thankless and invisible whether done right or wrong, but it's pretty much always right here.


Pendant ce temps sur Terre (Meanwhile on Earth)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

There's likely a better example of the phenomenon than Meanwhile on Earth, but it feels like a bit of an inversion to a certain formula, where you promise weird aliens and horror with the idea of sneaking some sort of loftier ideas to the audience. This one, arguably, can be sold as a meditative drama, maybe one set in the future but where those elements are a metaphor, only to deliver something weird and chilling on top of that.

Elsa Martens (Megan Northam) was always close to her astronaut brother Franck (voice of Sébastien Pouderoux), and just as she was excited for him being selected for a deep-space mission, he couldn't wait to see how she grew as an artist, fully expecting her to be having shows in Paris when he returned even though she was crashing with parents Annick (Catherine Salée) and Daniel (Sam Louwyck). But he didn't return; winding up lost in space, and now Elsa is still living at home, occasionally defacing the statue erected to memorialize her brother and working at the palliative care center Annick manages - and even there, best friend Audrey (Soifa Lesaffre) is moving away to take a job somewhere on the coast - while Daniel scans radio bands hoping for a message and Franck's son Vincent (Roman Williams) is a frequent visitor. It's Elsa that receives a signal, though, via a strange biological receiver, from entities that say they have rescued Franck, and need Elsa's help to prepare for their arrival.

This is a pretty nifty situation for a movie even before the science fictional elements start appearing, although they are welcome when they do; if it is not going to be fantastic, why have the brother vanish while in deep space as opposed to at sea or in the country, after all? Writer/director Jérémy Clapin gives the viewer a good sense of who Elsa is and the way that this sort of grief and loss can feel tremendously isolating, as can a hostage situation, and like nobody can possibly understand because who has faced such trials before? She's confronted daily with the tragedies and indignities of the end of one's life and cannot find acceptance, much less solace in the idea that her family has avoided all of this. If this is all there was, it would be a great role for Megan Northam, who can hint at the vivacious young woman who should be there but who looks worn and spent instead.

After that, it's got a bit of a horror-movie story, although the story is carefully built to keep it on a certain path (fittingly enough) that it's not exactly suspenseful much of the time, but turns a screw or two nicely. The way that Elsa starts out initially seems like the way Clapin has set things up is designed to absolve her, but it leads to is more horrifying, that Elsa's good intentions have set her on a course she cannot escape, as it is made very clear to her that not making a certain choice is itself a decision with consequences, but where she also can't escape the guilt.

Though the live-action debut of someone known for animation, it's far less gaudy than many such films. There are animated pieces - it's kind of telling that the animated renditions of Elsa's comics about her and Franck having adventures from their childhood cast her as an alien, suggesting she didn't fit in and her brother was nearly her only friend - and there are a couple sequences and bits of weird biological design in the middle that definitely spring from the sort of mind that starts from this sort of visual, but the filmmakers take care to highlight the mundane nature of many situations, giving us a thoroughly lived-in world where most have moved past the thing that has devastated this family, even though it is extraordinary.

It's nifty work that can be sold as boutique-house science fiction even though, for all that it plays as something about human dilemmas and difficult moral choices, he also does not hesitate to use a chainsaw to point out how far Elsa might go if push came to shove. Just being smart doesn't make it any less a nifty genre thriller.


"Ahora vuelvo" ("Be Right Back")

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

I don't know that I've ever really considered how bizarrely incongruous raising a modern child in one of these old European apartments must be - most of the time when they show up in this sort of movie, the kid is dour because a parent has died or they've had to move in with a weird grandparent, but here we get Maria (Anastasia Russo), bouncing off the walls, watching cartoons at ear-splitting volume, shoveling microwave popcorn in her mouth. It's kind of no wonder that her mother (Belén Cuesta) is looking frazzled, and maybe doesn't feel that bad about stepping out to run a couple of errands.

She doesn't come back right away, of course, so it's not until the sun has set and Maria's stomach starts rumbling even though she's just finished the last kernel of popcorn that she realizes that this is actually a pretty scary place, and the person knocking at the door claiming to be her mother but having really weak excuses for not having a key might be faking. It almost seems to be about the shifting tone at times, how things that seem harmless can suddenly become spooky with the right shift, and a brash, kind of bratty kid can lose her nerve. It tips its hand fairly quickly, but also has some fun exploiting the idea that the sort of child who could be the resourceful heroine of this kind of story might also be a real frustrating handful for her parents.


