Fantasia 2022.04: Science Fiction Shorts, "Molting", The Girl from the Other Side, Next Door, "Bug Bites", and Moloch

Hello, day that always screws the posting schedule up! You've come early this year.

Sunday was a day for guests, and though there's usually a pretty good line-up at the shorts programs, it was just Paul Arion of "Fieldtrip" this year, although he had some entertaining stuff to talk about, since his 20-minute film was in the works for five years, some of it likely pandemic-related delays, but also because they spent a huge chunk of time building the primary costume (a highly-believable environmental suit) in his co-director's living room. The original intent in making it was "special effects but not visual effects", since they knew how much time that would add, although they wound up adding graphics for the characters' heads-up displays and the like. He also talked about shooting in some of those gorgeously stark Icelandic landscapes and how a full crew has to go through a rigorous permitting process, a small project like them can often "just trespass". This included the site of an actual plane crash that was apparently never properly… Well, I don't know, is it standard procedure to have people go in, break it up, and cart everything away, or is it possibly less impactful to just leave it there than to drive a bunch of heavy equipment into the area?

Next up, more animation, as Axis programmer Rupert Bottenberg introduced the pairing of The Girl from the Other Side with its directors Yutaro Kubo & Satomi Maiya, also joined by Katsushi Bowda, the director of "Molting", the short film that played ahead of it. They found it amusing that the two films had been programmed as a pair months ago, and in that time Bowda would wind up on a project with WIT Studio, who produced both short and feature versions of Other Side, so they got together and met there prior to coming to Montreal.

This was an introduction rather than a Q&A, as I gather things were scheduled a bit tight and both brought mini posters and other souvenirs to autograph after the presentation. I didn't get in that line because I don't need more stuff that's somehow got to get packed in a way that it won't be damaged on the way home, which is a bummer, because I'd have liked to get in close for a shot of one of the stop-motion models Bowda brought with him.

The guest for Next Door was Yeom Ji-ho, who made it as his senior project in film school, as apparently the film board has a program where top students can submit proposals and, with a lot of things being taken into consideration, the top one gets the resources for a small feature. They seem to have made a pretty decent choice here; it's pretty solid work. Kind of amusing to see someone asking for words of inspiration, though - he made it through enough screening that this wasn't exactly winning the lottery, but he's still at the start of things.

And, finally, we have Mitch excited to see Moloch director Nico Van den Brink, who has had shorts in Small Gauge Trauma a few times, including one that is in development for him to remake with Sam Raimi and James Wan producing. They'd been hoping to have him in person for a while, and what better time than this? He had some interesting talk about how the folk legend in the film was invented for it, but that there were similar ones, despite the fact that passing down these sorts of folk tales had fallen out of favor for some time in the Netherlands. He also mentioned that he's got projects in development both in America and back home, and it's entirely possible he'll have time to shoot and finish another Dutch film in the time those projects the big American producers are attached to make it into production.

So, long day that gave the camera some work. Today's plans are My Small Land, Next Exit, and Dark Nature. I could fit the Jean Rollin documentary in there, I suppose, but I'm not big on artist docs in general and he's not someone I have any particular attachment to. The Roundup with Ma Dong-seok is fun; apparently it didn't make it to Montreal during its North American run a month or two ago. But, then, it'll likely already be tomorrow when this gets published, because 10 shorts adds to the writing time disproportionately.

"The Gift"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)

"The Gift" is quick and basic enough to not really leave much time for "wait, what about–" when you put it in this sort of short film block. It starts with a father and son burying the latter's hamster, though a reverse shot reveals some sort of spaceship hanging in the sky behind them. Those have been around for a couple of years, and nobody really knows why. There's hints of something unexpected, but the film ends on the sort of ironic twist where it's hard to be sure.

It's not bad, pretty good for something done by folks whose IMDB entries suggest hobbyists, with quality effects work and not-bad-at-all direction.

"S.O.S."

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)

"S.O.S." is the sort of French comedy that often throws Americans, something kind of mean and dark underneath a thick layer of whimsy. It features a couple (Jacques Bouanich & Anne Benoît) who manage a seaside apartment building, with the UFO-enthusiast husband actually having sent a message to aliens, seeking placement as a climate refugee, though the representative and answer may not be what they expected.

What's clever, and sometimes a tricky thing to reconcile, is that the concept is something to be taken seriously and that there's a (sometimes literally) cutting set of observations being made about bourgeois hypocrisy but the film is such a bunch of pastel colors, with even the bad things in pleasing compositions. Filmmaker Sarah Hafner will also take the chance to do any bit of amusing slapstick that presents itself; even if it's jarring and an interruption. I really enjoy and like what she's doing here in a lot of cases, like the way she'll use piles of plastic water bottles big enough to seem obscene without making the image of pollution ugly; it's over-the-top enough to check off "looks harmless but we know it isn't". Like a lot in this mode, though, it's full of distractions and kind of exhausting as it arrives at its point.

"Heartless"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)

"Heartless" has one of those Twilight Zone scenarios that initially makes one wonder how you even get to the starting point - Haukur Björgvinsson posits a place where everyone's romantic relationships are reassigned every seven years, with those who resist being sent to the massive Egg that hovers ominously near the town, where their attachments will presumably be purged over the cycle. For Gunnar (Jóhann Kristófer Stefánsson) and Anna (Bríet Elfar), in their first relationship, the upcoming lottery is as fraught as might be expected.

Interestingly, Björgvinsson doesn't do the "you don't want to go back to how things were before, with society tying people to abusive partners, do you?" thing at all, which is an interesting choice, though this relatively short film could perhaps use that sort of an injection of reasons to consider this relationship lottery from a perspective other than Gunnar's anguish. On the other hand, Jóhann Kristófer Stefánsson does give good anguish, his adoration of Anna seeming to fill him almost too bursting without seeming overplayed, powerful enough that it's very easy to assume that Anna feels the same, although I suspect that a second viewing will show Bríet Elfar playing Anna more sad for how this guy she genuinely likes is about to get absolutely crushed.

It's a rich premise, and while I'm not sure that Björgvinsson has done the best possible job of extracting a story that explores it while also standing alone, but it's still not bad at all.

"Keep/Delete"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)

Has it really been long enough that someone could possibly be reinventing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind without knowing that they're doing it? Not that the idea was entirely original then or that Kryzz Gautier is the first to do so since, and her take on it is interesting for its differences - Kaari (Lorena Jorge) & Grace (Wilder Yari) not being heterosexual makes the relationship dynamics different, and the clean aesthetic implying hints at it perhaps being the tested, regulated future of that movie's world - its "technically, this is brain damage" line is legal boilerplate. It's got a couple of nice stars in Jorge and Yari, and Gautier avoids giving the audience too close a look at their memories so that they can communicate what they've lost and how themselves.

It has another one of those set-ups whose arbitrariness makes itself a little too obviously known - why four memories that can only be accessed with permission? It would be one thing if the nature of those memories seemed to have some purpose, but there's not enough time or detail for that. This also seems to be the least interesting portion of the story, compared to either coming to the decision to forget or trying to live without a huge chunk of one's life.

"Struck"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)

At three minutes long, it's almost absurd to give "Struck" a rating or even a review, and it's even weirder to see Hulu and 20th Century Studios logos on it. What are they going to do with it? Is it the result of some sort of contest to create a pitch reel for a potential film or series?

Although, if that's what it is, it's one I'd be curious about. Writer/director Nichola Wong establishes just enough of characters and premises and teases more in those three minutes to put a lot of series that spend a 90-minute pilot episode to get the audience to the basic premise that they knew from reading the show's listing to shame. It looks pretty nice, too. Which makes it an odd duck - there isn't much of it and it doesn't feel complete at all, but it's still impressively efficient storytelling.

"Till"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)

"Till" has a fascinatingly dystopian premise, in which the title character (Ulrich Matthes), determined to no longer be sufficiently useful to society, is expected to be replaced with an artificial intelligence, one which presumably executes using his brain as a platform. It might, in some ways, be a better version of him, although in others not so, especially since most of his memories will be lost; in this future, they're not so big on feeding an algorithm uncurated data as we are now.

Filmmaker Marc Philip Ginolas has Matthes and Till approach the idea with a sort of melancholy, back up at the idea of being considered less useful and not wanting to die, but perhaps not entirely in disagreement, as if he on some level understands he's been wasting his life of late and it may be too far gone to turn around. There's a bit or two in here about him trying to preserve something of it, in analog human fashion, which gives the film a bit of plot to keep things moving forward and helps set the mid-twentieth-century-bureaucracy tone (I kind of wonder how many people involved with this film remember the divided Germany and draw from it), but ultimately lets it settle back down into the intriguing mix of whether this is a situation that calls for rebellion or well-negotiated acceptance.

