BUFF 2022.01: You Won't Be Alone and The Nest

I've been trying not to jinx this for the past few weeks while also checking to see if the schedule had been announced, because I don't believe in jinxes but also don't see the point of talking about something that may not happen. Well…

Did they make that the opening night film of the festival as a sort of comment about how we've been doing these things in living rooms with maybe one or two others in the household who are into the sort of thing over the last couple years and it really hurts peculiar genre films i particular, or is it just a happy-ish coincidence? I don't know, but with BUFF being one of the first festivals canceled for Covid, it's really good to see it back.

I've mentioned before that even more than most film festivals, you've got to go into this one knowing a good chunk isn't going to be your thing, but it's kind of fun to note that they spent the first night looking at the two poles of modern horror with the classy art-house material of ou Won't Be Alone and the rather less-intellectual The Nest. I don't know that either really made a huge impression on me one way or the other; both flavors have either gone harder and been more precisely crafted (or, perhaps, more amusingly slipshod) but they still more or less do what they set out to do. The most interesting thing is that these two movies are more or less in the same genre but don't have a whole lot more in common than that.

Well, aside from the nasty fates the kitty-cats meet early on in both movies. They've got that in common.

You Won't Be Alone

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022, DCP)

There's a part of me that wonders if it's a red flag that this movie was not released by A24 - it's the sort of thing they've had a good instinct for, but if they let it go to Focus/Universal, maybe it's lacking something. It's not really scary, but filmmaker Goran Stolevski doesn't entirely grab something more grand and universal.

It's kind of odd that a man made this movie, given the extent to which this film about a pair of shapeshifters often finds itself resolving into a mother/daughter story: It starts with a woman bargaining with a the "wolf-eateress" known as "Old Maid Maria" for the life of her daughter Nevena, said witch returning 16 years later to claim her prize, take the form of her mother, and make Nevena a witch capable of taking other forms herself, with later events focusing on motherhood and Nevena being tormented by Maria, who wanted a child of her own but is a terrible surrogate mother, alternating between sabotaging and abandoning Nevena.

The first thing she does, when Nevena is an infant, is maim her so that she cannot speak, which persists no matter what form she takes. There's an odd thing about this movie in that it doesn't seem to know what to do with her lack of a voice, like it was added as a folk-horror version of the need to keep people from using cell phones. There's this idea of how Nevena's isolated childhood left her with a strange inner voice and point of view even before she became a witch, and she had to learn what it means to be human by observing from outside and experiencing different points of view, and it's a good one, but there's seemingly not a whole lot of thought given to the woman she would become. It's a rich vein of material that winds up feeling kind of generic despite the interesting folklore it's built on. Nevena's female identities tend to run together - they're all the same physical type - and her narration disappears as "Bosilka" and "Biliana" integrate into their villages.

On the other hand, sometimes it's best to just let mythology be mythology, a bunch of jumbled larger forces that those who believe can't fully understand rather than a jigsaw puzzle made of parables that fit perfectly together. The world shown here isn't complex, whether in its fantastic elements or the more mundane ones. If anything, I suppose, it comes down to the idea that the world is often horrific and unfair, and you've got to decide whether you'll embrace it or demand it embrace you.

The Nest '87

* * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2022 in the Brattle Theatre (BUFF 2022, DCP)

The Nest is surprisingly amiable, as Corman-produced junk goes. It's dumb and fairly unambitious, built out of horror movie spare parts, but the leads are pleasant and it's occasionally kooky rather than floundering. There's no money to spend, of course, but the filmmakers do a fairly decent job of working around that for a while. They keep the cast members who can contribute something front and center (and give credit to Terri Treas and Stephen Davies who know just how weird to make their secondary characters) they find locations that feel more expansive than maybe they are, and the bloody comes often enough to distract from how they really can't mount an actual killer-cockroach attack.

That's part of how the filmmakers bite off more than they can chew at the climax, though; the masses of roaches never seem like active super-roaches once it's time for them to be more than just something rustling the grass. Director Ternce Winkless is unable to make a ticking clock situation work, and the "boss" monsters that the special effects department whips up aren't good enough to splash across the screen because they're neither surprisingly cool or charmingly cheesy, but trying to shoot around them only highlights the problem.

With these decades-old b-movies, it's often worth looking to see what became of the folks involved, and a surprising number are still working. Heck, writer Robert King is doing some pretty darn good TV for CBS/Paramount - who'd've thought the guy who made this had The Good Wife/Fight and Evil in him?

Fantasia 2020.03: Monster Seafood Wars, Circo Animato, and Class Action Park

How is Fantasia 2020 different than all the others for me, aside from the obvious? Well, almost all of the screeners for movies playing these two days need to be requested from a third party other than the festival, but I'm not sure how many of the people involved were working the weekend(*), so this is one of the shortest Saturdays I've ever had at the fest and Sunday will likely be even shorter. On the other hand, it meant I could watch a shorts package and reviewing the whole thing did not put me behind by months, so there's that.

(*) Not at the festival; those guys are always running flat out for three weeks and there is no reason to believe that this year is any exception.

Anyway, it's looking like I might have some time to catch up on some of these, so we'll see how the rest of the week goes. I already had to circle around on a couple of the shorts, because I thought I'd put them on "Watch Later" so I could use the Roku, but no. Weird. There will be some things that don't match the schedule, but it works that way with the fest's in-person press screenings sometimes, too.

Anyway, enough about how the sausage is blogged, let's get back to the shorts - if you're in Canada, the "Circo Animato" package is exceptionally solid and the rest of us should hope some of these short films filter into other ways they can be seen. If I ran a theater, one of the things I would do is contact filmmakers of shorts like this directly and see if I could book them as before-movie feature, which is probably very difficult but would at least give my hypothetical theater something to stand out with. From this batch, I would definitely be talking to the makers of "The Weather Is Lovely" and "Wade", albeit to pair with very different films. I'm bummed that I'm missing out on the introductions and Q&As with the short packages this year, but everybody is going to have something to be proud of. Plus, I believe it's the first time I get to use "Croatia" as a tag on this blog (even if the short in question may be more Serbian than Croation)!

Last item on the day - a link was literally mailed to me as I was watching the shorts - is Class Action Park, which will apparently be on HBO Max at the end of the month. I gather that despite having both HBO and Cinemax in my cable package, I don't have that service, which is ridiculous and highlights why these massive companies should be naming their services after the movie studios rather than the TV brands, but at least it will be around for those who couldn't log in for this one. It's fun and horrifying!

Monster Seafood Wars

* * (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival, Vimeo via Roku)

Minoru Kawasaki has been making movies along the lines of Monster Seafood Wars for years if not decades, and though I've missed most of them, I get the impression that they've been just good enough and just profitable enough that he's been able to keep working and maybe upgrade his resources over that time. The movies haven't necessarily been good, per se, but they've apparently been consistent enough in quality and tone to get him a fanbase. This one's like that - not good, but he's got enough of a voice that it's kind of interesting.

It's a giant monster movie, with 50-meter tall sea creatures - an octopus, a squid, and eventually a crab - attacking the city and suspicion falling on Yuta Tanumu (Keisuke Ueda), who was bringing a basket with those three animals personally selected by his sushi-master father to the local shrine, as well as Setap-Z, the super-growth serum he helped to develop (at great expense) while at the Institute for Super Physical & Chemical Research. Japan quickly organizes a Seafood Monster Attack Team whose leader Hibiki (Ryo Kinomoto) recruits Yuta's childhood crush Nana Hoshiyama (Yoshina Ayano Christie) and ISPCR rival Hikoma (Yuya Asato), the latter of whom suggests they use bursts of rice vinegar to soften the molluscs up so they can be blasted with missiles.

The upshot of all this is that Takella the squid and Ikulla the octopus start dropping chunks of meat after that first battle which are incredibly delicious. It's a fun idea that pretty much everybody who has seen a giant monster movie has probably at least jokingly thought about, and it seems like like Kawasaki and co-writer Masakazu Migita have put a little thought into it (working, perhaps loosely, from a story by monster movie special effects legend Eiji Tsuburaya). Not a lot of thought, which is a shame; you can see the outlines of something cleverly satirical when you connect the offscreen marauding of giant monsters with meat only affordable for the wealthy - especially galling considering Yuta developed Steap-Z to help feed the hungry - but not only does it not really go anywhere, but the filmmakers just grind through the same exact bit what seems like ten times in a row, and it is dreadfully boring. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a little bit more fun for Japanese or J-phile audience who can spot cameos and parodies that others might miss, but if you're not getting that, it's a killer.

