Yikes, has it been a month? I can't even say it's been that busy at the day job and outside of movies, but sometimes you just can't get traction. I hope I've got some good notes here. Anyway, this is roughly the one-week mark for the festivals, right about where I usually start falling behind at Fantasia because there is Just So Much and I'm stupidly trying to do regular work at the same time. It's good to see that even restricted to press streams and such, I'm still kind of on schedule for being late.
I didn't see these all in the same day even if they're grouped that way, and this is out of order for how they were released to Fantasia viewers in Canada, you could have had this as your Wednesday there. It wound up being a sort of 1+2 day, where a couple of the movies make a decent double feature and the other is kind of separate.
The "other" one was Indemnity, which is a streaming-quality action/adventure from South Africa, and kind of interesting for how it wasn't that long ago that RSA filmmakers were talking about how there was no arts funding for much other than apartheid dramas and not a lot of venues for something commercial. This is slick and kind of empty-calorie, with some visual effects bits stretched, but that's kind of okay. As much as you'd like a film industry to be all brilliance, I suspect that there are more chances to create something great when there's an infrastructure cranking out disposable product like this than when anyone who wants to make a movie has to build up from scratch.
Watching RSA movies is kind of an odd experience at times, because at this point in its history, it feels kind of off to the rest of the English-speaking world, which it is maybe half part of, given how characters in this movie tend to bounce between English and Afrikaans pretty freely. It's not like the USA/UK/Ireland/Canada/Australia/New Zealand are homogeneous, but they do run together a bit, while every once in a while South Africa will show that the place's architecture hasn't entirely left its history behind. The mix of languages can be odd, too, especially in translation: It's weird to hear a character say "cloak and dagger" in the middle of some Afrikaans but have it subtitled as "obscurity", like someone didn't recognize that the phrase was borrowed from English to start with.
Also curious for outsiders is when an Afrikaner villain starts doing the "my evil plan is actually being done for the common good" monologue and lecturing the hero, who is black, about how this will enable them to expel the "colonizers" and reclaim Africa for Africans, completely without irony. I suppose, in its way, it's no stranger than my calling myself an American or some of my countrymen being up in arms against immigrants, although that last bit is dumb too.
"After" that, it was two movies about single women in their early 30s who start out not particularly interested in romance, which is kind of refreshing even if they do sort of become romantic comedies . Hold Me Back is particularly interesting in that regard, because I feel like I've been reading frightened "young Japanese people just not dating" stories for twenty years but never seeing it in the movies I watch, and while it's not really that - it sort of resolves into Mitsuko having had bad experiences rather than focusing on her career - it's closer to it than anything else I've seen. I really like Non as Mitsuko, as well - between this, Princess Jellyfish< and The 12 Day Tale of the Monster that Died in 8, she's staked out a nice space in terms of playing cute oddballs.
As for Ghosting Gloria, I kind of have to talk myself into liking parts of it, because it's got some major consent issues in it's "woman just needed to have sex with the right man (or ghost)" story, and it feels like it could have avoided them. It also could have done a lot more to make use of its gorgeous bookstore location(s); the filmmakers seem to overlook how much Gloria seems to like being a bookseller as opposed to it being a boring retail job until the last act, which is a shame, in part because both the big shop and the smaller one seen toward the end are really charming places. The former may be a chain, but it's got labyrinthine nooks and metalworks and an open elevator cage.
Next up: Road trip!
Indemnity
* * (out of four)
Seen 10 August 2021 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia 2021, Front72)
It doesn't seem like very long ago that I was watching a South African crime movie at Fantasia with the director talking about how it was almost impossible to make because the only source of funding was the government and all they wanted to do was prestige apartheid dramas, although it can't have been too long before District 9 happened. Times have changed enough since then that at least a few sleek, commercial films like Indemnity are coming out; and if they're not yet exactly great yet, you can at least see some potential.
Cape Town firefighter Theo Abrams (Jarrid Geduld) survived a major blaze but his PTSD has restricted him to desk duty, although he has bristled at seeing his therapist (Susan Danford). Elsewhere, a former employee of shady corporation M-Tech (Abduragman Adams) and a hacker associate are looking for Theo but are just as happy to make contact with his wife Angela (Nicole Fortuin), a respected reporter, about the strange list of men all across Africa found on the company's serves, over half of whom are either dead or in prison, that includes Theo's name. It's the sort of trail where the target is alerted early, and leads to Theo being on the run for murder, pursued by Detective Rene Williamson (Gail Mabalane), who can see something doesn't add up, although her superior Alan Shard (Andre Jacobs) mostly seems to want the case closed fast.
It's pretty basic direct-to-video material, plot-wise; even when it gets weird or high-concept, it does so in fairly familiar ways, and it often doesn't quite seem like writer/director Travis Taute has a great handle on what might be intriguing and what doesn't quite work. It's the sort of movie that has a massive continent-spanning conspiracy but still feels the need to kidnap Theo's son Wesley (Qaeed Patel) to make sure he's got motivation, along with a conspiracy that seems huge and hyper-competent when they're lurking in the shadows but sloppy once they start trying to murder loose ends. There are moments when characters all but turn directly to the camera to make sure that the audience is included when Theo is being lectured about how PTSD and trauma are real and need to be dealt with like other health problems.
Full review at eFilmCritic
Watashi wo kuitomete (Hold Me Back)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 11 August 2021 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia 2021, Front72)
Those of us inclined to follow links to Japanese lifestyle stories when we come across them feel like we've been reading about young people - especially women - opting out of the dating pool and what a demographic time bomb that is for the past twenty years, although it has seldom seemed like those women have shown up in exported pop culture as protagonists. Hold Me Back does offer up a romance that the audience can get behind, but it's a relatively rare movie in that it's as interested in its protagonist being single as not.
That would be Mitsuko (Rena "Non" Nounen), who has one of those "office lady" jobs seemingly as much about meeting eligible bachelors as becoming a skilled administrative assistant but isn't committed to either, even at 31. She fills her time and enjoys her freedom, taking art classes, fretting a bit whether it's odd to go to amusement parks on her own, finding herself amused by the crush colleague Nozomi (Asami Usuda) has on handsome but vapid Carter (Takuya Wakabayashi), and exchanging postcards with an old school friend, Satsuki (Ai Hashimoto), who has settled in Italy and has invited her to come for Christmas. She enjoys cooking for herself, and as a result runs into Tada-kun (Kento Hayashi), a somewhat younger salesman who regularly visits her company, at the local market. They hit it off, even if Mitsuko isn't looking for romance.
At first, it seems like Mitsuko isn't quite alone, talking with "A" (voice of Tomoya Nakamura), who initially seems like an especially helpful personal digital assistant, with "A" standing for "answer", but in their very first conversation, Mitsuko says "you're me", and it makes for an intriguing sort of dynamic. Mitsuko isn't presented as someone with a split personality so much as she mostly asks A what norms and expectations are so that she can put that in a corner and do what she wants. It's why A is silent in Italy, for instance, and it lets writer/director Akiko Ohku (adapting Risa Wataya's novel) get a bit abstract toward the end as she confronts both her past and future, because there's trauma in the past when A was in charge and she mostly did what was expected, but things can't go forward with Tada-kun if she decides she wants no part of it.
Full review at eFilmCritic
Muerto con Gloria (Ghosting Gloria)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 12 August 2021 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia 2021, Vimeo via Roku)
There's enough about Ghosting Gloria that is really clever and funny that the movie being built on a foundation that is, at best, questionable as all heck shouldn't really be necessary. A viewer can deal with that in a couple of ways, depending on their temperament (lamenting that some might be too circumspect for a sexy comedy or saying that the film tacitly acknowledges its issues), if one is so inclined, but one can't help but wonder: Why couldn't a film which is smart and creative throughout do better in one of its biggest moments?
That moment is its title character's first orgasm; Gloria (Stefania Tortorella) is thirtyish, works in a Montevideo bookstore, and isn't exactly a prude but is still annoyed by the continuous sex of her newlywed neighbors on the floor above her inherited apartment. It gets to the point where she decides to rent the place out and move into a spot that her oversexed friend and co-worker Sandra (Nena Pelenur) knows of, cheap because previous resident Dante (Federico Guerra) recently died there. It turns out, he's not entirely gone, and one night he moves from just knocking things over to making some aggressive moves on his new roommate. After that, Gloria knows what she's been missing, and even tracks down a way to make Date visible to her, but is he a lover worth defying nature for, or maybe just what she needs to be ready when Ángel (Marco Manfini) walks into the store and appears to be the direct opposite of most of the appalling customers?
How that first supernatural sexual encounter lands for a viewer will probably color the entire rest of the movie for the audience, and it's going to miss the mark for plenty. Married directors Marcela Matta & Mauro Sarser stage the scenes leading up to it more as standard horror where the destructive poltergeist adds rape to his bag of tricks, and it's frustrating that it didn't have to be this way; it shouldn't take much of a shift to make the sequence more clearly built around Dante's clumsiness and Gloria's repressed desire colliding. If one is generous, it's not hard to see how the film is about someone being overly-romantic about the first person to make her feel a certain way, even if he basically sees her as a way to self-gratification and he can't be part of her life (because he's dead). Sarser and Matta do good things with that idea, but the way into it pushes things just a bit too far.
Full review at eFilmCritic
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Fantasia 2019 Catch-up, Part 3: Ride Your Wave, Maggie, No Mercy, It Comes, The Wretched, The Prey, The Incredible Shrinking Wknd, 8, Cencoroll Connect, and The Purity of Vengeance
I'm going to have to find a way to make the Fantasia reviews come faster next year, whether it's remote-working less so that I've got more mornings to write, finding someone else to come for eFilmCritic so I don't feel obligated to review everything I see with the press pass, or just improving my focus so it doesn't take me so long. I've still got 17 Fantasia films that haven't received full reviews and I'm sure I was finished with 2018 by this point last year.
Of course, who knows how CoVID-19 will fit into this? I'll probably have more chance to crank through these over the next couple weeks that I would have otherwise, especially with roughly zero new releases to push them back, and I can't yet guess when the local film festivals that would be taking up my writing time over the next couple of months will reappear - maybe in the fall (the Irish Film Festival has already staked out November dates), maybe at a point which creates hard decisions re Fantasia in the summer, maybe we'll just have a skip year for the Underground and Independent Festivals. Heck, who knows what Fantasia will be like with so many films not getting released in their native lands in the first half of 2020, if we're not all still self-isolating by then?
Anyway, as you might imagine, this whole operation is getting tricky this far from the festival, no matter how good my entries on Letterboxd are and how much my notes fill in the rest. I got to Idol and had to punt it; I liked the film, but the details were not just gone but mixed up with another Korean thriller. I've skipped over G Affairs too, but that's because I was able to order a disc from DDDHouse and I can catch myself up later, while I'm locked in with no baseball.
The bright side: Those omissions mean that, as I cruise through the unreviewed movies, 8 wound up being eighth in this batch!