"Anima Possession"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)

"Anima Possession" proves surprisingly fascinating because it goes to the expected places for a short film about a woman (Hedwig Tam Sin-Yin) unsatisfied with her robot lover (Fish Liew Chi-Yu) despite "Tammy" being built and configured to her exact specifications. Maybe, it's suggested, what you really want is a girlfriend without a control collar - which sounds good until another robot girl shows up, looking for an arm to replace the one removed because her dead master had a disability fetish.

Though filmmaker Wai Mo Chan seems to be a new face, there are other names in the credits who may be familiar to fans of Hong Kong cinema even beyond stars Tam and Liew, and they seem to be having fun doing something where the reception in China doesn't matter in the sort of independent short that's clearly low-budget but kind of well-appointed because the professionals involved know their stuff. It's transparently queer and fairly openly admits that the only resolution is to become more so. It also has fun with its sci-fi bits as characterization, as Tammy's complaints about the "add-ons" that her (former) Master has installed not being things she wanted slyly reflects her own frustration at not knowing how to function the way people expect her to herself (welcome to humanity!), and the way that the robots communicate non-verbally is both logical and symbolic of a deeper connection.

This is good enough for me to wonder about where its director fits into Hong Kong cinema going forward - can someone new pull off the same sort of "one in Mandarin for them, one in Cantonese for me" the way someone established like Fruit Chan or Pang Ho-Cheug does (or, in the latter case, did before imploding his career)? Maybe not, but at least they did come up with this.

"Fieldtrip"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)

There's always one short in these programs where, even without being told, it's clear that some of the folks involved are not students or hobbyists but professionals who, even if they aren't sneaking equipment and/or processor cycles from their day jobs, certainly know how to get things done. In this package, that one's "Fieldtrip", which follows a military contractor whose ship home crashes upon takeoff for home and the deluxe retirement package they've been working for. The sole survivor, with a damaged suit, must get to a resupply base before considering his next move - no small feet considering they've just finished mining the planet.

Savvy viewers will immediately guess what "retirement" actually means in this context, and they're not exactly wrong, but filmmakers Paul Arion and Soren Bendt seem to be fan enough of the genre to set things up so that this doesn't really matter - whether you get there ahead of "Q" (Laurentieu Ciucur) or after, or if Arion & Bendt have something different in store, can wait while their resourceful engineer faces off with nifty variations on the classic hostile-planet bits, niftily staged in such a way that they also tell the viewer just enough about how things work to set up a terrific little ending.

"Molting"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Auditorium des Diplõmés de la SGWU (Fantasia Festival: Axis, digital)

A nifty little short about a protean mass making its way through a museum or archive, absorbing what it finds, forming a cocoon, and emerging changed, over and over again, many transformations seemingly necessary to get to the next step, frightening and scaring the automata tending the place, on the way to… what?

It's a question that's sort of easy to overlook because Katsushi Bowda's animation is so delightful, 15 minutes of stop motion where something familiar can persist even though the most radical changes of the strange invader. One of the delights of this form of animation is that it frequently doesn't mind showing its gears and mechanisms on the one hand while being impressively smooth in the same set of frames, and "Molting" hits the right balance of immersing the viewer and dazzling them at the technique throughout.

As to what Bowda is trying to communicate, I see a story about treating education as a scavenger hunt - you may only be trying to learn what you need for some purpose, getting through the numbered doors, but that approach is destructive and leaves nothing new in its wake. Ultimately, knowledge is transformative, and can't help but leave its user changed - whether they're looking for it to or not.

Totsukuni no shôjo (The Girl from the Other Side '22)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Auditorium des Diplõmés de la SGWU (Fantasia Festival: Axis, DCP)

I was quite fond of the short-film version of this previously made by the same creators, and while expanding it into a feature inevitably causes some dilution, this still retains the core of what made the original so appealing: A monster who still retains some vestige of his soul, a young girl more afraid of loneliness than anything else, and the look of a storybook which only enhanced the feel of a dark fairy tale.

That girl is Shiva (voice of Rie Takahashi), somehow still alive after a slaughter on the border between Inside and Outside, found by a nameless Outsider that she eventually calls Sensei (voice of Jun Fukuyama). The pair bond, though it would be dangerous for them to touch despite Sensei assuring her that he is different from the others and cannot spread the Curse. They are happy with each other, the doting Sensei finding it easy to remember some lost, forgotten humanity by caring for the girl, but borderlands are full of dangers from all sides.

It's the style which makes the biggest, most consistent impression, even when filling the screen with detail, it's the sort of clean look that one often finds as an illustration in children's books, clean with striking contrasts between light and dark, but not so much that it's something abstract. The filmmakers play around with the visuals a bit, but it all keys off the charming core with friendly villages and forests paired with the contrast between a sweet girl whose boots imply mischief and a horned creature whose silhouette is nevertheless dignified. The animation is sometimes allowed to be a little fuzzy, but that just adds to the handmade feel of it.

Attempts to expand the story are a little iffier: World-building involving human treachery and the difference between "Insider" and "Outsider" fills in a few blanks but also makes it feel like there are loose ends. The voice acting is solid, though; while the short did without dialogue, Fukuyama and Takahashi fairly quickly become the voices that the characters have in my memory of the first one, and having the characters speak doesn't reduce a story previously told visually to words and details now that the option is available.

I suspect that this is still a fairly condensed version of the original manga (it clocks in at a tight 70 minutes), but it certainly captures the essence of this sort of fairy tale without much waste.

Next Door '22

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Auditorium des Diplõmés de la SGWU (Fantasia Festival, DCP)

It maybe gets a little extra credit in my mind for being a student film, albeit one given some extra funding as part of a special program, but Next Door hits an impressive balance between being a clever setup and featuring people who are only clever to a believable level. So often folks are secretly geniuses or it's all a master plan, but filmmaker Yeom Ji-ho makes this an impressively honest mess his first time out.

It's not the first attempt for Chan-woo (Oh Dong-min), who has been spending five years trying to pass the entrance exam to the police academy, now down to his last few won to the point where he's asking a friend to spot him the $10 processing fee. Sure, Song-ho says, but come to dinner with the guys tonight. Chan-woo agrees, but there's also drinking, and he really can't hold his liquor. He wakes up the next morning in the apartment of neighbor Ko-hyun (Choi Hee-jin), subject of many noise complaints, a bruise on his forehead, and a body on the floor in a pool of blood. As circumstances conspire to keep him in there, he'll have to get a head start on using what he's been studying to figure out what happened and how not to take the fall.

The film is perhaps at its best in the first half, when its would-be detective backs himself into a series of corners and is puzzling his way out on his own, fighting his self-doubt as much as the traps he finds himself in. Yeom writes Chan-woo as the sort of guy who makes up bad raps to psych himself up and is still enough in student mode that it's easy to see him thinking aloud to work something out, and Oh Dong-min takes full advantage, making Chan-woo dorky but endearing, an average-level puzzle solver rather than someone so drawn to the intricacies that you worry there might be something wrong in his head.

More characters get added to the mix eventually - otherwise there will come a point where he can just walk out of the room and be done with it - and it turns out that having more concrete adversaries doesn't necessarily make for more compelling conflict, especially in a late coming turn that will likely make the audience wonder if Chan-woo or Ko-hyun has ever watched a crime movie before. Even then, though, I am kind of intrigued by some of what Yeom plays with, particularly the idea of how you reinvent the femme fatale for an era built for Instagram cuties and crypto schemes. Choi Hee-jin plays it with an intriguing lack of subtlety that feels like it could either be clumsy or her knowing just how much effort a girl with her looks needs to expend when dealing with guys as awkward as Chan-woo. Maybe not quite there, but it's something to build on.

The finale gets even messier, maybe not quite hitting the right balance between an escape and an implosion as everything goes to hell, but the film has built up enough goodwill by this point to have momentum to get across the finish line. It's strong for a debut, enough so to make one curious where Yeom goes next with this experience under his belt.