Full review at eFilmCritic

"Spinning Top"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

Shiva Momtahen's "Spinning Top" is produced by Iran's Documentary and Experimental Film Center and has a pleasant preserving-stories vibe to it even though it having it narrated by a little kid strips it of the usual nostalgia and gives it more of a boy's adventure feel as its young hero goes searching for his lost toy, eventually digging through a well of memories to find it. It's a choice that almost starts to grate but doesn't quite reach that point, no matter how rapid or circular that voice-over work gets. Momtahen finds the line between imagination and metaphor and straddles it expertly, letting the audience enjoy both sides.

It's a delight to look at, too, as the narrating boy is mostly presented as an extremely cute figure with classic cartoon proportions and design, centered on screen and framed by gorgeous borders that regularly shift into new configurations and dazzle with their colorful designs. It puts the purity of a child's imagination in the middle of something mythic, while the occasional shifts and transformations into a shaded, three-dimensional style are both playful and a bit of a shift into something more real. It doesn't quite make this story half-remembered, but does put it into memory.

"Kkum"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo)

Poking through credits, I see director Kim Kangmin worked on Dave Made a Maze, which kind of tracks; this is earnest and imaginative and built out of an unusual medium such that you never take the way it's made for granted but can still sink in and let Kim tell his story. It's a fascinating look - everything is made out of styrofoam and that gives it both the lightness of dreams and the solidity of reality. Everything here is surprisingly solid for being seemingly insubstantial.

Which is as it should be - it tells how the narrator's mother has constant dreams about her son and does a little digging into their interpretation but also how they spur her to action, whether in terms of prayer or something more concrete. Kim describes his mother's dreams as building a shield thousands of layers deep around him and it's a visual metaphor that works, especially as that shield is a silvery glow that matches the rest of the film's muted color scheme but also feels more solid even though it's a digital force field. Even as your eyes are examining the image, the idea is sinking in.

Plus, there are styrofoam insects getting splatted in a moment that is as delightfully goofy as it is sincere, and a brief but clever break in style around the birth of Kim's first child, as the world changes for him. It makes for a nifty short indeed.

"There Were Four of Us"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

Cassie Shao's "There Were Four of Us" is the sort of abstracted animation where I find myself wanting a little more context, because it's striking and personal and creates a heck of a mood in seven minutes. I just can't quite grasp where some of it is coming from.

I like the look of it, though, with the aggressively garish colors and shifting styles, taking place in a world that seems apocalyptic but that may just be how the characters see it. It dips down into something that is more literally dreams and self-reflection at times, eventually charting a physical and mental course that takes the narrator and viewer back to the start.

I get the feeling that this is the sort of art that reveals more as you stare longer and come back to it. It's got a good enough hook to make that happen, but a festival animation block may not be the best way to get there.

"Thin Blue Variety Show"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

There was a nifty thing that went on during the early days of this year's BLM protests, as actors appalled with the way law enforcement was attacking protesters donated the residuals they'd received from playing cops, and I don't know how much it lasted beyond that, but Gretta Wilson's "Thin Blue Variety Show" comes from the same place of looking at how media reinforces acceptance of bad police behavior and always has. It's sharp and angry, almost too much so to be described as black comedy, because even though everything has the look of jokes and parody, there's not a moment that isn't dead serious and full of conviction.

Stop motion can be tricky and time-consuming, so Wilson only manages three or four minutes, but they're packed and full of cleverness as she represents these characters by their costumes, presenting them as faceless puppets while the generic "perp" mannequin they abuse is nothing but face with no limbs to fight back. She uses MAD Magazine type stand-ins, but it's pointed enough that one can't watch the short without wondering how much of this "copaganda" has made its way into one's own head, right down to the closing statistics that sure look like they could finish an episode of Law & Order

"Genius Loci"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

Adrien Mérigeau puts a lot of characterization into "Genius Loci" in a relatively short bit of time - there is a lot going on with Reine (voice of Nadia Moussa), a young black woman who bristles at the close watch sister Mouna (voice of JIna Djemba) keeps on her, wanting to go out into the city, even as she finds it hostile to her and doesn't know exactly what she feels about white musician Rosie (voice of Georgia Cusack). Her body language, narration, and the way she sees the world sometimes tell different stories, but they all reinforce her as a fascinating character.

It's a lot, but sometimes life is a lot, and Mérigeau does some very nice work getting the audience inside Reine's head and doing the little-to-big changes that show just how things can run away from her. I like that sometimes it's not just a one-off issue but everything cumulatively that seems triggering for her, with memorable moments of her pausing, pulling back, and trying to get back on track, and how the world around her is beautiful but also kind of rough, both in how it's depicted and the actual conditions. It's an impressive case of the style representing the message without often getting too exaggerated.

"Reflexion"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

There must have been an incredibly fast turnaround on this one to have Alain Bidard's quarantine-inspired piece ready even for this delayed festival, and it almost feels retrofitted, like it started out as something else. For most of its running time, it feels like it's just a video chat about a pair of kids from different sides of the tracks in love with one afraid of how other people would act if they knew, with a bit of enforced isolation added to the end. It doesn't entirely feel like a last-minute twist, but certainly feels like it could have been.

It's an odd movie in other ways; the visual style with the exaggerated eyes contrasted with the hyper-detailed lip movements is a bit unnerving, right on the edge of the uncanny valley, and the whispered conversation takes a little strain to hear. It's an earnest but kind of mundane conversation realized with animation that can't do a lot to heighten it or focus on the most important points, the sort that feels like it might fare a lot better if Bidard just got a couple expressive young actors on Zoom and let them speak.

"Inside Blue"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

I love how quickly and wordlessly Chen Yi-Chien establishes the nervous pathology of "Inside Blue"'s main character, the need to have everything in its proper place that he brings tape to assign it even if it's not immediately obvious. It leads to a tormented but kind of funny bit of self-inflicted slapstick at times, even as the plaintive grunting on the soundtrack brings it just far enough into sympathetic rather than mocking territory.

I like the way Chen uses his digital tools as well; the style with any sort of anchored motion seeming too smoothing and the three-dimensionality being a bit exaggerated often comes across as fake or like the filmmakers just didn't have enough cycles to make it look more natural, but here it reads as hyper-awareness. I also love how nothing is allowed to be round and smooth, with every circular object rendered as an irregular pentagon or the like, not really sharp enough to be truly threatening but also not reassuring or comfortable. It reinforces how the world seemingly needs to be tamed even as both the audience and likely the character know that this is not the actual reality of things.

"Seoulsori"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo)

Kim Kyoung-bae's "Seoulsori" is the sort of three-minute short that feels like it must go a little longer for how much it does visually after initially seeming to be a bit still - Kim jumps from one image to another to the next without ever seeming to be jumping past anything. It's moving fast, but making each moment last just rough seconds that it lodges in the brain as something one was looking at for a while, enough that when elements return later it's got a little mental real estate. The upbeat but aggressive score by PEEJAY helps move it along too.

There's also something about how Kim goes hard against type that tickles a bit. It's a kid looking at a piece of art and being sucked in, but instead of amazement and awe he feels pure horror, and I find myself wondering why a bit - the piece he's looking at is fairly conventional, if a bit somber. Are the rest of the museum's displays pushing him into this, or is he just overpowered by the very idea that art can have this sort of effect on him that it frightens him? Maybe it's just kids sometimes being scared by things which seem totally innocuous to others, and filling the void with whatever they can imagine.

"The Weather Is Lovely"

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

I wouldn't be shocked to see Lien Chun-Chien's "The Weather Is Lovely" showing up more post-Fantasia; it's a nifty adventure that's cheery and imaginative and has enough computing power thrown at it to compete with what American studios can do. Maybe it doesn't show up in the Oscar nominees, but it probably makes the "Highly Commended" section and is selected for various family-friendly short programs. It's mainstream in a good way and it's a shame that there's not much of a place for a general audience to become aware of things like this.

And it's charming as heck, as a curious meteorologist discovers a tool dropped by a cloud artist and is delighted, at least until it gets too much water and starts to spit out a massive waterspout. There's an opposites-attract thing going on that lets both of them still be really charming and pleasant, and feels a bit like an inverted Disney Princess set-up with the spunky lady scientist in the open and the guy from the magic cloud city nervously poking around.

There's little to no dialogue, but the characters are expressive, with Lien and co-writer Lee Pohan filling the screen with little details but not overwhelming it, and making the danger of the "villain" real but not entirely scary, finding a lot for both characters to do as well as a fun robot sidekick or two. I'd watch a series of this pair's adventures and want more.

"Peace & Love"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

Ah, the annual short film that is presented in French with no subtitles so I've got to figure out what's going on and how I feel about it just from the action.