Kimi to, nami ni noretara (Ride Your Wave, aka Riding a Wave with You)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, DCP)
As Masaki Yuasa's output increases, he seems to be moving away from the strange and trippy films that gained him attention and toward the conventional, though if the result is something like this sweet animated romance, that's not a bad thing. It's still distinctive and occasionally eccentric, and winds up being something fairly unique once the bits of fantasy there are kick in.
He quickly introduces the audience to Minato Hinageshi (voice of Ryota Katayose), a lifeguard and fireman trainee whose eye is quickly caught by Hinako Mukaimizu (voice of Rina Kawaei), an incoming freshman studying oceanography who would probably spend all day surfing if she could. They connect pretty quickly, with Minato's best friend Wasabi Kawamura (voice of Kentaro Ito) knowing his buddy's found a good thing even if Minato's little sister Yoko (voice of Honoka Matsumoto) is jealous. It seems like a perfect romance in this seaside college town, but things can change in an instant.
They do, of course, with an inevitability that will likely have viewers noting that these nice young people are almost certainly being set up for a fall early on. Ideally, the audience wouldn't see it coming that way - it is generally far better to be completely gobsmacked than to pick up on things going too well - but Yuasa and screenwriter Reiko Yoshida are smart enough to not make a morbid game of it or make the moment that things change so grim that the fantasy that comes afterward seems completely ill-advised. It's a tricky line to walk, and I suspect that some will find that the filmmakers are being too playful with serious matters, while others will be impressed with the line being walked between frightening and seemingly harmless delusion.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Maggie
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Camera Lucida, DCP)
Yi Ok-Seop's Maggie is a genuinely peculiar little picture, and maybe could have done well being a little smaller with its eccentricity a bit more specific. It winds up being fun in spots while not quite living up to its ambitions in others, but the clever bits are quite fun.
It opens at the "Love of Maria" hospital, a former convent that has been converted into a private hospital that, with things like a space-themed x-ray room, can often seem like a fancy hotel. Nurse Yeo Yoon-Young (Lee Joo-Young) and her boyfriend Sung-Won (Koo Gyo-Hwan) get it on in that room, and when photographs from its equipment are posted on a bulletin board, chief of orthopedics Lee Kyung-Jin (Moon So-Ri) makes it very clear to Yoon-Young that this is not that sort of place. Meanwhile, Sung-Won has taken a temp job trying to fill the massive sinkholes that are appearing around Seoul, and his co-workers are even bigger screw-ups than he is.
When I was choosing films to see at the festival, the description of Maggie had me thinking it would be a farce about how everybody in a hospital thinks the picture of two people having sex in the x-ray room is their bones and soft tissue, leaving Yoon-Young (who came in to spite Kyung-Jin) and her boss the only people to care for patients and make house calls, so I was probably more disappointed than I should have been when Sung-Won and the sinkhole side winds up taking up more time later, and the really great comic hook is pushed aside. A shame, because the hospital introduces a fun group of characters, several of whom are more memorable than the ones who get actual names, and there's a great sense of dominoes falling as one thing leads to another here. It's how great episodic comedy works, and there's a keen eye for absurd detail that carries forward through the whole film.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Un-ni (No Mercy)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: Action!, DCP)
Man, how many times do the makers of this movie think we need to see a developmentally disabled 17-year-old raped before we're invested? I praise Korean genre cinema for not messing around on a regular basis, but there's a fuzzy space between being no-holds-barred in a thriller inspired by an actual crime and making a rape-revenge story extra tacky without finding a new angle. That's a simple way to look at No Mercy, I suppose, but it's not a complicated movie despite its occasional efforts to become one.
It picks up with Park In-ae (Lee Si-Young) walking into a garage in a red dress and heels that don't exactly beg to be accessorized with a sledgehammer, but In-ae is the sort of lady who makes it work. A beauty with strong mixed-martial arts skills who is having a little trouble finding work after a couple years in jail for a trumped-up charge, though Ha Sang-man (Lee Hyung-Chul) of "Happy Cash Loans" will throw her some work for collections. She is at least happy to be reunited with sister Eun-Hye (Park Se-Wan), a pretty teenager who is mentally about ten years old and whose history of being bullied had inspired them to move before. When Eun-Hye doesn't come home from school one day, In-ae naturally starts worrying and looking, and what she finds as she examines both Eun-Hye's current circumstances and the way things were in the last town where they lived fills her with the sort of horror and rage that leads back to visiting small businesses with a sledgehammer in hand, working her way up to Senator Park Young-Choon (Choi Jin-Ho).
This film doesn't necessarily demand a whole lot of range from its two lead actresses - the happiness and affection between the Park sister as they see each other again is something of an oasis among the rest of the film - so much as sustained effort that leaves a little room for individual personality. Lee Si-Young is committed and properly intense, doing good work to find distinct notches to push In-ae's fury to new levels with each new revelation and communicating how terrible she feels for somehow not having seen this before. It's not exactly an emotional roller-coaster, but it's not something where one can settle in or detach. Park Se-Wan occasionally falls into the trap of making Eun-Hye's disability substitute for a personality, but more often she captures a kid wanting people to like her and knows she's got to work a little harder, even if she doesn't fully understand why what's involved makes her feel awful. The rest of the cast may be playing creeps without much in the way of nuance, but those two are able to anchor things.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Kuru (It Comes)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
It's not often that you see a horror movie like this that has both an incredibly clear idea what it wants to be about but also has such ambitious sweep, managing what sometimes seems like multiple new takes on old ideas without losing what makes them work. That would be enough, but the film also builds to an absolutely amazing climax that is continuously offering more, the best and wildest exorcism put on film in a long time. It's a wonder this thing is never even close to careening out of control, but director Tetsuya Nakashima knows what he's doing.
After a flash-forward teaser, we're properly introduced to Hideki Tahara (Satoshi Tsumabuki) and his fiancee Kana (Haru Kuroki), who will soon be married and expecting a baby. Before they've told anyone the name they've chosen, someone visits Hideki at work to talk about Chisa. The colleague who took the message dies under mysterious circumstances, and as events get stranger (on top of the regular stress of a new baby), they find themselves reaching out to an old friend who studies folklore (Munetaka Aoki), freelance occult writer Nozaki (Junichi Okada), and club hostess/medium Makoto Higa (Nana Komatsu). At first, this seems a small enough haunting as such things go, although it may grow to the point where Makoto's sister Kotoko (Takako Matsu), one of the world's top exorcists, may need to get involved.
The trick of a good horror movie is often finding something that already scares the audience and giving is a life of its own, and Nakashima and company have a clear eye on, among other things, the potentially maddening nature of parenthood and living one's expected life. Part of what they do that's impressive is build the story such that things have some time to fester and recur, which means they can turn the Taharas' lives around and find different angles on how it can translate into supernatural horror, and in doing so deliver some impressive, varied shocks. Nakashima' adaptation of Ichi Sawamura's novel gets out there enough that things never play as purely metaphorical - there's themes and cleverness found here, but they don't overwhelm the thrills by making them just simple analogs to real life - but the scares get bigger even as they stay connected to what makes them mean something.
Full review on EFilmCritic
The Wretched
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The Wretched does things that relatively few horror movies seem to think of, and does them with a skill that a lot of its brethren that are traveling more well-worn paths don't necessarily manage. That's enough to get the horror fans most susceptible to becoming jaded excited about it - the ones who love this stuff but who, in their jobs as festival programmers or production company employees, see every movie less creative filmmakers crank out must find their eyes going wide. I don't know that it will be the case for those not quite so immersed in the genre; somewhere along the way, there maybe should have been a little something more to make its often audacious choices really hit home.
Five days ago, Ben (John-Paul Howard) arrived to spend the summer with his father Liam (Jamison Jones), who has thoughtfully found him a job at the marina he manages. His co-worker Mallory (Piper Curda) and her kid sister Abbie (Zarah Mahler) are pretty cool, but he is, as is customary with children of recent divorce, not impressed with Sara (Azie Tesfai), his father's new girlfriend. He's also noticed Abbie (Zarah Mahler), the attractive mom next door, although when her son Dillon starts noticing that she's acting strange...
Filmmakers Brett & Drew Pierce are working in a great horror movie tradition here, of the kid who knows something awful is up but can't get anyone to believe him, but at times it seems like they chose the wrong kid - not the eight-year-old who is in the middle of it, but the seventeen-year-old who is next door and is only kind of involved at first. It puts the scares at a little distance, and makes it feel like it should be working harder to pull it together. A late-film twist reveals how this might all fit together, but that puts a lot on the audience as well, because there's no time to spell out details, and requires the audience to be horrified at the idea of what's been lost more than the actuality of it
Full review on EFilmCritic
The Prey
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: ACTION!, DCP)
As "The Most Dangerous Game" riffs go, this certainly is one. You know the story, and the makers of this one don't have any particular twist or hook to add to it too make this stand out in a sea of them. Or at least, not an obvious one from this side of the Pacific; maybe it touches on something topical in Cambodia, but I'd be surprised, as it seems fairly generic, though enjoyably violent.
In it, undercover Chinese Interpol agent Xin (Gu Shangwei) winds up in Cambodia's Western Region Prison when caught at the scene of a crime, and it's not long before he learns that the warden (Vithaya Pansringarm) has a side operation in letting wealthy sadists hunt folks who are unlikely to be missed. The latest group is Mat (Byron Bishop), Payuk (Sahajak Boonthanakit), and his nephew Ti (Nophand Booyai), and it makes sense to include the Chinese guy with no friends in the country among the prey. And if someone like Detective Li (Dy Sonita) shows up to spring Xin after learning where he wound up, it just becomes all that much more important to destroy the evidence and kill the witnesses.
The disappointment is not so much that the story is familiar, but that the execution is mostly just decent. This is the team that made the fairly impressive Jailbreak a couple years earlier, but having a more open environment doesn't necessarily do a lot of good. There's some decent gunplay, but it's seldom as good as the previous film's martial arts and inventive camerawork, mostly just a lot of sharp running and tumbling and pointing guns with purpose. The technique is still slick and it does lead two a couple of quality fights, but the close quarters seemed to inspire more creativity.while the sharply defined geography gave the previous movie structure that this one doesn't have in such abundance.
Full review on EFilmCritic
El increíble finde menguante (The Incredible Shrinking Wknd)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The big question after this screening was "when did you see it", referring to the compositional trick going on through the film, which maybe speaks to how it's more of a visual gimmick than something that enhances the film's themes without overstating them. Which is a shame, because as much as that particular element may or may not work for a viewer, it does play into what filmmaker Jon Mikel Caballero is going for, helping to focus a genre often played for laughs into something a little more thoughtful.
It starts with a group of friends heading to a house in the country for the weekend, one that Alba (Iria del Rio) used to visit when she was a child. With her are her kind-of-snotty boyfriend Pablo (Adam Quintero), square-but-funny Mark (Jimmy Castro) and his girlfriend Claudia (Irene Ruiz), would-be YouTube star Mancha (Adrián Expósito), and cheerful-but-unemployed Sira (Nadia de Santiago). It should be fun, but as is often the case, it's complicated; Alba's father is having health issues and things are starting to fray with her and Pablo, while Mark and Claudia have their own things to bring up. It is not, necessarily, the sort of weekend where one wants to get caught in a time loop, especially one that Alba soon discovers is an hour shorter each time through.