The Beast Within

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

There's ambition to The Beast Within, and talent, but it's not exactly evenly distributed: The performances I love are all build around one that leaves me cold, and the ending isn't quite enough for me to circle back and consider how it all fits together. The pieces are seemingly all there for a fine psychological werewolf story, but they don't click together in solid fashion.

It takes place on a gated plot that doesn't seem to be very productive beyond a few backyard chickens and hogs despite the large, ancient stone farmhouse; with 10-year-old Willow (Caoilinn Springall) confined to it due to a respiratory disease that has her lugging an oxygen tank around. Or maybe it's just enough to be worked by father Noah (Kit Harington), mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings), and grandfather Waylon (James Cosmo), who despite the size of the house lives in a mobile home parked on the grounds. It's the sort of isolation where things faster, and maybe there's a reason why they live that way rather than in town - after all, every once in a while, Imogen takes Noah to another corner of the property for the night, along with a bit of their dwindling livestock, to be chained up until something passes.

So, do folks like Kit Harington on the show with all the dragon nonsense? I ask this because I can't recall ever seeing him in a film where he displays much in the way of star power or charisma, and it really kind of kills this. There's this terrific small cast around him, but much of the film almost seems to be hiding him rather than give the audience a chance to be charmed enough by his character to be shocked when his monstrous side comes out. He's admittedly got a particular challenge that some of the other members of the cast don't have, needing to play certain things as ambiguous enough to be reconsidered later, but the end effect is that this movie doesn't work if Noah's not interesting and he barely makes an impression. Bland, in some cases, is worse than bad.

I like much of what the filmmakers are doing otherwise; the rest of the cast in particular is strong, playing the metaphor pretty straight and building this really earnest core. Carolinn Springall gives the impression of someone who is used to her physical limits as Willow, which even more experienced actors often stumble at managing, while Ashleigh Cummings shines as the tough but often overloaded Imogen and James Cosmo gives off the very specific vibe of someone who never liked his daughter's husband but is there for support even when he doesn't say as much. They cover a set of family relationships that is likely very familiar to many even before the monstrous elements start to surface.

Once one gets a hang of the sort of timeless setting, it's a really nice thing to settle into, although I admit, I thought we were looking at multiple time periods at the start. The werewolf effects are mostly kept out of sight for much of the movie but do feel impressively tactile even as they're right on the border of where some in the audience would laugh at the man in a suit. It's fine for them to be kind of crazy and hard to believe, as it's a werewolf in a movie mostly told from a child's point of view, and works best when it's part of the shadows. The action-oriented finale is pretty well-staged, a good balance of things lurking just out of sight, sudden violence, and why you should not use antlers in all of your decorating.

There's not a lot there, though, with the film and audience biding a lot of time until that finale. I do feel, at least on a first watch, that the ending revelations are fortunate to have the emotional impact that they do one doesn't really care to examine just how hard the movie worked at pointing in another direction at times but just let it be. Folks will make excuses if they care about the characters enough, although it's likely better if they don't have to, and The Beast Within has an unfortunate tendency to straddle that line.

Fantasia 2024.04: The Avenging Eagle, International Science-Fiction Short Films, Not Friends, The Old Man and the Demon Sword, and Mash Ville

Falling a day behind here, because Sunday was a full day and Monday an early start, and the breathing room I'd hoped for didn't materialize. There's also no desk in this hotel room, so it's a little slow going.

Apologies for the terrible panorama from the Sci-Fi Shorts; some weird fisheye stuff going on. Anyway, my notes also stink, but from the left, there three folks from "Headache", with director Björn Schagerström in the center; two from "ZZZ", with director Philipe Vargas on the left; director Connor Kujawinski of "A Little Longer"; directors Daniel Shapiro & Alex Topaller of "Escape Attempt"; and Eddy Martin & Elena Rojas, two of the cast members of "ZZZ".