"Bug Bites"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Auditorium des Diplõmés de la SGWU (Fantasia Festival, DCP)

I feel like I could almost repeat my brief review of the director's previous short verbatim; this, too, is a sort of punchline short that ends on a neat bit of practical effects. I suspect it's especially satisfying for film and horror fans who are prone to get into the weeds a bit and know of what they speak: As unabashedly modern as the setting is, director Daniel DelPurgatorio and cinematographer O'Connor Hartnett certainly make the effort to make it look like it's shot on 16mm or cheap 35mm stock, and the way it's staged and acted - sort of like a giallo where intonation is kind of weird because everyone presumes they're going to be dubbed by someone whose delivery winds up being kind of odd itself - makes it feel like the sort of short where they just showed up at someone's apartment to shoot, but the finale says they clearly did not.

I don't know that it totally handles the swing between unnervingly creepy and "wait, no, really, what the heck?" - there's a gag bridging those tones that just keeps going well past the point of being funny because DelPurgatorio and co-writer Anthony R. Williams apparently couldn't find a punchline - but it still winds up the sort of thing that grabs a very specific spot at the intersection of "knows their filmmaking" and "mind goes to weird places".

Moloch

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2022 in Auditorium des Diplõmés de la SGWU (Fantasia Festival, DCP)

Though I'm one with the tendency to overthink horror most of the time - I like well-thought-out mechanisms and monsters that represent things - I do kind of find myself appreciating that to the extent Moloch is that, it's sort of secondary. Director Nico van den Brink and co-writer Daan Bakker have made a movie that rings true enough for people to project their own fears onto it, but is mostly just a good time that's going to involve something supernatural and knives.

After all, it's already happened at least once, as a flashback features a ton of blood seeping into the basement pantry where a young girl is giving the mouse that lives there a treat. Thirty years later, Betriek (Sallie Harmsen) has a little girl of her own, Hanna (Noor van der Velden), a busybody mother (Anneke Blok) starting to have some health issues, and her father Reol (Fred Goessens) all living in the same family home. It's near a swamp where a local eccentric has suddenly died, somewhat ironically - there's an archaeological team there unearthing "bog bodies", naturally mummified corpses in extraordinary condition despite being centuries old. She winds up mediating between the locals and the scholars a bit, as her former career as a touring violinist means she's got the best English and the team's head, Jonas (Alexandre Willaume), doesn't speak Dutch. They hit it off, though Jonas finds it hard to believe the locals see Betriek and her family as more cursed than catch - that is, until a member of his team with no history of violence attacks the family in their home, and both the local legend of Feike and what they're unearthing suggests there may be something bigger afoot.

The filmmakers kick things off with a big, delightful piece of haunted-house creepiness - the opening shot of this modest house is perfectly dark and foggy with music that leaves no doubt that this is a bad place even before the walls start gushing blood - so it's kind of impressive just how quickly and easily they settle back into something mostly comfortable. As much as the intrigue about the strange deaths and how they may connect to the paranormal or an ancient legend is never far from the forefront, the film seems to be fueled by the chemistry between Sallie Harmsen and Alexandre Willaume more than anything else. They have these smart folks light up around each other with the mystery feeling like a mutual interest rather than an excuse to pair them.

The mystery and mythology that the filmmakers build is, I suppose, as close to a fair-play mystery as something involving ancient spirits and a pagan god can be, although it may wind up a little more opaque than necessary by the end: Bakker and van den Brink lay all the pieces out plainly enough but there's no really good point for a detective to point out what was a red herring and explain what was really happening, so they skip it. There's a bit of wondering what's being accomplished by all of this at the end and a sense that maybe the mythology fits together rather loosely, but never enough to actually stop things dead. This isn't really a murder mystery, after all, even if it maps to that genre surprisingly well.

No, it's the story of a curse, and van den Brink proves quite good at taking the seemingly innocuous and twisting into dangerous territory before one is even quite aware what has happened, playing the genre elements mostly dead-straight despite how light things often are between Betriek and Jonas. There's sometimes shocking amounts of blood and enough control of the atmosphere that he doesn't have to revel in mutilation or gore to get a good shock.

It's solid, well-built horror that doesn't have a specific bigger point to make, but still gets its jumps and creeps honestly.

Fantasia 2018.14: Blue My Mind and Anna and the Apocalypse

Remember what I said about patterns being easy to see when you have short schedule days? It was teenage girls having high school go to hell yesterday. I can't say I loved Blue My Mind, but it's not exactly for me in one sense, though I suppose it is in terms of "hey, teenage girls spend a lot of time freaked out over their changing bodies and identities, so cut them more slack than Mia's father does".

It's a reminder that we really need to get more female voices at eFilmCritic and in film criticism in general - I can review this, but don't have the same perspective. It's worth trying to find someone who does.

Because this was a day where Hall and DeSève were about an hour out of sync, I had some time to poke around for food, and wound up at Taboo, which (I think) is in the spot where m:brgr used to be, in part because that's where I was when the rain started coming down good. Not bad at all, although if I go in again, I may go for more sliders and regular fries rather than a big ol' poutine. I'm recommending it to my brother to try the next time his bosses send him to MTL on business; he'd probably really go fo the tartares and cocktails.

After that, back to the fest for Anna and the Apocalypse and one of the more energetic Q&As of the fest so far.



Tony Timpone on the left, joined by director John McPhail in the center and co-star Christopher Leveaux on the right, and on the "pleased to be here and having a blast" scale of festival guests, young Scots who have made a Christmas zombie high-school musical are pretty high. Leveaux, it was mentioned, is actually the grandson of The Wicker Man filmmaker Robin Hardy, and mentioned putting a little wicker man easter egg in the movie somewhere. When asked about influences, McPhail said that he was always a big horror fan, but finding musicals that had this sort of feel to them was a bit trickier, and got a big round of applause when he mentioned The Happiness of the Katakiris. They did put down a hard-and-fast rule that the zombies would not be singing or dancing at any point, because that would be the difference between the movie being a comedy and being a joke. They also mentioned dropping one of the more meta moments because they couldn't fit it in, and the film's probably better that way. There were other things they couldn't do because of budget - they wanted more gore, but felt they had to save the effects money for when people the audience knew went down. They're psyched to see the Orion logo in front of their movie.

One of the more amusing audience questions came from someone who asked if Vertigo comics character John Constantine was an influence on Steph, and that got McPhail laughing - no, but actress (and choreographer!) Sarah Swire would love that, especially since she pretty much made that character her own: Steph originally started out as a sportier, more outgoing athlete, and the bleach-blonde, standoffish activist was how Swire saw her. She kind of steals the movie.

After that, I headed to the Forum for Salyut-7, which I liked a fair amount, although it's not exactly a break from summer movie camp. Probably the only one until the end, though.

Instead, today's a much more full day, with Violence Voyager, Pledge, Blood and Black Lace, and DJ XL5's Outtasight Zappin' Party. Searching and Hurt are both pretty darn good.

Blue My Mind

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Camera Lucida, digital)

Blue My Mind is the sort of movie where I find myself kind of impatient, waiting for a certain more active story to kick in, but where I am also fully aware that someone who has actually been a 15-year-old girl might look at it and say "yes, this, exactly - this is an uncannily perfect metaphor for having your body and mind suddenly changing and not feeling like you can talk to anybody about it because you've been made to feel like a monster!" It's not for me, and that's okay.

Does it still sometimes feel like the filmmakers have this big fantastical thing in the middle of their story that they spend an hour and a half trying to avoid? Sometimes, yes, and it can be kind of frustrating. It's fortunate that the more grounded bits still work extremely well - lead actresses Luna Wedler and Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen are great, impressively sympathetic even when not necessarily easy to like.

But, really, don't listen to me; find some young women in her teens or twenties who have seen the movie. They're going to know what they're talking about a heck of a lot better than me.

Full review at EFC.

"Netflix & Chill"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)

A quick, entertaining short film that does a pretty nice job of playing out as silent, body-language comedy before taking its twist. Yannick Jozefzoon and Romy Gevers are genuinely funny with alternately hesitant and eager teenagers trying to find the right approach. It takes just long enough a detour into suspense before finding a pretty terrific punchline.

Anna and the Apocalypse

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)

Anna and the Apocalypse at time plays like an actual high-school musical, which works better than you might expect. It could be done as a big production, but there's something that feels right about how it keeps things at a level that can revel in the silliness of its premise but still has room to treat its teens' concerns with respect rather than as overdone melodrama or metaphor.

