Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.05: "Ragdoll Dance", Best Wishes to All, Fucktoys, and Escape from the 21st Century

Shorts People!

Honestly, there could have been two groups like this, but even when I don't do the Saturday midnight, I usually look at that Sunday noon slot and wonder if I'm going to be up for rolling out of the bed without an alarm, doing some crosswords, having a big ol' bagel or donut, and making it to the Brattle by the start. I don't pre-order in case there are folks who really want to see this particular "existential" shorts package, and I don't think I've made the first shorts package on time since the festival started having this scheduling template. Certainly not since the pandemic.

I did not take good notes for this, and IMDB lists a lot of producers for Fucktoys (hey, I think this is the first blog post with cussing in the title that might wind up in my teenage nieces' social media feeds!), so I apologize for saying this is a guy I don't know, writer/director/star Annapurna Sriram, someone else I don't know, co-star Sadie Scott, and festival programmer Chris Hallock.

It was a fun conversation, because this was obviously a very low-budget movie and there was therefore a lot of talk about just how much of it was thrifted in and around New Orleans, or shot without permits and the like. The film hit various pandemic and hurricane-related delays, but, one has to admit, there are times when you can't imagine it taking place anywhere else.

Sriram also spent a lot of time talking about how the heart of the film is how, when you're young, especially a young woman, you can sort of know danger but kind of blithely go ahead anyway, and this was about when a person's luck runs out, and how you recognize that and react.

And with that, BUFF is finally wrapped up, and I've blown right past IFFBoston. Here's hoping that is finished before it's Fantasia time!


"Lilly Visits the Hospital"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

"The Bum Family" shorts are kind of BUFF tradition by now - I feel like we've seen them at every festival going back to before the pandemic - and, honestly, they've never been my favorite things in the package, very much "I'm glad you guys had fun making this but I'd never seek this out on my own". As usual, it's got some fun gags and some that feel inside. I kind of feel like this one has the characters feeling a little more self-aware of their weirdness than previous shorts have - not entirely planning to be an agent of chaos instead of just being one while trying to be normal, but with more of that than usual.


"Les Bêtes"

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)


I loved the heck out of this at Fantasia last summer, and seeing it a second time months later maybe shaves a little of the novelty off but sharpens the satire a bit - one goes from laughing at the darkly comic awful ways that the aristocrats treat the macabre but lively little animated performers that are brought into the castle to feeling the callousness, especially in the performative cruelty of the little impressario who thinks it will bring him closer to his human masters. No, guy, you're one of the creatures to them.

It makes for a delightful little short, though, as filmmaker Michael Granberry and his crew make a bunch of Weird Little Guys and have them perform, do nifty character animation on the aristocrats, and use the petty bourgeois envy of the folks in between as a catalyst to something more destructive that constantly moves between horrifically destructive and satisfying bits of small-scale revenge. There is something especially powerful about a stop-motion film that ends in flames; for all that one knows that there were probably multiple copies of each little figure made, there's a special horror to the destruction and sense of the miraculous in what survives.


"Peeping"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

Four minutes of odd that kind of looks like either the hardware or software used for rendering could use an upgrade in a way that may be deliberate, to give it a bigger underground/raising a fist to the man feeling. The premise is pretty straightforward and not going to be misread - folks just trying to have fun and do picking themselves apart to please a censorious authority - but some of the designs are neat and it's not trying to do too much.


"Pocket Princess"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

This one's a neat stop-motion tale that feels like it's adapting a lesser-known fairy tale, one which makes it pretty clear that the cruel priest uncle isn't just an unsympathetic taskmaster but almost certainly molesting his niece, which makes its Grimm-ish finale something between a horrible nightmare and an escape. I suppose that's what makes a lot of those original-recipe stories work sometimes - looking at the world's horrors and admitting that sometimes the only escape you can construct is mental.

It's also kind of nifty-looking, really knowing how to make its various characters have the right balance of innocence and malice, and also making the fantasy world that Anna retreats into both fraught and tight, even when it might seem relatively bigger.


"Pippy and the Typist"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

Look, it's got a moment where the main character dropkicks the person controlling the world's actions from the magic typewriter, and that's quality physical comedy. I'm not sure its meta hijinks ever get quite that funny again, but it puts in the effort, very much dedicated to chaos and the idea that just because you're a cartoon character, you may not actually know the best way to deal with cartoon characters, especially if you're already vindictive about your prior bad situation.

"The House of Weird"

* * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but generally speaking, what you get when folks self-describe themselves as "weird" ever since the original Weird Tales ceased publication isn't great (yes, there's nuance to be had here, but this is a review of a 4-minute short), even if you can see folks having fun and want to applaud that. That's more or less what "The House of Weird" is - filmmaker Mark Reyes and friends screwing around with various tools to create series of funky looking rooms in a house that doesn't exactly open geometric law, and maybe trying to say something about how today's world is incomprehensible and like an escape room you can't exit, but mostly coming off as lightweight oddity for the same of oddity. But, hey, it's a first film, and maybe a learning experience.


"Poppa"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

Hmm.

Yep, weird, but it builds up to the one joke you can fit into its two-minute runtime, and there's something really pleasant about its 1990s TV animation style that makes the gross bits work a little better.


"The Garden Sees Fire"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

Another bunch of weird little guys, but drawn out trying to create a sense of importance. Mostly well done, I suppose, but 15 minutes is a lot of abstract weirdness.


"Red Thumb"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

An impressive dark fantasy that does nice work combining story, allegory, and world-building into a tight space.


"Demons in the Closet"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

One-minute stop-motion horror story, riffing a bit on Army of Darkness, perhaps. Might have taken months to do, but works out pretty darn nice.


"A Walk in the Park"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

I can't seem to find the particular Jay Marks who made this one on IMDB but I hope folks in Hollywood are noticing this short because he certainly seems like a guy where you try and recruit him for something bigger, whether in animation or live-action. He's got a really good knack for building eerie atmosphere into blockbuster action, makes a twist into a deeper horror work, and inserts comedic bits in that don't undermine the sort of story he's telling.

It turns out to be the sort of big, slick banger that tends to be the grand finale for one of these blocks, except…


"Howl if You Love Me"

* * * ½ (out of four) Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Ragdoll Dance, laser DCP)

This is also a great one, a zippy little cartoon where a couple manages to work around the lady's lycanthropy until the werewolf hunters come and make everything worse. It's upbeat and adventurous with a fine score and plenty of comic relief from their little dog, and despite the lack of dialogue and the cartoon character designs, there's a moment or two that really captures the best bit of werewolf stories, where someone is absolutely terrified of what their conditions will do to their loved ones. It's also built up in such a way that we can really enjoy the final rampage.

Genuinely fun note to end the package on.


Mina ni sachi are (Best Wishes to All)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)

Where to stream it (when available)

Best Wishes to All is quality Japanese "the world is somewhat askew from what you think" stuff, although very much the sort where I kind of want an argument to be raised with its premise at some point, even if it ultimately fails. This lady wants to push back on nihilism, but doesn't really get a chance to try.

The young woman in question (Kotone Furukawa) is visiting her grandparents for the first time in years while on break from college, with her parents and brother expected to join them soon. Something seems off, though, compared to when she visited as a child; there are strange noises, and a mysterious locked door at the end of the upstairs hallway. Eventually, what she finds shocks her, and the reaction of everyone around her but one childhood friend shocks her even more.

What she discovers doesn't really make sense, but that's exactly the point of this sort of Twilight Zone-ish story: Director Yuta Shimotsu and co-writer have a broad idea here, that the price of one person's happiness is another's suffering, and will generally always err on the side of the mechanism being vague and the feeling being authentic than trying to construct a perfect, detailed set of parallels. The discovery is a quality slow burn, though; the filmmakers have a nice way of raising flags right away so that the audience gets a feel for what they're in for but not the how, so the audience is kind of poking around the corners trying to see what's coming. When things get definitively weird, it gets more ominous.

It's also got quite the nice lead performance from Kotone Furukawa; she quickly sells the audience as a likable, down-to-earth student and recoils in horror well, but she's good at the middle part, too, where the heroine is between the horrible discovery about her world and anything she can possibly do about it, processing without looking blank. There are plenty of complementary folks to make it work, too: The too-friendly grandparents, the friend who knows what she doesn't and suffers more for it, the recluse who had the same reaction she did and had it drive her mad. The performances as a group sell the idea of a world that is (probably) different from ours in one very important way but can seem like it isn't twisted into unrecognizability, at least on the surface level.

It does kind of get scattered toward the end, sort of tossing in every sort of symbolic idea for how this works semi-randomly rather than building something that feels like it could actually be the case or has interlocking bits of meaning, which would be nice. It's effective for most of its hour and a half, though, and doesn't stretch out past that enough to undo it.


Fucktoys

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Fucktoys is probably the most cheery example of this sort of proudly disreputable movie - the type where you can imagine the folks involved taking each gasping patron who flees the theater out of shocked propriety as a sort of victory - that I can recall seeing. It's all sex workers on the margins of a place that is pointedly already marginal, but is never really looking to make the audience feel like they're slumming it, even when it eventually gets to the point when the candy coating starts to wear off.