It was, as usual, an enjoyable Q&A, with the "Headache" folks talking about how it's kind of easy to find brutalist architecture that give you massive concrete slabs for exteriors, it's not so easy when you want that inside, and they wound up shooting in an art museum space that was between expositions, and seemed to be relatively welcoming of folks making a short film. They also talked about how using that space was tricky at times, since they didn't want visible light sources, in one case creating a weird spot where light was coming out of a shute that illuminated the head of a bed. They mentioned that it was a proof of concept for a feature, and that unlike a lot of shorts, they actually found themselves adding stuff into the initial cut, because the timing just wasn't right.

The "Escape Attempt" team had the opposite problem; their initial cut was almost an hour, too long for the shorts section of most festivals (the Oscars define one as 40 minutes or less and most festivals are similar). They initially cut it down to half that, but at times wondered if they should try to boost it to a feature. I'm not sure there's really enough in the story for that, and I imagine that at that length they'd be spending a lot on the FX budget. That said, they did mention that a lot more was practical than you might think, especially with the spaceship interiors; the production design team was eager to build rather than just send things along to the effects house.

I'd hoped to head across the street for Ghost Cat Anzu after that, but it would have been a tight fit and a shorts package with a lot of filmmakers to wrangle and have Q&A with always runs long, so I stayed in De Sève for Not Friends, which turned out fine schedule-wise, chipping away at Tuesday so I'd be able to see Customs Frontline outside the festival but part of it in spirit.

I stayed in De Sève for The Old Man and the Demon Sword, with the festival's Jusine Smith hosting writer/director Fábio Powers, producer Christiano Guerreiro, and visual effects artist Jules Spaniard. It's the sort of Q&A where, even if you didn't love the movie, makes one say "good for you!", as Powers talked about his love for B movies, having the idea for the movie in his head for a long time, and wanting to make something with António da Luz, a non-professional actor and the uncle of a cousin who had a distinctive vibe and energy, and how he started from the going-meta finale because he figured he'd need to explain a lot of slip-ups only to find the movie mostly went fine. He also brought in a couple of folks he remembered from television when he was a child, one of whom had surprisingly retired to his town, and contacting Spaniard on Facebook to get some pointers on how to do effects and winding up with a collaborator.

It's also apparently very specifically Portuguese in a lot of ways, including how the village where they filmed has a population of 14: Apparently a lot of those mountain towns are hollowed out in that way, which gives you a lot of freedom to make a movie but has its issues, like how there is obviously no coffee shop or grocery store in a place of that size.

So, very much an "Underground" entry, though not exactly full-on Outsider Art. I'm glad there's a place for that, beyond just "folks not interested in the wrestling horror movie on the bigger screen".

The day ended across the street in Hall with the World Premiere of Mash Ville, with host/programmer Steven Lee, director Hwang Wook, the translator whose name I missed, producer Lim Dong-min, and actors Kim Hee-sang & Chun Sin-hwan. They talked about wanting to do genres you don't see very often in Korean movies, specifically name-checking westerns and John Ford, and it's kind of funny, because if this is a Western, it feels more Sam Peckinpah than Ford to me. I don't really know that it's actually a Western; it feels more like the Coen Brothers doing small-town crime with a heart of pitch-black darkness.

Anyway, I was kind of wiped out at that point, maybe not properly appreciating it and retaining it well. I'll probably give it a look if it pops up somewhere else.

Long day! And a couple more since; if you're reading this on Saturday the 27th (Day 10), the plan is trying for Killer Constable, crossing the street for Capsules 2024 if I'm not far enough up the pass-holder line, HEAVENS: The Boy and His Robot, Kizumonogatari, and Infinite Summer.


Leng xue shi san ying (The Avenging Eagle)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Fantasia Retro, laser DCP)

I haven't seen nearly enough Shaw Brothers material to know where this stands in the pantheon - they made so much and I've mostly watched it hit-and-miss as it plays various repo programs! I'm guessing this is close to top-tier, with a hook that makes it stick out enough to be worthy of the spiffy new restoration and forthcoming release on disc.

It opens with a man who calls himself "Vagrant" (Ti Lung) falling from his horse as he desperately rides across the desert; a passing rider who calls himself "Homeless" (Alexander Fu Sheng) stops to assist him, only to have Vagrant run off with his horse. Homeless eventually catches up to Vagrant, who reveals that he is a former member of the Boat Clan, a group of vicious marauders commanded by Yoh Xi-hung (Ku Feng), and Vagrant was one of the notorious Eagle Warriors. He has attempted to turn over a new leaf, for reasons he chooses not to share, but Yoh has sent his comrades to bring him in dead or alive, and ultimately it appears that the only chance at survival is to go on the offensive. Homeless chooses to help his new friend, although he remains cagey about his own past.