It's the day of the Christmas talent show in Little Haven, Scotland, but things get off a bit on the wrong foot for Anna Shephard (Ella Hunt) when her best-friend-with-a-massive-crush John (Malcolm Cumming) mistakenly blabs to her father (Mark Benton) that his daughter is not planning on going straight to University, but has purchased a ticket to Australia to start a gap travel year. For the other students, problems seem a bit more minor - Mr. Savage (Paul Kaye) is already throwing his weight around ahead of his promotion to headmaster, spiking a story on homelessness Steph (Sarah Swire) has been writing for the school blog, leading her to ask A/V maven Chris (Christopher Leveaux) to help her film at the soup kitchen, though that might make him late for the number his girlfriend Lisa (Marli Siu) - also Anna's best gal pal - is doing in the show. Of course, before all this has gone on, Anna has switched off a story on the car radio about a super-bad flu outbreak, so when she and John start making their way to school the next morning, they find that they've got bigger problems than her ex Nick (Ben Wiggins) being kind of a pest.

The "New Day"-type number that Anna and John have at this point is probably the movie's best and funniest; it gets to be cheery with zombie mayhem in the background, playing as a bit of a subversion of the form, but not in a sneering manner - it's sincere and with standing behind Anna & John, not making the jokes at their expense. The songs by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly are kind of what you might expect from a modern movie musical - there's about five of them, front-loaded so that the latter half of the movie can be more action-based, and on first pass the impression is more that they fit their slot well enough rather than having their lyrics and melodies embedded into one's heads. They sound a little processed, although not so much that they don't sound like they're coming from the characters. Everybody sings for themselves, which is nice.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia 2017 catch-up, part 4: Thousand Cuts, A Thousand Junkies, Attraction, Jailbreak, Fashionista, Geek Girls, Mumon: Land of Stealth, Lu Over the Wall, Prey, and The Endless

And that's 72 feature films reviewed on eFilmCritic for Fantasia, give or take - it's not counting A Taxi Driver, which opened in Boston the week I got back and was thus skipped in Montreal accordingly, but is counting Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which I didn't actually see as part of a festival screening but did go to see between the start and end of the festival. There were also 4 short film packages that got pretty good write-ups (as did most of the shorts I saw), and 7 features I saw, but didn't get a chance to expand into full reviews. One was in unsubtitled French, so maybe give me a pass on that, and a couple of the others… Well, the filmmakers would probably rather I not share my feelings on a couple in any depth.

Yeah, it took three and a half months after the actual end of the festival, which is not ideal, but given that I kind of tapped out last year, it's an improvement, and I'm glad I figured out a bit more of a better way to go about it. Picking back up on updating my Letterboxd account and not shying away from using the international plan on my phone let me update a fair chunk in real-time. I didn't have more time during the fest, or immediately after, but a good chunk of first impressions being down as an initial draft helps, and getting this chunk down has helped me discover something reassuring - that, contrary to what some seem to think, it is much easier to write about what we love than what we dislike. That sticks around.

It means that, though it took me months to write them up, I was able to say all I want Mumon: Land of Stealth and The Endless, saving the best for last, so to speak. I'm kind of surprised that The Endless didn't get bumped up because of an impending release by Well Go, but I'm hoping that they find an early-2018 slot that gets it a semi-wide release. I've been waiting months to talk about something in this movie, and even if I figure that a lot of the people I'd want to discuss it with have already, you like to do it publicly these days. A far sadder consequence of the delay can be seen with A Thousand Junkies: The film I saw as darkly funny when watching it feels quite different on the other side of one of its stars dying what may have been a drug-related death. I really wasn't sure how to handle that when expanding the review; I tried to just stick to my initial impressions.

By interesting coincidence, I saw Mumon: Land of Stealth pop up in a YesAsia email, and it got me frustrated with the Japanese film industry's apparent disinterest in the world market all over again. Yoshihiro Nakamura's films may not quite get the buzz they deserve at festivals, and apparently haven't found favor with the broader J-pop fandom here, but they're consistently great. Because the audience is currently rather niche, nobody is paying the fees Japanese studios want to license their movies, but the studios don't want to jeopardize that potential revenue stream, so they don't put English subtitles on their Blu-rays. Or maybe it just doesn't occur to them to make them English-friendly because they don't see enough opportunity there - certainly, there are very few of us that will pay the ridiculous prices they want for those discs (the three editions up for pre-order have list prices from $45 to $90). The upshot is, nobody sees these films outside festivals, and it seems as if the desire to get the most potential money out of them is preventing people in North America from buying them at all.

But you know what's not expensive?

Yes, it's a Jay-at-Fantasia tradition, where I spend the last loonies in my pocket on Crush Cream Soda and Oh Henry bars that you can't easily find in the United States, saving them until after I finish my reviews. They will taste so good tomorrow!

Le serpent aux mille coupures (Thousand Cuts)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

You can tell Thousand Cuts ("Le serpent aux mille coupures" in the original French) is going to be an excellent slow burn from the start, as director Eric Valette contrives to bring three or four more or less unrelated groups to the same deserted spot in rural France and doesn't make it seem like a ridiculous premise despite being a huge coincidence. It's a tingly feeling that this could be a really entertaining mess, a sensation that only increases as an even more dangerous fellow shows up after the first bit of violence and two law-enforcement agencies get involved.

It starts with a drug deal going down; Jean-François (Stéphane Debac) doesn't really want to go through Spanish drug kingpin Javier any more. He soon won't have to, as an escaped felon (Tomer Sisley) crosses path with Javier's crew and comes out injured, but at least alive, disposing of the car and bodies well enough that a cartel lawyer and fixer (Terence Yin) are dispatched to find out who is responsible. Adrien holes up in the nearby farm, where owner Omar (Cédric Ido) and his wife Stéphanie (Erika Sainte) are already on on high alert because a lot of the locals do not like that a black man purchased the place after the previous owner went bankrupt - and, indeed, the key witness who could unravel the whole thing (Guillaume Destrem) was there to vandalize and destroy crops.

From there, it's all about turning the screws, and Valette does a fine job of that making not just the audience but the less-hardcore thugs wince as the worst of them tortures his way to what's going on while the folks pegged as heroes are more or less helpless. It does, eventually, wind up with Valette and co-writer Hervé Albertazzi (who wrote the source novel and is credited under nom de plume DOA) stretching themselves a little thin - Omar and his family disappear for a while as the situation in town gets more out of control, and while the various law-enforcement agencies getting along is a nice change of pace, it implies we don't need quite so many people involved. This mostly works, because the careful, measured progress keeps the audience glued to the screen as the very implausibility of the set-up keeps everybody orbiting each other, eventually drawing closer until the big confrontation comes.

Full review on EFC.

A Thousand Junkies

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 28 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

At some point during A Thousand Junkies, a viewer will likely think it's getting dark, but of course it's been dark since the start, when its main trio got into their beat-up Volvo to score their first heroin of the day, and starting to get strung out really just emphasizes what the oddball banter had been hiding. It's a humanizing though not particularly sympathetic look at being that far into addiction, though I've got no idea how accurate it may be.

Tommy (Tommy Swerdlow) is the guy with the car, and he starts his day before 7am, picking up T.J. (TJ Bowen) and Blake (Blake Heron), and putting in a call to Jimmy, their favorite dealer, who will, as the day goes by, always seem just out of reach. In the meantime, they chase down other leads, like Igor (Dinarte de Freitas), a rich Russian kid that Blake knows who doesn't like to shoot up alone; they'll also think back to how they met and how they got the car.

This is a story set in Los Angeles, so it's almost fitting that the car gets an origin story of its own; it's an indispensable part of the group, and as run-down, desperate for fuel, and close to collapse as its human occupants. It's not a character in the movie, but it's a necessary part of the framing: Director Tommy Swerdlow shoots a lot of scenes through the windshield, of course, but it's also important as the only true home these three have - they may have places where they sleep, but those belong to other people. The car is the only place or piece of the scenery that is constant as the men travel from one neighborhood to another, never letting a true sense of place build up. And when they finally start to get desperate enough to turn on each other, the car is part of that, too.

Full review on EFC.

Prityazhenie (Attraction)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2017 in Théâtre D.B. Clarke (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

It's something of a pleasant surprise that Attraction is more of a Russian take on The Day the Earth Stood Still than War of the Worlds or Independence Day, although I suspect that few looked at The Day the Earth Stood Still and thought that the movie needed more dumb teenagers, although it's possible. It makes the constantly changing impulses a bit more believable, at least, although is justifying the weak bits better than avoiding them?