AP (Annapurna Sriram) is one of them, a sort of flighty young woman who has been able to earn all she needs to get by selling sex she kind of wasn't opposed to having anyway when she feels like it. The thing about trusting fate in that way is that a girl can wind up in a panic about what fortune tellers say, specifically that her recent run of bad luck is due to a curse, and that she needs to earn some money quickly in order to hire someone to get it off her. So, with the help of friend and lover Danni (Sadie Scott), who just got out of jail, she hops on her scooter and starts looking around Trashtown for ways to earn some quick bucks, though her scatterbrained nature means she often finds herself at the same place she started, if not further behind.

That the movie generally seems to be going somewhere is a neat trick, because it's a story that requires a lot of episodic bouncing and things sort of sinking to a slightly lower low that would kind of die if it stopped being fun despite the trajectory. Writer/director/star Annapurna Sriram does impressive work in all three areas keeping the energy up, playing AP as the right sort of dim but scrappy-sweet girl who can keep forward momentum for 100 minutes without slowing down for the audience to question anything and keeping things upbeat despite the absurdity. Sadie Sweet is a good foil for her, harder-edged but on the same wavelength, and there are a few other one-off types who match the vibe, notably Danian Young as a politician too genuinely nice for his own good and François Arnaud as a high-roller who might be able to solve AP's money problems himself.

The film is often stripped-down to an extent that approaches surreal, never more so than when hanging out in AP's "bedroom" in the middle of a field - is this literal, the way AP perceives homelessness that includes freedom, or something else again? The film is full of stripped-down locations and characters that could fit some version of them. Sriram lets them move blithely along, suggesting that the inconveniences of living hand to mouth more than make up for being smothered under patriarchal, moralistic expectations. Even a square like me can understand where AP is coming from.

The film is, however, ready for the conclusion it winds up reaching, which delivers the right emotion for every moment after the twist that sets out on a new course. Sriram shows a really steady hand here to make a point without the topical moralizing, and the poetic license taken at that point feels earned even as it lets her not go into what could have been a lot of details about how things would play out that the audience neither need nor wants. The big twist is jaw-dropping for all that it's maybe been in plain sight despite how the vibe is very much anti-twist, and she shows as much skill turning a screw as she had deliberately not doing so.

Some folks are still probably going to opt out pretty quickly; Sriram is certainly not making any effort to include a big, mainstream audience here. It's good work, though, whether she intends to ever make movies for the more easily-upset or not.


Cong 21 Shi Ji an Quan Che Li (Escape from the 21st Century)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available) (Prime pre-order link)

Even folks who like and watch a lot of imported movies often tend to forget about the foreign film filter - that they often look better or classier because, with only so much demand for them outside their native territory, only the best or most mainstream cross borders in any meaningful way. China produces a ton of movies, though, both for theaters and its big streaming services, to entertain its population of 1.4 billion, but it's a rare thing for something as decidedly odd as Escape from the 21st Century to push its way into North America in even the tiny way it's managing.

It opens in the summer of 1999 on "Planet K" (which is basically Earth but pointedly not so, which I imagine gets you a little more leeway with the censors), introducing the audience to fat kid Paopao (Kang Qixuan), his dumb friend Wang Zha (Chen Yichen) with a "Hong Kong" wig for hair, and their buddy Wang Chengyong (Li Zhuozhao), who is super-popular, dating the gorgeous and equally popular Yang Yi (Ma Fanding), and will fight anybody who tries to get between them. That's how they wind up exposed to a weird chemical that allows them to take the places of with their future selves while their teenage bodies are unconscious - but in 2019, Paopao is now not only a hunk (Leon Lee Chenhao), but he's the one dating Yang Yi (Zhu Yanmanzi); Chengyong (Song Yang) is gangster working for a mysterious Boss (Wen Zhengrong); and Wang Zha (Zhang Ruoyun) is a photographer partnered with reporter Liu Lianzhi (Elane Zong Chuxi). Worse, they find out that this dystopian world where they're at odds with each other may be their fault, and they may even be putting their past lives at stake!

Story-wise, this movie is wobbly as heck; there's a good sort of time-travel farce set up in the idea that Paopao and Wang Zha are determine to keep the extremely jealous Chengyong from finding out Paopao and Yang Yi wound up together in both the present and future, but it doesn't really work, both because Yang Yi never really becomes enough of a distinct character of her own to make the answer interesting (as is wont to happen to girlfriends in movies about three or more male buddies) and because that piece is mostly a way to get these kids to stumble around and get into bigger trouble, which could have dire consequences for planet K, although it's the sort of "paradoxes just sort of make things blow up for reasons" sort of time travel trouble as much as anything really clever.

Still, that all leads up to an absolutely crazy, apocalyptic climax, with Bonnie Tyler singing "Holding Out for a Hero", missiles flying, characters sneezing themselves between 1999 and 2019 to try and keep a henchman from becoming too good at Street Fighter, and even more ridiculous things. Writer/director Li Yang throws the whole kitchen sink at the audience at hyperspeed with visual effects that do their level best to pull off every gonzo thing in his head, and he mostly does it without the audience getting lost. That doesn't mean one necessarily knows what's happening, but you can keep track of what the various characters are doing and what their individual stakes are, with nobody getting left behind.

Of course, the whole movie is cranked up to eleven even before this The present and the past have different aspect ratios, the film will become animated when live action is simply not sufficiently trippy for what's going on, and why settle for larger-than-life when one can be absurdly larger-than-life? It's exhausting at times and often both over-complicated and without room for nuance, but it's seldom boring, and it really helps that the teenage and adult actors do an excellent job of staying in sync rather than letting the two time periods get away from each other.

It's weird, maximalist filmmaking that was probably lucky to hit the festival circuit and gather up people to tell their friends they won't believe how nutty it is rather than try to cram that into a high-pressure worldwide release.

Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.04: "Love to Love You, Maybe", Sister Midnight, Alma & the Wolf, and Re-Animator

Shorts People!

I often talk about how BUFF is scheduled tight, and that means there's not really any Q&A after shorts programs any more, and barely have time for introductions, so I didn't get names. I think the two folks at the right did "Banjo", but, otherwise we just zipped through this. I don't even recall seeing a YouTube Q&A this year like in previous years (although my YouTube feeds and the social media that might point them to them aren't great at the moment).

Didn't get the name of the emcee, but that's Alma & the Wolf Michael Patrick Jann on the right and his son Lukas Jann, who acted in the film, in the center.

Kind of an odd Q&A, in some ways. There were the usual interesting bits about shooting in the cold, and how cool it was to work with Ethan Embry, and a really sweet finish about working with one's dad/son, even if Dad keeps having you murdered. But father Michael Patrick really got into what he was going for right from the start, and there was a bit of a different vibe to it than Stefan MacDonald-LaBelle the previous evening. MacDonald-LaBelle had the vibe of someone who made a movie for fun geeking out about it with friends, but Jann's a pro (working mostly in TV since Drop Dead Gorgeous in 1999), and most of the time, folks in his spot are kind of cagey about what they want you to think about their movie. He didn't exactly get out diagrams or anything, but he wanted it very clear that there was no ambiguity and he meant to do that and this is what he was going for, rather than the typical bit where what's important is how you react to it as an audience.

And I get why he might do that; as I get to in the review, it's the sort of film whose ending can be very unsatisfying for certain viewers, and he's maybe trying to nudge us toward "this ending works" before we put our ratings and reviews on [festival sponsor!] Letterboxd or spreading word-of-mouth. He was probably not consciously trying to affect that rather than just reading the room, seeing people not wholly satisfied and either wanting to defend his work or make sure people understood what he was trying to say, both kind of natural impulses.

Interesting trend, though, and I wonder whether there might just be some sort of evolution, in that folks who are apt to make a case for their tiny indies rather than just casually cast them out are going to drive more and better word-of-mouth in an environment where not much else is going to surface their tiny movies.

Hey, it's Barbara Crampton and Michael Gingold, having a post-film talk about Re-Animator, which looks great and is going to have a super-nice 4K disc in a month or two. I'm not necessarily sure that there's a whole lot to say about Re-Animator that a lot of the folks not seeing it for the first time haven't heard - it's 40 years old, various labels have released anniversary editions with special features and associated anniversary articles showing up in print and online every five years since 1995 or so, with many of the folks involved participating over that time. Crampton has embraced the role of horror's cool aunt since coming back from taking some time off from acting about fifteen years ago, so she's probably talked about it and other things she's a lot: She said "don't ask about Chopping Mall", but someone asked about Chopping Mall, and there was a kind of groan when some guy asked about shooting the big finale where she's lying naked on a on a gurney while there's chaos all around her. I kind of wonder if it might have landed better from a woman, although maybe there's less "what's that like, I can't imagine" coming from that direction.

That does kind of play into how she got the part because some other actress dropped out when her mother got a look at the script, and then she and Bruce Abbot read for the part with Jeffrey Combs, not realizing he'd already been cast and this was a chemistry read for him. She also talked about how Stuart Gordon, primarily a theater guy then, had them rehearse a lot more than was typical for any film, much less a horror flick, and was exacting, to the point where one actor said he'd probably play every character himself if it was possible. Made me wonder where his head was at 30 years later, when he maybe could have done a lot of that with animation, motion capture, and the like.


