Between being the last one in and sitting where I can escape in a hurry if need be, it wasn't a great spot for pictures, especially if you use the phone's panorama setting:
I believe my favorite bit of the Q&A was Grabowski being asked about creating the look for their synthezoid character and handing the mike to Adamska after saying a few words, where she said she had about $2,000 for the whole thing and then they had to use most of it on a skullcap because the actress wouldn't shave her head and so that made things harder than they needed to be.
After that, it was a decision between a restored Shaw Brothers film at 5:40 and something maybe sci-fi-ish at 6:30, and I chose the former even though I knew I'd probably be getting it on disc soon enough; the description of the other seemed a bit inside-baseball. It gave me a bit of time for the annual burger at Mr. Steer before heading across the street for Tamala 2030: A Punk Cat in Dark, which was one of the things I've had circled on the schedule since it was announced, having dug the original when it played the Brattle in its American release, kind of amazed there was a follow-up.
Then back to the apartment, with Cielo, Japanese Avant Garde Pioneers, Honeko Akabane's Bodyguards, and Dog of God on tap for Monday. It's Saturday now, and I'm planning on Hold the Fort, The Girl Who Stole Time, Influencers, and Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo, with Funky Forest highly recommended.
"Moon & Back"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)
Writer/director Pony Nicole Herauf knows that the science-fictional aspects of her short film don't make a lot of sense, and bakes it into the beginning, when Branch (Bren Eastcott) and Mattie (Mattie Driscoll) phone a radio call-in show and are yelled at on-air for saying that the issue in their relationship is that their close friendship struggled when Branch was away at college, and now her new job is going to take her to the moon. It's going to be a big thing soon, they say.
Is it? Well, there's not exactly a lot else in the story to suggest it, but also only the most occasional slip to suggest that Branch is sick and may either be dying soon or undergoing experimental treatment far away, and this is a last weekend where that euphemism will be strictly enforced. It's not a thing one sees in the very funny performances from Eastcott & Driscoll at first - Branch & Mattie are the sort of delightfully ordinary folks who are funny in large part because of how they come off as mainly being funny to each other, even with Herauf giving them a lot of good lines - but they're good enough to give a lot of heft to scenes played against somewhat lo-fi visual effects toward the end.
"Lola"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)
I'm inclined to believe that "Lola" depicts what's actually going on, with teenage prodigy Tessie (Jovie Leigh) making yet another attempt to cure or at least arrest her grandmother's fast-moving dementia. It's got the feeling of someone who has always been superlatively bright running hard into her limitations and kind of doesn't work unless Tessie can actually get in there and receive one last bit of good advice from the part of Lola's brain that hasn't been scrambled.
Of course, what's fun is that the apparent limitations of a student film lead to director Grace Hanna making a lot of choices that emphasize that this is from the point of view of a precocious child, from the animation to the props made of everyday objects to a mindscape that's got the same general form of one where filmmakers spend millions of dollars to create a mental library but is all the more poignant for its relative simplicity. The costume Leigh is given to wear as Tessie is also adorable whether it's the characters existing in a heightened world, her sort of playing dress-up, or somewhere in between.
"First Sight"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)
"First Sight" looks like it's going to be a "don't fall in love with an AI construct" thing, but writer/director Andew McGee has some more interesting things to do, as widow Luna (Ellise Chappell) is matched for a first-date with handsome, likable Antony (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd). As a writer who reviews new consumer technology, she's got top-of-the-line Bluetooth contact lenses with a powerful AI in her phone offering useful advice on the heads-up display, but taking its recommendations doesn't make for an exciting date, and that's before the ransomware attacks.
I've been wondering when we were going to start to get more stories of artificial intelligence being kind of useless in situations where human expression is concerned, as features continue to come out with androids who are more human that human or AIs that can outwit even the most clever protagonist, and that's pretty far from the experience of anyone who has desperately tried to shut Copilot off. McGee is smart about this without it coming off as a lecture, and the ransomware bit is clever (although I'm almost more frightened of a hack where my reading glasses replace the fine print on a contract), although it kind of stretches the blind date out in a way that seems untenable.
Ellise Chappell is pretty darn good through that, at least, and all-around; she captures the bits of McGee's script that require her to be sad in a big way, even if it's not always on her face, and the sort of generally nervous that makes these sort of shortcuts so tempting. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd hits the right tone as well, disappointed enough that Luna is taking outside cues enough for it to show without seeming mean or sanctimonious enough to be unappealing.
"Disappeared"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)
"Disappeared" kind of feels a little more like The Matrix with the serial numbers scraped off than one would maybe like, although with interesting ways to go should Eunuk Jeong get a chance to expand it. There are times when I wondered a bit if it were written and selected with the intent of showing off the studio in which it was shot in a sort of symbiotic way, a chance for both the business and the filmmaker to have a polished calling card, and that determined a lot of its emphasis.