The restoration/scan of The Avenging Eagle that played Fantasia's Retro series is good enough that you can see the glue holding the wigs on, one of those things that makes you wonder if maybe movies were made with the expectation that a little projector motion and the like was expected to smooth such things out. Honestly, it can be shocking how good movies you associate with beat-up grindhouse prints and bargain-bin VHS look given a chance. And this one looks fantastic, full of bright colors and garish costumes and a world created on soundstages that feels both mythic and squalid, terrifically and clearly shot.

It's just generally a very fun movie, as well. A lot of Shaw Brothers martial-arts flicks have tended to feel like arcane and arbitrary reasons to fight, and this has a stretch like that, but eventually it has things click into place and push forward for the rest of the movie. Ti Lung and Fu Sheng nail the sort of reluctant brotherhood that is in many ways the mainstay of Hong Kong action cinema, with Fu especially giving a performance that initially feels fake but is revealed as fake with a purpose, eventually becoming something unexpected, while Ti Lung makes his Black Eagle someone with a heavy emotional burden who is nevertheless a man of action even when confronting it. Ku Feng, meanwhile, is the sort of larger-than-life monster who convinces audiences that the other two will have to fight together even before they throw the first punches.

The fighting itself is terrific in a way that's not necessarily a given, sometimes a little heavy on slow motion that becomes freeze frames but giving the feel of something spontaneous rather than overly choreographed. Director Sun Chung, writer Ni Kuang, and fight choreographers Tong Kai & Huang Pei-Chih have an excuse to throw waves of enemies at Ti Lung and Fu Sheng, all with distinctive weapons and styles which have the heroes having to adapt their own tools. It's never just "more", and the filmmakers make the mind games that are part of the finale just effective enough to make things nicely wobbly.

Also, I chose to believe that several scenes with sleeve knives were meant to look like the guy was flipping his enemies the bird. It's that kind of movie, straightforward in its serious, deadly intentions but well aware that the object is to have fun<.BR />

"ZZZ"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, laser DCP)

A woman (Julieta Ortiz) comes to what appears to be a closed-down mattress store, but the inside is revealed as a place where one can enter and choose their dreams. She chooses to see her husband Sebastian (Eddy Martin), a truck driver who died in an accident twenty years ago, but even a dream of being your younger self (Elena Rojas) and reuniting with the love of one's life will be tinged with the memories of the real world.

Writer/director Felipe Vargas leans hard on some familiar tropes here, but combines them in interesting ways. The flophouse explicitly recalls images of opium dens but the actual injection is laced with Sandman imagery that carries through to a desert landscape that helps make it clear that Marcella is less injecting herself into a memory as building a desired environment; it's also kind of amusing that this is all located in a storefront that used to be a mattress shop, things that were briefly and unsustainably ubiquitous in recent years. It's occasionally somewhat short of brilliant; the finale with a police raid and "will she choose to extricate herself" feels kind of old-hat, and the film could maybe use one or two more explicit reminders that, ultimately, Marcella is talking to herself.

Vargas and Eddy Martin do seem to get that, though; even if they don't say it out loud, Martin has Sebas vacillate being Marcella's idealized memory and also her own guilt and need to be forgiven. Julieta Ortiz and Elena Rojas do very nice work of making Marcella and "Ella" the same person, even if they aren't entirely cast for being dead ringers for one another; they capture a lot of the same body language and way of speaking, and Vargas often shows that the older Marcella is not a solid block of guilt, but someone who still has a lot of what made Ella vivacious.


"Headache"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, laser DCP)

"Headache" opens with the appearance of taking place in a prison, but that's maybe not quite it - at least, there's no mention of there being an outside world that put the people in there with their flatly colored jumpsuits and rigid hierarchy. Frank (Torkel Petersson) starts out wearing blue and in Production, moving pills from one bin to another, but he is told that he has been one of the least efficient workers there and is moved to Consumption, where he is given a gray uniform and tasked with popping the pills Production is creating. To make sure, they are regularly given regular bonks on the head. It finally strikes him as so absurd that he tries to escape.

