They also talked a bit about repurposing the same pod set as the home of three three different people and having to be fairly careful about shooting in a disused mine, which was not that dangerous but hard to set up in. Between all those things, the behind-the-scenes crew really did some nice work. The movie doesn't make a tiny budget look huge, but they made a fair-sized world out of not that much.
A lot of folks I know up there went to Chainsaws Are Singing at this point, and while I regret not being able to punch Estonia on my Fantasia passport this year, "slasher musical comedy" didn't really feel like my thing, and it would have overlapped with Don't Call It Mystery, which really did seem like my thing. Instead, I took advantage of it being a sort of lull between lunch and dinner at Deville Dinerbar, had some delicious root beer ribs with excellent fries (though I didn't need jalapenos in the corn bread), and more pain perdu than I was expecting for dessert. You can eat in Montreal.
Don't Call Me Mystery was fun, although it's kind of amusing to see the host, a big fan, explaining Viki Rakuten as how you can see the rest of the series. Some of the smaller streamers you need to watch Asian shows are, well, idiosyncratic even when they don't assume they're playing to expats rather than North American fans.
After that, I figured on seeing the remake of Witchboard with director Chuck Russell in attendance, but between staying for the Penalty Loop Q&A and the fact that Russell is a guy who kind of counts as a big name at this festival (that it's not a "party with Hollywood types" fest is part of what I like about it, but it does mean that when folks who have had mainstream success show, the folks who want to be near that swarm) and it being shot locally, there were a lot of people in the passholder line ahead of me. We got to the point where they were letting twos and threes in and then a sort of lull before they officially sent us away, and that's when I basically decided that anybody in line behind me probably wanted to see this movie more than I did, so I went back to the hotel, made a post, and got a bit of sleep.
"The Door"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)
"The Door" lays its basic idea out there in straightforward fashion, and while there are some rickety or underdone bits, the cast nails what they've been called upon to do and the way that filmmaker Alexander Seltzer doesn't entirely fill every detail out makes it a nice springboard, if not entirely a thriller.
As it start, Felix (Raymond Ablack) is moving out of the house he and Kara (Tanaya Beatty) had shared until the loss of their daughter; as is often the case, one is trying to keep the place frozen in time and the other finds that a form of torture. He is just saying his last goodbye in the kitchen when she notices something that doesn't make any sense - a locked door that they have never used. She is freaked out but he says it must have always been there and they must have just ignored it when they saw it didn't go anywhere. He agrees to keep watch until they can figure out how to open it.
We all know what's going to be on the other side of the door, of course, and a feature version of the movie would probably be concerned with what comes after, maybe years after, but Seltzer is more concerned with what comes before, watching the strain between Felix and Rita play out. Beatty and Ablack are great here, their performances resolutely rooted in the characters' present but convincing us that they have a different past that overshadows it. The basic premise may at times feel like a bit of a stretch - how is Felix not thrown for a loop by this strange door appearing in a room he must know well? - but works because there is sort of something about it that resonates with how he was already putting this place behind him and she was not in a position to handle it changing at all.
The Silent Planet
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)
Movies like this are a huge part of the reason I attend festivals like this. It's nifty science fiction that isn't just an obvious metaphor for something familiar but isn't completely out there, strong cast, neat world-building. It doesn't have a natural place to play in most theaters (although I am slowly coming around to the Seaport Alamo's "four seemingly random screenings over one week" thing), but fits here nicely. There should be more places where it fits nicely.
It introduces the audience quickly enough to its two main characters: Theodore (Elias Koteas) has been the sole inhabitant of Planet 384 for years or decades for a crime he claims not to have committed, writing journal entries his wife Mona will never read and working a mine because his pod will shut down if he doesn't meet a quota. He does this even after ripping the telemetry implants out of his body, which makes the system think the mine is no longer being worked, sending a new prisoner. Niyya (Briana Middleton) was raised by Oiaan refugees before they were wiped out, and her act of terrorism is half a way to stand up for her pacifistic alien benefactors and half a way to be sent away from humanity. She didn't count on the planet's previous inhabitant still being alive, but also starts to suspect that Theodore isn't who he says he is, and their sharing this planet is a cruel trick.