Many time-loop stories are built to create a sort of existential despair or repetitive trauma underneath the comedy of being able to predict what's coming and figure out a situation given enough reps, but the twist Caballero puts on it gets to an intriguing and resonant paradox: Alba has not been doing much with her youth, only to suddenly get hit with the idea that there's less she can do and less time to do it than she thought. It's a take that has bits of wasted potential and bits of dying young to it, but isn't about making existence seem pointless with drudgery. Alba is on vacation, and it's potentially nice, but it's limited, and making the most of the good times, it turns out, takes effort and consideration rather than just casting one's cares aside and living for the moment.
Full review on EFilmCritic
8
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The demon, of sorts, at the center of 8 is a sad, guilty one, something which makes for a different sort of thriller than the fairly traditional opening implies; it's as much the story of someone bound to something supernatural as those facing it, which means that filmmaker Harold Holscher doesn't have save the sense of tragedy that goes with these stories entirely for after he's done stringing the audience along.
Set "somewhere in South Africa", it introduces the audience to Mary (Keita Luna), a precocious young girl who has come to the country with uncle William (Garth Breytenbach) and aunt Sarah (Inge Beckmann) after the death of William's grandfather. The farm has seen better days and the house at the center is far too large for such a small, modest family. They soon meet "Lazarus" (Tshamano Sebe), who says he used to work for Master Zeke and who quickly befriends Mary, but there's something strange about the drifter, with other locals unwilling to take work on the farm if he's around and some even calling him a demon.
Small things give 8 a distinct, South African identity; the very time it takes place, in 1977, seems too late for this kind of story in many locations, like the rest of the world is more settled, but here these sort of old family mansions are just starting to become obsolete. It makes "Lazarus" feel even more like a lingering remnant of something else, which the white family doesn't understand but the locals do. There is mistrust between the various groups that needs little explanation but forms a real barrier, but one which is part of the landscape rather than the most central point of the film. It's an extra layer of tension that keeps the audience from ever getting too complacent.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Cencoroll Connect ("Cencoroll" & "Cencoroll 2")
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, digital)
There's a shift in the animation style somewhere in the middle of this film, but that's natural; there's ten years between the releases of "Cencoroll" and "Cencoroll 2", and you can't help but see the spot where they are fused into a short feature. The thing is, it becomes a bit of a different sort of anime at that point, introducing more characters who have clear purpose and sense of urgency, piling more action on, losing a bit of what made the opening feel unique even if it isn't necessarily anything completely new.
A sonic rift in the sky occasionally belches out strange creatures, which run around and fight and do some damage, and high school girl Yuki (voice of Kana Hanazawa) is fascinated by them. Getting too close to one of those showdowns, she discovers that her classmate Tetsu Animiya (voice of Hiro Shimono) is somehow bonded with one, communicating with "Cenco" and helping the creature to feed, but really not curious about all the rest beyond that, even as a similarly bonded teen, Shiuu (voice of Ryohei Kimura) is spoiling for a fight.
Short films like the original "Cencoroll" sometimes wind up in the same sort of place despite being made for opposite reasons, either as calling-cards to show bigger studios and producers just what makes a given team stick out or in a burst of independent creativity that they know they'll likely have reined in should they make the big time. Whichever is the case for director Atsuya Uki, he came to play, and his team seems to have a blast with exaggerated character designs, Cenco morphing into new shapes and the characters making the same sort of right-angle turns as they drive each other nuts. It's high-energy and a delight to look at, full of surprises even as the story is purposefully meandering and not exactly driving toward anything in particular.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Journal 64 (aka The Purity of Vengeance)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
"Department Q" has, as a film series, reached the point where it not only has to deal with characters staying in the same place rather than having some sort of shift in their job or life, but where a character is compelled to mention that they really didn't have this many perverse cold cases before Carl Mørck was assigned to them. It's not quite a breaking point, but it's a spot where I suspect everyone involved is thinking about how to avoid inertia while not changing the series's basic appeal.
And it does okay. This time around, the more personal narrative that takes center stage for those following the characters as much as the mysteries revolves around Carl's partner Assad (a first-billed Fares Fares), who is given a rare chance to move up while confronting the issues with being an Arab in Copenhagen more directly. It's nicely and sympathetically laid out (down to the way emphasis is placed in the phrase "non-ethnic Danes" to make it sound reluctant and avoid positioning Assad and his friends as outsiders), giving Fares the chance to act as the movie's rock rather than just having Assad be Carl's. It takes some of the pressure off co-star Nikolaj Lie Kaas as well; his morose, cynical detective can hold steady rather than having to plumb further depths, even making a joke or two on occasion.
This case launches in the present with the discovery of a mummified family around a table with one empty chair in the walled-up room of an apartment, and touches on an uglier bit of Danish history that can't be entirely consigned to the past (don't they all). In this case, it's the story of Nete (Fanny Leander Bornedal), who was sent to the island "girl's home" of Sprogø in 1961. The place would later become infamous for illicit experiments and forced sterilization in the name of eugenics, with Nete's particular tormentors doctor Curt Wad (Elliot Crosset Hove) and nurse Gitte Charles (Luise Skov). In 2016, Wad (Anders Hove) is now running one of Copenhagen's most successful fertility clinics, and once Carl and Assad tie the room to Sprogø, it's not altogether unreasonable to assume that he may have been intended for the empty chair and thus might still be a target.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Of course, who knows how CoVID-19 will fit into this? I'll probably have more chance to crank through these over the next couple weeks that I would have otherwise, especially with roughly zero new releases to push them back, and I can't yet guess when the local film festivals that would be taking up my writing time over the next couple of months will reappear - maybe in the fall (the Irish Film Festival has already staked out November dates), maybe at a point which creates hard decisions re Fantasia in the summer, maybe we'll just have a skip year for the Underground and Independent Festivals. Heck, who knows what Fantasia will be like with so many films not getting released in their native lands in the first half of 2020, if we're not all still self-isolating by then?
Anyway, as you might imagine, this whole operation is getting tricky this far from the festival, no matter how good my entries on Letterboxd are and how much my notes fill in the rest. I got to Idol and had to punt it; I liked the film, but the details were not just gone but mixed up with another Korean thriller. I've skipped over G Affairs too, but that's because I was able to order a disc from DDDHouse and I can catch myself up later, while I'm locked in with no baseball.
The bright side: Those omissions mean that, as I cruise through the unreviewed movies, 8 wound up being eighth in this batch!
Kimi to, nami ni noretara (Ride Your Wave, aka Riding a Wave with You)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, DCP)
As Masaki Yuasa's output increases, he seems to be moving away from the strange and trippy films that gained him attention and toward the conventional, though if the result is something like this sweet animated romance, that's not a bad thing. It's still distinctive and occasionally eccentric, and winds up being something fairly unique once the bits of fantasy there are kick in.
He quickly introduces the audience to Minato Hinageshi (voice of Ryota Katayose), a lifeguard and fireman trainee whose eye is quickly caught by Hinako Mukaimizu (voice of Rina Kawaei), an incoming freshman studying oceanography who would probably spend all day surfing if she could. They connect pretty quickly, with Minato's best friend Wasabi Kawamura (voice of Kentaro Ito) knowing his buddy's found a good thing even if Minato's little sister Yoko (voice of Honoka Matsumoto) is jealous. It seems like a perfect romance in this seaside college town, but things can change in an instant.
They do, of course, with an inevitability that will likely have viewers noting that these nice young people are almost certainly being set up for a fall early on. Ideally, the audience wouldn't see it coming that way - it is generally far better to be completely gobsmacked than to pick up on things going too well - but Yuasa and screenwriter Reiko Yoshida are smart enough to not make a morbid game of it or make the moment that things change so grim that the fantasy that comes afterward seems completely ill-advised. It's a tricky line to walk, and I suspect that some will find that the filmmakers are being too playful with serious matters, while others will be impressed with the line being walked between frightening and seemingly harmless delusion.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Maggie
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Camera Lucida, DCP)
Yi Ok-Seop's Maggie is a genuinely peculiar little picture, and maybe could have done well being a little smaller with its eccentricity a bit more specific. It winds up being fun in spots while not quite living up to its ambitions in others, but the clever bits are quite fun.
It opens at the "Love of Maria" hospital, a former convent that has been converted into a private hospital that, with things like a space-themed x-ray room, can often seem like a fancy hotel. Nurse Yeo Yoon-Young (Lee Joo-Young) and her boyfriend Sung-Won (Koo Gyo-Hwan) get it on in that room, and when photographs from its equipment are posted on a bulletin board, chief of orthopedics Lee Kyung-Jin (Moon So-Ri) makes it very clear to Yoon-Young that this is not that sort of place. Meanwhile, Sung-Won has taken a temp job trying to fill the massive sinkholes that are appearing around Seoul, and his co-workers are even bigger screw-ups than he is.
When I was choosing films to see at the festival, the description of Maggie had me thinking it would be a farce about how everybody in a hospital thinks the picture of two people having sex in the x-ray room is their bones and soft tissue, leaving Yoon-Young (who came in to spite Kyung-Jin) and her boss the only people to care for patients and make house calls, so I was probably more disappointed than I should have been when Sung-Won and the sinkhole side winds up taking up more time later, and the really great comic hook is pushed aside. A shame, because the hospital introduces a fun group of characters, several of whom are more memorable than the ones who get actual names, and there's a great sense of dominoes falling as one thing leads to another here. It's how great episodic comedy works, and there's a keen eye for absurd detail that carries forward through the whole film.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Un-ni (No Mercy)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: Action!, DCP)
Man, how many times do the makers of this movie think we need to see a developmentally disabled 17-year-old raped before we're invested? I praise Korean genre cinema for not messing around on a regular basis, but there's a fuzzy space between being no-holds-barred in a thriller inspired by an actual crime and making a rape-revenge story extra tacky without finding a new angle. That's a simple way to look at No Mercy, I suppose, but it's not a complicated movie despite its occasional efforts to become one.
It picks up with Park In-ae (Lee Si-Young) walking into a garage in a red dress and heels that don't exactly beg to be accessorized with a sledgehammer, but In-ae is the sort of lady who makes it work. A beauty with strong mixed-martial arts skills who is having a little trouble finding work after a couple years in jail for a trumped-up charge, though Ha Sang-man (Lee Hyung-Chul) of "Happy Cash Loans" will throw her some work for collections. She is at least happy to be reunited with sister Eun-Hye (Park Se-Wan), a pretty teenager who is mentally about ten years old and whose history of being bullied had inspired them to move before. When Eun-Hye doesn't come home from school one day, In-ae naturally starts worrying and looking, and what she finds as she examines both Eun-Hye's current circumstances and the way things were in the last town where they lived fills her with the sort of horror and rage that leads back to visiting small businesses with a sledgehammer in hand, working her way up to Senator Park Young-Choon (Choi Jin-Ho).