Director Björn Schagerström and co-writer Agnes Jeppsson have a number of satirical targets, with a bit of Stanford Prison Experiment thrown in as well. The sharpest barbs seem to be aimed at late capitalism, where businesses are completely focused on growth at the expense of what people actually want and need; the broadest ones which maybe get the biggest laughs target bureaucracy and a sort of algorithmic obedience that cannot handle unexpected actions. They are all, by and large, good jokes, but kind of at right angles to each other, so that what's going on at the end had kind of drifted from what was really working at the start.

I do like how Torkel Petersson sells it all. He's got the job of being the audience surrogate who sees this society as nuts but also being of it, and he really nails that deadpan alarm. There's a nice cast around him; I believe Jenny Elisabeth Gustavsson plays the member of management who is either cheerfully evil herself or an effective enough mouthpiece that she might as well be, and really nails that quietly predatory vibe to stand out. Even folks who show up late for a gag or two really fit into this odd situation without issue.


"The Move"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, laser DCP)

I really like the structure Eric Kissack does with this short film: Establish things in relatable, entertaining fashion, throw some fantastic wrench into it, and then double down in a way that hits a nerve and pushes to a dramatic climax without sacrificing what's been making the whole thing work. Eliminate "fantastic", and that's probably the way most comedies are supposed to work, especially at this length, but a lot of people forget that or get the proportions off.

Here, we meet Kate (Amanda Crew) and Todd (Dustin Milligan), a young couple whose relationship had recently hit a few bumps but are now moving into a new apartment, getting ready before the movers show up. Initially, Todd is complaining that the previous tenants left an armoire behind, but they soon find it's not the weirdest feature: There's an itty-bitty invisible wormhole that zips things over to the other side of the living room, and it probably says something about their relationship that Todd is terrified and panicky while Kate sees it as the coolest thing that she's ever seen.

It's really fun to watch Dustin Milligan and Amanda Crew work here. They give Todd and Kate great opposites-attract energy, trading rapid-fire barbs in a way that's genuinely funny but also shows the strain relationships built around such different temperaments can have, and kick it up a notch when the portal makes things weird. They are both genuinely funny and go big in a way that complements each other: Milligan's whiny neuroticism might be a lot except that Crew's rapid acceptance and excitement creates a middle they can orbit around without ever getting too far apart. And when things get weirder, the energy level is such that it's not even really a pivot to making a choice that may be entirely against one's nature for the one one loves.

Pretty darn good in under ten minutes.


"Escape Attempt"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, laser DCP)

During the Q&A, the filmmakers mentioned problems with the runtime, in that the initial cut was almost feature-length but they probably couldn't stretch it further without killing the pacing, so they cut it down to something which qualified as a short. The pacing is good now but the storytelling has some big gaps. It's listed on IMDB as a TV series, but I kind of can't see it working better in that configuration. It kind of feels like the crew made something they couldn't complete but the material was too good to waste, so they put it together as best they could - which isn't bad.

It opens introducing us to Saul (Andrzej Chyra), who describes himself as a professor with particular knowledge of Twentieth Century conflicts, and who is looking to leave the Earth and get away from humanity. Most jaunts are to Pandora, but that planet is nearly as crowded. Emma (Anna Burnett), the pilot of a private spacecraft also on her way to that planet, offers to drop him off at one of many uninhabited worlds, a detour her linguist husband Vadim (Ieuan Coombs) is less excited for. They warn somewhat over the trip, but when they make landing on this supposedly empty world, they find that people are already there, villains Saul recognizes all too well working a slave labor population to death.

There's backstory or lore here, more than a half-hour short winds up having time to explore and which might have been slated for future episodes if this did indeed start life as a TV series. You can probably do without to a certain extent - you don't really need to explain Nazis - but there are some very odd jumps in its story, especially as Emma and Vadim never seem to be more than wealthy vacationers before encountering this huge and horrifying mystery, and while they seem a little too well-equipped to handle it. It is really stopped down to just Saul reckoning with a long-ago decision to run.

Looks really nice, though, if very much in the Apple Store vibe with white jumpsuits seemingly the only fashion in the future. There's a stark contrast between the 2020s Star Trek look and what they find on the planet, and even though the effects are likely mostly CGI, there's a satisfyingly model-like feel to how the ships move.