As it opens, a Moscow high school class is more or less ignoring the teacher going on about the night's meteor shower - well, the nerd everyone calls "Google" (Evgeniy Mikheev) is interested, while Yulia Lebedeva (Irina Starshenbaum) and her friend Svetlana Morozova (Darya Rudenok) make plans to watch it from the top of Sveta's apartment building. Or not - "watching a meteor shower" makes for an excellent excuse for Yulia to sneak off with boyfriend Artyom (Alexander Petrov) without Yulia's strict military father Valentin (Oleg Menshikov) being terribly suspicious. It works out well until one of those meteors hits an alien spaceship, the spaceship crashes, and Sveta is in the impacted area that Valentin is placed in charge of securing. Yulia, Artyom, and some of his friends sneak in and find both some alien tech and an injured member of the crew - and this "Hakon" (Rinal Mukhametov) not only looks human, but kind of cute.

Though the film has its problems - it can tend toward spinning its wheels on the way to an extremely obvious "power of love/danger of jealousy" story - its heroine Yulia actually manages to grab hold of the movie once it had settled on her being basically decent and wanting to help, albeit in a somewhat entitled way (she is the type that rebels against her military father while still being comfortable throwing his weight around). Irina Starshenbaum has the right sort of attitude for the bratty but basically decent Yulia, and she's able to sell the necessary quick growth while still showing the same prickly exterior. She's kind of got to; neither Alexander Petrov or Rinal Mukhametov is nearly as charismatic in their parts as she is, leaving her having to do the heavy lifting to make those scenes compelling.

Full review on EFC.

Jailbreak

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017: Action!, DCP)

Like a lot of action flicks from places that don't export a whole lot of movies, Jailbreak shows that there are a fair number of folks in Cambodia who know some martial arts and aren't particularly concerned with the safety standards other places have in place. Whether the excited reception this movie got at the festival will translate into a steady stream of Cambodian action movies or not, time will tell, but this first foray into cinematic mayhem is a high-energy hoot.

As it opens, the local authorities have just captured "Playboy" (Savin Philip), the presumed leader of the Butterfly Gang, and he's being transferred to Prei Klau Prison by an elite escort: Dara (Dara Our), the team leader; Sucheat (Dara Phang), just transferred from an undercover unit; Tharoth (Tharoth Sam), tough enough to hang with the guys; and Jean-Paul Ty (Jean-Paul Ly), a French GIGN agent. Of course, Playboy being the actual leader of an all-female gang rather than just the money man is unlikely, and he's ready to roll on Madame Butterfly (Celine Tran), and knowing this, she's made it known to Scorpion Gang leader Bolo (Sisowath Siriwudd) that there's a price on Playboy's head and an opportunity for a breakout. There are, of course, a whole ton of Scorpions in this prison, and Playboy is supposed to be locked up with the worst of the worst.

This may be giving the plot a bit more credit than it deserves. It's basically twenty minutes of enough exposition for the cops to be more than "the girl", "the guy with the beard", and the like, and then all hell breaking loose. Once things get started, the movie is basically one brawl after another, as the cops are constantly outnumbered by less-skilled but more numerous prisoners, and they just keep going, knocking each other around, throwing the occasional knife into it, and every once in a while going for a one-on-one with a featured heavy. Director Jimmy Henderson and his co-writer Michael Hodgson don't clutter things up with a lot of complexity or worries about people switching sides, but they're good at splitting the group up and bringing it together to make for good fights, and not cheating too badly with the geography of the place. It's not the detailed, obviously creative choreography you'd see from Jackie Chan or Donnie Yen, but it's busy and exciting without overloading the audience.

Full review on EFC.

Fashionista

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

Roughly a minute or so into Fashionista, I could feel my eyes start to roll as the opening credits not only cut to a similarly-framed shot of Amanda Fuller's April with a different outfit for each new name put up, but the soundtrack changed as well (my notes say something along the lines of "oh, this is just precious!"). It works, I suppose, as shock therapy to get the audience used to the way director Simon Rumley puts his movie together, taking a lot of distinct moments and putting them next to each other without obvious transitions and trusting that the audience will see the through-line even on the first time through.

April (Amanda Fuller) has more than enough outfits to make that happen; she and her boyfriend Eric (Ethan Embry) run the Austin second-hand shop that bears his name and the overstock fills their apartment. It's alarming to see, really, but seems relatively benign until a few things start to threaten that status quo, like when Eric starts taking trips to Dallas to discuss opening a location there with the uncle of cute customer-turned-employee Sherry (Alexandria DeBerry), leading to some fierce arguments. It's after one of those that she meets Randall (Eric Balfour), a well-to-do man with fingers in some unsavory pies and whose own clothing obsessions complement April's. Soon he's paying for fancy, designer outfits, and it's a big change for someone who so closely identifies with her outfits.

The big idea at the center, how April's creative fashion sense comes across as fun and cool and hides a tendency toward hoarding and addiction, is kind of fascinating. Lots of movies link creativity and addiction in a way that positions the latter as the necessary side-effect of the former, and in April's case it goes further because she often seems to literally be creating herself. In her mind, how she presents herself is a large part of who she is, and the wardrobe upgrade Randall offers feels like a sort of upward mobility even if it is still putting on the outfits another man gives to her, and within a more narrow range. It's a tendency to define herself by what she has and allowing herself to be trapped by what feels like her own initiative.

Full review on EFC.

Geek Grils

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2017 in Théâtre D.B. Clarke (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017: Documentaries from the Edge, DCP)

A great number of documentaries might be said to have the prime of their lives on the festival circuit; that's where they're most likely to find packed houses and lively discussion, far more so than during the later years when they're getting one viewer at a time on whatever streaming services pick them up and their information ages. This is especially true for Geek Girls, which seems especially designed to play to audiences at genre film festivals, whether as a rallying point or a useful wake-up call, depending on one's perspective.

It's the work of Gina Hara, a Canadian born in Hungary who, like many women who enjoy comics, video games, and science, has occasionally been made to feel unwelcome by male would-be gatekeepers, enough to be interested in documenting the phenomenon. And so she does, starting in Tokyo's Akihabara district ("where geek history began") and initially finding nobody who would agree to be interviewed on camera, causing her to circle back to North America with a stop in her childhood hometown, talking to an interesting group along the way: Jamie Broadway of Black Girl Nerds, competitive gamer Stephanie Harvey, Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Anita Sengupta, and many others, before returning to Japan for an interview with a pair of tentative, anonymous young women.

One of the more interesting facets of the film is actually one of its more implicit, in that the way Hara defines the geek world is markedly different than how I would as a man a decade or two older who loves genre material but never embraced the term "geek". Calling Akihabara ground zero highlights the focus on manga, gaming, and cosplay, which from one perspective is a bit of a slight on folks like Bjo Trimble (an important figure in early Star Trek fandom) and authors like Andre Norton and C.J. Cherryh who injected a female perspective into science fiction and fantasy even if they had to do so under androgynous pen-names. It's an important choice in a couple of important ways: It focuses the film on the present rather than the past, and it serves as an important reminder that what men generally place at the center of geekdom - and the mostly-male media that treats this as the default - can be markedly different from what women do, with much of the friction where these two spheres intersect.

Full review on EFC.

Shinobi no kuni (Mumon: The Land of Stealth)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, HD Cam)

When attending a genre festival, find the movie by Yoshihiro Nakamura. It will often be relatively unheralded, either because he's not as outrageous as fellow very productive Japanese auteurs like Miike or Sono, or because he's not adapting something that has already found a fandom across the Pacific, but it will almost certainly be one of the best films there. Such is the case with Mumon: The Land of Stealth, and on top of that, it's one of Nakamura's very best. It looks every inch the silly bit of ninja action from the start, but there's a biting criticism of capitalism lurking underneath, so that when it comes to the fore at the end, the audience shouldn't be surprised, but it still hits a bit harder than expected.

As it opens, it's September 1579, and the ninjas of Iga are battling again. They're not really enemies - ninjas are too much the dedicated mercenaries to really hate the rival clans - but fighting is what they do, and being on top leads to the best jobs. Heibe Shimoyama (Ryohei Suzuki) recognizes it as a stupid exercise, but it should be relatively harmless; his clan's fortress is well fortified. At least, it seems that way before Mumon (Satoshi Ono), whose name means "no door", crashes through and then steps aside because he was only paid to make an entrance - at least until he's offered a better deal. The he returns home to his wife, Okuni (Satomi Ishihara) who is refusing to let him into their modest house until he makes good on what he he promised when he kidnapped her from her hometown of Aki. Meanwhile, in Ise, Nobunaga Oda's plans to unite the kingdom are blocked by Iga, but who wants to fight a province full of ninjas? Instead, he sends his son Nobukatsu (Yuri Chinen), to keep them busy by building a fortress. They figure, fine, we can just tear it down when we're done.