I've kind of got no idea what was going on - a master and an apprentice are on a boat, they encounter another, there are some really aggressive fish, and a metamorphosis… Maybe the dialogue explains things, maybe it's just everybody saying "yeah, this is messed up". It's fun to watch, though, with everything extremely malleable and chaotic but with a lot of charm. It moves quickly and makes the chaos work for it, and you get an impression of the characters just from the way they hold themselves. Nice effects animation, too.

And on top of that, the last few seconds works as a punchline even for those of us who don't really know what the joke is, if only because it's an extremely well-timed gag.

"Florigami"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

"Florigami" is a straightforward but nifty little abstract bit of animation from director Iva Ćirić, the sort where you get what she's doing pretty quickly but marvel at both how nice it looks and how clearly it's presented. It features sprouts and vines trying to grow toward the sun, blocking and sometimes throttling each other, with one made to grab the audience's attention and seeming to have a little more agency even as the stronger vines block it. It's the sort of thing that looks like it just happened or was done algorithmically even though every frame was likely labored over.

A thing I dig about it is Ćirić finds a really nice spot where these plants feel just active enough that the audience can feel some sort of identification but, despite the bright white vine's buds which look kind of like eyestalks, they never get too anthropomorphized. Yeah, there's something we're supposed to get out of them and all, but they're still plants. It's a metaphor, not a fantasy.

"Wade"

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

If the festival had a "short I would most like to see expanded to a feature" award, "Wade" would probably get my vote. Kalp Sanghvi and Upamanyu Bhattacharyya create a vision of a flooded Kolkata that not only impresses with its detail but pulses with anger, every corner not just showing the remnants of regular life but the sort of denial and xenophobia contributed to this mess in the first place. It picks up at a moment when people seem to be right on the edge of being able to handle their new normal but still finding things shifting.

It's a great-looking movie but seldom a pretty one; the tigers that move into the city are downright monstrous-looking and the pinholes the characters are given for eyes combine with characters' super-bronzed skin to suggest that the sun is pounding down even more than expected. It makes them feel like the walking dead even before the filmmakers really start loading up the hardships. They pile it on relentlessly but at a pace that creates tension more than frenzy, with plenty of genuine building horror.

I'm not saying it would be a fun feature, but it would be a memorable one with a strong point of view, even if it might be a hard sell.

"The Grave of St. Oran"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Circo Animato, Vimeo via Roku)

Jim Batt's "The Grave of St. Oran" is adapted from a poem by Neil Gaiman with him providing narration, and it's an interesting little bit of history that I suspect Gaiman finds fascinating in part because there are unsettled pieces to it. Several times, he stops to say that maybe something else happened, or that history doesn't record that bit, but it doesn't really matter, because the totality of the story has a shape and is built around this bit they do know. It is the sort of thing that makes a story neither history nor myth but legend.

Batt embraces that, using a style that seems to come from the illustrations a contemporary monk might make for the story, limiting motion somewhat but not completely, repeating shots that suggest the two saints that landed on Iona were close friends. Though animated and set hundreds of years ago, these shots feel like photographs from a true-crime documentary, which fits, and also lets Batt slide all the easier into horror, both as Oran is buried alive and he begin to haunt the place. It's often a pretty simple visual, the sort that suggests there is something eerie about the place, if not a history of carnage.

"Eerie" seems to be what they're going for, if sometimes an arch and curious variation of it, and it generally works out fairly well.

Class Action Park

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival, internet)

New Jersey's infamous Action Park is the sort of thing that, decades later, defies belief - it seems like it almost has to be parody that is exaggerated a little too much. But, no, it was a real thing and the makers of the documentary seem almost as stunned as the audience, spending an hour and a half saying "can you believe this?" in shocked surprise and not having to do much else.

They do start by giving a little background, discussing how 1970s stockbroker Gene Mulvihill was looking for something new to do after being banned from Wall Street and purchased a pair of ski resorts in Vernon, New Jersey, but also wanted to make money off them in the summer, which led to building one of the country's first water parks, with mountain slides and go karts as well. As one might imagine, Mulvihill was not one who cared much for rules, so he pushed to make the tracks more thrilling (despite very few involved actually knowing much about engineering) and hired as few minimum-wage teenagers as he could possibly get away with - all while creating a fake off-shore insurance company and using it to launder money. Surprisingly, the place would stay open for twenty years.

There is probably a nifty movie - dramatic or documentary - to be made that focuses more on Mulvihill and maybe uses the dangerous rides and lax supervision as punctuation or subplots, but it's hard to blame directors Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott III for going the other direction - there's much more footage to work with and it makes for eye-opening television. Much of it comes from the 1980s, so it's a combination of home movies and VHS footage, and they lean into it for the general look of the film - the animations have a crude and hand-drawn look rather than being sophisticated CGI renderings of how all the physics works, and even the captions that label the participants often look like something that may have come from the local news during that period. It's nostalgic for those who lived through the period, although not ostentatiously so. It's what they've got to work with and they run with it.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Fantasia 2010 Catch-up Part 04: Variola Vera, Frankenstein Unlimited, The Executioner, Mesrine

Just five left before I start digging into screeners...

Variola Vera

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Wow... Looking at the IMDB page for this, I am shocked to see that Rade Serbedzija played the womanizing doctor in this movie. I had him completely pegged for the Albanian Muslim who serves as patient zero, because his career lately has been variations on that sort of hirsute guy of Eastern European heritage. My mind is blown. Now I'd like to see more of his early career, especially if this tense account of a 1972 smallpox outbreak is representative.

The film starts with Halil Redzepi (Dzemail Maksut) contracting variola vera while on a pilgrimage to the Middle East and returning to what was then Yugoslavia, but soon it drops us into the middle of a hospital soap opera, with all the necessary ingredients: There's Dr. Grujic (Serbedzija), a scuzzy type who has made his way through much of the female staff, but has yet to have any success with Danka Uskokovic (Varja Djukic), the newly-arrived lady doctor who is as professional as she is beautiful. There's Dr. Dragutin Kenigsmark (Erland Josephson), the head of the hospital, who has a history with Dr. Markovic (Dusica Zegarac). The administrative director, Upravnik Cole (Rade Markovic), is having an affair with Slavica (Vladica Milosavljevic), trampy enough that you know she's been a notch on Grujic's bedpost. There are long-term patients, maintenance men, and hangers-on, and it's chaotic enough that one almost doesn't notice Redzepi staggering in, getting the runaround until he's vomiting blood, and nobody at the hospital connecting his symptoms with smallpox (it's extinct, right?) until an outside expert, Magistar Jovanovic (Aleksandar Bercek), insists on placing the hospital under quarantine.

Though made in the early 1980s, Variola Vera dramatizes an incident that occurred ten years earlier, and it feels like a 70s movie. Not just in that it does what I presume a good job of recreating 1972 Belgrade, but also for the general tense atmosphere combined with solid character work. It feels very pre-Jaws/Star Wars, a mirror image of the paranoid thrillers that came out on the other side of the Iron Curtain during that period, complete with a subplot about the government wanting to keep news of the outbreak quiet, not just to avoid a panic, but to avoid looking backward to the west. Indeed, contrary to the expectations Americans might have of Eastern European productions during the Cold War, writer/director Goran Markovic doesn't appear to have any trouble showing institutions as corrupt and/or ineffective.

Full review at EFC

Frankenstein Unlimited

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

One of the pleasures of Fantasia is that, while the draws are often much-anticipated movies from around the world, it always has room for smaller films, including enthusiastic showcases for locally-produced works. They're not always on the largest screen and sometimes they're run at odd hours - audiences would have to go to the secondary screen on Sunday morning for this anthology of six tales inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - but it's an important part of the festival, even if the results are somewhat uneven.

That not every bit will appeal to everyone is borne out by the first segment, Matthew Saliba's "Dark Lotus". It's something of a music video in two parts, with a mad scientist (John M. Thomas) cultivating fetuses in a garden, only to find his work destroyed by a rival (Martin Plouffe) - though years later, the spider-woman (Kayden Rose) born out of his work will avenge him. Having the film start with the most unconventional of the segments is a good idea; though it will excite some, many won't easily connect with it, so it can't derail the movie. The photography is nicely done, and it's creative and effective in its grotesquerie, but even those who like it gross may not like it weird.

Fortunately, it's followed by the most direct take on Frankenstein, Matthew Forbes's "Victor". This one takes place some time after the Monster's rampage, with Victor Frankenstein a pariah in his village, haunted by what his glorious dreams turned into. It's attractively mounted on a small budget, and hits upon a part of the story that is often overlooked or downplayed.

Full review at EFC

Jibhaengja (The Executioner)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

It's not hard for a prison movie to get off to a decent start. There is, after all, always a new guy coming in who needs to be shown the ropes and taught the rules. That the new guy in the case of The Executioner is a guard rather than an inmate isn't even a particularly novel twist on the idea. Still, the filmmakers handle this hook well enough that it's not particularly hurt by its awkward second half.