"Sincopat"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, laser DCP)

Another short with a devilishly simple idea played out well, "Sincopat" introduces Ona (Núria Florensa), an executive and designer who has taken her company's newest device out for a spin: The "Narval", a fashionable smartwatch which synchronizes with injectable nanotechnology that takes up residence in the audio processing center of one's brain, beaming music directly into your head. It will make the company a fortune, and Ona loves it. At least until a malfunction has the nanos stop receiving and just repeating what's in the buffer, meaning the same two seconds of music are playing in her brain on a loop, and there's no way to stop it.

I've kind of got my doubts about the whole "no way to stop it" thing - it initially seems like a problem that can be solved with a hammer if you don't want to wait for the transmitter's battery to die - but the basic idea is good enough to let it slide for ten minutes of jokes about how having this in your head on a loop will drive you absolutely mad and how, obviously, a big tech company is going to consider this a one-time fluke or an acceptable risk with the launch so close. Co-writer/director Pol Diggler gives the short a "stages of grief" structure, which proves a good fit and allows the film to jump forward to the next gag rather than feel trapped by the implications of any one idea. The punchlines for the short as a whole are a bit obvious, but they work.

Núria Florensa sells the whole thing well, too - there's a likable sort of fecklessness to Ona at the start, capturing the intersection of "this is so cool" and "this is going to make us so rich" tech executives, while later projecting the horror that comes with each stage of this torment. This could have just been a fable about a tech person hoisted on her own petard, but it plays more darkly comic when you realize the company will treat this all as collateral damage.


"Katele (Mudskipper)"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, laser DCP)

I must admit, I was more often interested in "Katele" as an idea than drawn into its particular story. "Modern fantasy rooted in Australian aboriginal culture" is something I hadn't seen, and it feels like you could do a lot more with that than what we see here. Which isn't much of an outline: Martha (Elmi Kris), an indigenous woman working the late shift in a laundrette, sees one of the machines go haywire and pulls a man (Waangenga Blanco) out. She hides him, argues with the white guy making deliveries to various institutional clients (Tony Nixon), and when the man vanishes, ruminates on what her life should be like.

It may just be that this short is a bit miscast as part of a science-fiction block, especially for someone like myself who tends to gravitate toward the nuts-and-bolts end of the genre; in that context, one may tend to fill in a fantastical narrative that's not exactly there. I, for example, read the ending as Martha following Katele back through the portal to a world where Australia had never been colonized, but there's not exactly anything in the text that says so. Indeed, not a lot really happens.

Still, Elmi Kris has a face, and she projects the frustration and sadness of her current situation well, and even for those not in her particular circumstances, the feeling that one's life shouldn't be like this and maybe there is someplace where it isn't is powerful. She's terrific at communicating this mood.


Phuean (mai) sanit (Not Friends)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

My first reaction to seeing the description for Not Friends was "Dear Evan Hansen, but Thai", which is probably unfair, in that I haven't seen that film or the play that spawned it and they could be completely different in their details (though Not Friends at least has a cast full of folks believable as teenagers). It's not a bad take on the basic theme, but doesn't quite have the confidence to remain darkly comic or the agility to pivot to something heartwarming.

The film centers on Pae (Anthony Buisseret), who has transferred to a new school for his senior year after an incident at his previous one, where he was often treated as an outcast because the smell of the family flour-mill business seemed to stick to him, and which his father (Pramote Sangsorn) expects him to join because he's on his own for university. He's assigned to sit next to the gregarious Joe (Pisitpol Ekaphongpisit), who says Pae is his 150th friend and a person only has that many in his life. That will be true for Joe, who is hit by a truck and killed crossing the street. It's an opportunity for Pae, though, as a fine-arts school is having a short-film contest which can deliver a full-ride scholarship without having to worry about entrance exams, looking for tearjerkers, so Pae opts to make a film about his best friend Joe, using the story that won Joe a writing contest. The snag is Bokeh (Thitiya Jirapornsilp), who was Joe's actual best friend in junior high, but winds up reluctantly offering her services as cinematographer despite her initial plan being to expose Pae as a fraud.