It's a whimsical, silly series of events, adapted by screenwriter Ryo Wada from his own novel Shinobi no Kuni, and the filmmakers deliver a lot of poppy, bubbly scenes that serve as a fun contrast to how dour this sort of period film can be. There's a skewed logic to how scenes play out, with the ninjas coming off as simple folk with simple needs, almost refreshing in how they outright avoid tying themselves in knots. In a way, they're almost like children, and there's great hay made out of how these fearsome warriors are kind of goofy, with Mumon easily admonished and pushed around by a woman who is technically his prisoner.

Full review on EFC.

Yoake Tsugeru Lu no uta (Lu Over the Wall)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, Bu-ray)

Masaaki Yuasa had two feature films at the festival, which is some pretty spectacular productivity for someone working in animation, and I suppose that when you're on that kind of roll, it's no surprise that both wound up pretty darn good. Lu Over the Wall is a different sort of delight than Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, in some ways a more conventionally unconventional coming-of-age fantasy: It's hardly the first story with magical creatures helping a lonely kid find his place and save the town, although few are quite the same feast for the eyes and ears.

The kid is Kai (voice of Shota Shimoda); he lives in Hinashi, a fishing town denied sunlight by its massive "Shadowstone" wall, which also hides Merfolk Island, a failed amusement park built around the legends that mer-people lived nearby. He and his father just moved there from Tokyo, and Kai is trying to be invisible, but when classmates Yuuho (voice of Minako Kotobuki) and Kuniko (voice of Soma Saito) discover his DJ skills from something he posted on YouTube, they get him to join their band. They are not the only ones who hear Kai's music - Lu (voice of Kanon Tani), a young mermaid, hears it and sings along, and she gets so caught up in it that it gives her legs to dance with. Soon, she's joined the band, even though Yuuho and Kuniko don't know anything about their new singer other than her amazing voice.

That's just the basic plot, and while that's effective as heck - Yuasa and co-writer Reiko Yoshida pack all the coming-of-age themes, young romance, running around to keep a secret, and subplots which flesh out the supporting characters as complete, interesting people into a leisurely but not over-stuffed film - it's the way that this story sometimes gives Yuasa the chance to suddenly jump into something new that lets it grab a spot in a viewer's head. It's using music as a jolt from the very start, where the audience not only gets a sense of the strong feelings Kai is holding in as he composes and arranges in the opening before sudden jump to a bouncy theme song that occasionally feels like it has set too high a bar for the rest of the film because the music won't quite be so popping and married to fantastic visuals until almost the end. Teenagers in a band can often seem like shorthand, piggybacking on the viewer's own memories of a time when music was a direct line to their passion, but Yuasa and Yoshida seldom actually have their characters talk about this rather than just throw themselves into it in various ways.

Full review on EFC.

Prooi (Prey)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

Prey is, make no bones about it, a silly extra-large-animal-attacks-humans movie, but it's one that is quite well aware of precisely what audiences want from that sort of picture. There is not really a single sequence that doesn't play out with exactly the beats that one might expect for this sort of B-movie, which adds up to the film in general playing in the same sort of way. This is thankfully more of an asset than a weakness here - director Dick Maas and company hit familiar genre notes, but hit them fairly well.

After a poor suburban family encounters something wild and hungry, we meet Lizzy (Sophie van Wilden), a veterinarian at Amsterdam's Artis Zoo who specializes in large animals, whom she generally considers less troublesome than her recently-discarded-but-still-hopeful ex-boyfriend Dave (Julian Looman). She's called in by Detective Olaf Brinkers (Rienus Krul), who has her name on file for dealing with animal attacks. He's hoping for a coyote or the like; she frightens him by saying it's a lion, larger than average, maybe escaped from some illegal private menagerie. Olaf's boss wants to keep it quiet and have a cousin who has gone on safari handle the situation, but eventually they're going to have to call Lizzy's former colleague (and lover) Jack (Mark Frost), not aware that his last job has left him a little less equipped to hunt down this sort of predator.

The long tradition of people who would ordinarily encounter an actually dangerous animal being menaced by something large and carnivorous isn't exactly distinguished - for every Jaws, there are a great many inferior imitations. Fortunately, director Dick Maas is a B-movie pro, and he hits the right notes at the right moments, so that while the film never really has great moments of surprise and shock, it's very satisfying in terms of execution. There's a certain comfort to being able to see that the people involved know what a killer-animal movie is supposed to do and do that, giving the audience what it wants with just enough color to keep it from being self-parody. The moments of black comedy feel more genuine than ironic.

Full review on EFC.

The Endless

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson have not only not made a bad movie yet, but they're 3-for-3 in making fantastic films that at some point make the viewer's eyes bulge with delight at one point or another, when it becomes clear that they are doing something really clever. The Endless is no exception, building tension in an almost conventional way and then making sure that both the things that build mystery and resolve it are genuinely thrilling. It's a genuinely great horror film that will excite their fans and likely impress even those who aren't huge fans of the genre.

Benson & Moorhead also star in the movie, playing brothers Justin and Aaron Smith, who escaped from a cult ten years ago. Or at least, that's how Justin puts it; younger brother Aaron still romanticizes the group and tends to skip his deprogramming appointments. He might be tempted to go back if the pair didn't receive a videotape in the mail, but that's what it takes to get Justin to join him for a visit, especially with it referencing a mysterious "ascension" and seeming to end with disaster. So they return to Camp Arcadia, past the oddly-fresh memorial for their mother on the side of the road, and see that things have not changed much - Hal (Tate Ellington) is still working on some strange equation, Aaron still has a huge crush on Anna (Callie Hernandez), and neighbor Carl (James Jordan) is still kind of a jerk. There are new additions - cute artist Lizzy (Kira Powell) and Jennifer (Emily Montague), who came to California after her husband disappeared. There are secrets here which could, at the very least, tear the brothers apart.

This is only the pair's third feature (after Resolution and Spring), but one can already see strong themes emerging in their work that runs deeper than the love of analog media or the threat of something too ancient for its origins and purpose to be properly remembered. All of their films deal in some way with the idea of getting stuck at some point in one's life and someone trying to break free, and they aren't shy about laying this idea right out there from the start, with Aaron especially wanting to return to the safety of the place that sheltered them when their mother died and Justin trying to mount an argument for moving them forward. Right at the start, it's feelings that most in the audience can immediately connect with, even if the source is unusual, and it forms the bedrock of the movie.

Full review on EFC.

The Fantasia Daily, 2013.07 (24 July 2013): Uzumasa Jacopetti, OXV: The Manual, and Black Out

Not much touristy stuff yesterday - I think it's really going to be backloaded this vacation. And, actually, I wasn't too distressed about it - the temperature had dropped 30 degrees (Fahrenheit, 17-ish Celcius) in the past couple of days and I hadn't brought anything with long sleeves.



Say hi to Darren Paul Fisher, who figured out a way to promote his movie OXV: The Manual and still look kind of slick. Nice guy who made a good movie, and spent a lot of time talking about his composer's good work.

Today's plan is already well underway (I caught a 10am press screening of I'll Follow You Down), with the regular screenings starting with The Last Tycoon at the Imperial and ending with The Machine at de Seve; and I'm not sure yet whether I go with Missionary or The Weight in between. Ugh, thought I'd find some way to upload this between lunch and the start of the first movie. Really, Old Port of Montreal, what is the point of WiFi without internet access?

Uzumasa Jaccopetti

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2013 in in Salle de Sève (Fantasia Festival, HD)

There are any number of different types of weird movies, from the merely off-beat to eccentric to bizarre and beyond. Uzumasa Jacopetti certainly tends toward the stranger end of the spectrum, and like a lot of movies there, it can be as off-putting as it is intriguing. The way its parts add up isn't obvious - that add up to any specific thing is debatable - but they are at least interesting components.

The first piece is Shoji Hyakkan (Shinji Wada), a man of few practical skills but a big idea: Build a house whose floors are magnets floating above each other. It would certainly provide room for his son Shigeo (Shishimaru Ozawa) and his wife Sana (Kiki Hanaka), who would like another child although she shows some odd, unnerving behaviors when out with Shigeo. Another piece is Police Office Kobayakawa (Masaki Kitahara), who catches Shoji obtaining some extremely fresh leather to serve as his new house's wall, and instead of arresting him decides to hire him on for a special project.