I kind of love both Elias Koteas and Brianna Middleton here. The script is, by and large, a two-person story that would have been tempting to play as very theatrical, but Koteas gives Theodore this nervous timidity and convinces the audience of his tendency to talk to himself, which could look like an affectation. Theodore hasn't bottled things up, but sanded himself down to something dull, for better or worse. Middleton plays Niiyya as someone who knows herself and humanity a bit too well and is young enough to be a bit harsh but not prone to panic. Middleton is good at making Niyya wary without her looking scared, not entirely sure if her Oiaan upbringing and human nature can be reconciled.
They probably can, as one of the main themes of the movie is how malleable a human psyche can be. There is, of course, a strange native entity on Planet 384 that can expedite or exaggerate the process a bit, but while it is considered dangerous and scary, neither characters nor filmmakers discount what it surfaces as the creature as opposed to the humans; it's an accelerant rather than a distraction. More important is that the human mind is reaching out in all directions, looking for patterns and ingesting new information, and already fallible. Someone subjected to isolation is going to reintegrate themselves in any way they can. It is, given when it was likely filmed, perhaps ahead of the game when it comes to how generative "artificial intelligence" fits into that; the custom-generated sitcoms that Theodore watches are terrible but likely reinforcing what the prison system wants them to reinforce anyway.
This all takes place in a world that feels like it's got more to reveal, always adding a couple more details than a scene absolutely needs but not getting sidetracked. I like how Niyya's pod is basically the same design as Theodore's but with a more modern user interface, the tents connected to them are easily inferred to be greenhouses, and Theodore has a collection of neat rocks that are visible but never mentioned; a man spending decades on a mining planet is going to collect neat rocks. It holds together but doesn't overwhelm, just enough visual effects to feel futuristic but not become the point.
It's a nifty little movie that will likely be buried by others with more and bigger stars or more striking visuals once it's off the festival circuit, but those who find it will be fairly lucky.
Misuteri to Iu Nakare (Don't Call it Mystery: The Movie)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Fantasia Underground/Animation Plus, laser DCP)
Fine, I will figure out how that weird streaming service works so I can watch the series. That's high praise, because me deciding to catch up with a TV series is pretty rare. Don't Call It Mystery hits a lot of my buttons, though, and for how impenetrable movie spin-offs of television series based on long-running manga can be, this stands alone well, an entertaining one-off that hints that the bigger series has more to offer.
After an ominous start - a speeding car flying off a cliff and exploding - we're introduced to Totono Kuno (Masaki Suda), a curly-haired, highly-observant college student who is socially awkward in a way that is as likely to lead to saying too much as too little, visiting Hiroshima for a museum exhibition, a little freaked out by the high-school girl (Nanoka Hara) following him. She's Shioji Kariatsumari, whose grandfather has recently died; family tradition holds that one heir inherits the entire business, but remember the car crash? That was the entire previous generation. So Shioji and her cousins - Rikinosuke (Keita Machida), Seiko (Sairi Ito), and Neo (Riku Hagiwara) - are each being given the key to a storehouse with a problem to solve, to be judged by longtime family lawyer Yoshiie Kurumazaka (Yasunori Danta) and accountant Gunji Makabe (Takuzo Kadono), with Kurumazaka's grandson (and Shioji's crush) Asaharu Rumazaka (Kohei Matsushita) hanging around. A mutual friend has recommended Totono to Shioji, both for help solving the problem and because these contests have, over the past century, turned cutthroat and violent.
This is, however, pretty custom-designed to appeal to me, a mystery with an affable sleuth (and if original manga-ka Yumi Tamura isn't also a fan of old-school Doctor Who with a particular fondness for the Tom Baker years, I'll eat some sort of hat). It's got a structure that allows the story to get bigger and switch directions in ways other than dropping more bodies, which is a thing that can trip a lot of light mysteries up. It's cozier than cozy in some ways, but that's not necessarily a fault - screenwriter Tomoko Aizawa, director Hiroaki Matsuyama, and the cast give the audience a bunch of characters with various connections - every heir has a relative not in the line of succession or two, at least, and the puzzles are right up front, and the fun is in watching Totono work rather than doing it oneself.