It feels like this was the most fun version of the story for about five or ten minutes, right around the school assembly, when Pae shifts into full huckster mode, the other students falling for it and Bokeh joining up to make sure he doesn't screw it up. The cynicism of the premise is on full display, but writer/director Atta Hemwadee can't really sustain it; the movie shifts into "let's put on a show!" mode and a later twist just never sits right. It also doesn't help that Joe's award-winning story, while being useful in offering a lot of ways for Pae, Bokeh, and the AV club to shoot wacky things, feels mawkish and simplistic, something that may win an elementary school contest but not one for high-school seniors and not something that will make adults cry. People in the film keep saying it's great but it doesn't hold up when the audience hears it.

The heck of it is, the film clearly has the right folks in the leads. Anthony Buisseret is genuinely funny when playing Pae as a dumbass with an instinct for scheming and faking it until he makes it, giving the impression of someone less a monster than desperate enough to grab onto anything and figure out how to make it work later. Thitiya Jirapornsilp is a good foil for him as Bokeh, making her smart enough to realize her own faults as well as Pae's and both relishing the chance to sabotage him and to make a movie about her friend. Pisitpol Ekaphongpisit pops in and out of flashbacks as Joe, and does a good job of riding the line between being the pest Pae often saw him as an the earnest good friend of Bokeh.

Gags about amateur filmmaking dominate the middle section, and there's a fun sense of absurdity on the one hand and fondness for the scrappy improvisation. There's a certain stabbing at us older folks when Bokeh suggests doing an homage to the most famous scene in the first Mission: Impossible film and her classmate points out that the movie is old, from before they were born, but I guess it's fair (and I wouldn't exactly mind if Tenet becomes the zoomer equivalent). There's a stab at the characters of similar quality when it's revealed that they didn't know everything about Joe, but Hemwadee kind of gets into a mire playing it out.

Eventually, he's seemingly working hard to make everything retroactively a lot nicer, and while maybe that's the emotions he wanted to evoke, it's less entertaining to be assured that folks weren't that bad than to see them work to overcome their worst impulses. As a result, Not Friends has its moments, but can't quite lean into how it's often at its best when the characters are at their worst.


"Space Dumbs: The Fly"

* * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Fantasia Underground, laser DCP)

Man, we're going on 60 years of people making the same jokes about Star Trek and 40 making the same jokes about The Next Generation, aren't we? It's kind of amazing that some folks are still howling when they get the reference.

But, hey, more power to the fact that people are still having fun with Star Trek decades later in Kazakhstan. We've seen these jokes before, but everybody's got to start making movies somewhere, and writer/director/co-star Alan Talkenov is a disconcertingly good match for Brent Spiner as Data.


O Velho e a Espada (The Old Man and the Demon Sword)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Fantasia Underground, laser DCP)

There's kind of a weird tension to watching something like The Old Man and the Demon Sword because half its charm and reason for existence are the way it is a DIY labor of love, while in the other, some of the material is good enough that one might want to see it a bit more refined. If this were a professional production, you'd call it a bad movie, but if it had to make money, it would not exist, and the world might be a bit poorer for that.

It opens with a warrior monk wandering central Portugal with a sword in which a loquacious demon is trapped, discovering a town shielded by a force field that is overrun with demons, which apparently only the town drunk António (António da Luz) can see. The sword, of course, will end up in the hands of "Tohno", and there's a seemingly never-ending supply of monsters which only he can see that need to be dispatched before the sword is recharged enough to cut their way to the outside.

A lot of this is actually kind of cool if you like the stuff filmmaker Fabio Powers is drawing from. The monsters are often rendered with effects straight out of the video games of some prior decade, but some of the designs aren't bad at all; I particularly like the guys who are like a vantablack hole in the image but still give off an impression of unkempt furriness. The design of the sword is straight out of a baller anime, and there's some fun in how the filmmakers have clearly figured out how to get the eyeball in it to turn and blink and are going to do this in every damn shot, and voice actor Paulo Espirito Santo is great even if you don't speak a word of Portuguese. They love and own the cheese.

On what you may consider to be the other hand, though, António da Luz was not an actor, but a guy the director liked and wanted to put in a movie, more or less telling him to be himself and maybe improvise a little. This sometimes works, especially at the start - he's got this sensation of sadness and whimsy filtered through what seems to be a genuine bone tiredness that professionals don't always capture - he often feels undirected and like he's got the same few ideas to spew, and Powers never manages to turn conversations between his alcoholic screwup and the demon sword into something one can really build a film around.