Things get a bit violent as well as strange after that, sometimes going so far in unusual directions that trying to figure out just what Uzumasa Jacopetti is trying to do can leave a viewer scratching his or her head. Me, I think that co-writer/director Moriro Miyamoto is saying that there's a kernel of madness in every person, and while it is obvious in some like Shoji, seeing it in one person can activate it in another, resulting in great achievement or folly. All of the characters here are what they are from the very start, and all of them have strange dreams, but sometimes it takes a particular intersection to act on them.

Full review at EFC.

OXV: The Manual

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2013 in in Salle de Sève (Fantasia Festival: Camera Lucida, HD)

It is not necessarily difficult for an alternate-reality sci-fi film to hook an audience; it just needs a clever premise and the chance to present it in a familiar setting before playing out how strange it makes the world. The trick is coming up with a story that's more than "hey, this world's weird!" and playing it out so that the audience can relate to it. That's hard, and by making it work with OXV: The Manual, Darren Paul Fisher and company have made an extremely impressive little movie.

That hook? A bunch of young children taking a written test blindfolded to determine their "frequency" - how lucky or in sync with the world they are. The standard scale runs from 0 to 100, but Marie-Curie Fortune (Lily Laight) scores a 127 and Isaac-Newton Midgley (Charlie Rixon) scores a -7, so far off that the universe tries to separate them when they stand near each other for even a minute. As teens (Georgina Minter-Brown & Dylan Llewelllyn), they try to test that phenomenon for different reasons - though both are geniuses, Marie is extremely high-functioning but emotionally detached, while Zak is empathetic and utterly smitten. With the help of friend Theodore-Adorno Strauss (Owen Pugh), the adult Zak (Daniel Fraser) finds a way to connect to Marie (Eleanor Wyld), but for as happy as it makes them, the idea behind it may tear the world apart.

Quantifiable luck has been used in science fiction for a long time, for the exact same reason that it's a tricky thing to do well: It digs into philosophically juicy concepts of free will and determinism, and while that's heady stuff to think about, it can get the story either running on rails or utterly random until it dissatisfyingly breaks its own rules (Larry Niven once described his bred-to-be-lucky character Teela Brown as having the ultimate superpower, author control). Fisher for the most part avoids that by building his universe very precisely, on the one hand having this tendency toward good or bad luck determine its characters' destinies as much through human prejudice as making the environment bend to their will and on the other hand by eventually hinting at a parallel history that has enough recognizable ideas to have a certain ring of truth.

Full review at EFC.

Black Out

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2013 in le Cinéma Impérial (Fantasia Festival: Action!, HD)

I think I nodded off for about twenty minutes of Black Out, so go ahead and make your jokes about the title being apt; I certainly did. I don't particularly blame the movie for this, though, as it kept its end up, tossing plenty of new twists and nifty bits of action at the audience with regularity. It is, as promised, reminiscent of early Guy Ritchie, with big characters and a script where one thing leads to another leads to another which triggers this memory which explains that, so heaven help you if you lose the thread.

Interestingly, though, losing that thread maybe gives one a better look at the details in some cases, and those showed a story with perhaps too many moving parts, diluting the focus on soon-to-wed reformed criminal Jos Vreeswijk (Raymond Thirty), who should be driving the movie. Characters comment on amnesia not being believable, and the movie doesn't make it interesting enough to refute them. Things work a bit better when pared down to essentials at the end, and there's enough life throughout to make it interesting, but I feel like it's really going to need a second look to really give it a fair appraisal.

Bangkok Revenge & some Fantasia catch-up

The funny thing about this movie's walkouts - and, yes, it is kind of sad that blogging about China Lion releases inevitably has a "Walkout Watch" section - is that the first couple seemed to come right when they realized that there were going to be subtitles. If they'd stuck around, they would have seen just how much of the movie turned out to be in English. As I say in the review, this is actually a pretty big issue because only the star really seems conversant in the language, and when they do switch from Thai to English, there are no subtitles, so you miss what's being said in the seconds it takes for your brain to start getting dialogue from your ears rather than your eyes.

Others later abandoned ship because the movie wasn't very good. The whole deal with China Lion distributing this one in America - and seeming to give it a lot more publicity than they did the superior movies opening on either side of it, The Bullet Vanishes and Vulgaria - is kind of weird. It's a French/Thai co-production that's mostly in English, and while star Jon Foo himself is hapa-Chinese, I'm not sure how much this appeals to the expatriates that make up much of CL's target audience beyond everybody liking martial arts action.

Also: The "Bangkok Revenge" title is one of the more obvious renamings for the American audience in recent memory; the distributor just put a title card on the front of the movie, while actually keeping the "Bangkok Renaissance" titles in the opening and closing credits, subtitling them "Rebirth". Weirdly half-hearted.

Anyway, don't let this disappointment keep you from seeing Vulgaria if it plays Boston (or wherever you may be reading this from) in a couple of weeks; I saw it at Fantasia and that is some funny stuff. Other things I saw at Fantasia and am just now finishing full reviews of: New Kids Turbo, Dead Bite, Blood-C: The Last Dark, Columbarium, Poongsan, Hail.

Bangkok Renaissance (aka Bangkok Revenge, aka Rebirth)

* * (out of four)
Seen 14 September 2012 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, Sony Digital 4K)

Some martial-arts action flicks are all-around great movies, and many are capable, if not exceptional. A distressing number, though, are one trick ponies, with good action scenes being held together by connective tissue that is given so much less attention than the fights that the movie practically becomes a tug of war. Bangkok Revenge's action makes a good effort early, but eventually the awful in-between material wears it down.

Twenty years ago, an honest Bangkok cop and his wife were murdered in their bed by a gang of corrupt officers, one of whom is sent into their ten-year-old son's room to finish the job. He does, but Manit miraculously survives the bullet to the head, and is taken by nurse Chanticha (Aphiradi Phawaphutanon) to be secretly raised by herself and a martial-arts master in a small village. The fact that Manit's brain injury seems to have left him without empathy doesn't stop the master from teaching him potentially lethal hand-to-hand combat, which will come in handy when Chanticha gives the grown Manit (Jon Foo) what she has learned about his father's murder on her deathbed. He decides to finish the job, with reporter Clara (Caroline Ducey), Inspector Andana (Pream Busala-Khamvong), and French boxer Simon (Michael Cohen) occasionally joining the quest.

Jon Foo is not yet a big name in the martial arts world, but he's working his way up; he's spent time on Jackie Chan's stunt team, and occasionally been a featured performer when Chan or Tony Jaa needs to take on several guys at once. So it's not particularly surprising that the early action scenes, especially, are a lot of fun to watch. Foo's an athletic guy with a nice balance of raw strength and agility, and much of the movie's first half has him moving straight from one fight to the next, taking on large crowds by taking a bunch down hard (the prosthetic-limb guys had to build a lot of broken legs) and moving quick on others. There are some impressively staged fights, especially in close quarters: Foo gets to show his stuff in an elevator, an automobile, and a subway car, in addition to some battles on more open turf. Another is shown in shadow.

Full review at EFC.

New Kids Turbo

* * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012 Action!, DCP)

After New Kids Turbo, another festival-goer and I off-handedly discussed which bit of incessantly-repeated profanity was less likely to fly with an American audience. For a certain group, that sort of broad-spectrum political incorrectness is an asset not matter what, but those with a limited tolerance for uncouth morons should steer clear, as this movie's got more than than it knows what to do with.

Well, it's got at least five: Richard (Huub Smit), who somehow has managed to attain a place of his own and a dog; Rikkert (Wesley van Gaalen), who has a pregnant girlfriend he has probably never had sex with; Barrie (Flip Van der Kuil), the local pot grower; Gerrie (Tim Haars), a loser idiot even by loser idiot standards; and Robbie (Steffen Haars), the one without a mullet. They're more or less unemployable, especially in this difficult economy, and when they beat up bill collectors after being kicked off welfare for behaving like violent idiots, Richard declares that he's not paying for things any more. When this starts to become a movement, folks hig up in the Dutch government decide that they must be silenced, even if their hometown of Maaskantje is collateral damage.