I do kind of like the central performance by Tan Woo-seok, whose character seems to be the sort of screw-up where both he and those who know him get frustrated at how his limitations get in the way of his being generally likable - one sort of feels bad for noting how annoying it must be - and he's got a bit more range than that when need be.
"No Nation"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)
Between this and 40 Acres, I'm liking the greater Native/First Nations representation showing up in some recent post-apocalyptic tales. Not necessarily a whole lot, but enough to make one consider how some things would shake out. "No Nation" carves out a nifty little niche where it feels grounded and gritty while hinging on silly genre nonsense, and director/co-writer Jeffrey Elmont seems to know it, having characters ask why they're doing the elaborate rugby ritual rather than something more sensible.
The reason, of course, is that the rugby ritual is cool, which is both why we watch these movies and how the guy in charge exerts control. The audience feels the excitement of it even if they don't necessarily have a rooting interest; Elmont and company reveal details as the combatants play rather than do an explanation ahead of time, throwing a monkey wrench into it just as the viewers understand. At that point, there's no satisfaction in anyone being hoisted by their own petard, and part of what makes the finale feel honest is that there's a lesson there but one maybe can't be sure people will take the right one to heart.
"Weird to Be Human"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)
Sometimes, watching science fiction, I'll groan at "back in the bad old days of the Twentieth Century, we did this, and though we say we've outgrown it…" dialogue, even if delivered with intense earnestness by William Shatner or Patrick Stewart, but I feel like I'd kind of welcome it in "Weird to Be Human". Part of that is that we're in "AI is more human than human" territory, a bit strained as AI makes things in everyday life dumber, and part is because many folks in the present who could do with a fable about how the government chooses who is eligible for citizenship and makes them jump through tortuous hoops to obtain it are isolated from the process and could maybe use the linkages.
All that is in "Weird to Be Human", but you may have to know it's there to see it. Happily, it's got a nicely unsettling "one dystopian room to decorate in budget Cronenberg fashion" aesthetic, the sort of performances where a viewer can settle in and change their impression of who is supposed to be the audience surrogate and who is supposed to be the monster over the film's running time, and just enough memory of being behind the Iron Curtain and having resurgent right-wing movements for everyone involved to know of what they speak. The small cast handles their parts quite nicely, willing to sound alien and odd but let their inner humanity come through, for better or worse.
"Fingerprints of the Gods"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)
I wonder, a bit, to what extent a character named "Monkey" was intended to make one think of some sort of trickster deity at first, even though we're probably more in "at a typewriter" territory in this short, as a reporter is given a story that makes him question the foundations of the universe.
"Fingerprints" is nice-looking - I particularly liked the precise layout of Monkey's apartment inside a run-down building - but it kind of falls prey to what hobbles a lot of simulation-theory stories, where there's not exactly much the folks discovering that they live inside a simulation that may be shut down can do about it, and for all that director Wei Zhenfeng talks about being inspired by the Mandelbrot Set, he never quite finds a way to blow audience minds with some sort of fractal revelation of simulations within simulations. It's a nicely-mounted short, but probably the one where specifics have faded most over the time it takes to write things up.
"Filther"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)
Appearing at this moment, with its faceless protagonist, steampunk imagery and compositing where the elements don't quite seem to match, this probably draws "is this made with generative AI?" more than the "nice ambition, but maybe you're stretching a little thin" it would have gotten a couple years ago. Unfair, perhaps - nothing in the credits indicates that's the case - but it's got the feel: Some nifty ideas, a focus on aesthetics, and a story that's relatively thin, trying to be capital-E Emotional while connecting the big visuals.
I found it kind of pretty but distancing, and there's something really odd about the love story seeming to favor the match-making service over the nice girl at the shop nearby who at least seems to like him. Nothing' is really happening other than the protagonist fixing things, and for as much as the clockwork construction is kind of a soothing respite from folks being mean to him and the general tumult among the normies, the movie isn't doing much more than showing pretty pictures to earn a happy ending.
Tian long ba bu (The Battle Wizard)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: Fantasia Retro, laser DCP)
Where to stream it(Prime link), or order the 2009 DVD at Amazon
The Battle Wizard may not be one of those Shaw Brothers flicks with a surprising seed of greatness in it, but it's awesome beyond its campiness, diving into one weird thing after another, barely considering the possibility of slowing down.
Twenty years ago, Qin Hongmian (Gam Lau) informed her lover Tuan Chengchun (Si Wai) that she was two months pregnant and telling her husband that it was his wasn't really an option, since he'd been away for six months, That husband (Shih Chung-Tien) chose an inopportune moment to return and attack Chengchun, only to discover that the latter's kung fu is so powerful he can shoot energy blasts from his fingers. Oh, and Chengchun is a prince who already has a fiancée (Hung Ling-Ling) who dismisses Hongmian in the bitchiest fashion possible. So it's no wonder that Hongmian spends her daughter's entire childhood teaching her kung fu so that Mu Wangqing ("Tanny" Tien Ni) can seek revenge on her father, his wife, and any offspring they may have produced. The trouble is, Chengchun's sun Tuan Yu (Danny Lee Sau-Yin) is a pacifistic scholar who has no desire to learn martial arts, which means he'd be in big trouble after stepping out to prove to his father that one just needs words if he didn't meet pretty snake handler Cheng Ling'er (Lin Chen-Chi), as Hongmian's husband has been hiding out, biding his time and training a disciple to assassinate Yu as well.
