Fantasia 2025.05: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, The Battle Wizard, and Tamala 2030: A Punk Cat in Dark

Unusually short day, but a long post because it started with a shorts package. Well, didn't exactly start with it; I spent the first slot back in the apartment, finishing a post covering Friday, because the two things on offer were Japanese Avant Garde Pioneers, which would run again the next day, and Bullet in the Head, which I've watched a couple times in the last couple years and believe has already been announced as the group of Hong Kong classics from the Golden Princess collection that Shout! Factory will be touring soon. You're welcome!

Between being the last one in and sitting where I can escape in a hurry if need be, it wasn't a great spot for pictures, especially if you use the phone's panorama setting:

Let's split that up a bit.

So off at the very far left, we have the event's host, then "Filther" filmmaker Simen Nyland, from Norway; "Lola" director Grace Hanna & executive producer Derek Manansala, from the US; "Weird to be Human" director Jan Grabowski, art director Agnieszka Adamska, and production designer Juliusz Dabrowski, from Poland; and "Disappeared" director Jeong Eun-uk, from South Korea.

Jeong's interpreter was next, then finally representing "Fingerprints of the Gods" were writer/director Wei Zhenfeng, producer Zhong Yu, and one more member of the crew, with their interpreter hiding behind.

I believe my favorite bit of the Q&A was Grabowski being asked about creating the look for their synthezoid character and handing the mike to Adamska after saying a few words, where she said she had about $2,000 for the whole thing and then they had to use most of it on a skullcap because the actress wouldn't shave her head and so that made things harder than they needed to be.

After that, it was a decision between a restored Shaw Brothers film at 5:40 and something maybe sci-fi-ish at 6:30, and I chose the former even though I knew I'd probably be getting it on disc soon enough; the description of the other seemed a bit inside-baseball. It gave me a bit of time for the annual burger at Mr. Steer before heading across the street for Tamala 2030: A Punk Cat in Dark, which was one of the things I've had circled on the schedule since it was announced, having dug the original when it played the Brattle in its American release, kind of amazed there was a follow-up.

Then back to the apartment, with Cielo, Japanese Avant Garde Pioneers, Honeko Akabane's Bodyguards, and Dog of God on tap for Monday. It's Saturday now, and I'm planning on Hold the Fort, The Girl Who Stole Time, Influencers, and Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo, with Funky Forest highly recommended.


"Moon & Back"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)

Writer/director Pony Nicole Herauf knows that the science-fictional aspects of her short film don't make a lot of sense, and bakes it into the beginning, when Branch (Bren Eastcott) and Mattie (Mattie Driscoll) phone a radio call-in show and are yelled at on-air for saying that the issue in their relationship is that their close friendship struggled when Branch was away at college, and now her new job is going to take her to the moon. It's going to be a big thing soon, they say.

Is it? Well, there's not exactly a lot else in the story to suggest it, but also only the most occasional slip to suggest that Branch is sick and may either be dying soon or undergoing experimental treatment far away, and this is a last weekend where that euphemism will be strictly enforced. It's not a thing one sees in the very funny performances from Eastcott & Driscoll at first - Branch & Mattie are the sort of delightfully ordinary folks who are funny in large part because of how they come off as mainly being funny to each other, even with Herauf giving them a lot of good lines - but they're good enough to give a lot of heft to scenes played against somewhat lo-fi visual effects toward the end.


"Lola"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)

I'm inclined to believe that "Lola" depicts what's actually going on, with teenage prodigy Tessie (Jovie Leigh) making yet another attempt to cure or at least arrest her grandmother's fast-moving dementia. It's got the feeling of someone who has always been superlatively bright running hard into her limitations and kind of doesn't work unless Tessie can actually get in there and receive one last bit of good advice from the part of Lola's brain that hasn't been scrambled.

Of course, what's fun is that the apparent limitations of a student film lead to director Grace Hanna making a lot of choices that emphasize that this is from the point of view of a precocious child, from the animation to the props made of everyday objects to a mindscape that's got the same general form of one where filmmakers spend millions of dollars to create a mental library but is all the more poignant for its relative simplicity. The costume Leigh is given to wear as Tessie is also adorable whether it's the characters existing in a heightened world, her sort of playing dress-up, or somewhere in between.


"First Sight"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)

"First Sight" looks like it's going to be a "don't fall in love with an AI construct" thing, but writer/director Andew McGee has some more interesting things to do, as widow Luna (Ellise Chappell) is matched for a first-date with handsome, likable Antony (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd). As a writer who reviews new consumer technology, she's got top-of-the-line Bluetooth contact lenses with a powerful AI in her phone offering useful advice on the heads-up display, but taking its recommendations doesn't make for an exciting date, and that's before the ransomware attacks.

I've been wondering when we were going to start to get more stories of artificial intelligence being kind of useless in situations where human expression is concerned, as features continue to come out with androids who are more human that human or AIs that can outwit even the most clever protagonist, and that's pretty far from the experience of anyone who has desperately tried to shut Copilot off. McGee is smart about this without it coming off as a lecture, and the ransomware bit is clever (although I'm almost more frightened of a hack where my reading glasses replace the fine print on a contract), although it kind of stretches the blind date out in a way that seems untenable.

Ellise Chappell is pretty darn good through that, at least, and all-around; she captures the bits of McGee's script that require her to be sad in a big way, even if it's not always on her face, and the sort of generally nervous that makes these sort of shortcuts so tempting. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd hits the right tone as well, disappointed enough that Luna is taking outside cues enough for it to show without seeming mean or sanctimonious enough to be unappealing.


"Disappeared"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)

"Disappeared" kind of feels a little more like The Matrix with the serial numbers scraped off than one would maybe like, although with interesting ways to go should Eunuk Jeong get a chance to expand it. There are times when I wondered a bit if it were written and selected with the intent of showing off the studio in which it was shot in a sort of symbiotic way, a chance for both the business and the filmmaker to have a polished calling card, and that determined a lot of its emphasis.

I do kind of like the central performance by Tan Woo-seok, whose character seems to be the sort of screw-up where both he and those who know him get frustrated at how his limitations get in the way of his being generally likable - one sort of feels bad for noting how annoying it must be - and he's got a bit more range than that when need be.


"No Nation"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)

Between this and 40 Acres, I'm liking the greater Native/First Nations representation showing up in some recent post-apocalyptic tales. Not necessarily a whole lot, but enough to make one consider how some things would shake out. "No Nation" carves out a nifty little niche where it feels grounded and gritty while hinging on silly genre nonsense, and director/co-writer Jeffrey Elmont seems to know it, having characters ask why they're doing the elaborate rugby ritual rather than something more sensible.

The reason, of course, is that the rugby ritual is cool, which is both why we watch these movies and how the guy in charge exerts control. The audience feels the excitement of it even if they don't necessarily have a rooting interest; Elmont and company reveal details as the combatants play rather than do an explanation ahead of time, throwing a monkey wrench into it just as the viewers understand. At that point, there's no satisfaction in anyone being hoisted by their own petard, and part of what makes the finale feel honest is that there's a lesson there but one maybe can't be sure people will take the right one to heart.

"Weird to Be Human"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)

Sometimes, watching science fiction, I'll groan at "back in the bad old days of the Twentieth Century, we did this, and though we say we've outgrown it…" dialogue, even if delivered with intense earnestness by William Shatner or Patrick Stewart, but I feel like I'd kind of welcome it in "Weird to Be Human". Part of that is that we're in "AI is more human than human" territory, a bit strained as AI makes things in everyday life dumber, and part is because many folks in the present who could do with a fable about how the government chooses who is eligible for citizenship and makes them jump through tortuous hoops to obtain it are isolated from the process and could maybe use the linkages.

All that is in "Weird to Be Human", but you may have to know it's there to see it. Happily, it's got a nicely unsettling "one dystopian room to decorate in budget Cronenberg fashion" aesthetic, the sort of performances where a viewer can settle in and change their impression of who is supposed to be the audience surrogate and who is supposed to be the monster over the film's running time, and just enough memory of being behind the Iron Curtain and having resurgent right-wing movements for everyone involved to know of what they speak. The small cast handles their parts quite nicely, willing to sound alien and odd but let their inner humanity come through, for better or worse.