When I saw the movie has more uncouth morons than it knows what to do with, I mean that literally - the movie does very little with Barrie and Robbie. Presumably Steffen Haars and Flip Van der Kuil are too busy off-screen to carry much of a burden in front of the camera - both are credited as writers, directors, and producers, with Van der Kuil also editing - though for all I know, they only had small parts in the original internet videos and TV series. That there are excess New Kids is indicative of a level of excess that works for the group often enough; even those who likely don't want to admit it will, when pressed for the truth, say that they laughed during the movie, sometimes pretty hard. Go for broke often enough and some of the gags will pay off, especially when you're talking about slapstick targeted at the very deserving (of course, you'll also get comedic dead zones like a painful breaking of the fourth wall). Haars & Van der Kuil also do a pretty good job of escalating things; the gags get bigger and more absurd with the story.

Full review at EFC.

Gancore Gud (Dead Bite)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)

There's actually a pretty fun movie inside Dead Bite doing all it can to get out, and it could be just as happily trashy as the one we got. After all, it's got a charismatic-enough lead (and director, and co-writer) in Thai rapper JoeyBoy, a potentially fun ensemble in his group Gancore Club, and all the other ingredients for B-movie fun: Bikini girls, gleefully bloody mayhem, and fun monsters. The beautiful Thailand scenery doesn't hurt at all. But, wow, does it get away from him.

For those of us not hooked up to Thailand's hip-hop scene, JoeyBoy (given name Apisit Opasaimlikit) is the frontman for Gancore Club, and as the movie starts (well, after a framing sequence), they're a little dissatisfied with their last concert, as only ghosts showed up. Their manager attempts to placate them with a music video shoot on the coast with plenty of pretty girls in bikinis, but when they take a boat out to Mermaid Island... Well, things go bad, as they've got a group of savages in the forest led by apparently-immortal Payee (Lakana Wattanawongsiri) and aquatic zombies coming from the sea.

As I said, I don't know anything about Gancore Club, and I suspect that the movie plays a whole lot better for fans. There's a half-dozen or so members in the group, and the filmmakers don't do a whole lot to establish characters and personae for newcomers like me. JoeyBoy seems confident but kind of shy for a big hip-hop star; Golf's a big guy with a big personality; and... uh, Teng likes fishing. They're a likable enough crew - even non-fans will enjoy them well enough - and I imagine if they're your favorite band, seeing them chased by monsters or getting turned into zombies probably makes things a lot more fun.

Full review at EFC.

Blood-C: The Last Dark

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012 AXIS, HD)

I wouldn't recommend seeing Blood-C: The Last Dark at all, but above all else, do not go in to see this movie cold. Seriously, don't do it. I am pretty sure that this would be a tiresome excuse for a movie with overly frantic action, a protagonist completely devoid of personality, and a laughable finale even if I had seen Blood: The Last Vampire recently or had picked up any of the multimedia tie-ins between then and now, but not having the Blood mythology in one's back pocket doesn't help.

The film opens with a couple of men stalking Mana Hiragi on the subway. They hulk out into vampire-on-steroids monsters and corner her at the station, only to find Mana probably wasn't the one they should be concerned about; Saya Kisaragi (voice of Nana Mizuki) was also riding that train, and Saya is a vampire-human hybrid who has been fighting monsters for far longer than the school uniform she wears implies. It turns out that Mana is part of a team investigating these "Elder Bairns"; this "Sirrut" group believes that they are connected to industrialist Fumito Nanahara (voice of Kenji Nojima).

Nanahara also seems to have something to do with draconian curfew laws in Tokyo that affect the teen-age heroes. To be fair, the filmmakers do a decent job of laying out just enough mythology that a new or lapsed fan can grasp the important elements without smothering the audience with exposition, at least on average. After all, while Blood has amassed a fair amount of details, the broad strokes are familiar enough - long-lived vampires gathering power behind the scenes, their victim/creation seeking revenge, the time to unleash an occult force of unspeakable power drawing nigh.

Full review at EFC.

Columbarium

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Fantastique Week-end, HD)

Columbarium is not quite one jettisoned gimmick away from being a perfect little thriller, but it's tight and suspenseful enough to impress as it is, telling a good little story without much in the way of fat at all. It's a shame that even high-profile Québèçois films don't seem to make their way out of the province very often, because this one's a little gem.

Joe MacKenzie (Gilbert Comptois) was imperfect in life and remains so in death, as his will states that in order to inherit, his sons must spend a week at his lake house in rural Québèc building a columbarium for his remains (a sort of elaborate shrine). Both men have good reason to do so - older son Mathieu (David Boutin) is in dire financial straits from his work on Wall Street and the gambling he did in Vegas to make up the shortfall, while younger son Simon (Maxime Dumontier) could use the money to kickstart his current dream of heading to Los Angeles to become an actor. Of course, the MacKenzie boys have other issues, and the combination of alcohol, energy drinks, blackouts, and biblical quotes that mysteriously appear only serves to bring things closer to a boil despite the chill in the air.

Maybe Columbarium is a ghost story; maybe what happens is the endgame of the brothers' longtime issues; maybe executor Marcel (Pierre Collin) is playing them against each other. One thing is for sure: Writer/director Steve Kerr isn't going to tip his hand very much until absolutely necessary. This does not mean that he and the film are spinning their wheels, though; instead, he's built a situation where a great deal can be implied - the very fact that their father asks his sons to build him this shrine says as much about him and the inevitable relationships of the family as many flashbacks could - and where seemingly small things can crank the tension up a notch or two. Not bad for an indie filmmaker working with a small cast and mostly staying in one location, and he's got the skills to make small steps work.

Full review at EFC.

Poong-san-gae (Poongsan)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)

I sometimes wonder if Kim Ki-duk has a whole cache of unfilmed scripts on his laptop, turned out quickly because not writing dialogue for your main character saves a lot of time. It makes for a distinctive style, so that even what might otherwise be a straightforward spy movie actually directed by Juhn Jai-hong undeniably has Kim's stamp.

Though the border between North and South Korea may be the most heavily guarded such line in the world, there is one man who passes through it regularly. Leave a note on a bulletin board near the Imjinak bridge, and this anonymous man (Yoon Kye-sang) known only by the Poongsan-brand cigarettes he smokes will smuggle messages and small items to the other side. The governments are mostly unaware of him, at least until some of his clients are busted selling smuggled artifacts. Then, the KCIA contacts him; they've got a North Korean defector (Kim Jong-soo) who is dragging his feet until he is reunited with his young lover In-ok (Kim Gyu-ri).

Main characters not talking may be a Kim Ki-duk signature, but it works to fairly good effect here. Mostly, that's because it is more or less impossible to get any sort of information on the background of this "Poongsan" guy; though he's clearly well-trained, there's no way to find out whether he was originally born in the North or the South, whether by admission or accent, something which the South Korean intelligence officers obsess over. It's an interesting question as to whether this makes him Korean-without-an-adjective or a man without a country. It makes for interesting comparisons with other characters who have crossed the line: In-ok considers herself North Korean and doesn't seem to consider how difficult it might be to go back; the defector is trying very hard to make himself South Korean; some members of an undercover NK team may be going native. As much as stories like this generally focus on how Korea is naturally a singular entity, the pessimistic read here is that too much time may have passed: The message Poongsan carries in the beginning is between two very elderly people on their deathbeds, and there seems little common ground otherwise.

Full review at EFC.

Hail

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)

The word "hail" can mean a number of things, and for some reason I kept thinking of the wrong ones until about halfway through the movie, when some bad weather follows a bad event, and the sound as much as anything seemed absolutely right. After all, there are a lot of figures of speech that use rain to indicate unfortunate events in one's life, but for some people, it comes down harder and you don't always have shelter.

Take Danny (Daniel P. Jones); in and out of jail all his life, his last stint has ended a few days early, allowing him to surprise longtime lady love Leanne (Leanne Letch). This time, he resolves, he's going to stay on the straight and narrow. He is humble as he goes to various auto body shops to ask for a chance to show what he can do. He really seems to have it together most of the time, and even the friends who have been part of the problem before are encouraging. But...

Star Daniel P. Jones knows this role; it is him in almost every way. Director Amiel Courtin-Wilson had previously made a short film ("Cicada") of Jones relating a personal story, and for Hail he combed through five hundred pages of Jones' reminiscences to immerse himself in this man's life and world. Leanne Letch is Jones' real-life girlfriend, and many other cast members are playing themselves or fictionalized versions thereof. The locations add to the verisimilitude and Courtin-Wilson's experience as a documentary filmmaker shows; even in intimate shots, there's a sense of the camera being out of the way as the subjects go about their lives.

Full review at EFC.