The new guard is Oh Jae-hyung (Yoon Kye-sang), for whom this is just one more in a series of unimpressive jobs, and it shows - the inmates initially give him no respect. It falls to veteran guard Bae Jong-ho (Jo Jae-hyeon) to toughen him up. Jong-ho is not shy about using his baton, and puts it to Jae-hyung that this is the only way to get the inmates' obedience, even if the hardening sometimes doesn't stop at the prison walls. Things are about to change, though - the new death row prisoner, Yong-doo (Jo Seong-ha) is a serial killer without any shred of remorse, his crimes so reviled that the government feels pressured to reinstate executions (though criminals have been sentenced to hang, none have actually been executed in South Korea since 1997). This move affects not only Yong-doo, but other inmates like Seong-hwan (Kim Jae-geon), who has been awaiting execution for so long that he and Senior Officer Kim (Park In-hwan) have become close friends.

I strongly suspect that The Executioner would have more effect on me if I were a Korean national, or even if I had more familiarity with current Korean culture and politics than I do. Part of the reason is that it does not become overtly political until about halfway through, and while any audience member who has been content to simply watch it as a prison movie will find himself or herself a little thrown by the change in emphasis, foreign audiences may be a little more at sea because they lack a baseline. What is the general thinking on the death penalty in South Korea, and why did executions stop a decade ago? Have there been recent cases like the one depicted that have led to a call for renewed executions, or is this a purely hypothetical situation? Heck, during a section of the film where Jae-hyung and his girlfriend Eun-joo (Cha Soo-yeon) deal with a pregnancy scare, there's an awkward juxtaposition of capital punishment and abortion where I realized that I didn't really know whether the anti-abortion crowds tend to politically align with the pro-execution people, and vice versa, in South Korea as they do in the US.

Full review at EFC

L'instinct de mort (Mesrine: Killer Instinct)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 September 2010 in Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run)

The story of French outlaw Jacques Mesrine is a grand, sprawling one, so large that Jean-François Richet felt the need to split it into two films in order to do it justice. Watching the first one, covering Mesrine's rise to prominence in the 1960s, it's possible to make a case that this doesn't go far enough, as Killer Instinct itself could very easily be divided in half, with each segment expanded into a strong film.

Though we are briefly introduced to an older Mesrine, the film quickly flashes back to his origins: In 1959, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is approaching the end of a tour as a French soldier in Algeria, and somewhat hesitant about the brutal techniques used to quell the rebellion. He's soon back in Paris, and while his parents (Michel Duchaussoy and Myriam Boyer) have lined up a job for him, his friend Paul (Gilles Lellouche) has found him far more lucrative "off the books" work for gangster Guido (Gerard Depardieu). Soon he's a successful bank robber, and has met and married Spanish beauty Sofia (Elena Anaya), but armed robbery and domesticity don't mix, and by the late sixties, he and new flame Jeanne Schneider (Cecile De France) have fled for Montreal, where Quebec separatist Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis) could use a man like Mesrine.

Though the two halves overlap somewhat, the geographical split ensures that Cassel's Mesrine is the only character to be a factor all the way through. While that certainly gives Cassel plenty of opportunity to shine, it also can make the telling of Mesrine's story feel a bit shallow: Love interests and partners in crime (sometimes the same people, sometimes in opposition) seem to be rushed on and off the stage, with barely a chance to establish themselves before being replaced with the next year's models. The idea may be to establish Mesrine as larger than life, a man for whom others are just temporary, supporting characters, but it often has the effect of making the others seem neglected. It also may leave the audience vaguely wondering if there's something to the pattern of Mesrine joining groups that seem to position themselves as something other than mere criminal organizations that could be made more explicit.

Full review at EFC

L'ennemi public n°1 (Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 September 2010 in Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run)

The first half of Jean-François Richet's two-part biography of French gangster Jacques Mesrine, Killer Instinct, was quiet good; the second half, Public Enemy Number One, is even better: As much as it's still shuffling a lot of characters in and out, it's telling one strong story in a way that's both intense and highly entertaining.

Public Enemy Number One starts by flashing forward to 1979 (the aftermath to Killer Instinct's prologue) before jumping back to 1973, where Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) has been apprehended by the law but is suffering from no resultant lack of bravado; he's already plotting his next escape. He'll alternate daring escapes with audacious robberies, in the process meeting fellow escape artist François Besse (Mathieu Amalric) and new lady love Sylvie Jeanjacquot (Ludivine Sagnier) and making an enemy of Commissaire Broussard (Olivier Gourmet). As dogged as the detective's pursuit is, though, Mesrine's worst enemy may be his own legend, and how he is starting to believe it.

This movie doesn't pick up right where its predecessor left off in time - about four years have past - but Mesrine in this film is the character that he spent Killer Instinct becoming: A man who believes himself to be a devil-may-care modern swashbuckler, harnessing his personal charisma with ease to tweak the police and charm the public. It's a funny, charismatic performance, but even as Cassel is making the audience laugh, he's also perfectly showing the dark side of this personality: A desperate desire not just to succeed, but to matter. As the movie goes on, this arrogance and desperation takes on a greater and greater prominence in Cassel's performance, even as it becomes more unlikely - with his increasing scraggliness and middle-age spread, he becomes something akin to an aging rock star, confusing charisma with significance.

Full review at EFC

Fantasia 2010 Catch-up Part 03: Tears for Sale, Centurion

Yep, it's short. I've spent a fair amount of time in the last few days staring at the shorter bits I wrote for Fantasia Daily postings and deciding that I really didn't have more to add to four days worth of movies. Whether because it's been a month, some of these are ones that didn't make a big impression on me, or I really want to write something else, I'm not sure.

Plenty of Fantasia catch-up that can be done in the Boston area this weekend: The Kendall continues Centurion (9pm shows only) and the first Mesrine, adding the second Mesrine as well. The Last Exorcism is all over the place. And the Regent Theater in Arlington will be running Suck from Thursday to Thursday. It's pretty good and I think most of the country is just getting one night, so that's pretty nice.

Today's unused people standing in front of screens taking questions picture: Serbian journalist Dejan Ognjanovic, who curated the "Subversive Serbia" section of the festival, doing a Q&A with Tears for Sale and A Serbian Film screenwriter Aleksandar Radivojevic. Ognjanovic is not actually tiny, although Radivojevic's proportions certainly make him look that way.


Carlston za Ognjenku (Tears for Sale)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010: Subversive Serbia)

The hackneyed phrase that is often used to describe this movie is "a Serbian Amélie", which I think does it a disservice because, well, I didn't like Amélie much at all. Gilliam might be a better comparison; after all, Jeunet's films are basically optimistic, and while Uros Stojanovic's fantasy is far from being a complete downer, there's an unavoidable element of tragedy to it.

It's just after World War I, and in a small Serbian village, there are two sisters. There are a lot of sisters, actually, but almost all the men have died in the latest war. These two sisters are blonde and sweet Ognjenka (Sonja Kolacaric) and brash brunette Mala (Katarina Radivojevic), and they are professional wailers, crying at funerals to emphasize the mourning family's despair. After an accident leads to the death of the last man in the village, they are dispatched to find and bring back more, and to make sure that they come back, a witch casts a spell so that their late grandmother (Olivera Katarina) will haunt them. The sisters do wind up finding two men willing to come with them - Dragoljub (Nenad Jezdic), a human cannonball, and Arsa (Stefan Kapicic), the huckster he works with - but they're such nice guys; at least one couple should just go on to Belgrade!

Though considerably more colorful than many other recent Serbian pictures that have played the festival circuit, it does contain much of the same pessimism - writer Aleksandar Radivojevic's pen also spawned A Serbian Film, after all. The jokes are frequently-pitch black, such as the early bit that tells us that boys are sent off to war as soon as they are taller than their rifles, and the rifles get shorter all the time. This village serves as something of a microcosm of Serbia then and now, ravaged by war with its aftereffects as inescapable as the minefield, originally meant to protect the women, which surrounds the village (according to Radivojevic's Q&A, this is even more pronounced in the original cut which screened at Fantasia; the version that Europacorp released elsewhere in Europe and at festivals is fifteen minutes shorter and all but removes the grandmother, meant to represent how death always hovers near the region). Belgrade becomes not just the capital, but a representation of the rest of Europe and the world - grand, prosperous, almost a fantasy.

Full review at EFC.

Centurion

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 August 2010 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (first-run)

I suspect that Neil Marshall will never break through to doing big Hollywood movies, assuming that holds any interest for him, despite just how good he is at every aspect of the job. The man is just too fond of his blood and guts to go to the world where producers are always looking for a PG-13, and he's not content to stick to horror movies, where that's a niche one can settle into. That's why his new movie, Centurion, is premiering in boutique theaters in the United States alongside a video on demand run despite being a big, brawny action/adventure.