This film doesn't necessarily demand a whole lot of range from its two lead actresses - the happiness and affection between the Park sister as they see each other again is something of an oasis among the rest of the film - so much as sustained effort that leaves a little room for individual personality. Lee Si-Young is committed and properly intense, doing good work to find distinct notches to push In-ae's fury to new levels with each new revelation and communicating how terrible she feels for somehow not having seen this before. It's not exactly an emotional roller-coaster, but it's not something where one can settle in or detach. Park Se-Wan occasionally falls into the trap of making Eun-Hye's disability substitute for a personality, but more often she captures a kid wanting people to like her and knows she's got to work a little harder, even if she doesn't fully understand why what's involved makes her feel awful. The rest of the cast may be playing creeps without much in the way of nuance, but those two are able to anchor things.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Kuru (It Comes)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
It's not often that you see a horror movie like this that has both an incredibly clear idea what it wants to be about but also has such ambitious sweep, managing what sometimes seems like multiple new takes on old ideas without losing what makes them work. That would be enough, but the film also builds to an absolutely amazing climax that is continuously offering more, the best and wildest exorcism put on film in a long time. It's a wonder this thing is never even close to careening out of control, but director Tetsuya Nakashima knows what he's doing.
After a flash-forward teaser, we're properly introduced to Hideki Tahara (Satoshi Tsumabuki) and his fiancee Kana (Haru Kuroki), who will soon be married and expecting a baby. Before they've told anyone the name they've chosen, someone visits Hideki at work to talk about Chisa. The colleague who took the message dies under mysterious circumstances, and as events get stranger (on top of the regular stress of a new baby), they find themselves reaching out to an old friend who studies folklore (Munetaka Aoki), freelance occult writer Nozaki (Junichi Okada), and club hostess/medium Makoto Higa (Nana Komatsu). At first, this seems a small enough haunting as such things go, although it may grow to the point where Makoto's sister Kotoko (Takako Matsu), one of the world's top exorcists, may need to get involved.
The trick of a good horror movie is often finding something that already scares the audience and giving is a life of its own, and Nakashima and company have a clear eye on, among other things, the potentially maddening nature of parenthood and living one's expected life. Part of what they do that's impressive is build the story such that things have some time to fester and recur, which means they can turn the Taharas' lives around and find different angles on how it can translate into supernatural horror, and in doing so deliver some impressive, varied shocks. Nakashima' adaptation of Ichi Sawamura's novel gets out there enough that things never play as purely metaphorical - there's themes and cleverness found here, but they don't overwhelm the thrills by making them just simple analogs to real life - but the scares get bigger even as they stay connected to what makes them mean something.
Full review on EFilmCritic
The Wretched
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The Wretched does things that relatively few horror movies seem to think of, and does them with a skill that a lot of its brethren that are traveling more well-worn paths don't necessarily manage. That's enough to get the horror fans most susceptible to becoming jaded excited about it - the ones who love this stuff but who, in their jobs as festival programmers or production company employees, see every movie less creative filmmakers crank out must find their eyes going wide. I don't know that it will be the case for those not quite so immersed in the genre; somewhere along the way, there maybe should have been a little something more to make its often audacious choices really hit home.
Five days ago, Ben (John-Paul Howard) arrived to spend the summer with his father Liam (Jamison Jones), who has thoughtfully found him a job at the marina he manages. His co-worker Mallory (Piper Curda) and her kid sister Abbie (Zarah Mahler) are pretty cool, but he is, as is customary with children of recent divorce, not impressed with Sara (Azie Tesfai), his father's new girlfriend. He's also noticed Abbie (Zarah Mahler), the attractive mom next door, although when her son Dillon starts noticing that she's acting strange...
Filmmakers Brett & Drew Pierce are working in a great horror movie tradition here, of the kid who knows something awful is up but can't get anyone to believe him, but at times it seems like they chose the wrong kid - not the eight-year-old who is in the middle of it, but the seventeen-year-old who is next door and is only kind of involved at first. It puts the scares at a little distance, and makes it feel like it should be working harder to pull it together. A late-film twist reveals how this might all fit together, but that puts a lot on the audience as well, because there's no time to spell out details, and requires the audience to be horrified at the idea of what's been lost more than the actuality of it
Full review on EFilmCritic
The Prey
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: ACTION!, DCP)
As "The Most Dangerous Game" riffs go, this certainly is one. You know the story, and the makers of this one don't have any particular twist or hook to add to it too make this stand out in a sea of them. Or at least, not an obvious one from this side of the Pacific; maybe it touches on something topical in Cambodia, but I'd be surprised, as it seems fairly generic, though enjoyably violent.
In it, undercover Chinese Interpol agent Xin (Gu Shangwei) winds up in Cambodia's Western Region Prison when caught at the scene of a crime, and it's not long before he learns that the warden (Vithaya Pansringarm) has a side operation in letting wealthy sadists hunt folks who are unlikely to be missed. The latest group is Mat (Byron Bishop), Payuk (Sahajak Boonthanakit), and his nephew Ti (Nophand Booyai), and it makes sense to include the Chinese guy with no friends in the country among the prey. And if someone like Detective Li (Dy Sonita) shows up to spring Xin after learning where he wound up, it just becomes all that much more important to destroy the evidence and kill the witnesses.
The disappointment is not so much that the story is familiar, but that the execution is mostly just decent. This is the team that made the fairly impressive Jailbreak a couple years earlier, but having a more open environment doesn't necessarily do a lot of good. There's some decent gunplay, but it's seldom as good as the previous film's martial arts and inventive camerawork, mostly just a lot of sharp running and tumbling and pointing guns with purpose. The technique is still slick and it does lead two a couple of quality fights, but the close quarters seemed to inspire more creativity.while the sharply defined geography gave the previous movie structure that this one doesn't have in such abundance.
Full review on EFilmCritic
El increíble finde menguante (The Incredible Shrinking Wknd)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The big question after this screening was "when did you see it", referring to the compositional trick going on through the film, which maybe speaks to how it's more of a visual gimmick than something that enhances the film's themes without overstating them. Which is a shame, because as much as that particular element may or may not work for a viewer, it does play into what filmmaker Jon Mikel Caballero is going for, helping to focus a genre often played for laughs into something a little more thoughtful.
It starts with a group of friends heading to a house in the country for the weekend, one that Alba (Iria del Rio) used to visit when she was a child. With her are her kind-of-snotty boyfriend Pablo (Adam Quintero), square-but-funny Mark (Jimmy Castro) and his girlfriend Claudia (Irene Ruiz), would-be YouTube star Mancha (Adrián Expósito), and cheerful-but-unemployed Sira (Nadia de Santiago). It should be fun, but as is often the case, it's complicated; Alba's father is having health issues and things are starting to fray with her and Pablo, while Mark and Claudia have their own things to bring up. It is not, necessarily, the sort of weekend where one wants to get caught in a time loop, especially one that Alba soon discovers is an hour shorter each time through.
Many time-loop stories are built to create a sort of existential despair or repetitive trauma underneath the comedy of being able to predict what's coming and figure out a situation given enough reps, but the twist Caballero puts on it gets to an intriguing and resonant paradox: Alba has not been doing much with her youth, only to suddenly get hit with the idea that there's less she can do and less time to do it than she thought. It's a take that has bits of wasted potential and bits of dying young to it, but isn't about making existence seem pointless with drudgery. Alba is on vacation, and it's potentially nice, but it's limited, and making the most of the good times, it turns out, takes effort and consideration rather than just casting one's cares aside and living for the moment.
Full review on EFilmCritic
8
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The demon, of sorts, at the center of 8 is a sad, guilty one, something which makes for a different sort of thriller than the fairly traditional opening implies; it's as much the story of someone bound to something supernatural as those facing it, which means that filmmaker Harold Holscher doesn't have save the sense of tragedy that goes with these stories entirely for after he's done stringing the audience along.
Set "somewhere in South Africa", it introduces the audience to Mary (Keita Luna), a precocious young girl who has come to the country with uncle William (Garth Breytenbach) and aunt Sarah (Inge Beckmann) after the death of William's grandfather. The farm has seen better days and the house at the center is far too large for such a small, modest family. They soon meet "Lazarus" (Tshamano Sebe), who says he used to work for Master Zeke and who quickly befriends Mary, but there's something strange about the drifter, with other locals unwilling to take work on the farm if he's around and some even calling him a demon.
Small things give 8 a distinct, South African identity; the very time it takes place, in 1977, seems too late for this kind of story in many locations, like the rest of the world is more settled, but here these sort of old family mansions are just starting to become obsolete. It makes "Lazarus" feel even more like a lingering remnant of something else, which the white family doesn't understand but the locals do. There is mistrust between the various groups that needs little explanation but forms a real barrier, but one which is part of the landscape rather than the most central point of the film. It's an extra layer of tension that keeps the audience from ever getting too complacent.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Cencoroll Connect ("Cencoroll" & "Cencoroll 2")
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, digital)
There's a shift in the animation style somewhere in the middle of this film, but that's natural; there's ten years between the releases of "Cencoroll" and "Cencoroll 2", and you can't help but see the spot where they are fused into a short feature. The thing is, it becomes a bit of a different sort of anime at that point, introducing more characters who have clear purpose and sense of urgency, piling more action on, losing a bit of what made the opening feel unique even if it isn't necessarily anything completely new.
A sonic rift in the sky occasionally belches out strange creatures, which run around and fight and do some damage, and high school girl Yuki (voice of Kana Hanazawa) is fascinated by them. Getting too close to one of those showdowns, she discovers that her classmate Tetsu Animiya (voice of Hiro Shimono) is somehow bonded with one, communicating with "Cenco" and helping the creature to feed, but really not curious about all the rest beyond that, even as a similarly bonded teen, Shiuu (voice of Ryohei Kimura) is spoiling for a fight.
Short films like the original "Cencoroll" sometimes wind up in the same sort of place despite being made for opposite reasons, either as calling-cards to show bigger studios and producers just what makes a given team stick out or in a burst of independent creativity that they know they'll likely have reined in should they make the big time. Whichever is the case for director Atsuya Uki, he came to play, and his team seems to have a blast with exaggerated character designs, Cenco morphing into new shapes and the characters making the same sort of right-angle turns as they drive each other nuts. It's high-energy and a delight to look at, full of surprises even as the story is purposefully meandering and not exactly driving toward anything in particular.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Journal 64 (aka The Purity of Vengeance)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
"Department Q" has, as a film series, reached the point where it not only has to deal with characters staying in the same place rather than having some sort of shift in their job or life, but where a character is compelled to mention that they really didn't have this many perverse cold cases before Carl Mørck was assigned to them. It's not quite a breaking point, but it's a spot where I suspect everyone involved is thinking about how to avoid inertia while not changing the series's basic appeal.