"Fingerprints of the Gods"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)

I wonder, a bit, to what extent a character named "Monkey" was intended to make one think of some sort of trickster deity at first, even though we're probably more in "at a typewriter" territory in this short, as a reporter is given a story that makes him question the foundations of the universe.

"Fingerprints" is nice-looking - I particularly liked the precise layout of Monkey's apartment inside a run-down building - but it kind of falls prey to what hobbles a lot of simulation-theory stories, where there's not exactly much the folks discovering that they live inside a simulation that may be shut down can do about it, and for all that director Wei Zhenfeng talks about being inspired by the Mandelbrot Set, he never quite finds a way to blow audience minds with some sort of fractal revelation of simulations within simulations. It's a nicely-mounted short, but probably the one where specifics have faded most over the time it takes to write things up.


"Filther"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: International Sci-Fi Showcase, laser digital)

Appearing at this moment, with its faceless protagonist, steampunk imagery and compositing where the elements don't quite seem to match, this probably draws "is this made with generative AI?" more than the "nice ambition, but maybe you're stretching a little thin" it would have gotten a couple years ago. Unfair, perhaps - nothing in the credits indicates that's the case - but it's got the feel: Some nifty ideas, a focus on aesthetics, and a story that's relatively thin, trying to be capital-E Emotional while connecting the big visuals.

I found it kind of pretty but distancing, and there's something really odd about the love story seeming to favor the match-making service over the nice girl at the shop nearby who at least seems to like him. Nothing' is really happening other than the protagonist fixing things, and for as much as the clockwork construction is kind of a soothing respite from folks being mean to him and the general tumult among the normies, the movie isn't doing much more than showing pretty pictures to earn a happy ending.


Tian long ba bu (The Battle Wizard)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival: Fantasia Retro, laser DCP)
Where to stream it(Prime link), or order the 2009 DVD at Amazon

The Battle Wizard may not be one of those Shaw Brothers flicks with a surprising seed of greatness in it, but it's awesome beyond its campiness, diving into one weird thing after another, barely considering the possibility of slowing down.

Twenty years ago, Qin Hongmian (Gam Lau) informed her lover Tuan Chengchun (Si Wai) that she was two months pregnant and telling her husband that it was his wasn't really an option, since he'd been away for six months, That husband (Shih Chung-Tien) chose an inopportune moment to return and attack Chengchun, only to discover that the latter's kung fu is so powerful he can shoot energy blasts from his fingers. Oh, and Chengchun is a prince who already has a fiancée (Hung Ling-Ling) who dismisses Hongmian in the bitchiest fashion possible. So it's no wonder that Hongmian spends her daughter's entire childhood teaching her kung fu so that Mu Wangqing ("Tanny" Tien Ni) can seek revenge on her father, his wife, and any offspring they may have produced. The trouble is, Chengchun's sun Tuan Yu (Danny Lee Sau-Yin) is a pacifistic scholar who has no desire to learn martial arts, which means he'd be in big trouble after stepping out to prove to his father that one just needs words if he didn't meet pretty snake handler Cheng Ling'er (Lin Chen-Chi), as Hongmian's husband has been hiding out, biding his time and training a disciple to assassinate Yu as well.

It's a lot happening and it's about an inch deep, sure, but like the best Shaw Brothers martial arts films, there is just enough earnestness in that inch to occasionally surprise, whether it's the look of shock as Hongmian realizes she's been abandoned or how enough friendship develops between Wangqing and Yu that the filmmakers aren't just teasing incest (amusingly and coincidentally, this special-effects-heavy film was made in part as a response to Star Wars, anticipating this twist by five and a half years). No matter how frantic and silly things get, the cast gets to make their roles more than ciphers notable for their fighting styles.

They're fighting a lot, of course, but there's a good balance to the violence that alternates between splatstick and good wire fu. The filmmakers go to town with all the visual effects and fantasy that mid-1970s Shaw Brothers can muster, complete with finger guns, rubber monsters, and a guy in a thoroughly unconvincing gorilla suit. The action choreographed by Tong Kai mixes up swordplay, punching and kicking, and what is effectively gunfighting fairly well, so that combatants aren't just posing at each other, and things get enjoyably gross as limbs get blasted off (leading to characters running around on iron chicken legs) or Lee Sau-Yin seems to have a good time playing Tuan Yu as surprised by the martial-arts moves he gets by drinking magic snake's blood.

It's got a nice pace to it, too, introducing a new absurdity just often enough to get audiences saying sure, why not, rather than feeling overloaded. It's maybe a bit too much by the end - there are points when I was thinking it's been too long since we checked in on the cute snake girl, and I suspect a subplot about where her family fits into all this was cut until the film needed more bodies for the ending battles - but it goes down smooth and never stops amusing for its whole 77 minutes.

And, honestly, what else do you want? The Battle Wizard is determined to entertain from start to finish, and it's a gas all the way through.


Tamala 2030: A Punk Cat in Dark

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2025 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia Festival: Animation Plus, laser DCP)
Where to stream Tamala 2010 (Prime link), or pre-order the disc at Amazon

Sometime asked if seeing the first movie made this 23-year-later sequel better and I had to say, maybe, although it's been 20 years and I really should have bought and watched the new disc as soon as this was announced a part of the festival, the way I often do when sequels drop after this sort of wait. This could go up or down, depending on how that plays for me when I see it again.

(You're already talking to the distributor, right, Ned?)

As it opens, one-year-old kitten Tamala is just hanging around the run-down, graffiti-covered Cat Tokyo, popping in to visit her boyfriend Michaelangelo, a private detective and handyman who has just been hired to find someone who vanished a couple weeks ago, on 7 July, and while it seems like Tamala wouldn't be much help, she knows people, and they soon find video footage of him vanishing into thin air - and not only that, the same thing happened to six other cats that same night, forming a pattern across Cat Japan that matches a constellation. Meanwhile, a one-eyed mercenary named Blur is tracking occult occurrences around Cat Earth, many of which seem to lead back to Tamala herself.

I don't know that vaguely remembered details of Tamala 2010 really helped - they basically had me expecting this to be kind of unnervingly sexy, which didn't seem to be much of a factor after the start - and I kind of think loose continuity is kind of explicit here. Tamala is described as a 1-year-old kitten despite this movie taking place 20 years later than the first. It is, perhaps, a sort of meta-commentary on the state of media, with corporate entities behind the scenes managing cycles of destruction and rebirth, with the Real End lurking. The punk, anti-capitalist characters of the first film reappear somewhat jarringly toward the end, though their message is somewhat muted.

There's a lot of movie to get through before that material really takes center stage, though, and the long middle is seldom nearly as fun as the apocalyptic finale or watching literal sex kitten Tamala (seemingly what you'd get if you gene-spliced Betty Boop and Hello Kitty) tags along on Michaelangelo's missing person case. Tamala herself is in short supply for a while, and none of the other characters who get more involved with the plot are as memorable or fun, with the story itself more atmosphere than developments that pull an audience closer.

Like the last one, though, it looks and sounds amazing, a run-down retro future with great character designs, touching camera, and nifty music and sound the baseline . The mostly B&W look hits the direct spot where manga, film noir, and the Fleischer Brothers overlap. Tamala's cheerful dancing and bouncy walk (accompanied by squeaky boings to make one wonder if she's wearing leather all the time) give way to unsettling violence, and while I suspect that much of the film was realized digitally, writer/director/composers "T.O.L." really lean into that in the final act with a robotic cat god whose obvious CGI nature makes her incursion into Cat Earth almost Lovecraftian.

So, yes, going to see this again, and looking forward to it. It's crazy stuff, probably about 40% nonsense even if you've recently caught up on all previous Tamala material, but fun and energetic nonsense.

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.