The trick is that in a lot of ways, this isn't primarily a mystery, so much as that's the way to get the audience to another story which is, in itself, not that much, but which can serve as a good thing to be dug up while letting the audience enjoy the digging. It's maybe not necessarily a great puzzle, it's got levels - the storytellers commit to this being a multigenerational story with deep roots, and while there's a risk of losing track of the present in that, they mostly dodge it. It doesn't hurt that this sleuth's thing is observation, and the story rewards that as much as it does twisted thought processes.
It's also got a nice cast, some of whom carry over from the series and some of whom don't. Masaki Suda's portrayal of Kuno may or may not be close to the source material which I haven't read, but he nails the often-contradictory nature of the fussy amateur sleuth who really doesn't want to be in the middle of crime even though he keeps winding up there without testing the audience's patience. There's enough sparks between the main pair to make me wonder if Shioji is meant to recur, with Nanoka Hara doing well to reconcile how she's kind of frighteningly capable and determined for a teenager but also able to trip herself up because she's still very much a kid in some ways. There's enough personality all around to keep things interesting without making the red herrings more compelling than the actual solution; I don't know that the rest of the cast is filled with character actors who know the job, but it feels like it is.
The filmmakers do well to keep this story self-contained, although I suspect fans will certainly be able to place it and enjoy the mid-credit scenes. If nothing else, it feels like a good introduction to a franchise which maybe hasn't gotten as much of a push on this side of the Pacific because shojo manga doesn't get as much attention as the shonen material aimed at boys, but probably should.
Penalty Loop
* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)
There's a lot about Penalty Loop that maybe doesn't feel right initially, like writer/director Shinji Araki had an idea for a nifty variation on a familiar theme but had to bend a lot of pieces out of shape to fit them together. Indeed, I'm not sure that I buy a lot of the story, but I see what he's getting at. There's some food for thought here, and Araki presents it in a way that's entertaining enough to eat up.
Something feels kind of off with Jun Iwamori's girlfriend Yui as the film starts, but it seems as though he'll never find out what it is, because she is murdered while he is at work. Eventually, Jun (Ryuya Wakaba) discovers who the killer is - maintenance worker Mizoguchi (Yusuke Iseya) - and constructs a meticulous plan to get his revenge. The next day, though, it seems like the previous is a dream, and his plan doesn't go quite so smoothly when Mizoguchi shows up to work. On the third iteration, it becomes clear that time is repeating - and Mizoguchi is as aware of what is happening as Jun is.
Araki mentioned during the Q&A that the film was written during Covid restrictions and, yeah, that tracks. It could be written at any point, but that set of circumstances certainly seems like it makes creating this movie, in this configuration, more likely, as the repetitive nature of one's days are brought into sharper relief and the daily goals But there's something else going on here, too, which coincidentally hearkens back to The Silent Planet at the top of the day, as it becomes painfully clear to Iwamori that what seemed apt at the start of this process doesn't at the end, because not only can people change, but they will adapt their brains to the system they are in, to the point where he may, for better or worse, wind up with a stronger connection to Mizoguchi than Yui.
It's not always smooth, to the point where I am curious how climbing the walls during Covid lockdowns influenced what seems like a sudden tonal shift, where a change of heart that traditionally takes forever or requires a major revelation seems to happen quickly, because folks just get sick of unpleasant things fast and we all know that now. It's a pretty weird shift, and I don't know that I really buy it, although I found the comedic material enjoyable enough to roll with it. It's not necessarily the only sharp turn, especially as Araki opts for a backstory to the loop which hand-waves much less than the typical time loop does, and makes the intrusions of so-called "normality" exceptionally unnerving.
Oddly - relatedly? - I do like the way that the end stretches in contrast. It's maybe an admission that recovering from such trauma isn't going to happen easily or by following some packaged program, and there are plenty of ways to parse someone saying he's fine when he's clearly not. It gives Ryuya Wakaba some really good, tumultuous material to work through after Yusuke Iseya's killer who shows depths and fear if not repentance. Iseya spends a fair amount of the movie threatening to steal the film from its apparent protagonist, and the chance for Wakaba to respond, highlighting the emptiness that inspired all of this, is welcome. Penalty Loop is creaky at times, like a Twilight Zone episode where you can help but think that Serling is really stretching to build a premise for his ironic ending and a big bump to get the story where it has to go on top of that. On the other hand, it's frequently funny, twists nicely when that's called for, and leaves the audience with a bit more than expected.
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