"SexySweat"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

Writer/director Luke Condzal pulls a bit of a trick here that I can't recall seeing very much before, where he starts the short with an effect you see a lot in shorts that play festivals like BUFF - roaring bass static that seems to shake the camera and blood-red lighting - to imply that Dr. Zabar is maybe primed to explode, but then having actor Len Bellezza play him as basically amiable and steady while Stephen Wattrus's Sandy Urethra (Condzal probably gave the character that name to see people write it like that in reviews, and who am I to deny him?) is playing it weird. It's like some sort of meta subversion of expected subversion when Zabar apparently knows how to keep that at bay and we don't get the "here's the real maniac" ending.

It does give a different energy to Sandy, aka "SexySweat", a disgraced gym owner, as he gets weird and twitchy and has a comically long monologue of drugs in his system turn into a sobbing breakdown. The audience is waiting for a twist that never actually comes and it pierces their cynicism even as things are darkly humorous.


"Catamaran"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

Pound for pound, the action demo reel with comedy might be the toughest sort of short to really nail. "Catamaran", for instance, is pretty decent - the action plays, and writer/director Joseph Rocco Plescia has good instincts for subverting a specific sort of action cliché (the folks who somehow miss entirely at relatively close range with automatic weapons) - but it doesn't give itself the maneuvering room or moments with a plot to actually sell any joke other than "the actors are playing to the balconies and the characters are kind of dumb". I look at the descriptions on both the festival website and IMDB, and that stuff isn't in the movie much or at all.

Which is not a big deal, unless the folks involved were looking to use it to demonstrate how well they can handle the parts of an action movie that aren't straight-up stunts and maybe winking at the audience. They do pretty well with that here - I kind of wonder how tricky shooting a lot of the film on and around a boat made choreography harder - well enough to make me interested in what they can do with a bit more in the way of resources.


"Banjo"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

Foreskin and circumcision-related jokes, even more than most dick jokes, is a weird sort of implied slapstick, all about dancing around some bit of physical comedy that the filmmakers may or may not use as a punchline. It's not entirely what the film runs on - it's central character Isaac (T.J. Sullinger) having weird paranoid escalation that's one half his college buddies (Alex Poletti & Hunter Torr) bringing him to a cabin so he can lose his virginity in the same place they did in high school and the way his adding foreskin to a dick joke earlier made everyone look askance and gets him good and keyed up when girlfriend Sarah (Claire Rice) arrives.

"Banjo" is the sort of thing that hits me in a blind spot because my brain is going to try and figure out what it is about repeating the word 'foreskin" that makes it a joke; the people being weird around it done well enough that I enjoyed the performance - director Cameron Poletti and the cast play it nicely frantic and eventually fully tip into sheer absurdity versus the bits that aren't quite jokes. I laughed a fair amount, but also spent time just recognizing the buttons they were trying to push.


"The Time Capsule"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

Hey! I sort of know that guy (John Gholson)! Well, we follow each other on social media and occasionally exchange words, but, like, the one time we were in the same city at the same time I didn't say anything!

Kind of one joke here: A group of friends go down memory lane as they unearth a time capsule with various things from their Generation X childhood (and, yes, I had a couple "hey, that's kind of cool" moments), only to be occasionally interrupted by the one guy whose contribution was a Wendy's Value Meal deciding to eat it, leading to everyone being grossed out. It's not a bad joke, though, and filmmaker Michael Charron does all right at sort of letting things low-key roll so the gross-out can surprise a bit.

They shift into weird-but-deadpan to get out of the loop, and it's kind of fun, although a lot of the home stretch is "are we setting up something zany or is everyone being chill the joke?", so to speak. The whole thing is kind of enjoyably shaggy, though, the sort of thing that has the energy of improv even if it really can't be, folks given characters to play off each other with.


"But He's Gay"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

I'm not saying if "But He's Gay" goes this route or not, but you see a movie like this at an underground film festival and you think "this is going to take a sharp turn into murder" while it might instead veer to pathos in a more straight-laced festival. That's doubly so when characters are like "red alert - who invited Maeve?", begging for things to get violent.

Neither Meagan Kimberly Smith's Maeve nor the rest of the folks at this house party are really weird enough, though. The dialog is all fairly anodyne and vague, and there's nothing terribly specific to latch onto with any of these characters, and the tension of Maeve being there is something we're told is uncomfortable more than feel. Then when things finally come to a head, it's awkward but not funny or painful enough to work as any kind of gut-punch. This just sort of happened and it's weird.

Maybe if I was more a part of these sorts of phone chains and dinner party groups, this would hit a bit more square, but the jokes seldom jump from the off-kilter but not that funny background.


"Erection and Destruction"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

Enjoyably goofy, this does a really nice job of doing "A leads to B leads to C leads to D" as things get more and more weird and frustrating before having someone pop off because, mentally, they're still back somewhere between A and B and this has all gotten out of hand. Filmmaker Eddie Mullins and his crew also do very well in terms of getting the audience to buy into this larger, kind of fantastical word even though it's clearly being made in the same three or four rooms with stuff the filmmakers have around the house.

That's not a bad thing, by the way; the way Mullis rotates through not just the same locations but camera placements to get the audience feeling like Chip (Joshua Burge) is cycling through similar problems even as things around him evolve, which is a neat way to keep the whole thing grounded in the depression that initiates the whole situation. In the middle of the absurdity and a connection to how this springs from something real, and how treating the biochemical part of depression doesn't actually make their situation better so much as giving them a higher ceiling, which I suspect must be a tremendous source of frustration even if the treatment doesn't have harsh side-effects. It's deadpan goofiness that connects directly to something in the viewers' brains.


"Handball"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

There's a fun sort of vibe to shorts like "Handball", in that a whole lot of the movie is very scripted indie-filmmaker talk, and it's not bad, really but you can feel how a lot of these films are calling cards: Writer/director Eli Beutel wants you to see how he's come up with an interesting situation and written entertaining dialogue about it; stars Ben Groh and Cassidy Rose Gyetvan want you to see how they handle it, getting their fingers on the pulses of these characters, playing off each other well, letting you see them in full and that they're sort of young and inexperienced and can't see how their desires to be happy are hurting their partner. They're all good, and it's a decent little film.

And then it turns out that they've taken their discussion to a neighborhood handball court where this older neighborhood guy Luigi is playing, kind of wiping the floor with some guy younger than him but maybe old enough to be Charley or Hazel's dad, eventually getting Charley to pay. And the thing about Luigi (who isn't listed on the IMDB page) is that if he's not some guy Beutel bumped into and decided to put in the movie and let him just be himself, then the actor is sure capturing that sort of guy. He wheezes and rambles in a way that feels unscripted, goes off on tangents, and his advice doesn't really have much to do with what Hazel and Charley were worried about, but there's something about him just wanting to play handball at this point in his eventful life that maybe says the kids should find what they want and commit to it or not worry so hard. He collapses the careful, methodical work that the filmmakers have been doing to that point.

Which is kind of the point, and neat because it both upends this sort of carefully-constructed conversation film while also very much being that sort of short film.


"There Will Be Womanly Wiles"

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

Sometimes these shorts will have a good oddball hook that they don't exactly fail, but doesn't necessarily hook the viewer Filmmaker Nicole Higgins and her co-star Will Madden seem to have some interesting takes on online sex-work, kink, virtual reality, and how weird it is for the real-life partner even though he tries to be good with it, but transgressive as it aims to be, this one vanishes from one's head just as soon is it's done and we're on to the next one.


"Make Me a Pizza"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

I wonder how often actual porn actually involved paying off the pizza delivery man with sex, or if it's just one of those things that's so easily mocked that the parody establishes the cliché. That's kind of where this one starts, but it continually finds ways to pull it in odd and surreal directions, with a ton of pure visual innuendo in between. Although it's not exactly PG-rated innuendo, much of the time; it gets earnestly sexy just as it gets weird.

But there's a sort of weird method to this film's madness. Woody Coyote (who also co-wrote) comes in looking goofy in his mullet and cut-off shorts, but his dopiness isn't really stupidity, and the puppy-dog earnestness works for him. It's also amusingly class-conscious without making it a thing and winking at the audience, just a rich woman trying to get her pizza for free even though she lives in a large mansion and maybe becoming a bit more aware because of the working-class guy who is showing solidarity with every person who contributes to the pie.

It gets much weirder - my notes say something about a "bizarre pizza god" - but the oddity of it plays.


"The Streetlight"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Love to Love You Maybe, laser DCP)

Surrealism doesn't usually veer into sweetness as opposed to comedy like it does in "The Streetlight", and that's a shame, because there's something genuinely delightful about moving through the oddity of the world that we seemingly take for granted and coming out in a better place. Writer/director doesn't ask star James Milord to either take the strange events for granted or do a double take when a streetlight starts communicating in subtitled hums, including pointing out a chainsaw that just happens to be sitting nearby. She just lets him play it straight and gives the audience time to laugh in somewhat befuddled fashion.