It's a lot happening and it's about an inch deep, sure, but like the best Shaw Brothers martial arts films, there is just enough earnestness in that inch to occasionally surprise, whether it's the look of shock as Hongmian realizes she's been abandoned or how enough friendship develops between Wangqing and Yu that the filmmakers aren't just teasing incest (amusingly and coincidentally, this special-effects-heavy film was made in part as a response to Star Wars, anticipating this twist by five and a half years). No matter how frantic and silly things get, the cast gets to make their roles more than ciphers notable for their fighting styles.
They're fighting a lot, of course, but there's a good balance to the violence that alternates between splatstick and good wire fu. The filmmakers go to town with all the visual effects and fantasy that mid-1970s Shaw Brothers can muster, complete with finger guns, rubber monsters, and a guy in a thoroughly unconvincing gorilla suit. The action choreographed by Tong Kai mixes up swordplay, punching and kicking, and what is effectively gunfighting fairly well, so that combatants aren't just posing at each other, and things get enjoyably gross as limbs get blasted off (leading to characters running around on iron chicken legs) or Lee Sau-Yin seems to have a good time playing Tuan Yu as surprised by the martial-arts moves he gets by drinking magic snake's blood.
It's got a nice pace to it, too, introducing a new absurdity just often enough to get audiences saying sure, why not, rather than feeling overloaded. It's maybe a bit too much by the end - there are points when I was thinking it's been too long since we checked in on the cute snake girl, and I suspect a subplot about where her family fits into all this was cut until the film needed more bodies for the ending battles - but it goes down smooth and never stops amusing for its whole 77 minutes.
And, honestly, what else do you want? The Battle Wizard is determined to entertain from start to finish, and it's a gas all the way through.
Tamala 2030: A Punk Cat in Dark
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia Festival: Animation Plus, laser DCP)
Where to stream Tamala 2010 (Prime link), or pre-order the disc at Amazon
Sometime asked if seeing the first movie made this 23-year-later sequel better and I had to say, maybe, although it's been 20 years and I really should have bought and watched the new disc as soon as this was announced a part of the festival, the way I often do when sequels drop after this sort of wait. This could go up or down, depending on how that plays for me when I see it again.
(You're already talking to the distributor, right, Ned?)
As it opens, one-year-old kitten Tamala is just hanging around the run-down, graffiti-covered Cat Tokyo, popping in to visit her boyfriend Michaelangelo, a private detective and handyman who has just been hired to find someone who vanished a couple weeks ago, on 7 July, and while it seems like Tamala wouldn't be much help, she knows people, and they soon find video footage of him vanishing into thin air - and not only that, the same thing happened to six other cats that same night, forming a pattern across Cat Japan that matches a constellation. Meanwhile, a one-eyed mercenary named Blur is tracking occult occurrences around Cat Earth, many of which seem to lead back to Tamala herself.
I don't know that vaguely remembered details of Tamala 2010 really helped - they basically had me expecting this to be kind of unnervingly sexy, which didn't seem to be much of a factor after the start - and I kind of think loose continuity is kind of explicit here. Tamala is described as a 1-year-old kitten despite this movie taking place 20 years later than the first. It is, perhaps, a sort of meta-commentary on the state of media, with corporate entities behind the scenes managing cycles of destruction and rebirth, with the Real End lurking. The punk, anti-capitalist characters of the first film reappear somewhat jarringly toward the end, though their message is somewhat muted.
There's a lot of movie to get through before that material really takes center stage, though, and the long middle is seldom nearly as fun as the apocalyptic finale or watching literal sex kitten Tamala (seemingly what you'd get if you gene-spliced Betty Boop and Hello Kitty) tags along on Michaelangelo's missing person case. Tamala herself is in short supply for a while, and none of the other characters who get more involved with the plot are as memorable or fun, with the story itself more atmosphere than developments that pull an audience closer.
Like the last one, though, it looks and sounds amazing, a run-down retro future with great character designs, touching camera, and nifty music and sound the baseline . The mostly B&W look hits the direct spot where manga, film noir, and the Fleischer Brothers overlap. Tamala's cheerful dancing and bouncy walk (accompanied by squeaky boings to make one wonder if she's wearing leather all the time) give way to unsettling violence, and while I suspect that much of the film was realized digitally, writer/director/composers "T.O.L." really lean into that in the final act with a robotic cat god whose obvious CGI nature makes her incursion into Cat Earth almost Lovecraftian.
So, yes, going to see this again, and looking forward to it. It's crazy stuff, probably about 40% nonsense even if you've recently caught up on all previous Tamala material, but fun and energetic nonsense.
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