BUFF 2022.02-03: Honeycomb, The Innocents and Nitram

Check it out - guests (with programmer Nicole McControversey)!

I think writer/director Avalon Fast (center) and co-star/etc.Henry Gillespie-Graham (left) were the only filmmakers for a feature to visit, and almost certainly the only non-local ones, arriving from British Columbia and hanging around the festival for a few days, and why wouldn't you? There's some talent here, but pulling everything together to actually get a movie shot and finished isn't necessarily something you can repeat easily, much less being accepted into festivals, so when that happens, you head over just in case you never get another chance.

Honeycomb was one of just two features on the schedule that really felt "underground", not that this festival has ever been strictly about the homemade stuff that won't ever get distribution; in fact, it was pretty loaded up on international genre movies that already had distributors' logos in front of it. I admit, I bailed on the other one Friday night - Hypochondriac looked like the sort of thing that gets me considering leaving early, and with the Brattle still doing some distancing, I wasn't going to claim a ticket that could go to someone really enthusiastic - but it made me wonder what sort of a wrench the pandemic threw into indie filmmaking. Was it a situation where the need for Covid protocols would hamper indie filmmakers more than studios, but not necessarily hobbyists? It certainly feels like there's that sort of hangover going on.

Honeycomb

Seen 24 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022, DCP)

There are movies you expect to find on YouTube and others where you expect to be charged admission, and by and large they shouldn't both be on the same scale, which it's why some don't get star ratings. This falls squarely into the first category - rough as heck, sometimes interesting and showing potential, but you don't take someone who expects professional polish to this on a date.

It offers up a group of young women between school years finding an abandoned house well off the road and decide to make a commune there, with boyfriends only brought in blindfolded and a set of harsh but hopefully fair rules. Naturally, certain members of the hive attempt to emerge as queen, and stuff with guys inevitably becomes a problem. The cast is actually pretty capable, unpretentious and able to sell their harsher moments. The locations are fun and sell themselves. Both the earnestness and viciousness are matter-of-fact in a way one can believe. The downside is that it often feels like the filmmakers expected a lot more to emerge from the outline through improvisation, and that even with what they did get, there's not necessarily enough footage to stitch it together. Even at 70 minutes, it drags for the amount that actually happens of interest.

It's okay, the sort of thing that probably means more ro young women than me and more to the folks making it than random young women. It's probably not surprising that "appropriate revenge" doesn't work out that well, especially for relatively petty disagreements, and kind of ends just when it's starting to get interesting.

De uskyldige (The Innocents)



* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022, DCP)

The Innocents isn't quite another attempt to reinvent the X-Men - you kind of need some sort of officials trying to take control of the young people with powers for that - but it's close enough to feel like one and maybe make me grumble a bit about the cynicism of it even as I'm admiring the craft. Superhero stories (or supervillain stories) are about bringing things into sharper relief by increasing the scale at their best, but just reveling in the amped-up violence at their worst, and this one doesn't always have enough to say to make the ugliness worth it.

It's one of those movies that seemingly has a hard time seeing kids learning the lines between right and wrong and what the consequences of their actions may be as much more than little sociopaths at times, and while there's some truth to that, it's also the sort of thing that is stark enough without being heightened, so you're kind of gilding the lily on the darkness here, and by exaggerating, the film loses a bit of what could kind of be interesting - how young Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) is maybe drawn to the way Ben (Sam Ashraf) acts out because she resents having to look after her developmentally challenged older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), who has a special connection with neighbor Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim), and how each of Ben, Anna, and Aisha find their almost-trivial powers enhanced by the others. There's potentially layers here that could perhaps use a more delicate touch.

The execution is pretty darn good, though - filmmaker Eskil Vogt can grab a moment and milk it for all the tension he can find, and he knows how to deploy his young cast, especially Fløttum, who looks to be about eight or nine but can present his deep resentment but can also conjure a bit of uncertainty, where Ida starts to grasp the horror of the world needing her to be a moderating influence even though, like looking after her big sister, it's probably too much responsibility for that kid. I do like how the folks playing Ida's and Aisha' parents all seem the appropriate level of overwhelmed without it feeling like a too-convenient plot device.

The result is, almost inevitably, like a certain strain of comic book, the sort that seems to be pushing an envelope more to be seen pushing it than because there's something especially interesting on the fringes. It's well-executed but leaves me a bit colder than was intended.

Nitram

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022, DCP)

I forget whether Nitram had a "based on a true story" tag on it at the start or not - I feel like it didn't - and not being familiar with the specifics of this incident makes me wonder if the film played with a greater sense of mounting dread for its local Australian audience that would likely immediately recognize it as a fictionalized version of the events leading up to the mass shooting that led to a change in the country's gun laws. Otherwise, it's got a sort of "this can't end well" vibe but not a lot of specific dread.

Which is fine. Interesting, even, as Caleb Landry Jones's "Nitram" (the reverse of Martin, the real-life gunman's nam) falls into a good-if-odd situation as a favorite of faded light Helen (Essie Davis) after being a source of frustration to his parents (Judy Davis & Anthony LaPaglia) for his entire life, and there's this broad sense of desperation, because none of these people really have the tools to make satisfying lives for themselves, and even when they're enabling each other, there's no sense that they're happy or in some sort of symbiotic situation. They're just getting fleeting moments of pleasure that in many cases are destructive of the world around them. The cast does well to make them seem mostly functional but not really capable of the sort of introspection necessary to decide to make their lives better, and off-kilter without it seeming fun. It's a low-key bad situation where one maybe doesn't necessarily see how close many are to falling apart until it starts happening.

I'm not sure whether it's a problem that the film jumps to Nitram buying a bunch of guns and getting into shooting without a lot of explanation. Part of the "problem" with this story, for those of us looking for a narrative, is that Nitram is not all there, and sometimes his brain forms connections that a healthy, intelligent person's don't, and if you're looking for an explanation or a through-line, or a counter to the common conservative line that the problem is poor mental health, well, you're not going to find it. You've just got to see that someone is going to occasionally make this jump and be horrified at the way the Australian society of the time was ready to let them do so with few questions asked. It's frustrating from both a real-life and storytelling perspective, but not just because one wants answers - the filmmakers capture how the randomness is part of what makes it terrible but I can't say I felt riveted by it - the back half of the movie got to "these things that make no sense happened and they're awful" for me but not "these terrible random things happened and you can't look away".

And that's why I'm not nearly as high on the movie as I feel I should be - I saw posts on social media the night it screened that the IFFBoston audience was stunned into silence, but I can't say that's how I felt, as opposed to just waiting for the movie to reach its inevitable destination. Not waiting impatiently, mind; just not having the visceral reaction that writer Shaun Grant and director Justin Kurzel were looking for.

IFFBoston 2017.183: Thoroughbreds & Thelma

Kind of disappointed in myself in only getting to two days of IFFBoston's Fall Focus, but not beating myself up over it too much - I'd already seen one and most of the rest will likely play a fair number of theaters in coming weeks. These two seem the most likely to get lost in the shuffle, so it's nice that my schedule worked out best with them.

Thoroughbreds, kind of amazingly, isn't set to come out until next year, which wouldn't be bad if it just got finished recently, but co-star Anton Yelchin died in 2016. Stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke won't quite have aged out of playing teenagers by then, but it's not a ridiculous possibility. It's far-enough away that Focus may opt to send it straight to VOD, or Universal could even decide that they don't need a boutique label by then. It's an odd enough movie that this sort of thing wouldn't surprise me.

As for Thelma, it's listed as being released this weekend, but the Boston showtimes haven't updated at this point, so who knows if we'll get it this week or next, or at all? It's worth remembering that for one of director Joachim Trier's previous films, critics basically had to beg theaters to get it to play in the area. I missed it, later catching it on video, and I'm kind of not sure where this one plays - it's just genre enough to not play the Kendall, but foreign enough not to play Boston Common. Maybe it gets a 9:30pm-in-the-Goldscreen-plus-midnights week at the Coolidge, but who knows?