And it does okay. This time around, the more personal narrative that takes center stage for those following the characters as much as the mysteries revolves around Carl's partner Assad (a first-billed Fares Fares), who is given a rare chance to move up while confronting the issues with being an Arab in Copenhagen more directly. It's nicely and sympathetically laid out (down to the way emphasis is placed in the phrase "non-ethnic Danes" to make it sound reluctant and avoid positioning Assad and his friends as outsiders), giving Fares the chance to act as the movie's rock rather than just having Assad be Carl's. It takes some of the pressure off co-star Nikolaj Lie Kaas as well; his morose, cynical detective can hold steady rather than having to plumb further depths, even making a joke or two on occasion.
This case launches in the present with the discovery of a mummified family around a table with one empty chair in the walled-up room of an apartment, and touches on an uglier bit of Danish history that can't be entirely consigned to the past (don't they all). In this case, it's the story of Nete (Fanny Leander Bornedal), who was sent to the island "girl's home" of Sprogø in 1961. The place would later become infamous for illicit experiments and forced sterilization in the name of eugenics, with Nete's particular tormentors doctor Curt Wad (Elliot Crosset Hove) and nurse Gitte Charles (Luise Skov). In 2016, Wad (Anders Hove) is now running one of Copenhagen's most successful fertility clinics, and once Carl and Assad tie the room to Sprogø, it's not altogether unreasonable to assume that he may have been intended for the empty chair and thus might still be a target.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Fantasia 2019.10: Ride Your Wave, The Prey, Born of Woman '19, The Incredible Shrinking Wknd, and 8
Is there a place near Concordia that does a nice, simple omurice? It was all that the little girl in It Comes wanted and apparently the comfort food of choice for the couple in Ride Your Wave. A dish shows up twice in less than 48 hours at a film festival, that's a message, I guess.
Anyway, Ride Your Wave and The Prey were the early-afternoon shows in Hall, guest-free, leaving me some time to poke around the comic shops on Sainte Catherine to fill in holes to no avail. I'm beginning to suspect that Marvel just didn't print a few relatively recent issues. Plenty of time for a burrito before heading into DeSeve for the rest of the day.
First up there was the annual "Born of Woman" shorts block, which I missed the first couple of years because it always seems to get scheduled in such a way as to span two films on the other screen, one of which I want to see badly. This year, the stuff in Hall was stuff I could take or leave, meaning it was little issue getting into this 9-short block, with filmmakers Valerie Barnhart, Michelle Garza Cervera, Erica Scoggins, and Yfke Van Berckelaer on-hand.
It's a pretty great block of short films, where even the least exciting entry was pretty decent and the best were fantastic. It's worth noting that Ms. Barnhart (whom I think I've seen around the festival in previous years, perhaps as a volunteer) basically taught herself animation while making "Girl in the Hallway", grumbling later that she didn't realize that she'd chosen one of the most demanding forms of animation to work with. She seems to have mastered it, though, as several people are talking it up as not just their favorite short in the program, but one of their favorite shorts in the festival.
Later in the evening, I decided to switch from my planned selection of Killerman to 8, and I'm pretty glad I did; as much as I liked Cash Only a few years back. Harold Holscher made a pretty nifty little film that I'm glad I had a chance to see on the big screen. Holscher sounded like he was not necessarily optimistic about people in its native South Africa getting to do so. Distribution and exhibition are pretty hard there, and there isn't a lot of support for local genre film (something I remember hearing from a South African genre director at this festival something like ten years ago, claiming all the funding was for apartheid dramas).
Kind of a shame, since he made a great-looking movie, and it sounds like they had fun - the young lady playing the monster was a ballerina, and while they were initially worried about her freaking out the young co-star while in full make-up, they were apparently great friends by the end.
It's been a busy enough weekend that this post about Saturday is going up on Thursday, when I'll be at Shooting the Mafia, Lake Michigan Monster, Miss and Mrs. Cops, and the Zappin Party. Shadow is playing during my late-lunch-break, and well worth checking out on the big screen.
Kimi to, nami ni noretara (Ride Your Wave, aka Riding a Wave with You)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, DCP)
As Masaki Yuasa's output increases, he seems to be moving away from the strange and trippy films that gained him attention and toward the conventional, though if the result is something like this sweet animated romance, that's not a bad thing. It's still distinctive and occasionally eccentric, and winds up being something fairly unique once the bits of fantasy there are kick in.
Part of that's his character design; there's not much mistaking the jangly limbs, pointy noses, and skinny necks his characters have. There's also the sheer playful abandon in how, when the thing that does give this a certain amount of fantasy emerges, there's a whimsical acceptance, that what might mark a person as crazy can somehow happen, especially since it fits the personalities of everyone involved so well. Yuasa's movies have always had a bit of the fantastic amid the everyday, and here he slides into more carefully than usual, keeping it in Hinako's head until it absolutely must come out.
And then there's the delightful animation, where once again Yuasa is using water to craft a fluid reality while also filling the world the characters live in with nifty detail. It's maybe not always the ones people might consider important or universal, but things like a particular coffee shop, firefighting techniques, and smooth surfing pull the audience in even when they might look at the very simple story with side-eye. It's a very nice combination of down-to-Earth and fantastical that does a fantastic job of getting at just how powerful young love and be and how unreal the fallout is.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Bar Fight"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: ACTION!, digital)
"Bar Fight" is the result of filmmaker Benjamin R. Moody finishing up a horror movie and deciding he wanted to hit something, and what he delivers here is a pretty darn good fight sequence with a minimum amount of filler around it. Some guys show up in the middle of a bar that's closing and find that the bartender is no pushover, and that's that.
With any luck, it will serve as a nice calling-card for star Aaron D. Alexander, who has enough screen presence to sell the tired, put-upon bartender before the action starts getting crazy and then surprises when the man is eminently capable of dealing with anything thrown at him. The film is five minutes long, but between them, Moody and Alexander imply the entire "guy has been through some things and doesn't think he's up to the challenge any more" story in body language and reaction shots, and the fight choreography doesn't entirely take precedence over showing who this guy is. He's reluctant and doubts himself all the way through the end, and even good action movies sometimes have trouble putting that amount of characterization into their action. The best use that action in part to reveal character, and it's great that the film found time for that without a lot of room to spare.
The Prey
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: ACTION!, DCP)
As "The Most Dangerous Game" riffs go, this certainly is one. You know the story, and the makers of this one don't have any particular twist or hook to add to it too make this stand out in a sea of them. Or at least, not an obvious one from this side of the Pacific; maybe it touches on something topical in Cambodia, but I'd be surprised, as it seems fairly generic.
The big disappointment is not so much that the story is familiar, but that the execution is kind of lackluster. This is the team that made the fairly impressive Jailbreak, but having a more open environment doesn't necessarily do a lot of good. There's some decent gunplay, but it's seldom as good as the previous film's martial arts and inventive camerawork, mostly just a lot of sharp running and tumbling and pointing guns with purpose. There are a few striking shots - filmmaker Jimmy Henderson knows exactly what he's doing when the characters burst out of the woods and into a beautiful, bright open space on a riverbank - but mostly it's just a decent example of Action Movie Plot #8.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Lili"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
"Lili" is as clear and concise a story about how men use power positions to coerce women, and how even in situations like film where sexuality can be part of the job description, it is, at the bare minimum, a pretty crappy thing to do. Filmmaker Yfke Van Berckelaer lays it out step by step, showing how "strength" is often twisted as a route to intimidation. I don't know how many people seeing this will need the lesson, but it's an impressively clear one.
There's also no small amount of fun in watching Lisa Smit act as the title character. Some may feel that audition scenes, like the one that make up this movie, or other things where you can see the performers going about their business, ruin the magic, but it comes across here as somebody doing a thing well, and I've always enjoyed skill on display. Smit's good at her job, giving Lili a character even as Lili is donning other personae, and that's fun to watch.
"Sometimes, I Think About Dying"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Stefanie Abel Horowitz does a nice job of digging right into self-doubt in "Sometimes, I Think About Dying"; I have no idea how much she and playwright Kevin Armento compressed his original work to get it down to 11 minutes, but it does fine work cutting down everything extraneous, never needing to offer an origin story or specific counter-arguments for how its narrator feels, just letting her show how navigating these feelings can seem almost impossible.
To do so, she chooses a lot of visually quiet locations where Fran can be overwhelmed by her thoughts, whether her house, a somewhat sparse office, or empty streets, or space outside the city. Katy Wright-Mead does a nifty job of making her seem more outwardly put-together than she feels most of the time without it conflicting with her narration, so that when one collides with the other, it feels a bit more wrenching, with Jim Sarbh making the guy who is genuinely interested in Fran maybe a little nervous on his own but not a matching-misfit sort.
"The Hitchhiker" (2018)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Adele Vuko puts a couple of familiar short-film subjects together - 'hitchhiker leaving a corpse behind" meets "hiding something from concerned friends" - with a twist that unites them in maybe slightly-too-easy fashion in order to create a women-helping-women narrative. There should, it seems, be more of an explored downside to the deal offered, although there's not really room for it in a film this relatively short.
Vuko's put a nice cast together and given them plenty of room to play off each other, with Isaro Kayitesi especially fun as the group's worrywart, obsessively jumping immediately to Google to find whatever freaks her out, playing well off a group that are, for different reasons, more likely to let things go. It's a group that doesn't always seem to belong together but which makes you think they want to be, which is enough and important as things get more tense and the idea that things might not work out well becomes clearer.
"Wakey Wakey"
* * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Mary Dauterman has made a nice-enough looking short, although I kind of got thrown by how I viewed it: My brain had the characters in a spaceship because the compositing which put an ocean outside their window made me think it was a screen rather than a look at what was right outside, and I'm still kind of not sure whether they were meant to be in a seaside house or on a boat, with the otherwise-unseen motion meant partly explain the twist ending. I kind of think there's a nifty sci-fi plot about dream machines or what have you possible, but there's also not enough there to presume it.
The result's certainly got intriguing potential, but plays like a short that just doesn't have enough to it to make a solid impression one way or another, and not having that definitive push toward a conclusion makes me less interested than having one and winding up as a bad idea.
"Vaspy"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Hweiling Ow builds the sort of horror short hear that is originally weird and gross, but seemingly not about that much - or at least, not about that much in ways that particularly work for me. It offers an offbeat horror take on pregnancy stress and cravings being amplified by already having a five-year-old doing what he does, but it sort of feels like we've seen that connection before and the toy wasp making its heroine have somewhat more wasp-like tendencies which she dismisses doesn't quite seem special enough. It's an eccentric take on a classic, but one that's so eccentric that it doesn't quite hit so hard.
"Maggie May"
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
It's kind of interesting that what are likely the two best shorts in this program both find their horror in not so much violence but inaction and dismissal. Filmmaker Mia Kate Russell offers up a villain that is fearsomely sociopathic in her idleness, and Lulu McClatchy is unnervingly great in the role: She has the sort of blankness that implies some sort of cognitive disability where she is genuinely paralyzed by not knowing what she should do, but also the sort of sneer that implies she knows just exactly what she's allowing to happen. She's thoroughly awful, but Russell and McClatchy invite you to feel bad about hating her.