Perhaps anticipating this, the film also ends on something that is weirdly meta and maybe too clever by half, winking so hard at the audience as to sprain something but doing it in such a way that it's not particularly satisfying no matter how you look at it. It can be seen as throwing away some of the fun fantasy, or raising the question about whether this sort of DIY film can be exploitative but not actually engaging with it. It doesn't quite play as cynical, but it also feels like walking away, not actually doing anything with what got the audience's interest.

It's a handmade underground thing, so it's going to be kind of rough. I'm glad I've seen it, and I'm glad Powers has this odd artifact that he made with a friend. It's a pure curiosity, but there's room for that.


Mash Ville

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

The listings for Mash Ville describe it as a Korean Western, but I don't really know if it scans as part of that genre, aside from there being a sense of rural isolation; it's too frantic and the themes don't exactly line up. It feels more like some of the meaner Coen Brothers movies, full of small-town nastiness and weird nihilistic violence, but only sporadically managing that sort of compulsive watchability.

It starts with two people in traditional dress murdering some farmers in what one would initially assume to be some sort of gangland assassination; the only survivor in the town, it seems, is Kong Hyun-man, and him quite by accident. In a nearby city, movie propmaster Jeong Yo-ji is drinking her breakfast, arguing with a producer about delivering a corpse dummy, unaware that another drunk woman, Moon Seo-in, has selected her trunk for a nice comfy place to lie down. Yo-ji rebuffs a waiter's attempts to sell her on a local moonshine, which liquor executive Park Won-jeon is seeking out to explain why his company's sales are so low in this specific area. He happens upon Joo Seo-jeong (Jeon Sin-hwan), not realizing that he's the distiller in question, working with his perpetually out-of-it half, impressively bearded-brothers (Park Jong-hwan & Park Sung-il). The bad news from them is that someone just died after drinking the latest batch, so they start heading to the next town over before the local law enforcement finds out. Because the brother accidentally buried his car keys with the body, they wind up carjacking Yo-ji, and those cult killers from the start are heading in the same direction.

This seems like it should be a lot of violent fun, and it often is: There's an art to the punctuation headfirst that filmmaker Hwang Wook seems to have mastered, the film by and large looks great, and there's a fun soundtrack. Each of the three main threads is a good candidate to be part of a movie like this, off-kilter enough to feel new but also not quite big enough to be the sole support for a feature on its own.

The trick is how you play the threads out and, more crucially, crash them together, and that's often just not very good. For every inspired idea like the screw-up brothers winding up in the middle of a weird death cult, there's two cases of really not having any idea of what to do with Seo-in after her unique introduction, or even Yo-ji. There should be some sort of surprising alchemy in play, but too often, these elements pass our bounce off each other. Even within a thread, there's seldom the sense that a couple characters bouncing of each other is particularly interesting or something you'd like to see more of. The best moment is probably Won-jeon waxing rhapsodic about his knowledge of spirits to Seo-jeong, who claims he just likes a bourbon with a cigar. It's good "we're in a movie and here to entertain you while increasing tension" talk that the film otherwise lacks.

Much of the cast is underused like that, but they handle their assignments well. Jeon Sin-hwan is the closest the ensemble has to a lead, giving the sense of someone with potential beyond small-time moonshining but never quite able to push himself in that direction. Park Jong-hwan anf Park Sung-il make a fun comic team. The folks playing Yo-ji, Won-jeon, and Hyun-man squeeze what they can from their scenes, and the killers feel both deeply weird and dangerous.

(If anybody wants to hook me up with a press kit or update some websites so I can credit people peppery, it would be appreciated!)

On top of never feeling like a Western, Mash Ville too often feels like a lesser version of the genres it's closer to: There's a good Coen-inspired movie or Pulp Fiction knockoff to be made with this material, but this all too often isn't it.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 26 July 2024 - 1 August 2024

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 Museum of Science has Twisters Friday and Saturday evenings into August.
• The Lexington Venue has Widow Clicquot, Touch, and Thelma and is open Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Dead Pool & Wolverine, holding over Widow Clicquot, Despicable Me 4, Thelma, and Inside Out 2.
  
  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!

Customs Frontline

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.

Fantasia 2024.03: Anime no Bento 2024, "The Future Is Now", Brave Citizen, and Mononoke the Movie

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.