Anyway, as much as I wish I could have gone to more than three movies, I caught three of the right ones. Both halves of this dangerous-young-women double feature had some issues, but they're good enough that I'm glad I got to see them on a big screen and that Brian, Nancy, and the rest of the IFFBoston/Brattle crew helped me prioritize them.

Thoroughbreds

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 October 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2017, DCP)

The teenage girls in Thoroughbreads watch an old movie or three over the course of their own film, and, boy, would Anya Taylor-Joy be looking at a heck of a line in femmes fatales if there were still the same sort of regular demand for them. Her performance as a potentially-monstrous teenager is delicious, begging to be inserted into a film that has higher stakes or which gives her someone to pull down from a much higher pedestal.

She's playing Lily, who used to hang out with Amanda (Olivia Cooke) before transferring to boarding school a year and a half ago. Nobody is talking to Amanda these days, but Amanda doesn't mind - indeed, she says she can't, that she's unable to feel emotion but can fake it well enough to get by, and she that knows Lily's just tutoring her for the SATs because her mom is paying. As much as this confession initially freaks Lily out, she quickly comes to like having a friend for whom she doesn't have to keep up a sweet, placid exterior - at least, until Amanda picks up on the enmity between Lily and her stepfather (Paul Sparks) and bluntly raises the option of killing him.

Writer/director Cory Finley has Amanda spill that she's not capable of feeling emotion early, and there are times when it makes what Olivia Cooke does a little less interesting; she can be flat in her delivery and the audience will basically take it as given, with any display of emotion immediately recognized as a technical exercise even when the script doesn't have her actually giving an explanation on how she fakes crying. Amanda's stated lack of feeling distances the audience from her in the same way it distances her from other people, something the film perhaps waits too long to address, especially since it serves to camouflage the little things Cooke does right, principal among them being flat but never really cold. Finley is careful never to describe her as selfish or a sociopath in hiding, and Cooke is often quite good at finding the delivery that's neither robotic nor obviously inflected.

Full review on EFC.

Thelma

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 October 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2017, DCP)

I love the themes that director Joachim Trier eventually gets around to really poking at, the idea of institutions and even family holding determined women back by any means necessary. There are times when it gets well out of the filmmaker's hands, like he's got this idea but doesn't really know how to pull it together as a story and ultimately decides to just go with what feels right (or horrible, depending on the scene), but mostly this movie seems to be on the right track.

After a brief prelude, the audience meets present-day Thelma (Eili Harboe), a bright girl who grew up in a small town but has come to the city for college. She and her parents (Henrik Rafaelsen & Ellen Dorrit Petersen) appear to be close, but maybe not quite so close as they first appear: Thelma isn't exactly actively rebelling against her religious upbringing, but she fibs about which courses she's taking and sees a pretty big difference between believing in God and believing the world is 6000 years old. Given this, it's almost a given that she won't tell her parents how close she is getting with her classmate Anja (Okay Kaya), but not telling them when she starts having seizures - and the doctors can't find any signs of epilepsy or similar neurological disorders - is something else.

It would be one kind of movie if the seizures stayed in her head, but from the way that all those birds were crashing into the window the first time, that's not going to be the case, and when that happens, a story can either go in the Carrie or X-Men directions, and both are kind of minefields. The second almost inevitably makes the character's abilities the focus of the story, making it a question of practical application rather than the internal struggles that the storyteller wants to tell on a larger-than-life scale. Enlarging it to that scale, though, tends to break the metaphor, making the girl with great potential inherently dangerous, not just something that makes people uncomfortable or nervous. Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt don't really have a solution for that, story-wise, and to be fair, they don't need one, though their film would likely be a bit more compelling if there were a little more evidence offered that Thelma could change the world in a positive way.

Full review on EFC.

Fantasia 2017 catch-up, part 3: The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue; Almost Coming, Almost Dying; Death Note: Light Up the New World; 78/52; Friendly Beast; November; You Only Live Once; M.F.A.; and DRIB

With the IFFBoston Fall Focus going on now and an actual non-film festival vacation coming up, I'm making the decision to punt on the last two unreviewed films of day #15, Town in a Lake and Dead Man Tells His Own Tale). It's been three months, my initial Letterboxd entries are not exactly detailed, and something's got to give if I'm going to get to The Endless with any of my brain power intact. It's kind of unfair that these are the ones getting the short end of the stick, because they're basically suffering from being at the tail end of a stretch where the festival was just scheduled so tight that I couldn't get more than a short paragraph or two into my phone between movies and surrounded by shorts that have to get their write-up in real time. It's not that they're bad movies - Town in a Lake is kind of great! - but even those of us super-dedicated to earning our press passes by trying to write something on every darn thing that we see at a three-week festival can't quite manage it.

Heck, releases caught up with me three times during this batch, as both 78/52 (now with the subtitle "Hitchcock's Shower Scene") and M.F.A. both got theatrical/VOD releases just as I was getting to them (not sure when DRIB hit the streams). Sadly, November does not yet to be on any schedules yet, and what the heck, distributors? It's almost November and this thing is weird and gorgeous. I know screens are going to be tough to come by, but that's kind of on you for letting it sit so long, you know?

Anyway, 13 left, with 2 I almost probably won't get to. That Crush Cream Soda and Oh! Henry bar that I've been sitting on since the end of the festival as my reward for finishing these up are almost in my belly!

Yozora wa Itsudemo Saiko Mitsudo no Aoiro da (The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017: Camera Lucida, DCP)

It's unusual for a film to be based upon a book of poetry, even one with a title like "The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue" which frequently allows one of its characters to narrate with a voice that is piquant in its cynicism. Seeing the credit for poet Tahi Sihate is a little more surprising given that director Yuya Ishii adapts it into a film that has a strong narrative despite appearing to be just as focused on what its characters think as what they do.

The narration comes from Mika (Shizuka Ishibashi), a nurse in Tokyo who earns extra money in a hostess bar, though as you might expect from someone whose thoughts tilt toward the dark, she's pouring drinks rather than putting on a big smile and flirting with the customers. That's where she bumps into a trio of construction workers - uncertain Shinji (Sosuke Ikematsu), sarcastic Toshiyuki (Ryuhei Matsuda), and homesick Filipino Adres (Paul Magsign). As they both live or work in the Shibuya section of Tokyo, Mika and Shinji find their paths crossing regularly and they start to form a tentative friendship, even if Toshiyuki is the one that asks Mika out.

It's a sign of just how well-sketched the characters in this film are that Mika can talk about how love does not exist on this earth and also say it's stupid and destructive without the viewer saying, hey, take a cynical side here, or feel like she or Ishii is just being antagonistic. Ishii sets actress Shizuka Ishibashi a difficult task in making Mika so generally abrasive without quite pushing the audience away, especially since he doesn't give her cool, snarky lines to lean on. Ishibashi proves good at directing Mika's doubts inward and presenting her as frank and suspicious but not mean, at a certain remove but showing that she's not aloof even if she may seem disengaged.

Full review on EFC.

Kumoman (Almost Coming, Almost Dying)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017, Blu-ray)

There's likely a bit of truth in the way Almost Coming, Almost Dying slows down after a bizarre, titillating beginning: Recovery is not always hard in a way that obviously challenges someone, but it's often kind of boring and/or embarrassing, with a lot of waiting to see if something has healed properly or not being sure how to ask if this illness has affected something intimate. And so, after a fair amount of funny nudity and a themed "massage parlor" to open things up and get Manabu (Misoo No) into the hospital, the rest of the movie seldom strays far from his bed as he spends a month convalescing from a particularly ill-timed brain hemorrhage.