We start with Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender), a Roman officer (the Centurion of the title) guarding the northern frontier in England in 117 AD. The Picts, led by Gorlacon (Ulrich Thomsen) attack his fort and he is captured. Like a good prisoner, he escapes, not knowing that Governor Julius Agricola (Paul Freeman) is dispatching the Ninth Legion, commanded by General Titus Flarvius Virilus (Dominic West) and guided by mute tracker Etain (Olga Kurylenko), to attack Gorlacon's stronghold. Though they meet up, a brutal Pict attack has Titus now captured and the Legion more than decimated. The survivors mount a rescue operation, but even after getting in and out of the village, it's going to be a race to the border.

Centurion brings the action from the very start, and it is frequently thrilling, bloody mayhem. It is a time of swords, axes, and spears which connect with a distinct crunch and spray red all over the place, and Marshall is quite creative in how he kills and maims his characters. There are hits that will make men wince, others that are kind of viciously funny, and still others that serve to announce just how rugged the Picts and Romans are even in their last moments. Marshall and his crew do a good job of getting this on-screen, seldom cutting away from a particularly nasty death or shaking the camera too much. While it's not quite an hour and a half of wall-to-wall action, it's intense throughout, and even the moments between fights are unabashedly muscular.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia Daily for 26 July: A Holy Place, Into Eternity, Black Death, Little Big Soldier, The Loved Ones

A tough day to match in terms of quality and quantity, this one - even the somewhat slow start with A Holy Place was a pretty good movie, and I found myself pretty darn enthusiastic about all the rest.

I'm really hoping that a good chunk of these movies get general releases. A Holy Place is from 1990, so even a video release is unlikely. Into Eternity will likely stay on the festival circuit for a while, and might only hit the U.S. on video-on-demand and maybe play something like the Brattle's Eye-Opener series, if that returns this fall.

Black Death will probably get the same sort of release that Valhalla Rising and Centurion are - the PPV before a limited theatrical release. Shame, as they're fun movies and not exactly obscure, but that's the way it is; audiences don't necessarily stray very far from comfort zones these days. Similarly, The Loved Ones will probably end up on the IFC Midnight schedule; everyone's speaking English and it's not like the Australian accents are terribly thick, but it's a weird movie, and though it's about teenagers, there is likely no way to cut it down to a PG-13 rating without also getting the running time down to about an hour - it's short and gross.

Oddly, I think Little Big Soldier might have the best chance to get a "regular" theatrical release. Jackie Chan's still a recognizable name, it's a movie that the critics can get behind, and it's got Jackie doing Jackie Chan things. Unfortunately, I doubt that any distributor is going to be clever enough to put it out in January, when it might mostly face cometition from crap and relatively stodgy awards contenders, but I'd really like to see this get some theatrical play. It's a good reminder of why we love Jackie Chan.

Sveto mesto (A Holy Place)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010: Subversive Serbia)

I've been coming to Fantasia for five or six years now, and I believe that this is the third time that some take on Nikolai Gogol's "Viy" has played. This one is from 1990, part of the "Subversive Serbia" program, but feels like it comes from an earlier era, a creepy period piece dripping with atmosphere.

Thomas (Dragan Jovanovic) is a theology student, though not a particularly observant one. On the way back from a town fair, he sees a carriage that neither of his two companions do. Things get stranger when the old woman who lets him sleep in his barn enters and tries to force herself upon him - which becomes a great deal more appealing when she seems to transform into the beautiful girl in the carriage. Upon returning to the seminary, the abbot tells him he has an assignment: Landlord Zupanski (Aleksandar Bercek) is insisting that Thomas, specifically, come to his estate to pray for his daughter's health, per her wishes. When Thomas arrives, though, Katarina (Branka Pujic) has already passed... And guess where Thomas has seen that face before!

Though A Holy Place is an old-school horror story that takes place in a more repressed time, writer/director Djordje Kadijevic is not shy about drawing the direct line between sex and the occult goings-on that surround Thomas and Katarina. It's a powerful force here, one that literally warps reality and drives men mad, and Kadijevic does a fine job of presenting the dichotomy of the sex drive as being something that is both natural and something that must be mastered lest it destroy everything.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Into Eternity

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010: Documentaries from the Edge)

Often, documentaries will be rated on the perceived importance of their subjects, as opposed to the actual quality of the film. Into Eternity is a rare example of a documentary that not only covers a vital (yet often overlooked) topic, but does so in a way that is informative and even-handed, as well as presented in an interesting way.

The topic in question is the permanent storage of nuclear waste. The waste from fission reactors is generally stored in pools of water above ground, and imperfect solution, as these facilities require constant monitoring and, while the technology is sufficient for the foreseeable future, when dealing with material that will be dangerously radioactive for a hundred thousand years, one must also consider the unforeseeable future. This film takes a look inside Finland's plans for the long term, a cavern being excavated half a kilometer into the bedrock of the Eurajoki region. The facility was started in the twentieth century and is projected to be finished, filled, and sealed at the turn of the twenty-second. It is called "Onkalo", Finnish for "hiding place".

Writer/director/host Michael Madsen (not, let us note, the American actor) does not spend a great deal of time debating the pros and cons of nuclear power itself, beyond pointing out that though there are dangers, today's civilization presumes the availability of abundant energy. Even if another fission reactor was never built, and the existing ones were shut down, there would still be hundreds of thousands of tons of spent fuel rods that (barring a new model of reactor that can use them as fuel) must be quarantined. Building something like Onkalo is presented as a practical necessity.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Black Death

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010: Between Death and the Devil)

Director Christopher Smith is clever in presenting Black Death to us. We all know that the bubonic plague was spread by ticks nesting on rats, and the opening scenes will often have the vermin skittering across the screen. He doesn't use them to show his characters up, though, so their tendencies to offer supernatural explanations can't quite be discredited, which adds a bit of uncertainty to an already lean and mean film.

After all, in 1357, everybody wondered what had sent the pestilence, the main argument being as to whether it was the work of God or the Devil. Whatever the cause, even the monasteries are no longer safe, leading novice Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) to send Averill (Kimberley Nixon), the girl he loves, back to the woods near their home to be safe. He'll soon follow, as a guide for Ulric (Sean Bean). The Bishop has heard that a village near there is plague-free, perhaps as a result of necromancy and dark magic, and has dispatched Ulric and his team to investigate. They battle through plague and bandits to get there, and find that it is plague-free - and that town leaders Hob (Tim McInnerny) and Langiva (Carice van Houten) have little use for the Church.

Black Death doesn't quite have an A-list cast, but it's one where just about everybody involved is perfect for the task at hand. If you need a guy to look imposing while swinging a big sword, every movement a testament to his righteousness, you really want Sean Bean. He looks much more natural in a beard and chain mail than he has in his recent, more contemporary roles, and that's what you want from Ulric: This is a man who feels he has been called to his violent work by God, and should walk through a room, forest, or swamp like he owns the place. His band is comprised of similarly dangerous men (including an excellent Andy Nyman as more or less the exact opposite of the nebbish he played in Smith's Severance), and they've got to be ferocious in their own right but also not quite up to his fierce standard. Of course, there's room for an older, more philosophical second-in-command, and John Lynch fills that part very nicely.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Da bing xiao jiang (Little Big Soldier)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Jackie Chan's been in the movie business a while, and the last decade or so has certainly looked like the inevitable decline phase of a man who became a star based in large part on his physical gifts succumbing to the passage of time. He's been alternating often painful Hollywood projects with Hong Kong pictures that were merely considered mediocre, and even for longtime fans, a new Jackie Chan picture was nothing to get excited about. Lately, however, he looks primed for a comeback - he's gotten good reviews for his parts in The Shinjuku Incident and The Karate Kid, and his latest movie is a delight.

In it, it's the 2nd century BC, the height of China's "Warring Kingdoms" period. The two specific warring kingdoms are Liang and Wei, and the battle of Mount Phoenix is particularly fierce; it ends with only two left alive: One, a middle-aged peasant foot soldier for Liang (Chan), played dead for the entire battle; the other, a younger Wei general (Wang Lee-hom), is fierce but injured. Thus, the grunt captures the general, planning to take him back to Liang for the award of five acres of good farmland. It will not, of course, be that simple; the general is naturally trying his best to escape, and has enemies of his own withing the Wei hierarchy, including his immediate pursuers, Prince Wen (Yoo Sung-jun) and General Wu (Yu Rong-guang). Plus, they're an easy target for bandits and barbarians across the countryside.