And then, somehow, it gets to a point where you can see Milford's petty crook has maybe become a better guy and that the talking streetlight has had a glimpse of the wider world, reminding us of how most of us don't see far behind our horizon. It's an oddly positive and heartfelt ending for something that could be very screwy.


Sister Midnight

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available

Stop-motion reanimation - is that a thing?

Being able to ask this question is a sign of just how fun the fun parts of the movie are, which carries through well enough that it doesn't really matter that there's not really a story here, but a chance to riff on various ideas. Sometimes that's good enough.

It starts off introducing the audience to Uma (Radhika Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak), a couple settling into Gopal's studio apartment in Delhi (though "studio" makes it sound much fancier than it is). It's no love match - neighbors say they married the village idiot to the village weirdo, and neither of them are particularly ready for married life: Uma has to get curmudgeonly neighbor Sheetal (Chhaya Radam) to teach her how to cook, while Gopal seems terrified of touching his wife. Both wind up working long hours as much as to avoid the awkwardness of being together as needing the money, but becoming a creature of the night may just wind up making Uma a different sort of creature of the night.

The best part is probably lead actress Radhika Apte, whose Uma is delightfully cranky from the start, veering from curious to frustrated and back as she discovers her weird nature and explores it. She's funny and abrasive but has the knack for bringing that across without making Uma truly cruel. The movie takes a bunch of different directions, but she always seems to be on the right wavelength. There's a fun vibe where writer/director Karan Kandhari initially lets the audience assume Uma is smart because she is rebellious and unsatisfied, but average and abrasive women can feel that way too, and Apte turns out to be in over her head much of the time, but in a way that connects with the audience even if they're running ahead of her.

The supernatural material emerges roughly midway through and it's kind of enjoyably screwy, like filmmaker Karan Kandhari found a fun twist on vampires but didn't really find a vampire story to tell. Which is okay; Uma being a vampire of sorts means she never fits in and is never going to fit in but still wants to live some sort of life and there's something very relatable about how she might not figure out what being different means rather than being swept up into some community that is different in the same way. Story-wise things sort of go around in circles for a while toward the end; it's all neat takes, fortunately, but you can sort of see Kandhari kind of trying to figure out what she's going to do with these ideas without arriving at a final destination.

It looks nice, though, or at least the look is effective: The design crew finds ways for these tight places to work as spaces, and accentuate how drab some situations are without sinking into a bland brown. The soundtrack will often take a surprising turn into something bluesy or otherwise incongruous with the setting in a way that helps smooth things along. And the animation that shows up is kind of terrific, unusual and dynamic but not really showy - these creatures are a nuisance to Uma, so Kandhari and company make sure that they look neat but don't get big beauty shots.

Sister Midnight is kind of all over the place, but there's no denying the vibe is good, and when Kandhari gives Apte something interesting to do, it doesn't really matter how well the scene connects to the rest of the movie.


Alma and the Wolf

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)


Note: There's really no way to say anything worth saying about Alma and the Wolf without getting into stuff about the ending, so consider this a SPOILER WARNING and keeps scrolling down to Re-Animator if that's a deal breaker.

Anyway… There are movies with unreliable narrators, and there are movies with so much "here's what really happens" as to make most of the movie feel like a waste of time. I'm not saying this movie is firmly in the second category, but it sure tilts that way, and in the most obnoxious way possible. There aren't many details that remain unmolested by the end, and I'm not sure how well I would think this was handled if the director hasn't been unusually forthcoming on what he was going for at the end rather than saying "obviously, every viewer will have their own interpretation."

As the film starts, Deputy Sheriff Ren Accord (Ethan Embry) is annoyed that a call to deal with Alma (Li Jun Li), an alcoholic young woman he knew in high school who claims that some sort of giant wolf killed her dog and then attacked her, might delay him seeing his son (Lukas Jann) pitch in the big game. It doesn't, quite, but a couple days later, when he's scheduled to have his son at home, he instead schedules a date with Alma. The teenager has a little dog too, and whatever attacked Alma soon makes off with the kid, leaving Ren and partner Murph (Jeremie Harris) to track them down, but things get very weird in the woods.

Is Alma and the Wolf good enough in the moment to survive what comes later? Maybe. It's got a number of good bits and as a result the movie it's pretending to be is entertaining while it lasts. Director Michael Patrick Jann and his crew capture the vibe of a small town that's starting to decay but is hard to escape, capturing good details without being too fussy. The practical effects are pretty darn decent, as is the screwy, jerry-rigged mythology of it, as far as that goes. He's good at changing up genres with half a wink.

At least, until it's time to start getting serious and into what the film is really about, and eventually revealing that most of what the audience saw before was distorted at best and outright lies in other points, and while I know that, in real life, people will sometimes construct elaborate narratives where they're the hero that don't have any basis in fact, something about Abby Miller's script or how the rest if the team stages it doesn't make the audience sit up in interest when the truth is revealed: There's effort put into building the fantasy but the reality is expected to be compelling just because it's more realistic, and characters have traits exchanged too wholesale to feel there's a thread connecting them. There are moments of the sort that make one wonder if somebody imagining an alternate history is really going to come up with neat supporting characters and banter in retrospect, which doesn't feel right when you get a good look at the truth of how it's being made up. The revelations have one great scene amid a bunch that are pretty mediocre.

It probably doesn't help that I don't spend enough time around drunks that I can't really react to Ethan Embry's performance (someone has to give an award-caliber performance as an alcoholic for me to really have it resonate as great). His character really only seems lived-in rather than broad a couple times for me, and most of the rest of the cast is just fine. Jeremie Harris might be a bit too good, making Murph into a character who feels consistent even when he probably should be discordant.

Alma and the Wolf wouldn't be a great movie if the twist wasn't so extreme as to break it into pieces - it's low-budget capable more than truly solid - but I suspect that I'm not the only viewer who really needs a movie to justify lying to me better than this manages.


Re-Animator

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, 4K laser DCP)
Where to stream it, or buy the disc at Amazon (though an updated edition is likely coming soon)

I don't really know enough about 1980s horror to know that Re-Animator is actually a cut above its contemporaries or just feels like it, but you can certainly see why it's getting a fancy 40th anniversary release with guests when you watch it now. It's gross and occasionally goofy, but also just really solid craft beyond how everything from a few decades ago looked nice because it was shot on film and lit well.

It's nothing fancy, in a lot of ways, really; it's the sort of movie where you can see the filmmakers holding back a bit until it's time to get to the good stuff, but all the jumps and nasty stuff is quite well-staged when it actually happens. Jeffrey Coombs (looking impossibly young) nails this sort of mad scientist just starting out, where the amorality and theatricality doesn't really have experience behind it yet, a hungry Frankenstein shorn of the noble veneer. It's a star-making role if you don't mind being this sort of B-movie star.

The practical work has a certain simplicity but the filmmakers know just what to hide and what to keep in shadow even as it gets weirder, and it unnerves in proper Lovecraft fashion even when it's doing spook-a-blast stuff. Gordon and his co-writers have an exceptionally keen idea of what their audience wants, and there's seldom a bit of their gooey, entertaining violence that doesn't also have a cruel edge to it. Relatedly, I weirdly appreciate how much the movie seems to loathe the pervy older man David Gale plays, in that his nasty attitude is going to keep you from leering along with him at the pretty naked girl, which is not something these movies always manage.

Stuart Gordon knew what he was doing here.

Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.03: Head Like a Hole and The Ugly Stepsister

Hey, it's Head Like a Hole director Stefan MacDonald-LaBelle with festival programmer Chris Hallock, both down from Canada but making the absolute minimum number of USA-Canada jokes given the situation here!

Mostly, SML talked about how his film was about his reaction to corporate work, and it's not exactly single once you've heard him talk but I must admit that I was getting a different vibe while watching the movie, because the movie was kind of hitting Mormon and evangelical tones with me, because the song didn't match (and maybe wasn't as discordant as intended with the basement not matching the house upstairs).

Also, I do kind of find myself scratching my head at folks who do movies like these and talk about how working in an office was so soul-sucking that they'd rather be back in the job where they occasionally had to dispose of dead animals. Maybe it doesn't speak well of me that in twenty years into a job that has of late evolved into being more abstract and the start-up I was hired by being absorbed by a huge company that I truly believe changed its name because Google auto completes to something involving a major scandal. It's not that horrifying! I'd actually like to be in the office rather than remote again!

Don't get me wrong, I benefit from the people who can't do it and make art instead, but always feel weird when I'm in an auditorium and everyone nods along with the filmmaker saying this.

Very different vibe for The Ugly Stepsister, which may be gross but has a more mainstream sensibility, and where you can hear different people being grossed out by different things!


Head Like a Hole

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)

This is probably just me, but as the grandchild of a carpenter and someone who carefully checks the meniscus when using a measuring cup, I've got to say, the measuring that is a guy's entire job in this movie is garbage. It drove me batty every time he just put the ruler next to the hole at an angle or measured from the very end. Just, like, run a chalk line vertically through the center of the hole and measure from the 1cm mark!