It could be deadly-dull stuff (although I suspect that some Americans may find six weeks of care without worries about paying for it an exciting fantasy rather than a disorienting situation), but director Toshimasa Kobayashi and screenwriter Hiroyuki Abe are good at finding the little things that are weird or unnerving or thought-provoking and giving them just enough room to play out and lead into the next one without ever seeming to focus too much on any one thing. It preserves the singular point-of-view of the real-life Manabu Nakagawa's autobiographical manga without indulging in too much navel-gazing; though very much his specific story, the filmmakers maybe spot some irony in how the hospital stay twists Manabu's initial situation as a 29-year-old man living with his parents and seldom leaving his room: Having others attend to his needs while remaining isolated suddenly becomes a far less enjoyable experience even before the question of how he got there rears its head.

That sense of isolation and disconnection isn't necessarily something that necessarily comes to the forefront for most in the audience; the filmmakers camouflage it with more obvious surrealism and what is generally very good examples of the comedy of embarrassment. Some of it is standard "pretty nurse for whom you have no mystery" stuff, although there's also a number of scenes where on family member tries to run interference to keep others from figuring out just where Manabu had his aneurysm that are perfectly executed comedy. They're also mindful of how they use the "Kumoman" mascot - a furry that personifies both Manabu's RCVS and his fear of another seizure - not letting these flights of fancy overtake the humans at the center or letting that fear get shunted too far aside by its oddity.

Full review on EFC.

Death Note: Light Up The New World

* * (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017: Action!, DCP)

Was there really any particular demand for another spin-off of the theatrical Death Note series, or was the recent Japanese live-action television adaptation just a reminder to the rights-holders that there was money to be made? It doesn't particularly matter, I suppose, because this new addition coming ten years after the pretty entertaining 2006 two-parter is the worst sort of legacy sequel, picking up the convoluted mythology of the first but lacking the characters who initially got their hooks into the audience, or any particularly interesting successors.

A prologue states that the God of Death was so entertained by the chaos caused by the Death Notes ten years ago that he sent a dozen more of these magic notebooks to Earth, allowing a whole new set of people to kill someone just by writing the victim's name (and, optionally, manner of death) while picturing his or her face. The Death Note Task Force is revived, this time led by Interpol detective - and L's "true heir" - Tsukuru Mishima (Masahiro Higashide) and masked private investigator Ryuzaki Arai (Sosuke Ikematsu). It soon becomes clear that someone is trying to take control of all the Notes, quite possibly Yuki Shien (Masaki Suda), a hacker who considers himself "Kira's Messenger". He has sent a "Kira Virus" out that hints that the original Kira, Light Yamagi, is somehow still alive, which draws in Misa Amane (Erika Toda), now a successful actress whose memory of having used a Death Note was erased even if her feelings for Yamagi linger.

That paragraph likely sounds impenetrable for those who haven't encountered this material in one form or another before (there is the original manga, an animated adaptation, the two previous live-action movies which spawned spinoff L: Change the World, the Japanese live-action TV series, and the recent American live-action film), although odds are that there aren't many of those in the film's target audience: Death Note was a cultural phenomenon in Japan and one of the country's most popular cultural exports for a time. And there's certainly potential in a sequel, with an international scope and a "new world" of social media interaction that offers more at both extremes of anonymity and transparency that was just getting started when the earlier iterations came out. Though few characters survived the previous movies, you could probably build a heck of a thriller or satire around Misa as what looks to be a mature, decent woman whose celebrity is built on infamy she can no longer fully recall alone.

Full review on EFC.

78/52

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017: Documentaries from the Edge, DCP)

Do we really need an entire 90-minute documentary on the shower scene in Psycho? No, but then again, we don't need a lot of things that turn out to be pretty interesting, and Psycho was a pivotal moment in film history, with the shower scene one that absolutely everybody who has seen it remembers. You could spend a lot more than this time breaking it down - Hitchcock did take a full week to shoot that minute or so of film, after all, and then there was editing and music and all that, so there was thought put into it, and unpacking what seem like thought processes is usually worth doing.

It's probably not surprising that some of the best unpacking comes from editor Walter Murch, who has detailed an authoritative commentary on every cut and decision that Hitchcock and editor George Tomasini made - the man knows his craft and his voice and delivery are such that he can get out a lot of facts and not make it feel particularly dry. He's not the only one to walk the audience through what Hitchcock and his crew did; there are literally dozens of filmmakers and scholars from Peter Bogdanovich to Karyn Kusama to give their insight (conspicuous by his absence is Gus Van Sant, who famously did a shot-by-shot remake of the film). The only primary source that filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe really has left to talk to is Marli Renfro, the pin-up girl who served as Janet Leigh's body double, and her perspective is obviously very specific, although that's part of what makes the clips with the sweet old lady all the more intriguing.

It's not necessarily something that could work for the whole film, and finding the right balance of what to recount, what's background, and interpretation can sometimes be difficult. That's why it's probably more useful than it sometimes appears for director Alexandre O. Philippe to cut to the next two or three generations of filmmakers and fans who are sometimes just gushing or throwing out an undeveloped idea. Even when they're not necessarily providing new insight, it's useful; as the audience can feel these people learning something with them, making it less like a lecture and more like an interactive process. It's lubricant, even if some (like a young film professor who comes off far more as a fan than expert) are energetic enough to become off-putting.

Full review on EFC.

O Animal Cordial (Friendly Beast)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017, DCP)

Friendly Beast looks like a pretty typical single-location hostage thriller, a group of somewhat disagreeable people having guns pointed at them by petty criminals in way over their heads, but it's not very long before filmmaker Gabriela Amaral Almeida takes a hard turn, making a movie that, plot-wise, makes almost no sense as coming from that situation. And yet, once it gets rolling, it works; we certainly buy these characters feeling under-appreciated and disrespected enough to take this opportunity to seize the moment and the film.

It's almost closing time at "La Barca", a restaurant somewhere in Brazil, late enough that owner Inácio (Murilo Benicio) is sending Lucio (Diego Avelino), one of the servers, home. There's just one customer there - Amadeu (Ernani Moraes), a big guy eating his rabbit alone, at least until Bruno (Jiddu Pinheiro) and Veronica (Camila Morgado) arrive, already seeming half in the bag. It's a hassle for Djair (Irandhir Santos), the chef, who has already started closing the kitchen down and told his assistants to take the rubbish out, but the restaurant isn't so profitable as Inácio's dreams, so he has hostess Sara (Luciana Paes) sit them down and take their orders. Which means that when Magno (Humberto Carrão) and another couple masked men come in to rob the place, there's a couple more potential hostages. But when things don't go as the robbers plan, Inácio is still egotistical and paranoid enough that things nevertheless might not end peacefully.

Indeed, the way things wind up rearranged makes little enough sense that it seems like filmmaker Gabriela Amaral Almeida has more or less dispensed with plot to venture into a surreal world where dominance games of sex and violence happen entirely as their own thing without having any sort of specific goal. Heck, that's arguably what happens; Inácio and Sara don't necessarily have psychotic breaks in the strictest possible sense but their worldviews have been upset enough that they no longer take reacting in a rational manner for granted. As much as the extremity and, indeed, foolishness of some of their actions may leave viewers scratching their heads, they're not necessarily unreasonable; fear and violence can mess people up, even if there's something vaguely simple or rational about the original plan.

Full review on EFC.

November

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017: Camera Lucida, DCP)

Rainer Sarnet's Estonian fantasy opens with some familiar, but beautifully-lensed, stark images of life in and around a poor, pre-industrial village, and just as you're starting to form an image of what this movie will be like, it drops some utterly bizarre fantasy elements into the mix as a family's kratt goes berserk from lack of work, stealing the cow and trying to lift it like a helicopter before having its mind blown after being told to make a ladder out of bread like a computer trying to parse illogic in an original-series Star Trek episode. If you've never heard of a kratt before, it's a jaw-dropping display of WTFery with which to open the film. For those raised on the Disney-fied versions fairy tales that came out of Western Europe, Eastern European folklore is weird.