Little Big Soldier has been a pet project of Chan's for years, long enough that when he originally conceived it (he wrote the screenplay with director Ding Sheng), he would have been playing the young general. It's hard to imagine that now, and not just because Chan was already middle-aged when he made his big splash in America with Rumble in the Bronx. Jackie Chan's screen personality has often been that of a man who gets caught up in something but rises to the occasion, and that's a much closer match to the peasant than the general. Just looking at this film, though, even someone who had never seen a Jackie Chan movie before will have to smile at just how well he slides into the role. His character is a little world-weary but mostly optimistic, a gregarious fellow whose homespun and chatty nature should not be taken as a sign of weakness or stupidity; being friendly does not preclude him being clever or resourceful, or having depths to his personality that need to be teased out.

Full review at eFilmCritic

The Loved Ones

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

What sort of movie is The Loved Ones? It's the sort of movie where, when a carpet is lifted from the floor to reveal hinges, we in the audience are given a bit of time to ponder just what sort of poisonous Australian animals might be in that pit, waiting to feed - and then realize that, really, based upon what we've seen of the movie so far, we both should have guessed and not underestimated how truly messed up filmmaker Sean Byrne's imagination was.

Things have not been going well for Brent Mitchell (Xavier Samuel); his father died in an automobile accident while Brent was driving six months ago, which has weighed on him and his mother ever since. But, it's the end of the school year, time for the dance, and not only has Brent's buddy Sac (Richard Wilson) gotten sexy Mia (Jessica McNamee) for his date, he's going with Holly (Victoria Thaine). Lola (Robin McLeavy) has asked him, too, and while Brent let her down easy... Well, to coin a phrase, whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. Especially since she's willing to settle for a little party in her home, and her doting father Eric (John Brumpton) is just as much a psychopath as she is.

And, holy crap, are they nuts. While I'm certain that their dynamic has shown up in horror movies before, Robin McLeavy is especially noteworthy as Lola. She initially comes off as an average girl, as opposed to a bombshell stuck behind a bad haircut and glasses, and when we see her alone initially, she seems like a normal teenage girl that's a little shy and has her fantasies. As the movie goes on, of course, she's revealed to be more and more of a lunatic, and I like the way she doesn't just turn it on full-blast when Brent regains consciousness in Lola's house; she initially seems to be just kind of spoiled, but soon starts joining in, and by the time the movie's over, she's playing it big, one of the most enthusiastic, indestructible, and entertaining horror villainesses in a long time. Brumpton, meanwhile, is just plain low-key creepy as the father; combining the dad indulging his little princess with a guy who may well have been a serial killer well before Lola came around. Part of the fun of watching them together is that it's never quite clear who was insane first.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Fantasia Daily for 17 July: Oblivion Island, Golden Slumber, Variola Vera, Alice Creed, Eve's Necklace,Fable

Saturday was a long, long day at the festival, not just because of the six movies, which stretched over fifteen hours when all was said and done, but because of there was a fair amount of just plain craziness to deal with as well.

It started early in the AM, before I went to sleep, when I got back from Friday's late show to discover that somewhere between the wall and the laptop, the internet just wasn't working. Sometimes that can be fixed with reboots, but nothing I did to the server or laptop made them get along. I was almost late getting to Oblivion Island because of it, and wound up using the time between it and Golden Slumber sitting in a coffee shop, having bought a cookie and a smoothie for the express purpose of using their WiFi, only to have to wait on the smoothie until the frozen-drink machine was repaired.

On the plus side, there was a short my Mamoru Oshii before Oblivion Island, and it appeared that several people in the audience came entirely to see that 12-minute piece, "Je t'aime". It was, for what it's worth, not bad at all, featuring a basset hound in a world without humans, trying to befriend a strange flying girl robot, who eventually flips out and starts laying waste to everything. In a sense, it was everything you need to know about Oshii compressed into handy short-film size.

Golden Slumbers turned out to be pretty good, but with ten minutes to go...



...someone pulled a fire alarm. This kept us outside for a good fifteen minutes, during much of which time it was raining pretty hard. It also threatened to throw big monkey wrenches into any plans to jump back and forth between theaters; I was okay with my pass, but I was talking to people in line who had tickets for both The Disappearance of Alice Creed in de Seve and Blades of Blood in Hall, which was going to be tight to begin with, but the fire alarm dropped it to zero room for error.

Just to make sure, there was another alarm midway through Variola Vera (this one a "security issue"). That one had some serious attrition during the fifteen minute wait for the building to be cleared; a number of folks wound up bailing because staying to the end, catching a cab, and getting to Nevermore on the other side of town on time just wouldn't be possible. For me, it just meant seeing Eve's Necklace instead of Blades of Blood that night, so I'm pretty sure I don't hate whoever's responsible quite as much as the folks who really seemed to be enjoying Variola Vera.

The introductions for the two last movies of the night each had bits that amused me a bit: For Eve's Necklace the filmmaker paused after saying he was form Austin as to wait for applause; sorry, buddy, that only happens when you're actually in Austin. Also, festival director King-wei Chu introduced the last movie of the night as "Fable: Teeth of Breasts", but that's an easy mistake to make, especially if you've just been waiting backstage with star Melantha Blackthorne.

I ducked out on the Q&A for that one, as all that was left in the theater were folks who were impressed with the movie, and things were surreal enough at 2:30am!

Hottarake no shima - Haruka to maho no kagami (Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Though digital production has all but taken over the American animation industry, Japan's has mostly remained dominated by hand-drawn images. Of course, as with Disney in the 1990s, digital tools have been used in many traditionally animated pictures, including those from Production I.G. Their first fully-digital feature, Oblivion Island, is a nice little movie but I do rather hope that it's not a sign of things to come.

It's a cute enough story. Haruka was given a pretty hand mirror by her dying mother when she was younger, and said she would always have it with her, but at some point it wound up in a closet, and now she can't find it. The reason why she can't find it is because fox-masked creatures take the things humans take for granted, only returning them if appeased with an egg left at a shrine. 16-year-old Haruka (voice of Haruka Ayase), though she thinks that this is just a fairy tale, nevertheless leaves an egg, hardly expecting to actually see one of the creatures! When it grabs her keys, she pursues it to try to get them back, getting sucked into their world. And while it's probably not difficult to get back, she might as well find her mother's mirror while she's there. Except that it happens to be in the hands of The Baron...

The creative team involved is surprising - co-writer/director Shinsuke Sato has mostly done live-action fare, and his next two films are an adaptation of the ultraviolent manga Gantz; co-writer Hirotaka Adachi is better known for the horror stories he writes under the nom de plume Otsuichi. Surprisingly, what they come up with isn't particularly subversive; instead, it's rather standard family fare, with but one truly scary moment. That's not a mark against this movie, wihch is straightforward, charming, and goes down pretty easy. Kids will seldom get confused, at the very least, although the writing does have a bad habit of creating new rules for its fantasy world at the exact second they become convenient.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Golden Slumber (Goruden Suranba)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Fish Story may not have set the Japanese box office on fire, but the folks who saw it loved it, so it's no wonder that director Yoshihiro Nakamura chose another Kotaro Isaka novel (with a musical title) as one of his next projects. And it's got another killer hook, one that it gets a lot more mileage out of than other thrillers.

Start with Masaharu Aoyagi (Masata Sakai); when he was in college, he and his friends Shingo Morita (Hidetaka Yoshioka), Kazuo Ono (Hitori Gekidan), and Haruko Higuchi (Yuka Takeuchi) hung out, critiqued fast food, and traded conspiracy theories. Ten years later, he's a deliveryman, although one who gained a certain amount of fame two years earlier for rescuing pop idol Rinka (Shihori Kanjiya) from a burglar. It looks like Morita is doing much better for himself, but when Aoyagi awakes after passing out in Mortia's car, his old friend tells him that he's up to his eyeballs in gambling debt, but it would be wiped clean if he makes sure Aoyagi is in this car at this time. Why? Well, the Prime Minister's motorcade is about to pass by; Morita thinks Aoyagi is being set up as a patsy, like Lee Harvey Oswald. Which is ridiculous--

Bang!
Bang!

Nakamura and company set this situation up in a crisp, efficient opening that establishes Aoyagi's dorky, blue-collar charm, and then literally explodes into high gear. After that, the chase is on, and though Golden Slumbers hasn't really had a chance to build, it manages to sustain itself at a remarkably high energy and tension level for a long time. It's probably something like an hour after before that initial jolt starts to wane, and by then the story has started throwing not just twists but counter-twists, giving us a very well-played game of cat and mouse.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Variola Vera

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Wow... Looking at the IMDB page for this, I am shocked to see that Rade Serbedzija played the womanizing doctor in this movie. I had him completely pegged for the Albanian muslim who serves as patient zero, because his career lately has been variations on that sort of hirsute guy of Eastern European heritage. My mind is blown.