Meanwhile, Katrina Mathers is making her sister a little more than generically nice; Russell gives her a bit of personal dissatisfaction to work with, and once she finds herself injured by a freak accident, she does a fantastic job of channelling the viewers' horror and confusion without telling them what to feel. Russell keeps certain dangers off the screen in a way that allows her to strike at the heart of someone's worst fears without feeling exploitative. It's the sort of horror that leaves a nice, hard lump in one's stomach even before you start wondering how much it applies to broader situations.
"The Boogeywoman"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Would I probably get more out of "The Boogeywoman" if I had, at some point, been a teenage girl? Almost certainly. Even without being able to personally identify with what Sam (Amélie Hoeferle) is going through as she gets her first period well after her friends at an inopportune time, I loved watching the way these kids played off each other, for good and ill, as well as how things like a power failure at the roller rink and empty small-town streets are nervous-making without being overbearingly so.
When it gets the the supernatural part, it kind of loses me; I kind of feel like I should be making some greater connection between all the talk of Sam never knowing her mother and what else is going on, but it's never quite there for me, although it's acted and presented well enough that I can see that something is going on. Which may just mean that this short is made with other people in mind who will see how it fits together, which is fine. There's certainly enough there for me to give whatever I couldn't catch the benefit of the doubt.
"The Original"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
"The Original" is the rare short film where the finale is a kind of perfect knife to the gut, where I both want to see the fallout of it while also appreciating that the stabbing pain of it is undiluted. It's a nifty concept explored just enough to be a big emotional mess but not fall apart through being over-detailed.
Director Michelle Garza does a lot of nifty things to make writer Andrew Fleming's script seem more personal than topical, mostly by not setting it in something that clearly feels like the near future, but rather by shooting in black-and-white and creating a world that seems half British and half Mexican, making it hard to "yeah, but…" at any point. There's also an impressive division of labor between the actresses - Ariana Lebrón gets what at some points seems like most of the heavy lifting, as her character visibly grapples with all the hard decisions and loops the hospital makes her jump through to get her girlfriend's consciousness transferred into a healthy clone body, but Rebecca Layoo is doing amazing work in the background, so unsettlingly convincing as the victim of what appears to be a stroke that seeing the new her well feel genuinely mind-boggling.
There's a catch, though, and it's a delicious one, and I'm still pondering how it seemingly must have played out days later. You could make a feature out of this story, but it's still pretty great at 13 minutes.
"The Girl in the Hallway"
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
I'm not sure whether director Valerie Barnhart animated directly to a spoken-word performance by Jamie DeWolf here, or whether she had him record a new version for this film, but that's just nitpicking in how the great work she did was split between direction, animation, and editing. The full result is immensely impressive for a first-time filmmaker.
She's got a fine base to build on - DeWolf's story of how he can't read "Red Riding Hood" to his daughter because it's associated with something awful in his mind is exceptionally well-told without ornamentation; he's a raconteur who builds up and spaces out without it seeming obvious while also making it clear that he has to do it this way, because confronting these memories is hard. It's a lurid-sounding bit of true-crime, shot through with how hard many work to avoid confronting this sort of thing, and you can feel both the guilt and not having done more and the need for self-preservation that prevents it.
Barnhart layers impressive animation on top of it, and the result is something that is very conspicuously not beautiful - even the sweet-seeming missing girl who deserved better is not fully idealized - but is full of the little details that help put those who have lived a comfortable life into a scary situation and transitions which keep the story moving even as it stretches out in time. Barnhart enhances mood and storytelling without ever straying from or undercutting DeWolf's base.
El increíble finde menguante (The Incredible Shrinking Wknd)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The big question after this screening was "when did you see it", referring to the aspect ratio changes going on through the film, which maybe speaks to how it's more of a visual gimmick than something that got across what the movie was going for. Which is a shame, because as flawed as it was, it plays into how the film is about someone not doing much with her youth, only to suddenly get hit with the idea that there's less she can do and less time to do it than she thought.
It's a strong idea but one that didn't necessarily get translated into events that well; unlike most time-loop movies, this one never has a period where Alba is trying to figure out what's happening or do something about it before getting to acceptance. In a way, that's just her character, but it leaves a chunk of time in the middle when the film seems to be running out the clock as surely as she is, and while there must be some waste to realize that time is precious, it's not the audience's time that should be wasted. Director Jon Mikel Caballero really doesn't seem to have a great idea of how to fill the time before the resets get tighter (the loop tightens by an hour every time through), and that's a frustrating issue at times.
It's still put together well, and there's some really nice work by cinematographer Tânia da Fonseca. It's a great-looking movie all around, especially with the camera often pointed at pretty locations, but the way she had to reframe for different shapes throughout seems deceptively tricky, and her knack for shooting with depth comes in handy as the screen becomes a window the audience is peering through. There may be tricks here, but everybody rises to the challenge to make an impressive film.
Full review on EFilmCritic
8
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The "demon" at the center of 8 is a sad, guilty one, something which makes for a different sort of thriller than the fairly traditional opening implies; it's as much the story of someone bound to something supernatural as those facing it, even if it has the look of something a bit more conventional.
Small things give it a distinct, South African identity; the very time it takes place, in 1977, seems too late for this kind of story, like the rest of the world is more settled, but here these sort of old family mansions are just starting to become obsolete. It makes "Lazarus" feel even more like a lingering remnant of something else, which the white family doesn't understand but the locals do, enhanced by Tsamano Sebe's fine performance, which seems a bit out of time itself. There is lingering mistrust that needs little explanation but forms a real barrier.
The film doesn't coast on its particular setting, though. It's a great little scary story, with dangerous gentility serving a more plainly monstrous entity from the start. The tension is built on nervous hope that some sort of basic decency will counter the need for a fight that many of the characters don't seem like they can win. It's shot on great-looking locations, with a striking change of scenery and style at the end, and plenty of chances to enjoy the way of the more traditional ghost story bits play out in handsome style.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Anyway, Ride Your Wave and The Prey were the early-afternoon shows in Hall, guest-free, leaving me some time to poke around the comic shops on Sainte Catherine to fill in holes to no avail. I'm beginning to suspect that Marvel just didn't print a few relatively recent issues. Plenty of time for a burrito before heading into DeSeve for the rest of the day.
First up there was the annual "Born of Woman" shorts block, which I missed the first couple of years because it always seems to get scheduled in such a way as to span two films on the other screen, one of which I want to see badly. This year, the stuff in Hall was stuff I could take or leave, meaning it was little issue getting into this 9-short block, with filmmakers Valerie Barnhart, Michelle Garza Cervera, Erica Scoggins, and Yfke Van Berckelaer on-hand.
It's a pretty great block of short films, where even the least exciting entry was pretty decent and the best were fantastic. It's worth noting that Ms. Barnhart (whom I think I've seen around the festival in previous years, perhaps as a volunteer) basically taught herself animation while making "Girl in the Hallway", grumbling later that she didn't realize that she'd chosen one of the most demanding forms of animation to work with. She seems to have mastered it, though, as several people are talking it up as not just their favorite short in the program, but one of their favorite shorts in the festival.
Later in the evening, I decided to switch from my planned selection of Killerman to 8, and I'm pretty glad I did; as much as I liked Cash Only a few years back. Harold Holscher made a pretty nifty little film that I'm glad I had a chance to see on the big screen. Holscher sounded like he was not necessarily optimistic about people in its native South Africa getting to do so. Distribution and exhibition are pretty hard there, and there isn't a lot of support for local genre film (something I remember hearing from a South African genre director at this festival something like ten years ago, claiming all the funding was for apartheid dramas).
Kind of a shame, since he made a great-looking movie, and it sounds like they had fun - the young lady playing the monster was a ballerina, and while they were initially worried about her freaking out the young co-star while in full make-up, they were apparently great friends by the end.
It's been a busy enough weekend that this post about Saturday is going up on Thursday, when I'll be at Shooting the Mafia, Lake Michigan Monster, Miss and Mrs. Cops, and the Zappin Party. Shadow is playing during my late-lunch-break, and well worth checking out on the big screen.
Kimi to, nami ni noretara (Ride Your Wave, aka Riding a Wave with You)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, DCP)
As Masaki Yuasa's output increases, he seems to be moving away from the strange and trippy films that gained him attention and toward the conventional, though if the result is something like this sweet animated romance, that's not a bad thing. It's still distinctive and occasionally eccentric, and winds up being something fairly unique once the bits of fantasy there are kick in.
Part of that's his character design; there's not much mistaking the jangly limbs, pointy noses, and skinny necks his characters have. There's also the sheer playful abandon in how, when the thing that does give this a certain amount of fantasy emerges, there's a whimsical acceptance, that what might mark a person as crazy can somehow happen, especially since it fits the personalities of everyone involved so well. Yuasa's movies have always had a bit of the fantastic amid the everyday, and here he slides into more carefully than usual, keeping it in Hinako's head until it absolutely must come out.
And then there's the delightful animation, where once again Yuasa is using water to craft a fluid reality while also filling the world the characters live in with nifty detail. It's maybe not always the ones people might consider important or universal, but things like a particular coffee shop, firefighting techniques, and smooth surfing pull the audience in even when they might look at the very simple story with side-eye. It's a very nice combination of down-to-Earth and fantastical that does a fantastic job of getting at just how powerful young love and be and how unreal the fallout is.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Bar Fight"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: ACTION!, digital)
"Bar Fight" is the result of filmmaker Benjamin R. Moody finishing up a horror movie and deciding he wanted to hit something, and what he delivers here is a pretty darn good fight sequence with a minimum amount of filler around it. Some guys show up in the middle of a bar that's closing and find that the bartender is no pushover, and that's that.
With any luck, it will serve as a nice calling-card for star Aaron D. Alexander, who has enough screen presence to sell the tired, put-upon bartender before the action starts getting crazy and then surprises when the man is eminently capable of dealing with anything thrown at him. The film is five minutes long, but between them, Moody and Alexander imply the entire "guy has been through some things and doesn't think he's up to the challenge any more" story in body language and reaction shots, and the fight choreography doesn't entirely take precedence over showing who this guy is. He's reluctant and doubts himself all the way through the end, and even good action movies sometimes have trouble putting that amount of characterization into their action. The best use that action in part to reveal character, and it's great that the film found time for that without a lot of room to spare.
The Prey
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: ACTION!, DCP)
As "The Most Dangerous Game" riffs go, this certainly is one. You know the story, and the makers of this one don't have any particular twist or hook to add to it too make this stand out in a sea of them. Or at least, not an obvious one from this side of the Pacific; maybe it touches on something topical in Cambodia, but I'd be surprised, as it seems fairly generic.
The big disappointment is not so much that the story is familiar, but that the execution is kind of lackluster. This is the team that made the fairly impressive Jailbreak, but having a more open environment doesn't necessarily do a lot of good. There's some decent gunplay, but it's seldom as good as the previous film's martial arts and inventive camerawork, mostly just a lot of sharp running and tumbling and pointing guns with purpose. There are a few striking shots - filmmaker Jimmy Henderson knows exactly what he's doing when the characters burst out of the woods and into a beautiful, bright open space on a riverbank - but mostly it's just a decent example of Action Movie Plot #8.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Lili"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
"Lili" is as clear and concise a story about how men use power positions to coerce women, and how even in situations like film where sexuality can be part of the job description, it is, at the bare minimum, a pretty crappy thing to do. Filmmaker Yfke Van Berckelaer lays it out step by step, showing how "strength" is often twisted as a route to intimidation. I don't know how many people seeing this will need the lesson, but it's an impressively clear one.