Weirder still - Sarnet basically spends the movie accepting its premises while still allowing some modern vernacular to make its way in. The crossroads demon is neither regal, creepy, nor mischievous, for instance; he's a loudmouthed jerk who can be fooled but not pushed around. Witchcraft works, the plague is a shapeshifting creature that can be made to swear oaths, and departed relatives enjoy a nice sauna on All Soul's Day. It's a world where medieval superstitions have some basis in fact but which is fascinating because the people in it, from infatuated young Liina (Rea Les) and Hans (Jörgen Liik) on up, are all people we can relate to. In some ways, it seems like an attempt at partial immersion - the twenty-first century audience that buys a ticket to this sort of film is by its nature well-removed from the superstitions that ruled these people's lives (and which often still hold sway in areas where life has not changed that much), and might have a hard time seeing both the absurdity of the situation and the very real pressures the people involved faced.

It is, of course, not always a happy situation - life is cruel and requires grabbing for anything you can get in this place, so that person you understand is probably ready to screw over someone else you kind of like. There's a weary acceptance that takes some of the edge off, though, and enough genuine love in the hearts of Liina and Hans to give the audience some hope. Things might be simpler if the pair just loved each other, but Sarnet (working from a novel by Andrus Kivirahk) is not going to make it that easy - though Liina loves Hans, Hans is smitten with the new Baroness (Jette Loona Hermanis), a beautiful but sickly young German girl who has her own issues, while Liina has been betrothed to a local merchant. Indeed, there are enough intrigues and background characters that while the film plays out in a relaxed-enough manner - no scene is too frantic and the editing never seems rushed - the audience may at times wish for a little less, because there's just not time for everything to get its full due, even if all the details are intriguing in their own right.

Full review on EFC.

Sólo se vive una vez (You Only Live Once)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017: Action!, DCP)

Boy, is You Only Live Once a mess, starting from a solid thriller set-up, moving through some genuinely inventive action beats, before spending the bulk of the film in a hackneyed plot that overlooks some pretty darn basic things in order to make the "hiding-out" comedy work, before getting back into some over-the-top action toward the end. It's a genuinely dumb script that decides on a tone but not really a cast, often seeming to make things up as it goes along.

Leonardo Andrade (Peter Lanzani) is the guy who will eventually need to hide out, as he and lady friend Flavia (Eugenia Suárez) are setting up a schlub (Carlos Areces) whose job as a "food engineer" sounds ridiculous but apparently pays well and merits security - at least until ruthless French businessman Duges (Gérard Depardieu) shows up and demands he fork over the formula for the new preservative he's created. Soon enough, Leonardo has a blackmail tape of murder rather than infidelity as well as a flash drive people will kill for, so he's got to hide. Fortunately, there's a bus to a dormitory where Orthodox Jews from all over the country are having a sort of encounter group, so "Pablo Cohen" gets on board. New roommate Yosi (Dario Lopilato) sees something is up immediately, but both his fiancee Sara (Arancha Marti) and Rabbi Mendi (Luis Brandoni) seem to have taken a shine to Pablo, so Sara, Yosi, and Leonardo's estranged brother Agustín (Pablo Rago) - a priest! - get drawn in when Duges starts sending assassins to sniff Leonardo out.

There's something rather tacky about this sort of story - it lends itself to the broadest possible stereotypes while things only seem to get worse as the jokes get walked back (look, these guys are mostly like regular people!). Screenwriters Sergio Esquenazi and Axel Kuschevatzky mostly avoid that - Yosi, Sara, and Mendi have their eccentricities which certainly get exaggerated by their background but would probably be oddballs regardless - but there are still a lot of moments where someone might squint and wonder if Leonardo's first encounter with a specifically Jewish thing really counts as an actual joke in 2017. Thankfully, they and director Federico Cueva are often able to turn that into energy - Leonardo's enthusiasm for a certain group that is not necessarily thought of as Jewish first and not pausing when confronted with neo-nazis are at least fun, and an example of how the filmmakers are not necessarily going to get methodical and over-serious as the plot takes over - which is not necessarily something that a lot of action-comedies can say.

Full review on EFC.

M.F.A.

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

Rape-revenge films are kind of nasty things, although this one at least had that it was written and directed by women going for it. That at least makes things a little less creepy and exploitative, if not necessarily different but one can perhaps watch it without second-guessing it so much. It's easier to watch a scene where a woman is painting naked as a sign of reclaiming her own agency where physicality is concerned and feel like that's actual intentions rather than an excuse that way, for sure, although it's still not the most creative way to tell this story.

It takes place on the fictitious Balboa University, where Noelle (Francesca Eastwood) is a sweet young art student, kind of shy, doing work that her professor (Marlon Young) criticizes as being kind of conventional, though her friend and neighbor Skye (Leah McKendrick) is more encouraging. Still, she catches the eye of Luke (Peter Vack), a hunky classmate who asks her to to join him at a party at his frat's house, where he goes more than a bit too far. As is often the case, the school's counselor (Mary Price Moore) is no help, maybe not quite victim-blaming but clearly not advocating for her, and when Noelle goes to Luke to demand an apology… Well, she doesn't get one, but his falling over a railing is a different sort of satisfaction that she wouldn't mind feeling again.

Though less obviously misguided than some of its peers, M.F.A. is still a movie that can't help but feel like the filmmakers are checking things off, pointing out the things that you need to know and they need to say about campus rape culture but not necessarily digging deep into it or using that to establish a specific, unique situation. Noelle takes revenge for herself and others, in ways that are more real-world than elaborate, but finding new inspiration for her art as she stays just far enough ahead of the police to build up a little suspense. And, yes, that "new inspiration" bit is kind of gross no matter who is telling the story, although at least nobody brings up the idea that her horrible trauma may be a blessing in disguise. Director Natalia Leite and writer/co-star Leah McKendrick step fairly carefully in trying to avoid false notes, which gives their movie both a certain earnestness and a corresponding stiffness.

Full review on EFC.

Drib

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in 26 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017: Documentaries from the Edge, DCP)

Though screened as part of the festival's "Documentaries from the Edge" program, DRIB probably only qualifies as a for how it includes some original material that led up to the events depicted and cutaway bits that talk directly to the audience; otherwise it's all "recreations" that have a certain amount if license admittedly taken. It could, perhaps, do with a bit more - the filmmakers' relationship to their story's absurdity often leads to jokes not landing quite as well as they could, although there's enough of them for the movie to work, especially for fans of the absurd.

Actual footage, we are told, cannot be used because of the non-disclosure agreement that Amir Asgharnejad signed when he agreed to work on an ad campaign, so he is forced to recreate his experiences. An Iranian-born comedian who grew up in southern Norway, Amir became a fan of Andy Kaufman when his father died, and a Kaufman-like bit where he picks fights on the street that he can't win goes viral on YouTube. An American advertising agency hits on the idea of sponsoring and product-placing energy drink "DRIB" into the series - creative director Brady Thompson (Brett Gelman) envisions a stealthy, unacknowledged campaign - and somehow, Amir never really gets the chance to tell anyone but sensible copywriter Cathy Rothman (Annie Hamilton) that all the original fights were faked.

For all that Asgharnejad and filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli are going for a story that is stranger than fiction, the absurdity of the situation is not as Kafka-esque as the initial introduction makes it sound: Hollywood is weird but there's never any conflict between its strangeness and Asgharnejad trying to interact with it - as much as he quite reasonably doesn't want to get punched in the face by a bunch of Los Angeles bodybuilders, he often seems more a detached observer rather than someone getting caught up in more than he can handle or comprehend. If the fact that an audience can watch this and not be shocked or befuddled is meant to be an indictment of modern consumer culture, it doesn't quite work out that way, and Asgharnejad at times seems like a guy planning this movie rather than stumbling into it.

Full review on EFC.

Fantasia 2017.15: M.F.A., Drib, Town in a Lake, Dead Man Tells His Own Tale, and Good Time

A bit longer than I expected, as I was putting it at 50/50 that Dead Man Tells His Own Tale wouldn't let out in time for me to get into the night's big attraction, and it was close enough that I wondered if I should walk away, get an early start on writing, and let someone who needed it for their job have a seat. But first…



M.F.A. director Natalia Leite is on the left, talking about her film. I liked it, for the most part, although it was something of a case where I heard her talking about shooting the revenge-killing scenes as fantasy that I kind of hemmed and hawed, because they didn't really create the measure of excitement that I think she was going for, and I think that goes beyond me not being a woman, young or otherwise. It was, at least, interesting to hear her talk about shooting a rape scene first thing in the morning when nobody is really into it, despite knowing it's what the film needs. Non-sexual violence seems like it would easier to choreograph to not be so uncomfortable and scary.