That mis-identification aside, I'm really fond of this Serbian (well, "Yugoslavian", as it was made in 1982) dramatization of a 1972 smallpox outbreak. It's tense and bleak, and has the sort of ground-level, unwavering stare most associated with the seventies in America. It's a very nice combination of a simple story and a large, excellent ensemble.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

I am somewhat surprised that the title of this film is not "The Kidnapping of Alice Creed". After all, everything else about this movie is precise, thought-out, and well-defined - it would be a shame if the very title proved to be a red herring or gave the end away.

Vic (Eddie Marsan) and Danny (Martin Compston) have a plan. We see them prepare, carefully making sure that they will go undetected and leave no forensic traces that will cause the law to pursue them after they have made their escape. The young woman they kidnap, Alice (Gemma Arterton), will have no chance of escape before the ransom is paid. It is a good plan. In fact, it appears to be a flawless plan. Except, of course, that there is no such thing: There's always something hasn't been taken into account.

What is the wrench in Vic's and Danny's plan? You don't really expect me to say, do you? It's not a bad little twist, which lets the audience look at the plot in a different way, allows the security of the hideout to be compromised (but not obviously so), and sets up for another revelation that, while it doesn't so much turn the plot on its head again, certainly does a fine job of making things more complicated. It is, in its way, a machine as perfectly well-oiled as the original kidnapping plot, designed to keep things up in the air until the last scene.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Eve's Necklace

* * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

I nodded off during this and the next film, and was actually going to go back and give it a second viewing on Monday, but opted against it because, as I was walking back from the office, I really couldn't figure how seeing it a second time would add much more than novelty value. And since I'd already gotten the novelty value, that was time that could be spent in a steakhouse.

It's cute, don't get me wrong, and lends a bit of interest to what would probably be a less-than-impressive thriller scripts, but I don't think the audience ever reacted to it much in a way beyond "ha! that looks kind of weird being done by a mannequin!" The voice acting also kind of got on my nerves; as much as the filmmakers tried to be playing their mannequin melodrama straight, the silly voices just didn't work for me.

Fable: Teeth of Beasts

* (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Every year at Fantasia, generally during the midnight program, I see at least one movie that really should spur me to make a film of my own, just because within five minutes I am absolutely sure I write a better script, and within fifteen I know that the actors and director I could pull in via nepotism and friends of friends would not be complete spazzes. This year, Fable was that movie.

I should have run, but I don't want to be that guy, and this movie was a deadly combination of overly earnest voice-over, ambitious but unimpressive visual effects, and bad acting. Oh, and the "action" sequences. Everything seemed to be moving at half-speed, like they were still practicing their blocking rather than running through so that it looked good on screen.

I feel bad for even mentioning it, but I want this placeholder here: If, in a couple years, an atrocious gender-bending sci-fi romantic comedy with my name on it plays an easily marginalized slot at Fantasia or BUFF, this is why it happened. And as bad as it will be, I'm pretty sure it will be better than this.

Fantasia Daily for 13 July 2010: Mai Mai Miracle, Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle, Tears for Sale

I'm sure my friend Laurel, who has occasionally suggested I make this a dinner and a movie blog, will be disappointed with me: I did not have kimchi or even Korean for dinner on an evening when I saw Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle, instead opting for a stop at m:brgr. They still make a great burger, although I was a little disappointed that the tall, delicious ice cream sodas I washed it down with last year were no longer on the menu.

I don't know whether this is a regular thing, but for Mai Mai Miracle, families with children got bumped to the front of the line. Very cool from a practicality purpose (those tend to be larger groups, so this gives them the chance to sit together without rearranging the rest of the audience) and reaching out to an audience that could probably be easily put off by how much of the programming is pretty violent and otherwise not kid-friendly. They're also offering free admission to kids under 18 for The Land Before Time with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in person, and good for them.

In a somewhat interesting repeat of a couple nights earlier, the Q&A for Tears for Sale, there was another heated exchange between audience and filmmaker, once again with the unhappy audience member being shouted down somewhat. Again, a pity, because it demonstrated the tendency of people with strong opinions to presume that they are shared. Writer Aleksandar Radivojevic off-hand criticized the Serbian film industry constantly (along the lines of "the government only funds a certain type of film that stinks"), and what appeared to be a Serbian student in the audience took exception, both to the blanket assumption that nobody enjoys the movies being made in Serbia and how generally down on his home country he was.

I don't know that much useful could have come out of the argument, but as an amateur critic and hopefully open-minded fan of film in general, I'm really not comfortable with the "if you don't like it, why are you here?" that got shouted at the young woman. The way I figure it, the person who doesn't like the movie can probably potentially get more out of a Q&A and insight into the director's reasoning, and maybe has more interesting questions to ask. Those things get awfully dull when it's just "how difficult is it making such an awesome film?". Also, it's a good reminder that it's almost unavoidable one can get a very distorted image of the rest of the world; I'm sure that by the end of this festival, I'll get exposed to a lot of "Serbia is miserable", but there are other perspectives. Maybe this person is upper-class and has her own distorted view, but you always need an aggregate to get a complete impression.

Maimai Shinko to sennen no mahô (Mai Mai Miracle)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Mai Mai Miracle is charming. It's a nostalgic memoir about growing up as free-range kids, but we can use all the good ones we can get before we run out of people who grew up that way. Nicely animated by Madhouse, the anecdotes should please audiences of all ages, and the storytelling is sophisticated enough to draw adults in without leaving the kids behind.

Shinko (voice of Mayuko Fukuda) is an energetic third-grader living in rural Japan. Her days are spent running through wheat fields, messing with her little sister, soaking in every word that her grandfather, a former schoolteacher, tells her about their town, and using it to fuel her very active imagination, which she claims is connected to her "mai mai", a cowlick that just won't lay flat no matter what she does. One day, a new girl joins her class; Kiiko (voice of Nako Mizusawa) is in many ways Shinko's opposite - the girl from Tokyo is shy and sad, and lives in a new western-style house - but they become fast friends. Soon there are other kids in their orbit. It's a good life, but not always a carefree one.

Like many films of its genre, Sunao Katabuchi's breaks up into smaller pieces. It's taken from a book by writer Noboku Takagi, who based it upon her life, and the various individual episodes toward the beginning are both amusing and true-to-life; Katabuchi almost never misses when depicting what's in a kid's head or what they'll do in a given situation, and there's never a situation the feels contrived beyond kids' natural abilities to get into mischief, usually with at least one big laugh to be found in each scenario. The filmmakers also do a fine job of getting into the kids' point of view, only briefly giving us the adults' perspective.

Full review at EFC

Sik-gaek : Kim-chi-jeon-jaeng (Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Looking at the cast list for Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle should raise some alarms; the main couple from the first film has been recast and a completely new character has first billing. Given that the plot is in large part a repeat of the first film, this looks like something that would normally go direct to video. And yet, it apparently not only played Korean theaters, but apparently got a small simultaneous release in America.

The basics of the story are the same: After a diplomatic incident with Japan, a nationwide tournament is instituted to celebrate kimchi as a uniquely Korean dish and find the best examples of it on the peninsula. One of the contestants, Jang-eun (Kim Jeong-eun), is returning to Korea from Japan after ten years, during which she had climbed to the level of the Prime Minister's Executive Chef. It's also a chance for her to reconnect with her mother, Soo-hyang (Lee Bo-hee), whose restaurant Chunyang-gak is likely closing in the face of its debts - which is fine with Jang-eun. It sits less well with Soo-hyang's foster son, Sung-chan (now played by Jin Goo), the greengrocer who won the competition in the first film. Prodded by his girlfriend Jin-soo (now played by Wang Ji-hye), he enters the competition, hoping to use the prize money to keep the restaurant open - although even when they were kids, he has never beat his sister in a cooking competition.

Kimchi Battle avoids doing a lot of things that other sequels might go for in the same situation: We don't see Sung-chan particularly changed by his success in the previous film, having to get back in touch with his working-class origins; he's pretty much the same guy he was before. When we first see Jin-soo, she's grumbling on the phone to her boss, asking why he thinks she always knows where Sung-chan is, raising fears that the filmmakers will pull the "they broke up off-screen and now must rediscover their love for each other thing. But, no, they're still together, if not terribly demonstrative, which is about right; romance was never" the thrust of the first one. And while it seems Sung-chan has gotten an entirely new family history in this film, it's okay, because it introduces us to Jang-eun.

Full review at EFC

Carlston za Ognjenku (Tears for Sale)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010: Subversive Serbia)

The hackneyed phrase that will likely be used to describe this movie is "a Serbian Amélie", which I think does it a disservice because, well, I didn't like Amélie much at all. Gilliam might be a better comparison; after all, Jeunet hasn't had quite so bleak an outlook in some time.