There's also no small amount of fun in watching Lisa Smit act as the title character. Some may feel that audition scenes, like the one that make up this movie, or other things where you can see the performers going about their business, ruin the magic, but it comes across here as somebody doing a thing well, and I've always enjoyed skill on display. Smit's good at her job, giving Lili a character even as Lili is donning other personae, and that's fun to watch.
"Sometimes, I Think About Dying"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Stefanie Abel Horowitz does a nice job of digging right into self-doubt in "Sometimes, I Think About Dying"; I have no idea how much she and playwright Kevin Armento compressed his original work to get it down to 11 minutes, but it does fine work cutting down everything extraneous, never needing to offer an origin story or specific counter-arguments for how its narrator feels, just letting her show how navigating these feelings can seem almost impossible.
To do so, she chooses a lot of visually quiet locations where Fran can be overwhelmed by her thoughts, whether her house, a somewhat sparse office, or empty streets, or space outside the city. Katy Wright-Mead does a nifty job of making her seem more outwardly put-together than she feels most of the time without it conflicting with her narration, so that when one collides with the other, it feels a bit more wrenching, with Jim Sarbh making the guy who is genuinely interested in Fran maybe a little nervous on his own but not a matching-misfit sort.
"The Hitchhiker" (2018)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Adele Vuko puts a couple of familiar short-film subjects together - 'hitchhiker leaving a corpse behind" meets "hiding something from concerned friends" - with a twist that unites them in maybe slightly-too-easy fashion in order to create a women-helping-women narrative. There should, it seems, be more of an explored downside to the deal offered, although there's not really room for it in a film this relatively short.
Vuko's put a nice cast together and given them plenty of room to play off each other, with Isaro Kayitesi especially fun as the group's worrywart, obsessively jumping immediately to Google to find whatever freaks her out, playing well off a group that are, for different reasons, more likely to let things go. It's a group that doesn't always seem to belong together but which makes you think they want to be, which is enough and important as things get more tense and the idea that things might not work out well becomes clearer.
"Wakey Wakey"
* * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Mary Dauterman has made a nice-enough looking short, although I kind of got thrown by how I viewed it: My brain had the characters in a spaceship because the compositing which put an ocean outside their window made me think it was a screen rather than a look at what was right outside, and I'm still kind of not sure whether they were meant to be in a seaside house or on a boat, with the otherwise-unseen motion meant partly explain the twist ending. I kind of think there's a nifty sci-fi plot about dream machines or what have you possible, but there's also not enough there to presume it.
The result's certainly got intriguing potential, but plays like a short that just doesn't have enough to it to make a solid impression one way or another, and not having that definitive push toward a conclusion makes me less interested than having one and winding up as a bad idea.
"Vaspy"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Hweiling Ow builds the sort of horror short hear that is originally weird and gross, but seemingly not about that much - or at least, not about that much in ways that particularly work for me. It offers an offbeat horror take on pregnancy stress and cravings being amplified by already having a five-year-old doing what he does, but it sort of feels like we've seen that connection before and the toy wasp making its heroine have somewhat more wasp-like tendencies which she dismisses doesn't quite seem special enough. It's an eccentric take on a classic, but one that's so eccentric that it doesn't quite hit so hard.
"Maggie May"
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
It's kind of interesting that what are likely the two best shorts in this program both find their horror in not so much violence but inaction and dismissal. Filmmaker Mia Kate Russell offers up a villain that is fearsomely sociopathic in her idleness, and Lulu McClatchy is unnervingly great in the role: She has the sort of blankness that implies some sort of cognitive disability where she is genuinely paralyzed by not knowing what she should do, but also the sort of sneer that implies she knows just exactly what she's allowing to happen. She's thoroughly awful, but Russell and McClatchy invite you to feel bad about hating her.
Meanwhile, Katrina Mathers is making her sister a little more than generically nice; Russell gives her a bit of personal dissatisfaction to work with, and once she finds herself injured by a freak accident, she does a fantastic job of channelling the viewers' horror and confusion without telling them what to feel. Russell keeps certain dangers off the screen in a way that allows her to strike at the heart of someone's worst fears without feeling exploitative. It's the sort of horror that leaves a nice, hard lump in one's stomach even before you start wondering how much it applies to broader situations.
"The Boogeywoman"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
Would I probably get more out of "The Boogeywoman" if I had, at some point, been a teenage girl? Almost certainly. Even without being able to personally identify with what Sam (Amélie Hoeferle) is going through as she gets her first period well after her friends at an inopportune time, I loved watching the way these kids played off each other, for good and ill, as well as how things like a power failure at the roller rink and empty small-town streets are nervous-making without being overbearingly so.
When it gets the the supernatural part, it kind of loses me; I kind of feel like I should be making some greater connection between all the talk of Sam never knowing her mother and what else is going on, but it's never quite there for me, although it's acted and presented well enough that I can see that something is going on. Which may just mean that this short is made with other people in mind who will see how it fits together, which is fine. There's certainly enough there for me to give whatever I couldn't catch the benefit of the doubt.
"The Original"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
"The Original" is the rare short film where the finale is a kind of perfect knife to the gut, where I both want to see the fallout of it while also appreciating that the stabbing pain of it is undiluted. It's a nifty concept explored just enough to be a big emotional mess but not fall apart through being over-detailed.
Director Michelle Garza does a lot of nifty things to make writer Andrew Fleming's script seem more personal than topical, mostly by not setting it in something that clearly feels like the near future, but rather by shooting in black-and-white and creating a world that seems half British and half Mexican, making it hard to "yeah, but…" at any point. There's also an impressive division of labor between the actresses - Ariana Lebrón gets what at some points seems like most of the heavy lifting, as her character visibly grapples with all the hard decisions and loops the hospital makes her jump through to get her girlfriend's consciousness transferred into a healthy clone body, but Rebecca Layoo is doing amazing work in the background, so unsettlingly convincing as the victim of what appears to be a stroke that seeing the new her well feel genuinely mind-boggling.
There's a catch, though, and it's a delicious one, and I'm still pondering how it seemingly must have played out days later. You could make a feature out of this story, but it's still pretty great at 13 minutes.
"The Girl in the Hallway"
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Born of Woman, digital)
I'm not sure whether director Valerie Barnhart animated directly to a spoken-word performance by Jamie DeWolf here, or whether she had him record a new version for this film, but that's just nitpicking in how the great work she did was split between direction, animation, and editing. The full result is immensely impressive for a first-time filmmaker.
She's got a fine base to build on - DeWolf's story of how he can't read "Red Riding Hood" to his daughter because it's associated with something awful in his mind is exceptionally well-told without ornamentation; he's a raconteur who builds up and spaces out without it seeming obvious while also making it clear that he has to do it this way, because confronting these memories is hard. It's a lurid-sounding bit of true-crime, shot through with how hard many work to avoid confronting this sort of thing, and you can feel both the guilt and not having done more and the need for self-preservation that prevents it.
Barnhart layers impressive animation on top of it, and the result is something that is very conspicuously not beautiful - even the sweet-seeming missing girl who deserved better is not fully idealized - but is full of the little details that help put those who have lived a comfortable life into a scary situation and transitions which keep the story moving even as it stretches out in time. Barnhart enhances mood and storytelling without ever straying from or undercutting DeWolf's base.
El increíble finde menguante (The Incredible Shrinking Wknd)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The big question after this screening was "when did you see it", referring to the aspect ratio changes going on through the film, which maybe speaks to how it's more of a visual gimmick than something that got across what the movie was going for. Which is a shame, because as flawed as it was, it plays into how the film is about someone not doing much with her youth, only to suddenly get hit with the idea that there's less she can do and less time to do it than she thought.
It's a strong idea but one that didn't necessarily get translated into events that well; unlike most time-loop movies, this one never has a period where Alba is trying to figure out what's happening or do something about it before getting to acceptance. In a way, that's just her character, but it leaves a chunk of time in the middle when the film seems to be running out the clock as surely as she is, and while there must be some waste to realize that time is precious, it's not the audience's time that should be wasted. Director Jon Mikel Caballero really doesn't seem to have a great idea of how to fill the time before the resets get tighter (the loop tightens by an hour every time through), and that's a frustrating issue at times.
It's still put together well, and there's some really nice work by cinematographer Tânia da Fonseca. It's a great-looking movie all around, especially with the camera often pointed at pretty locations, but the way she had to reframe for different shapes throughout seems deceptively tricky, and her knack for shooting with depth comes in handy as the screen becomes a window the audience is peering through. There may be tricks here, but everybody rises to the challenge to make an impressive film.
Full review on EFilmCritic
8
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2019 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
The "demon" at the center of 8 is a sad, guilty one, something which makes for a different sort of thriller than the fairly traditional opening implies; it's as much the story of someone bound to something supernatural as those facing it, even if it has the look of something a bit more conventional.
Small things give it a distinct, South African identity; the very time it takes place, in 1977, seems too late for this kind of story, like the rest of the world is more settled, but here these sort of old family mansions are just starting to become obsolete. It makes "Lazarus" feel even more like a lingering remnant of something else, which the white family doesn't understand but the locals do, enhanced by Tsamano Sebe's fine performance, which seems a bit out of time itself. There is lingering mistrust that needs little explanation but forms a real barrier.
The film doesn't coast on its particular setting, though. It's a great little scary story, with dangerous gentility serving a more plainly monstrous entity from the start. The tension is built on nervous hope that some sort of basic decency will counter the need for a fight that many of the characters don't seem like they can win. It's shot on great-looking locations, with a striking change of scenery and style at the end, and plenty of chances to enjoy the way of the more traditional ghost story bits play out in handsome style.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Saturday, July 06, 2019
Boston Underground Film Festival 2019.05: Assassinaut, A Lot Like Life, Canary, Happy Face, and The Unthinkable
Will not go crazy with the shorts like I did in the last BUFF post. Will not!
(Did)
First up, the crew from Assassinaut, who made what was often a very impressive little movie although they occasionally confessed to winging it or putting a bit in that maybe didn't make complete sense but which was cool. I kind of think the prologue and revisit at the end were like that - I apparently got a completely different impression than what they were going for, and didn't feel entirely set straight when it was done.
I also kind of got the impression that the filmmakers at times had a little more trouble with the on-again, off-again schedule that independent films can have, or at least more than they usually let you see - that raising money, shooting, raising money, shooting at a different location, raising money, doing effects, raising money, doing other post-production, raising money, submitting to festivals… there can be gaps in there where it's hard to get rolling again with the same enthusiasm one had before. Not many admit it, especially at a festival where one's excitement is at such a high level, but I suspect it happens with a lot more of these movies than people will admit.