The 3:30 show of Drib was moved across the street to Hall, which was kind of weird, although it gave me time to hit the Swiss watch/chocolate place for a hot dog and a 68% cacao Madagascar Chocolate milkshake. As much as it's a good sausage and shake, watching it change over the past years has been kind of amusing - it started out as very much a place where you could buy fancy Swiss wall clocks with a place to get chocolate off in a corner, but the layout has been a bit different every year, evolving to the present where it's basically a cafe with clocks serving as decoration and a back room where you can see more.



After that, it was back to de Seve for Dead Man Tells His Own Tale, and it's pretty darn cool to see someone I know brought up on stage to talk about her short. I've seen her at BUFF, of course, but it's a different thing when it's not your home festival.

Finally it was back across the street for Good Time, where I got this lovely seat:



… meaning that my pictures of Mitch, filmmakers Joshua & Ben Safdie, and star Robert Pattinson (who draws a crowd) earn the horrible photography tag:



Doesn't much matter; they made a pretty great film and give an exceptionally entertaining and informative Q&A, talking about how the guy playing "Jerome" in one of its jail scenes was someone who actually had spent time in jails and gangs (they used a lot of non-professional actors), and as a result did a lot of the blocking for them, making sure they go things right. Joshua talked a lot about how Cops, which is seen a couple times in the movie, really speaks to America in the 21st century a lot more than you'd like it to.

Friday's plan: Thousand Cuts, Darkland, A Thousand Junkies, Fritz Lang, and we'll see whether I'm more in the mood for Overdrive or Innocent Curse after that. Better Watch Out is pretty decent, and the free George Romero tribute screening of The Crazies is a good movie by a good dude.

"Red Handed"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

Nifty, though very compressed short about a woman dealing with a very persistent stalker, ultimately taking desperate measures to make sure he gets caught. I really like the first few minutes of this six-minute short, as it gets across the huge blind spot the law has where persistent harassment is concerned more as a distinct problem for the characters than as a lecture. It wobbles a bit toward the end, seemingly not quite sure how much weight to give to "clever" and "desperate" in the woman's eventual plan, and as a result doesn't quite stick the landing like it hopes to.

M.F.A.

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

Rape-revenge films are kind of nasty things, although this one at least had that it was written and directed by women going for it, which at least makes things a little less creepy and exploitative. Not necessarily different, perhaps, but one can watch it without second-guessing it so much - it's easier to watch a scene where a woman is painting naked as a sign of reclaiming her own agency where physicality is concerned and feel like that's actual intentions rather than an excuse that way, for sure.

That being the case, it's still kind of a movie that can't help but feel like it's checking things off, pointing out the things you need to know and it needs to say about campus rape culture but not necessarily digging deep into it or using that to establish a specific, unique situation. Noelle takes revenge for herself and others, in ways that are more real-world than elaborate, bit staying that far ahead of the police but finding new inspiration for her art.

(And, yeah, that's kind of gross no matter who is telling the story, although at least nobody brings up the idea that her horrible trains may be a blessing in disguise.)

Nice performance by Francesca Eastwood, though; she can rage and boil exceptionally well, and she's fantastic when she mousy needs to be in the immediate aftermath of her attack. I wonder how much she's meant to seem cognizant of the oddness of her using her sexuality to exact revenge, and how much of that comes from Eastwood.

Full review on EFC.

"Whiskey Fist"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in 26 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

The framing device Gillian Wallace Horvat puts around this film - that it's a rejected script for a liquor company's short-film contest - is kind of brilliant, because not only does it enable her to bite the hand that feeds her in terms of talking about dumb branding stuff, but it really gives her free rein to do almost any crazy joke she can and have it not seem like going off the rails, because half of the joke is that the filmmaker was nuts to submit this.

Of course, that meta-level stuff mainly works if the core material is funny, and that is the case here; Horvat and her game cast sell the material with a great combination of deadpan and knowing reaction shots. I'd laugh hard even without that going on, but loved it even more for the multi-layer satire.

Drib

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in 26 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017: Documentaries from the Edge, DCP)

This probably only qualifies as a documentary for how it includes some original material that led up to the events depicted and cutaway bits that talk directly to the audience; otherwise it's all "recreations" that have a certain amount if license admittedly taken. If it's trying to be something a bit more than something based on a true story or have a bit more of a meta level, it's a bit short.

Fortunately, it's still quite funny; the absurdity of the situation is not as Kaufman-esque as the initial introduction makes it sound, but the cast had a good handle on when to go for weird and when play it as sane people in a crazy environment. In some ways, the L.A. advertising world can be too easy a target, but that doesn't make its specific sort of strange headspace and amorality less of a fine source of material.

DRIB probably isn't nearly as strange and out there as it would present itself as being, but it's solidly funny, and maybe would work better if it presented itself as more mainstream than it does.

Full review on EFC.

Matangtubig (Town in a Lake)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017: Camera Lucida, DCP)

Highly recommended to me and I can see why - it's a moody piece that effectively shows the paralysis and denial that can come from having an unimaginable crime in one's midst, but those can be tough to make into a story that goes forward. Town in a Lake feels true and often traps into something real even in its more metaphorical moments, but it can be dull.

Still, it's got moments of brilliance, especially in a last act where reality seems to go off the rails - at first subtly, and then in undeniable ways that almost demand explanations that will not be forthcoming. It's a tough way to end, but one that works, giving the audience reason to consider just what people are willing to trade in order to feel like the world is safe.

"For a Good Time, Call…"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

As much as I like director Izzy Lee and writer Chris Hallock, and will miss them as they leave Boston for points south and west, there's no denying that I really like a much more focused horror film than they tend to make. The impulses behind this one are great, you can sort of see the connection between the guy who posts his revenge porn getting attacked after he encounters the original form of that (the number scrawled on the bathroom wall), but there's something to the leaps the short makes that puts me off - the monster doesn't quite seem a personification of what it represents, and the guy sort of seems to go into the rest-stop bathroom for the specific purpose of getting attack, just putting in earbuds rather than attending to any sort of business.

I'm glad to see Izzy continues to have strong pacing skills and a good team in cinematographer/editor Bryan McKay and musicians Give Zombies the Vote, and I think this is some of her best work with actors, too. Here's hoping that the move to L.A., with more available resources and a potentially more competitive environment, will get her up to the next level.

El Muerto Cuenta su Historia (Dead Man Tells His Own Tale)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International Film Festival 2017, DCP)

That took a couple of turns toward the end, and that night have been okay if the movie hadn't dwelled to get there. This tale of a sexist take who revives as a member of the undead controlled by a cabal of mysterious women could be a nice throwback to the original sort of zombie, but instead it spins its wheels, having a fun cast not really do anything until it's ready to get into supernatural mythology at the end, and then a stinger that's seemingly nothing but set-up for something we'll never see.

Good Time

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017, DCP)

Good Time just moves, setting up what seems like a simple central relationship and then blowing it up by pushing Robert Pattinson's character into new bad situations, letting it slowly dawn on the audience that this isn't a good guy no matter how sympathetic his initial motives are. It makes for a fascinating shift, as the audience sees the astonishingly destructive chaos going on but is kind of stuck with Connie.

But what a run it is, as the Safdie Brothers never really let up, rolling one scenario into the next with almost no delay, never making the action moments into punctuation but instead just pushing through. It's a thing that keeps this night going and not necessarily worrying about how you'll get back to something.

And while it seems very street-level and simple-looking, it's got real style, from a flashback style to the credits to the pulsating soundtrack. The Safdies are great with sound and rhythm, to the extent that it pulls the audience through even when the visuals are chaotic and muddy.