This is an insane rant, but it's also a good chunk of the movie, where unemployed Asher (Steve Kasan), living out of his car, takes a job (with included lodging) that involves measuring "the anomaly" - a hole in the basement wall of a bungalow whose family seems to have abandoned it - every hour from nine to five. The boss, Emerson (Jeff McDonald) is mercurial and a stickler for punctuality and specific work attire, although facility manager Sam (Eric B. Hansen) is friendly enough. It's 15mm every hour, though, and eventually, something's got to happen, right?

Is the poor measurement technique a silly thing to care about? Yes, but there's not a lot of distraction from it. The film has one of those neat high concepts that nevertheless requires a lot of effort to stretch out to 90 minutes, and the characters surrounding the protagonist Asher are by and large quirky in a way that's one-note rather than intriguing - Jeff McDonald's Emerson, in particular, is all weird affectation from the start and seems to appear and disappear entirely as it becomes necessary. The weirdness and repetition is meant to be numbing to Asher, obviously, but it's seldom able to overcome the "only location we can afford" setting to feel real, or at least satirically connected to anything that needs attacking. When it comes time for something to happen, you can feel the filmmakers giving it a big, obtrusive push.

I like Steve Kasan as Asher, though; he's grounded and awkward without being an exaggerated geek, and reacts to the weirdness around him without breaking it. The B&W coloring looks good, too, flattening things that could be distracting without ever looking self-conscious. And when it's finally time to go all-in on being a horror movie, the filmmakers get a lot out of a little; the finale is weird and underplayed in just the right way.

It's a truly underground film at the underground film festival, far from fancy and often more dull even than it means to be, but the vibe is right and it starts and ends well.


Den stygge stesøsteren (The Ugly Stepsister)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

It's no dis on the rest of the cast or what's going on around her to say that this film's other stepsister, Alma (Flo Fagerli), has the inside track on being my favorite supporting character of the year. Aside from being a good counterpoint to the rest of the characters, she's someone we can all relate to in these times, as she seldom has actual lines but always looks to be on the verge of shouting "Jesus Fucking Christ, what the hell is wrong with you people?"

It opens with the title character, Elvira (Lea Myren), a young lady whose round face, constant reading from Prince Julian's book of poetry, and curls that seem to shout "so last year" make her seem the ugly duckling, in a carriage with younger sister Alma and mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), to live with new stepfather Otto (Ralph Carlsson) and stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) in the capital of their fairy-tale kingdom. Agnes is tall, worldly, and pretty, and seems initially friendly if aloof, until Otto drops dead during their first meal as a family, and all four of the ladies are appalled to discover that the other family has no money. When a ball where Julian (Isac Calmroth) will choose a bride is announced for four months hence, Rebekka sees and opportunity, sending Elvira to "Dr. Esthétique" (Adam Lundgren) and a fancy finishing school to make sure she catches the prince's eye - and if not his, that some other wealthy noble or merchant. Seeing Elvira as a rival while Rebekka spends all her time and money on this plan rather than her father's funeral makes Agnes icier, while Elvria's initial teasing by the other girls isn't exactly bringing out the best in her.

As a whole, the movie is a delightfully nasty inversion of the Cinderella story because it doesn't so much do the simple "what if the heroines were really the villains and the villains were really the heroines?" shtick but instead acknowledges that they're all teenagers, for the most part, innocent and selfish in equal measure, and with plenty of bile for those who would treat these girls as commodities. The filmmakers have a real knack for not Shrek-ifying the fairy tale setting to make it seem basically like the present but with medieval accoutrements too much but highlighting where you can see the same forces at play. It's particularly notable that Elvira gets a look at who Julian is behind the pretty poetry but seems no less determined even after being scorned; it's a sadly human reaction that requires little explanation.

What makes this inversion particularly enjoyable is the performances of the two young actresses at the center. Lea Myren never loses touch with the naive girl who is excited about new and fancy things, always letting the audience see who she was under who she's become. Thea Sofie Loch Næss does the same in a different way; Agnes is cool from the start but hardens, but she's usually just short of a villain, showing enough grief for sympathy even when bitterness overwhelms it. Ane Dahl Torp and Flo Fagerli make the devil and angel on Elvira's shoulders believable purple, with Torp's Rebekka all pragmatic ambition and Fagerli's Alma developing a questioning intelligence as she tries to see a different way.

The filmmakers are not subtle; some of the parody is very direct and writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt is going to extend a gross-out bit for as long as she possibly can, though seldom past the point where the audience is less reacting to the weirdness of the gag than being subjected her sadism. I noped out of the eye stuff pretty quick, for example, but just to put my hand in front of my eyes and peek out a bit, because it was working to make a point, whereas some in the audience clearly had not heard the whole bit with the slippers, and others seemed to murmur uncomfortably at the constant tapeworm-assisted stomach growling on the soundtrack. The film is very good at pushing pitch-black comedy right up to the point where it would be no fun anymore.

That's the film's whole deal, really. The audience knows from about five minutes in that it's going to be about using Cinderella to talk about the unhealthy pressures put on teenage girls, and the filmmakers keep finding ways to pound it home without going too far astray or beating a dead horse, right up until it's time to say they're done with this nonsense. It's mean and gross, but also funny and surprisingly sympathetic to all the girls stuck in its vicious circle.

Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.02: Fréwaka

Every year when I write stuff from the festival up, I feel like I should be prefacing reviews with "I don't grade on a curve and a lot of what you see at an Underground festival is going to be kind of rough", or that for as much as I like the people and energy of the festival, a lot of this isn't exactly my thing.

Which is why I only saw one movie on Thursday, even though I probably could have done three. I've never seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and don't have nearly enough interest to see a movie about it (it's a blind spot, but I'm not particularly ashamed of my horror blind spots). At the other end of the night, sure, there are good reasons to start a movie at 10:30pm when I've got work then next day, but I'm going to need more convincing than I got that a new film from the makers of Relaxer is one of them.

What's that leave us with? Weird Irish stuff. And while I like weird Irish stuff more than most supernatural horror, well…


Fréwaka

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it

I like Irish folk horror more than most other ways for movies to be built around the supernatural, but I'll readily admit: I do maybe need my hand held a little bit. The English or American boyfriend that gets laughed at before his girlfriend explains the town's traditions exists in order to make not just international audiences in general but me, specifically, a little more able to digest the movie a little better. Fréwaka, on the other hand, is mostly shot in Irish, very much intended for a local audience that knows what's going on, so maybe there's a bit more work for the viewer to get to the decent story behind it.

It opens with two prologues: A young woman vanishing on her wedding day in 1973, and a middle-aged woman hanging herself in a cramped compartment in the present day, fifty-odd years later. Soon we're introduced to "Shoo" (Clare Monnelly), the second woman's daughter, and her pregnant Ukrainian bride-to-be Mila (Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya), as they come to clean her apartment, with Mila wanting to sort the ephemera carefully while Shoo is inclined to throw it away. Mila will soon be doing that on her own, as Shoo, a home-care nurse, has just been given a placement for a stroke victim who must be an Irish speaker. Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) lives in a large, foreboding house on the outskirts of a small town. She, it turns out, was the lady at the start, and what she experienced when missing has left her agoraphobic and paranoid ever since.

I like a lot of the material that writer/director Aislinn Clarke is working with here - the eerie imagery, the two women who have survived some sort of abuse and shut a lot out as a result, the Irish brusqueness that can stop a film from woolgathering and provides a quick laugh as folks get on with it. Clarke is careful not to present anything that can't be folks in small towns doing weird local rituals until very late in the game indeed, but there's a sort of logic to how the idea of Na Sídhe is presented. Peig describes a house under her house and the idea that the world is thin around the time of major life changes, and her memories of the other side are vague and metaphoric, like the human mind can't record it properly. Clarke's script lets Shoo come at Peig's fears of the supernatural skeptically but not condescendingly, talking about how counting objects and using symbols is how humans keep control of the world around them.

The two leads are strong as well; both Clare Monnelly and Bríd Ní Neachtain find individual ways to make their characters haunted and abrasive rather than serving as too-obvious mirrors of one another. They still spar even once they understand one another, though there's more sad self-awareness of what they have in common. The rest of the cast fills their roles in solid fashion, with Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya giving Mila some frustrated depth, and Olga Wehrly doing a terrific job of convincing the audience that there may indeed be something supernatural going on just by acting weird in a couple of scenes.

The movie kind of needs what Wehrly delivers at that point because it's never quite as scary as it maybe should be if you're not primed by knowing the mythology. It sort of trucks along as decent drama but seldom quite connects with the sweet spot where the supernatural and grounded expanding intersect. Whenever something eerie happens, one is as likely to shrug it off with a thought about how this might be an unreliable narrator situation, but that's quite understandable, given what this particular woman has gone through. Bits are good and well-staged, but seem to be treading water until the last act, when the sense of reality finally begins to shake.

And even then, it ends on final scenes that have me thinking okay, I guess, if you say so, Ireland: A striking image that certainly looks the Irish folk horror part, but doesn't exactly feel like the culmination of this particular story. I suspect it may work better if you know the material, and nothing wrong like that. It's an Irish movie for an Irish audience, and well-done enough that I expect it works really well for them.

Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.01: The Surfer and Muerte en la Playa

I don't imagine there were a lot of guests scheduled for BUFF, especially the first night where the schedule was Sunday-evening tight, but I wonder how many are backing out. Nicole & Kevin might be joking about how the audience chooses the awards at this festival which means there's still democracy here, but the stories about people getting arrested by ICE folks trying to meet quotas at Logan aren't good, and film festivals sure seem like something where someone might come in on a tourist visa only to have someone who might have looked the other way before decide that was working. Like, I might not risk it.

Bleh.

Still, it was a fun night where the studio movie with indie roots and the restoration shared a theme of rage leading to murder in a sunny beach community. If you want more, The Surfer director Lorcan Finnegan's debut feature, Without Name, is currently sitting on my shelf in a disc released by Yellow Veil, a partner label of Vinegar Syndrome, who are apparently behind the restoration/re-release of Muerte en la Playa. The weird horror community crosses over a lot!


The Surfer

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Huh, I don't think I've ever heard Julian McMahon's actual accent before (and maybe I haven't; if the Sydney-born actor is laying Perth on something thick). There's something kind of funny about how he's been playing [North] American folks for twenty-five years without really scanning as Australian while Nicolas Cage's character is supposedly Australian but they've got to spend a couple minutes claiming that a few years in California twenty years ago has him talking like Nic Cage.

Or maybe it was longer; whatever the length, he's back in Australia now, intending to take his son (Finn Little) to the beach where he surfed growing up, pointing out the childhood home that he is repurchasing from the crest of a wave, presuming he can put together the financing to beat a last-minute all-cash offer. Since then, though, the locals have been bullying any outsider who comes to the supposedly-public beach, led by Scott "Scally" Callahan (McMahon), a motivational speaker who whips the local men into a frenzy. As Cage's surfer continues to haunt the beach, various things start going wrong, and the only ally he's got is a bum living out of his car (Nic Cassim) who blames Scally and his crew for his son's death.

The Surfer is the sort of Nicolas Cage movie that makes you wonder what would have happened if Cage hadn't taken the role. it might have been more timid, or it might have been the same but more unnerving because we're not looking for him to Nic Cage it up. He's good at this, and good in this movie, but it's not necessarily going to take one by surprise; we can sort of track how Cage will play his escalation from seemingly reasonable everyman to deadpan sarcasm to manic violence from previous experience at this point.

I do like the compact setup, though, with director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Thomas Martin clearly establishing stakes and how the title character is trying to recapture things that are gone, in large part due to his own self-destructive action, and seeing up little bits of entitlement that keep him from being totally sympathetic and get him deeper and deeper in trouble. It's so keenly and carefully set out up front that what comes after is kind of drawn out as a result, stripping away everything he's rebuilt in maybe too finely granular a fashion, before a turn that maybe requires more or less of the movie, because there's a whole other basket of issues that demand a bit of attention after that, from the "localism" that seems to drive the folks on the beach to how Scally's guru status is likely more about giving people permission to be cruel than channeling aggression.

The film's got a look, though, a real way of getting across how Australia is unforgivingly beautiful (it is a place where dehydration can sneak up on you while you enjoy the sunshine and interesting plants and animals), and an eye for how the rich folks near this beach are kind of cosplaying at being hooligans enough for it to become real. The comic timing of each new bit of cruelty is impeccable, and the frustration and heatstroke making this guy feel even more unstuck in time is effective.

I hate to be a "cut 15 minutes" guy, especially since the grindhouse flicks that inspired this were often sort of padded themselves, but it does feel like there's a 90-minute version that attacks the viewer as ruthlessly as the opening does throughout rather than vamping because it's going to take a couple of days to wear this guy down. Maybe there's not quite a correct pace for this story, and you've just got to roll with how good many of the moments are.


Muerte en la Playa (Death on the Beach)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon or direct from Vinegar Syndrome

You never totally know about IMDB entries for filmmakers outside the English-speaking mainstream, but to watch Muerte en la Playa is to be surprised that this comes near the end of the career of Enrique Gómez Vadillo rather than the start; it's got the feel of a young filmmaker trying to get things out as an outsider rather than a veteran who has had a decade or so and plenty of opportunities to hone his craft. That's both good and bad; transgressive energy pushes the film through periods where there are awkward talent gaps between some of the folks involved.

It opens with a nastily sexual murder at a boarding school that will have it closed, sending student David (Andrés Bonfiglio) home to his wealthy mother Lorena (Sonia Infante) and her latest paramour, Paul (Rodolfo de Anda), who seems an honest and pleasant enough gigolo. Lorena figures this will be a good time to start teaching David the family business; although she is disappointed that he would rather spend time with a pair of male hippies and deaf-mute servant Ruffo (Antonio Eric) than the various "secretaries" she has recruited to show him the ropes and prove he's the sort of man she imagines him to be, even if Paul and the rest quickly suss out that he is gay. Eventually, he finds new friends Tony (Humberto Lobato) and Nubia (Angela Alaltriste), while Paul quietly makes sure that the unusual amount of dead bodies showing up near the estate aren't investigated too closely.

I am mildly curious about the sources of Vinegar Syndrome's restoration, because the very start and end of the movie look like they are sourced from VHS copies, priming the audience to see it as the sort of disreputable, shot-on-video underground cinema of the 1980s, except that it quickly shifts to 35mm film and the sort of pretty darn passable cinematography that comes from pointing the camera at people with good physiques in sunny locations and not messing up the framing or the lighting, even if the point of view often movies like someone who just got their first camcorder for Christmas. Much of the rest of the movie feels like they only had so much time and film, so there's not always a great take or two to when they got to the editing bay.

Or they might have been going for a certain level of camp from the start; there are lines that it's hard to imagine being written in sincere fashion, although the actors do a fair job of delivering them without winking or stumbling over just how the character is supposed to be feeling to say this. The film isn't delivering great performances, but everyone is a well-cast match of the sort of guy they're meant to be.

Mostly, the vibe is right; one can feel the movie riding the line between the characters who are cosmopolitan enough to accept David as gay and the ones who will view that with contempt or disappointment. Squint, and you can see the bodies piling up as Lorena refuses to see her son for what he is in more ways than one. Any sort of message you might try to get from the film might be mixed at best and the ending is a bloody mess, but you can't really argue that maybe there's an argument to make being in the closet less scary in circa 1991 Mexico.

Or maybe it's not that deep, but just a portion of sleaze just capable enough to be watchable while also being quite ridiculous.

Boston Underground Film Festival 2024.01: Immaculate and Fatal Termination

Understand, I'm not complaining that an underground film festival isn't somehow chaotic, but the first day of BUFF this year was oddly frictionless: I purchased my pass and reserved my movies via the Brattle's website on the first days they were available, so there was no "go into the crowded Brattle lobby to pick up your physical pass, back in line for the box office to get tickets for the movie, third line to be seated" scrum at the start; I wound up just being able to walk in and take a seat up front. Then there was like a whole hour between the end of one movie and the start of the next.

I gather that was because a Zoom Q&A with the director of Immaculate fell through, which is a bummer; that might have been interesting and there were folks who vocally liked it a lot more than I did. But, no worries, I've checked and it looks like most of the weekend will be the "barely time to clear out and re-seat" BUFF that we've come to know and love!


Immaculate

* * (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2024 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground FIlm Festival, laser DCP)

Immaculate is pretty much exactly the generic religious thriller that it looks like, the sort with a central idea that seems worth pondering but has probably been done a lot, and this take doesn't have a whole lot that makes it jump out. Any doubt as to how it's going to go put to rest about 15 minutes in when the nice-seeming priest says he studied biology before becoming a man of the cloth, and after that, it's just ornamentation, but not too much, just some red-veiled nuns and a little more blood than you'd maybe expect.

We get the first glimpse of those nuns in an opener that suggests something like this has happened before, and then see Cecelia (Sydney Sweeney) arrive in Rome, a young novice about to take her vows and work in a convent dedicated to housing nuns who are dealing with dementia. She doesn't speak much Italian, but is nevertheless devout, convinced God saved her from death in a frozen river for a reason. Fortunately, Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), who recruited her, is happy to translate, and while both the Mother Superior (Dora Romano) and the icy Sister Mary (Simona Tabasco) seem to disdain the pretty young American, the rebellious, somewhat cynical contemporary in the cell next to hers, Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) quickly becomes a fast friend. But when she is discovered to be pregnant despite an intact hymen…

Well, at that point it should be interesting, but not much actually happens for a long stretch, and then it's it seems kind of half-effort, what's the most obvious course a person could take without making it particularly sharp. It doesn't have to be this way, and I suspect that at some point it wasn't: The film is short enough and has enough potential hooks to interesting ideas to make me wonder if it was cut down from something longer and more interesting, that maybe had some lines drawn between this project and parishes like Cecelia's closing, or Gwen's comments about this being what men do, or even finding a sharp irony in how there's a visiting obstetrician and ultrasound machine because convents used to be where inconveniently-pregnant teenagers were stashed. All this subtext is there to be inferred, sure, but, with no details to dig into, no pointed barbs at institutions or traditions, and barely any acknowledgment that Cecelia has been violated. It's like the filmmakers decided to hold back lest they offend any Catholics, but this story isn't interesting unless you're willing to do that.