Not to say that Tears for Sale is unpleasant; it's funny, sexy, and even sweet. Sonja Kolacaric and Katarina Radivojevic make for an entertaining comedy team as the sisters sent from their isolated village to bring back more men when the last one in the village dies (it's post-WWI, but the war never stops in Serbia; as the opening narration tells us, boys are sent off to war as soon as they are taller than their rifles, and the rifles get shorter all the time). It's unusual not just in Serbian cinema, but movies in general, to have a cast so full of women who are both unapologetically sexy but also funny, but Radivojevic especially is amazingly brash, playing her character broadly but often hilariously.

We were informed that this was the original Serbian cut; when Luc Besson's company cut big chunks out of the movie. I can't compare the two cuts, but I can see both sides, a bit - the cut described (mainly removing the ghost of the grandmother) sounds like it would be in many ways a more straightforward movie, especially since the thematic weight it added really wasn't there for me until the screenwriter explained it after the screening. But, this cut works very well, and certainly deserves to be seen.

Fantasia Daily for 11 July 2010: Alien vs Ninja, Technotise: Edit & I, A Frozen Flower, I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

Yep, this is about where I hit the wall trying to (1) see a bunch of movies, (2) write reviews of them to earn my media pass, and (3) put time in at my job which pays me the money necessary to travel to Montreal, sublet an apartment, and grab food between movies. I apologize, and will try and catch up with an all-capsule rundown of Monday; I will, of course, try to catch up after the end of the festival.

The big deal on Sunday was the world premiere of I Spit on Your Grave, 2010 version, which proved to be eventful not only for it being a pretty good movie (I didn't see a bad one all day), but for the the Q&A, which started off with a fan of the original saying the new version was BS, which led to him getting yelled down by many audience members who had stayed for the Q&A, him getting agitated and responding, calls for security to escort him from the room. Kudos on Mitch Davis for waving them off, and Meir Zarchi (director of the original Day of the Woman and producer of the remake) respectfully disagreeing and defusing the situation with a hug.

As much as Fantasia's audience is (justifiably) famous for its enthusiasm, I have to say, the gang-up there wasn't really cool. Yes, it's a bit rude, but the man was passionate about his feelings about the two movies, and one seldom gets an opportunity to get a direct conversation about that. The folks who would later preference their comments with how rude the first person had been to great applause seemed a bit hypocritical to me, jeering one person for giving an honest and negative opinion, but applauding others.

(In a second bit of "irony, what's that?", one of the producers actually said, when asking people to tell their friends to support the movie's October 2010 release, that it's a chance to support something different when Hollywood keeps pumping out adaptations and remakes. I get that this is a risky project, but, uh...)

Alien vs Ninja

* * * (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

There are some projects that one would figure cause movie studio lawyers to start twitching as soon as they are announced, but it seems that they have been slow to smite lately. If Fox ever gets around to crushing the likes of Alien vs Ninja, I hope they go easy on the Sushi Typhoon guys. It's not like anything about the movie indicates access to much cash, and the last act, at least, is demented sentai fun, which is more than can be said of the last few official Alien (vs Predator) films.

The title's pretty self-explanatory: An Iga clan raiding party - Yamata (Masanori Mimoto), Jinnai (Shuuji Kashiwabara), and Nezumi (Donpei Tsuchihira) - are returning from a missing when they see a fire in the sky. They're sent to investigate it with another party - including what is apparently the only girl in the clan, Rin (Mika Hijii), and a bunch of guys who mostly aren't going to live long enough to merit names - and find the expected: There is a boy whose entire village has been slaughtered, and a drooling seven-foot armor-plated killing machine. Since Yamata isn't exactly the type to back down from a fight, it's on.

AvN, as they even call it in the opening titles, is an entry in a series of low-budget action/gore movies created in large part for the export market, but even by those standards, it initially looks kind of half-baked. The CGI often crosses the line from "best we could afford" to "mock me, please". The palace Yamata and company are leaving as the film opens appears to be located next to a modern paved road, despite the film taking place in an earlier era. And no matter how many times Nezumi comments about being a senior/veteran/old, it doesn't make me believe Donpei Tsuchihira is anything but a guy in his mid-twenties with an anachronistic blond dye job - couldn't they at least shell out for a real middle-aged guy? All too often, the movie looks like it's nothing more than cheap and unambitious.

Full review at EFC

Technotise: Edit & I (Technotise - Edit i ja)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010: Subversive Serbia)

Early on in Technotise: Edit & I, the Edit of the title offhandedly mentions that one of her pet robots is named "Otomo", a reference that is apt for all that it is obvious: Like the famed Japanese director, Aleksa Gajic has adapted his own science fiction comic series into an animated film, and done so in a way that not only avoids Otomo's worse excesses, but also brings to mind another recent animator out of Japan, Makoto Shinkai, in that he has made a movie that belies its very small crew.

The year is 2074, the place is Belgrade, and student Edit (voice of Sanda Knezevic) is making another stab at passing her final exam in psychology. Though she's not qualified to practice, a research firm takes her on as an intern to baby-sit Abel (voice of Igor Bugarski), a mathematical savant who has been autistic ever since making a breakthrough about the nature of the universe. Things soon get very strange, though - just looking at Abel's work has an unexpectedly strong effect on her, and when she has a black-market chip implanted in her nervous system to help with memory retention, she has strange side effects - hallucinations, erratic behavior, and anemia that leads her to take an unusually high amount of iron supplements. By the time she starts to figure out what's going on with her, the company's head of security, Sergey (voice of Srdjan Miletic) is after her, and her group of friends - mainly boyfriend Bojan (voice of Nikola Djuricko) and best friend Broni (voice of Marija Karan) - may not be up to the challenge of facing down an international biotech company.

Gajic is Serbian, and the bulk of his work has been with French publishers (though the original Technotise story was first published in Serbia), and Technotise: Edit & I absolutely feels like a European sci-fi graphic album come to life: Plenty of detail but also a style that values cartooning over life-like visual realism, grand-scale concepts and action, and a good dollop of sex and comedy in even the most bloody or serious tales. The film lacks a bit of the sometimes quite crowded visual detail found in many bandes dessinées, but the look and tone is right on.

Full review at EFC

Ssang-hwa-jeom (A Frozen Flower)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

How things change; before King and the Clown, I don't think you ever saw gay characters in Korean cinema, and the casting of Thirst wound up being controversial and leading to relative unknown Kim Ok-bin landing the female lead because more established actresses wouldn't get near the nudity and sex the part demanded. Both of those seem to be relative non-issues for A Frozen Flower, which puts a Goryeo king and one of his guards in the same bed with no doubt what's going on, and has a few eyebrow-raising scenes involving the queen, as well.

It's a pretty good movie, sexy and suspenseful, beautifully realized. My only real issue with it was that it may have been a little too funny at times: The scenes where Hong Lim (Jo In-seong) is trying to impregnate the Queen (Song Ji-hyo) while the King (Ju Jin-mo) is in the next room, with literally paper-thin walls between them, got a lot of laughs, and I'm not quite sure how appropriate a response that was. It could have been played as uncomforable-tense, as opposed to uncomfortable-funny.

One thing that I would like to praise that may get overlooked amidst the sex and the intrique is how great the action in this movie is. Director Yu Ha only has two or three big action moments, but they are explosive - the first from how unexpected it is, and the one at the end for the sheer fury demonstrated, and how each swing of the sword and bit of destruction seems to have meaning. It's an exclamation point on the story, and a fitting one.

Full review at EFC.

I Spit on Your Grave

* * * (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

I can't comment on the original version of this movie (Day of the Woman), as I haven't seen it, but if this new version is toned down, as many horror remakes tend to be, I really don't want to see the original. This one is rough and brutal, to the point where Anchor Bay feels that it can't be cut down to an R rating for its planned October theatrical release, and they're probably right about that.

About half of the movie is quite excellenly made, if unpleasant. After some time setting the stage that takes a while to get going, the rape scene is absolutely horrific, as it should be. It's not fun to watch, but it feels right; the sort of monsters who could do this sort of things are probably just like what we see. The cast, as a whole, is excellent.

And then the last act... Well, it's just four or five brutal murders in a row, and while they're well-executed and satisfying on a certain level, I do think that this section could be improved. Sarah Butler is very good as the avenging victim, but especially in the last two instances, especially, the movie becomes a bit of a grotesque cartoon. The most truly unnerving scenes in this section are the ones where Butler's Jenny visits the innocent family of one of her rapists; it's the one that gets us to wonder just what's left of her mind and what she's capable of.

Full review at EFC.