Full Review at EFC

Fantasia 2017.06: Liberation Day, Wukong and Punk Fu Zombie

There could have been a press screening in here, but did I really want to see The Endless without an introduction and Q&A from the filmmakers? No, no I did not. Besides, that was about the same time Cacao 70 opened for breakfast around the corner, and I suspect I'm going to be there a few times during this vacation.

Theater-jumping made for a rapid-fire sort of day, as Liberation Day ended just in time to get across the street for Wukong while someone from the Hong Kong government pitched it as a great place to visit and shoot movies, and then that let out just in time to get downstairs for Punk Fu Zombie.

Wukong was a bit of a surprise - I was expecting something much more serious throughout from the teaser that played before a lot of Chinese movies at AMC Boston Common, but got something a lot funnier, at least through the first third or half. I'm also surprised to look at Fandango and see that it's only playing on half a screen at Boston Common right now (sharing it with Our Time Will Come); it got a pretty big push for a fairly small booking, especially considering that it's apparently cleaning up back in China. Anyway, glad I saw it, but I'm always a bit surprised that these movies show up at Fantasia while/after they played wide releases - for all that Fantasia brings a crowd to Hong Kong action, and the city does have a Chinatown, it seems like there would be a spot at the Forum or something more often. It's also kind of amusing to see some outlets covering movies that got a day-and-date release like they're festival films just being discovered by North America; there seems to be a real lag in catching up to these releases, even a year and a half after people complained about not being informed about The Mermaid.



So, uh, I don't know who any of these people are; the guy on the left was already on-stage when I got into Punk Fu Zombie and my French sucks enough not to catch their introductions properly. Still, they were having a great time working the audience and going on about both their low-budget zombie movie and the short that played beforehand. I honestly straight-up love the enthusiasm the locals display for their films; I really should polish up my French so that I can join in a little more rather than bail before the Q&A I knew I wouldn't understand.

Then I got back "home" and discovered to my delight that not only was the Red Sox game still going on (rained in Boston, I gather), and then that NESN Go isn't blocked in Canada. Darn near fell asleep watching the game on my phone, which was neat.

An interesting day, to say the least. Next up: Skipping the big thing which will be in theaters on Friday but going for Have a Nice Day, Sequence Break, Poor Agnes, and Plan B. Shock Wave is slick, but not a great action movie.

Liberation Day

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2017 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017: Documentaries from the Edge, DCP)

It is, perhaps, unfair to expect Liberation Day to be more controversial than it is, at least from one perspective: It is a documentary and it documents, in a manner that seems fair and transparent, and often entertaining. But it's also a part of a larger project, one potentially more subversive in its intent, and watching everyone involved not necessarily be timid but also not be daring makes for a film that perhaps lacks the kick that one about art-metal band Laibach playing a concert in North Korea perhaps should have.

The story made the news in 2015 - part of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Liberation Day celebrations (marking both Koreas' independence from Chinese and Japanese rule in 1945) would be the country's first-ever concert by a western rock band, made all the more interesting by the fact that the band is Laibach, a band that first rose to prominence in 1980s Yugoslavia and has since built an identity around their use of fascist iconography in a way that often seems to blur the line between satire and endorsement. Oh, and they would be covering songs from The Sound of Music as a part of the show. Even for someone with the sort of experience working with North Korea that producer/director Morten Traavik has, that's got to be a crazy tightrope to walk.

That this is actually Traavik's fifteenth visit to North Korea is a bit of information tossed out relatively casually, followed by some amusing YouTube videos of other projects he worked on there, but it's something that highlights the almost inevitable paradox at the center of this project: The DPRK isn't going to do something like this with someone they don't trust, someone they trust is not going to push back at their demands very much, and as a result, the friction between extremely unconventional artists and an extremely authoritarian government never really materializes. There's some potentially interesting material to be found in some of that lack of conflict - there is talk about how Laibach is a band from a country that no longer exists, with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc meaning these former Yugoslavians are now Slovenian, and member Ivan Novak sees the utopian elements of the place - but Traavik and co-director Ugis Olte don't particularly delve into that, or even counter those musings with how Pyongyang is something of a showcase city that gives visitors a skewed view of the DPRK as a whole.

Full review on EFC.

Wukong

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2017 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU/Théâtre Hall (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017, DCP)

You shouldn't judge a movie by its trailer any more than you should judge a book by its cover, especially the teaser-style thing for Wukong that ran before every Chinese-language film that played my local theater over the last couple of months, but it's still worth mentioning that this isn't exactly the dark, gritty Monkey King re-imagining that implied, but another oft-comedic fantasy adventure featuring the powerful but mischievous demigod, and while it's a fair question as to whether the world needs another one of those, it's at least an entertaining one, even if it does stretch its budget a bit.

It starts in the heavens, where the Destiny Council is preparing to select new immortals 300 years after the escape of a rebellious stone giant ended with the destruction of Mount Huaguo, where the Azi (Ni Ni) eagerly awaits the return of childhood friend Erlang Shen (Shawn Yue Man-lok), whose third eye stays persistently closed a side-effect of his having a mortal father and an immortal mother, only to be interrupted by Sun Wukong (Eddie Peng Yu-yan), who has climbed his way to Heaven to exact revenge for the destruction of his home. Wukong is captured, but the leader of the council, Hua Ji (Yu Feihong) places him in the custody of Azi with a "crown" that will squeeze his head painfully on demand. Undaunted, Wukong still attempts to destroy the Destiny Astrolabe, but that results in him, Azi, Erlang, Hua Ji's enforcer Tian Peng (O Ho), and mechanically-inclined Juanlian (Qiao Shan) being cast down to the crater where Huaguo used to be without their powers, finding the locals menaced by a storm demon.

Though the film opens with a bit of narration that tends toward the grandiose, it gets funny fairly quickly. The Sun Wukong introduced in the first act is not any sort of Monkey King but a shaggy guy in worn clothing strutting with a sort of goofy confidence that is both matched and complemented, an elegant princess who nevertheless is inclined to scrap. Director Derek Kwok Chi-kin and four other writers give the characters big, brash personalities and have them banter as they knock each other around with outsized weapons - Wukong's signature staff often seems like something out of a cartoon, even as it glows red through a black crust like lava. Even after they fall to earth, there's a cheeriness to how they pull together under Azi's leadership, drawing comedy not just from how Juanlian's previously ridiculed devices may be their best hope but from how Wukong and Erlang argue like children over how to best implement it and take credit.

Full review on EFC.

"À part ça, la vie est belle"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2017 in Théâtre D.B. Clarke (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017: Les Fantastiques Week-Ends du Cinéma Québécois, digital)

You don't need to understand French particularly well to enjoy this combination of a bouncy chanson by Claude François with images out of a zombie movie, limited though the animation may be. It is, obviously, a goofy juxtaposition, but it would probably be fun without this particular soundtrack; director François Mercier shows some skill at getting a bit of a zing out of what is basically a comic-book page flip, and making that limited animation work: I laughed a lot more at a zombie's shambling leg being manipulated into playing as dancing than seems reasonable.

It works, no matter what the language.

Punk Fu Zombie

N/A (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2017 in Théâtre D.B. Clarke (Fantasia International FIlm Festival 2017: Les Fantastiques Week-Ends du Cinéma Québécois, digital)

So, anyway, like I said above, I thought there were going to be English subtitles on this one. Shame on me for not re-checking the program before I left the apartment.

That said, this was never going to be my thing; I'm not big on warts-and-all parody or any form of "let's make a crappy movie on purpose", and this one crosses the fine line between a Wakaliwood-style picture that has to make everything from scratch and accept that it's just got no resources and folks doing bad dubbing because it's a joke. On top of that, it's an hour and forty-five minutes long, and that's a long time for this sort of movie. I was having a good time trying to keep track of the plot even without much French, and I kind of suspect that challenge kept me going longer until the "ugh, are we really still doing this" feeling kicked in.