It doesn't help that Sydney Sweeney's Sister Cecelia isn't really anything, never seeming particularly lost or desperate enough to believe to make her journey interesting, so for much of the movie she functions more as a straight man to the more defined characters of the other young nuns played by SImona Tabasco and Benedetta Porcaroli, who at least have some personality. Álvaro Morte plays Tedeschi in a way that I suspect might look better on a second run through - an early scene or two that plays as friendly may come off as more "older man preying on naive young woman" later (or, perhaps, for those who know the signs better first-hand) - but comes across as bland here: We know the part that he's got to play, but it's not a particularly twisted or grand take on it.

It means the inevitable finale and its last note intended to shock are staged well enough but don't have much impact behind them, because who is Cecelia before all this? Writer Andrew Lobel, director Michael Mohan and the crew have enough of a mean streak that the squeamish will occasionally turn away from the screen, and they've got some nice locations to shoot at, but are more grim than inventive, and ultimately everything is so contained and abstracted that neither the grandeur of the plot nor the admittedly intense manner of shooting the finale, full of tight focus on Cecilia as she stumbles through the dark and pushes her way through a rebirth of her own, truly raises the tension.

Maybe there's an interesting director's cut somewhere that the studio was too timid to release, but who knows if we'll ever see it.


Chi se da feng bao (Fatal Termination)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2024 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground FIlm Festival, laser DCP)

If you've heard of Fatal Termination, it's likely because of one particular clip that's been shared online quite a bit, an absolutely unhinged bit that has a five-year-old girl dangled from the side of a moving vehicle by her hair while her mother tries to rescue her my smashing her way in through the windshield. That insane car stunt just looks even more horrifically irresponsible in a new 4K restoration., but it's certainly a good indication of what sort of lunacy awaits during the rest of the film.

Like a lot of Hong Kong crime movies, the plot is very messy, the better to give a bunch of people reason to fight. Here, a middle-eastern terrorist (Dan Mintz) is looking to smuggle weapons from the Philippines to Lebanon via the Hong Kong airport, and corrupt customs official Robin Wai Loong (Robin Shou Wan-Bo) immediately sees a chance to redirect them to local gangster Ko Mok Fu (Phillip Ko Fei) and demand ever-increasing bribes for their release, with employees "Small Devil" (Cheung Chi-Tak) and Billy (Cheung Kowk-Leung) doing the actual work on the ground. HKPD Detective Jimmy (Simon Yam Tat-Wah), reluctantly partnered with the more by-the-book Lau (Lau Dan) is already on it, so Wai opts to throw suspicion on another officer, Miu Chun Fan (Michael Miu Kiu-Wai), whose sister Moon (Moon Lee Choi-Fung) and brother-in-law John (Ray Lui Leung-Wai) also work at the airport, and former cop John has an old enmity with Ko.

It maybe takes the movie a while to really find the groove it's looking for, and not always successfully, as it barely has time to show that Moon Lee is in the movie while it reiterates how Jimmy is an intense rule-breaker while Lau is laid-back and they're sure they won't mesh two or three times. It's oddly careful about getting its pieces set up to be knocked over later while still seeming frantic and overheated. Perhaps the somewhat slow start is necessary to make sure the audience isn't completely lost when the double-crosses and frantic action piles on at an ever-increasing pace, but it's ultimately worth it as director Andrew Kam Yeung-Wa and writers Lee Man-Choi & Pang Chi-Ming burn what they've built down in short order.

The sheer recklessness of everyone involved leads to some eye-popping action - not just that infamous car stunt but a number of impressive chases and double-crosses, with action director Paul Wong Kwan having a darn good eye for how a very busy melee can work, and a few martial-arts bits that might make one wonder just what Moon did for a living before she settled down to be a wife/mother/security guard. Moon Lee is great as always - she gets the Jackie Chan "stand back and watch her work" treatment while others like Simon Yam (more hot-headed than the cool guy from Bullet in the Head, but still surprising for those used to the more buttoned-down authority figures that would dominate his later career) - and it's not hard to imagine an alternate world where she had Michelle Yeoh's career; both are dancers who translated their physical skills to action, but Lee's tomboy enthusiasm seemingly didn't give her the big roles that the more regal Yeoh got (even ignoring some horrific on-set injuries).

The finale, especially, is as operatic as anything John Woo has ever done in his heroic bloodshed movies, but unlike Woo's grand bullet ballets, this final fight is fueled by chaos, with a seemingly unlimited supply of weapons giving Ko, Wai, Moon, and John seemingly endless fuel to express their rage, and Jimmy not exactly the sort of cop who de-escalate things. By the end, there's really no goal but violence as opposed to it being the only way through to a better end, and the way people keep somehow surviving just means this might never end because there can't be any satisfaction.

It's a nasty, nihilistic little action movie that opts to be high-energy and bright, rather than all dark and artsy. You can put yourself above the simplistic story or be appalled at the child endangerment, wondering how nobody got killed or seriously injured, but also grudgingly accept that these guys are pretty good at turning violence into exhilarating entertainment.

BUFF 2022.05: "Inbetween Days", Neptune Frost, Medusa, and Hatching

Meet the team running things!

Once again, because this is the tightest-scheduled festival you will ever see and (presumably) because of covid concerns, there was no Q&A in the theater for the animation package, but if you've got questions, they put one online, and it's almost an hour long, so I imagine there's lots of good stuff in there.

I'll probably rush through this a bit, just because it's been three months and I'm trying to get this out before another festival swamps it. It should be noted that the feature component of the day was strong as heck; even if the three movies weren't always my exact thing, they were nifty genre movies with specific points of view, the sort that leave you excited to learn a little bit more about the situations that birthed them or which give you a chance to see something familiar from a somewhat different angle. Which is a big reason why I love genre film festivals - they often seem like an even more direct look at how different cultures are thinking of topics than the "classier" fests.

"Fulcrum"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

"Fulcrum" is one of those animated shorts that starts out as a loose sort of narrative only to see that subverted to the joy of playing with shapes fairly quickly, but to its credit, seldom entirely loses the plot - or at least, you can at least generally find the characters filmmaker Timothy David Orme started with somewhere in the rapidly-filling screen. It's not just a case of something being a jumping-off point.

The end result is impressive; Orme duplicates and spirals out in recognizable Fibonacci sequences and other forms of mathematical precision but avoids the feel of cutting and pasting, with transitions that feel like they're exploiting the leverage of the film's title. Nine minutes isn't a huge running time for an animated short, but it's enough time for others following this general pattern to get lost, which doesn't happen here.

"In the Water's Wake"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

A short that feels like it could be the beginning of something, although if it were, filmmaker Sarah Kennedy would likely have to draw things out more if she were looking to tell an entire story as opposed to snippets of it. What is here is a nifty little piece, though; good-looking and trippy in its explorations of a beach town that may only exist in the castaway hero's mind.

"Johnny Crow"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

Jesse Gouchey and Xstine Cook appear to have done something a little like this before, in terms of style, but it's a good one - live-action backgrounds in kind of run-down areas, mostly devoid of people, but the street art coming to life in response to the narration. It makes the moments when imagery breaks free even more powerful, and underlines the setting in interesting ways, a culture trying to thrive despite having to exist among that of its invaders.

It bolsters the story about a native man trying to find stability as he's in and out of prison, worrying about what his absence means for his family. There's a frustrating familiarity to it, but the filmmakers seem aware of this, balancing their frustration and anger without succumbing to resignation.

"PORT"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

Not a whole lot to say - it's two minutes and mostly has a neat look - but it's enough to say that I'd like to see what else director Andrew Lehman can do.

"Hakkori"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

I had the weirdest feeling while watching "Hakkori", pretty sure I'd seen it as part of a shorts package with either Fantasia or Nightstream last year, but every once in a while having a reaction like "well, I'd have remembered that. The fact that most film buffs I know can apparently identify every movie they've ever seen from a single frame in one of those puzzle games is utterly foreign to me.

I was probably not entirely experiencing this again for the first time, but it's a fun one to do that with, following some cute yokai as they take the offerings from the local humans and frolic, bring it back to the boss, and the like. It's cute, drawn in a traditional cel-based style, or something that resembles it, the creatures inserted into live-action backgrounds that have a hint of the artificial to them because one isn't often looking at them from this close. The characters are wonderfully designed, getting a lot of emotion out of minimal features and expression, moving naturally but not in an overly-rotoscoped manner.

What strikes me most on this viewing where I am maybe a bit less in full "look at that!" mode is the way filmmakers Aya Yamasaki and Jason Brown approach nature and the yokai - one and the same, really - allowing them to be sort of alien and amoral, devouring each other, merging, splitting, executing these processes which are too chaotic to inevitably lead to renewal but tend to do so, letting the audience identify with the main guys they follow and be nervous that the world doesn't necessarily work by the terms humans will try to impose on it. It's a lesson that doesn't exactly feel like the point of the film even if it is a large part of what it's saying.

"Pottero"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

This one's a nifty little short that also has creatures who are not quite the personification of something more basic but which aren't entirely something else. Here, Lindsey Martin tells the story of a woman who encounters a monster from her backwoods town said to kill all that encounter it, escapes, tries to make something of herself, but cannot entirely escape the gravity of home, and must confront it.

It's simple, and told with animation that is not exactly pretty as it is in some cases, but Martin's got an eye for using ugliness with purpose, and is able to crank up tension even as he is sometimes able to treat a situation casually or dismissively. It's a reminder that people in simple or rough situations aren't stupid or lacking self-awareness, even though even the people from that sort of place can fall into the traps of believing in monsters and dismissing those who do simultaneously.

"Posted No Hunting"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

Stop-motion found-footage horror? Sure, why not? Director Alisa Stern and co-writer Scott Ampleford get right into it here, establishing an immediately creepy vibe with how the night-vision look makes models that should be cute something else even before things start to go seriously wrong and they're called on to contribute some annoyed and panicked voice acting.

A lot of folks doing live-action features would like to be able to do what they manage with three minutes and figures that look like they should be silly more than scary.

"Everybody Goes to the Hospital"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

This one's a nightmare that will likely feel all too familiar - waiting what may be too long to take an ailing child to the hospital, where Little Mata is as confused as she is sick and the parents feel powerless. It probably plays for everyone.

Filmmaker Tiffany Kimmel does things that maybe other directors wouldn't. She never makes this hospital seem overly large and out of proportion to Little Mata; the world seems out of scale to kids anyway and this is not a special property of this time. Indeed, there's a sort of quiet acceptance and even trust in Lucia Hadley Wheeler's narration as the title character, like she's trembling but has been raised to listen and keep out of the adults' way. It can still seem an alien place, though, with exterior shots often depicting it as up in the air, with nothing nearby other than the winding road leading to it, like it exists outside the world Mata knows.

Visually, it's kind of a familiar sort of movie, characters not exactly stiff but having limited joints and papier-mache heads whose expressions are animated sparingly. It's the sort where the animators will often hold most of the image still so that they can zoom into a little hand movement or the like, boosting its import. It's a known technique but it works because one still tends to expect exaggeration with this medium, and that sort of focus becomes doubly effective.

"The Bum Family: Lilly goes to the Dogs"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

I must admit, I haven't exactly loved previous "Bum Family" shorts that have popped up in the BUFF comedy and animation packages - they've had the randomness of something a little kid was making up as they went along, but not necessarily the wild creativity, and they've juggled too many characters who are mostly interesting for their odd designs.

This one winds up working fairly well, though, probably in part because it by and large strips the group down to just Lilly and her pet Fluffle and lets them be chaos agents in a place that can probably use a little chaos like a dog show, with Lilly getting down on all fours and taking Fluffle's place while she leads a revolution among the dogs. It's a pair of absurdities that the filmmakers commit to utterly even as it gets more ridiculous by the second and makes one question where the whole thing started. It's madness, but madness that seems to know its target.

"Argus"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

An impressively well-executed bit of dystopia, as one can have a difficult time telling whether something literally reality-warping is going on to the employee who comes in to do a menial, senseless task or whether it's just the sort of distorting job that creates such a feeling that this all could be a flight of fancy or a science-fictional premise that is inherently madness-inducing if real.

It's impressively executed, a nift combination of shabby and futuristic, nicely blurring the line between existential and science-fictional horror.

"O, What Rice! O, What Beans!"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

Not really my thing, I've got to admit, as much as I like rice and beans myself. It's a rough thing to say about a short where the production appears to mostly be a one-man show, but its idiosyncratic style often works against it. The joke is that the main character is obsessive over something kind of bland and unexciting, and that mania being incongruous is where the comedy comes from, but if the whole world is weird and kind of grotesque, it doesn't work nearly as well, and neither does the gross-out humor.

"Pancake Panic!"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022: Inbetween Days, digital)

I've got enough notes for "Pancake Panic!" in my festival notebook to make some features blush; it's as tightly-plotted and cleverly-assembled a story as you'll find anywhere, and it's not exactly something with an elaborate look or even ten minutes long. Filmmaker David Filmore leans on deadpan humor so that the brutal slapstick can surprise, and pulls together seemingly random threads in really impressive fashion.

Neptune Frost

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022, DCP)

Afrofuturism of this variety does not give a shit about whether my white North American self understands it, and that's kind of great. Even though there are a lot of Americans involved with this production, including writer/co-director Saul Williams, it feels like it comes from a different tradition with different assumed lines between reality and fantasy, let alone different genres, and no particular interest to explain things that a non-Rwandan audience might not get.

In a sense, that spark of discovery, whether it be an outsider learning a new culture or that culture seeing itself in a way they seldom had before, is the film's draw. The science fiction and adventure of it is kind of fuzzy and familiar - a government-corporate alliance oppressing the poor to exploit a vital resource and chosen ones rising to inspire a revolt, with "hacking" as a sort of magic. But what a spark, with a charismatic cast who all seem to have something defiant not far from the surface, computer and surveillance centers that opt for feeling like an art installation over a sleek but boring realism, a semi-magical sex change that manages to feel both like a trans person finding her true self and a man shedding his old life and ultimately feels like an act of evolution, and a willingness to dip into poetry and music when emotion charges the characters, but without it feeling like a not-literal representation.

At times, Neptune Frost seems to be trying to evolve new language, frantically trying to marry African culture to the technological world powered by its resources, and if it sometimes seems to be grasping, that's fine, because the discovery is exciting. It's a movie where I'm genuinely excited to dive into the eventual Blu-ray to see what I find on a second and third pass now that my mind is a little more attuned to whatever wavelength Williams and co-director/cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman were on.

Medusa

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022, DCP)

The politics of other countries can get flattened when you only hear of them occasionally, and such it has been for Brazil where I'm concerned (and I suspect for many other Americans) - it's easy to associate the whole country with what its leaders are doing as opposed to getting down into the guts of what people are dealing with. It's different all over, but a lot of the forces are the same, just interacting a bit differently.

So this film presents Michele (Lara Tremouroux) and Mariana (Mariana Oliveira), two best friends in their twenties who have been part of an evangelical church for some time, and often serve as the pretty faces it presents to the world. That cheery facade hides nightly acts of violence against sinners and, worse, those who would leave the church. One of these raids gets them in over their heads, with Mariana winding up scarred, and while she's supposed to be mentoring a new, mousy member of the group, she becomes obsessed with a woman who escaped the cult only to possibly wind up burned worse afterward, taking a job as a nurse at the coma center where she suspects this woman is a patient.

There's a lot going on - satire of the hypocritically pious chasing power and using the sex appeal to pull others in despite a fair amount of talk about virginal purity, a mystery, romance and jockeying for position. Amid all of that, I suspect that most viewers will respond to Mariana's honest, well-earned growth; there's intelligence and empathy to her which actress Mariana Oliveira seems to enjoy teasing out, and something hopeful about how someone can seem to slide out of a group like this as easily as they can slide in. It's all the better because few of these young characters seem cheaply brainwashed or knowingly hypocritical - "evangelical influencer" is a goofy character description but makes sense when you meet her. The neon lighting and pulsing beat of the soundtrack is a terrific set of choices, too; the characters' youth and wiring to be regular young women is never far off and never treated as weird or paradoxical.

It's an energetic romp through the heads of young evangelicals that initially benefits big time from treating them as complicated young adults and thus going in directions that will be unexpected given their usual portrayal. The finale is, admittedly, kind of all over the place, right on the border of doing the worst thing a movie with people shouting about demons despite being otherwise grounded can do. It earns its way there, though, offering more to chew on than just plot contrivances.

Pahanhautoja (Hatching)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022, DCP)

Director Hanna Bergholm and co-writer Ilja Rautsi seem to have ideas for two fine horror movies with enough overlapping material that it probably made sense to combine the two, and if that's the case, they do so well enough that it would be hard to disentangle them. The two halves don't quite mesh, though - what starts out as a story about a kid who tries to protect a monster from her ingratiating but harsh mother but loses control when it tries too hard to protect her is a great, darkly funny scary story for kids, but where it ends seems to be heading in the other direction.

This works in large part because the young actress at the center, Siiri Solalinna, is great at playing a kid who is terrified of her own emotions, and Hatching is at its absolute best when it plays into that. In those moments, it's creating a constant relatable knot in the belly, not just because everyone who has been Tinja's age recognizes the feeling, but because of how those emotions are well worth being scared of, especially when directed at those Tinja knows meant no harm and don't deserve the horrible things her monster will do to them. It's the sort of thing that can drive a girl mad.

When the movie gets away from that in the last act... Well, there's an argument that it still makes sense, that dark sides are like this, but it still sort of "just" becomes a monster hunt and takes the most generic horror-movie way out, down to the last-minute twist that, whoops, the story has no time to deal with!

That said, there's a lot of other good stuff in here, darkly funny bits executed with tremendous precision, easy mommy-blogger jokes that get sharper as the movie goes on (you can feel the filmmakers honing their knives), and a cruel irony in how both of this family's kids physically resemble one parent but are much more like the other inside, even if those parents are blind to it. Bergholm has her eyes on the goal and a lot of good bits that fit into it, and still makes a cutting, smart, funny monster movie.