Next up was the animation program, with (l-r) the festival host and filmmakers Ashley Gerst of "The Spirit Seam", Yasmin Mistry of "For a Better Life", Simon Allen of "Mother's Peak", Elena LaCourt of "Maintain Yourself", Santiago Castaño of "Morphosis", and Diedre Beck of "Night Train". As is often the case with this block, the introductions took place before the films, so there really wasn't much chance to talk about them.
Last guest of the festival was Alexandre Franchi of Happy Face. It's always a bit odd for me to see Montreal films at BUFF (though there's often one there), like I'm supposed to see them at that city's festival even if they fit this one better. A big topic for this conversation was casting, which was tricky - people who look like those in this movie often don't go into acting, so you get a mix of amateurs and professionals, and it's hard to ensure that there's no exploitation.
… so that's a wrap on BUFF, which means I've got a whole other festival to write up before heading to Montreal in, yikes, five days.
"The Obliteration of the Chickens"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
Izzy Lee's short goofing on/paying tribute to the inimitable Werner Herzog has at least one line that was good enough to write down, and a number of others that are pretty all right, and given that it is basically a few minutes of author Bracken McLeod doing stentorian oration over images of seemingly pointless minor chaos, that's a win. Not everyone's going to land, but she got me to laugh, and it was good.
I do wonder, a bit, if celebrating this aspect of Herzog in isolation does him a bit of a disservice. You take the seemingly-nihilistic quotations made in a manner that is too dry to be arch, and you lose the fact that this part of his personality is the complement to a powerful curiosity which otherwise animates his films. Izzy has some fun here with the things that get Herzog noticed, though perhaps not what makes people fans.
Assassinaut
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
On a scale of Turbo Kid to Prospect, Drew Bolduc's Assassinaut probably lands closer to the latter; in terms of the amount of youthful exuberance on display (or relative lack thereof). It's a bit of sci-fi horror that is not messing around any more just because most of its characters are kids, but that also helps it feel a bit more thrilling and enjoyably homemade than the same movie with gorwn-ups might have been.
The first of the kids the audience meets is Sarah (Shannon Hutchinson), about 15, selected for a trip to space to meet the President of Earth, though her former-astronaut father (Jeffrey Alan Solomon) has his eyes much closer to the ground these days. There are three others - Tom (Johnathan Newport), a pre-teen who is already a cynical-enough know-it-all to see this as a publicity stunt but one that will look good on his transcripts; Brooke (Yael Haskal) the most openly enthusiastic; and pretty but shy Charlie (Jasmina Parent). The initial meeting goes well, but soon the station is under attack, and the kids are sent down to an unknown planet in an escape pod, with a gruff, wounded officer (Vito Trigo) needing their help as much as they need his. Plus, it seems that the terrorists from the station are not their only concern.
Parts of the film display extremely impressive genre fundamentals, and not just in terms of quality gore. The attack on the station, for instance, is a nifty little piece of work, giving the kids plenty to do while also not putting them immediately and improbably at the center of the action. The folks around them are doing what they should be doing, and even if they're not long for the film, they're fleshed out enough to be interesting. Bolduc spends a little time setting the stage in interesting ways, giving the audience the feel if not the full layout of the space and including touches that make this sort of violence seem inevitable. When the people in power are trying to go for JFK's "we will go to the Moon" speech and it comes out unnerving, there are going to be uprisings.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Maintain Yourself"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
Lots of respect to this bit of stop-motion, which packs a lot of grooming-related discomfort into four minutes. It's an impressive example of what this particular medium can allow director Elena LaCourt to do, as there's a sort of inherent distortion to the doll-sized figures and faces that can't venture too far from one expression. It makes what many do to conform to societal standards of beauty seem like a twisted misery, and if nothing else, that certainly makes this an effective short film.
"The Spirit Seam"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
There's a nifty sort of folk-art look to Ashley Gerst's "The Spirit Seam", all her characters featuring beads for eyes and clothing that sometimes seems made from scraps, toys meant to be played with and worn out. It's a look that matches the setting, as Polliwog and her Pap-Paw live in an Appalachian company mining town, which itself can be a rough, eroding existence. That rears its head as Pap-Paw's health quickly fails, trigger both an end to innocence for Polliwog and the practical questions of how she'll get on now that the place where she lives has chewed up everyone she loves.
Even with that as the focus, there's still a great deal of the bucolic about "The Spirit Seam"; a hand-drawn map that connects reminds the viewer how such towns are both close and open, and there's sheer joy as Polliwog and Pap-Paw play together, the sort that's different for seniors and kids but complementary. It's deliberately a bit scrappy to keep one from romanticizing it too much, but serves to remind the audience that what happiness was found in these situations was real.
"Phototaxis"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
To what extent is The Mothman a thing people know about? I ask because, as someone who can say he's heard the name but has no idea what its deal is, I suspect that Melissa Ferrari's sometimes difficult to classify film might play better with a little knowledge. It's perhaps not vital, but just knowing where all of this is in the cultural context, and the general details of it, might be useful in stitching together how she sees the urban legend and the narcotics addiction in the places it is best known intersecting. I don't have that.
Even without it, though, I liked her film; it balances the otherworldly and the sadly down to earth well and finds a common link in their sense of doom. It uses the sort of limited model-making that sets an atmosphere well and is all the spookier because the camera sometimes seems to be doing most of the moving. I don't necessarily know more about the Mothman or addiction because of it, but I've got a sense of how they can seem connectedly apocalyptic.
"For a Better Life"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
Yasmin Mistry's "For a Better Life" is a great example of how well the sometimes-strange combination of animation and documentary can be strikingly informative. Without the animation, it's a guy talking, maybe with his face hidden for anonymity, and the filmmaker trying to figure out a visual that matches. Realized like this, Mistry can fill in the blanks that her subject normally just assumes, and can sometimes tamp down the intrusiveness of the camera, letting him tell his story without invading his space as he tenses up or recoils.
His story is harrowing, a tale of human trafficking and abuse that is presented almost casually at times, not so as to be cynical but to keep focus on this person's survival and recovery rather than the natural anger toward those responsible. The animation is simple but effective, and doesn't make a show of transitions in the way that some animated films built around a piece of narration will. Mistry also does a nice job of being specific without positioning the characters and institutions involved as uniquely good or evil, and that's important. This is stuff that is best understood through experience but which needs to be seen as problems general enough to be tackled and solved.
"Night Train"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
A nifty-looking film built around silhouettes and driving out to the railway crossing to watch the train go by. Not a whole lot of story there - Deirdre Beck's film is two minutes long, after all - but the atmosphere is terrific and the sense of adventure and seeing the train as a massive, powerful thing that cuts through everyday life but is taken for granted comes through.
"Mother's Peak"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
An atmospheric enough haunted-house tale, although in the middle of a group of much shorter films its fifteen-minute runtime can seem like a slow, noodly build. Not that filmmaker Simon Allen has any control over that; of course, and on its own the film isn't bad at all, capturing the right sort of small-town atmosphere around the spooky center with some pretty fair stop-motion animation to boot.
"Harls"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
Kenzie Sutton goes for the slapstick in this two minutes, with his anthropomorphic duck on his 356th reincarnation and kind of burnt out on the whole thing. Of course, going to a support group for this is just asking to get killed and revived in rapid succession. The fun of it is that he'll keep coming back as different species, and the fun is in how Sutton manages to make the same personality come through despite the rapidly changing models.
"Lilly Goes Fishing"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
A larger "The Bum Family" series is implied, and it's the sort of thing that I kind of think my younger nieces would go for until the points where its brightly-colored monster characters start kind of acting like monsters. It's not the sort of cartoon where cheery innocence crashes hard into black comedy, but you can see it from here.
It's fun, though, colorful and mostly friendly with Lilly and her friends cut out of paper and given hand-drawn expressions, stumbling through this thing they're not entirely suited for on the way to more than a few enjoyable gags. Big orange beast Lilly has got charm to spare and her simply-conceived friends add chuckles as amusing sidekicks.
"MORPHOSIS"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
It is not at all difficult to be impressed with something like "MORPHOSIS", which combines some fairly impressive animation with revolutionary zeal. It's not hiding anything, as it features frog slaves grinding food to paste for their corpulent leader who is apparently too lazy and weak to chew until someone rises up to fight the system. Filmmaker Santiago Castaño knows where he's going with this, presenting his villains as having little but numbers (which, obviously, is not insignificant) and always being pointed with what every single thing in the short is meant to represent.
The film is also impressively gorgeous work, from its mirror planet to the detailed setting which combine grandeur and a bunch of moving parts without bringing the two into visual conflict. The action is nicely done, just generally fun to watch and almost always hitting the right notes. A properly heroic score helps set the mood, and Castaño is focused enough not to make the action gross for gross-ness's sake.
"Wunderkammer"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
And here, my memory fails me. Sorry, Jennifer Linton, because I love cabinets of curiosity and as such would love to talk about your film.
"The Switch"
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
"The Switch" is the sort of music video that makes me wonder, a bit, how these things get put together - I didn't hear anything particularly specific to the story that the video tells in the lyrics, so it makes me wonder if someone like director John Paul Grigsby is one of several people pitching for the video and then files away or discards the idea if the band doesn't like it. Has he had this idea for a story about a lighthouse-keeper having to choose whether or not to light the way for a refugee craft or not for a while and was lucky to find the opportunity to use it, or was it inspired by this song and would have vanished into the air if not used for it?
It doesn't matter, I suppose; the work itself is impressive. It sketches its story well in four minutes, looking at its main character with interest: The stop-motion figure looks charming, a friendly-seeming old man who nevertheless is trying to block out his view of the people on their way that are suffering. It's an uncomfortably frank admission that others suffer because of the weakness and discomfort of people who seem kind on first impression, and works well with the lyrics to convey the disappointing nature of this reality.
Kanarie (Canary)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
There's a line in Canary that doesn't so much save the movie as affirm that the filmmakers know exactly what they are doing, and while it may be a little bit on-the-nose, it's not necessarily a bad thing for characters in a coming-of-age film to have what they've earned spelled out, especially when the film seems ready to go in the opposite direction. This one's smarter than that, enough to impress and be worth one's attention no matter how far it may seem from one's own experience.
It takes place in South Africa, the middle of the 1980s, with Johan Niemand (Schalk Bezuidenhout) graduating high school and about to begin his compulsory military service. Johan is nobody's idea of a soldier - music is his thing, with Culture Club his current obsession - so it seems best for all involved that he gets chosen for the South African Defense Force's Church Choir and Concert Group, also known as The Canaries. He quickly makes two friends in Ludolf Otterman (Germandt Geldenhuys), a big, affable classical music buff who seems to have less business being in the military than Johan, and Wolfgang Müller (Hannes Otto), a handsome fellow whose tastes match Johan's. Of course, they can't act on their attraction too obviously; though the Canaries are where a place where gay men in the SADF can find sanctuary, Reverend Koch (Gérard Rudolf), one of the two chaplains in charge of the group, is very keen that they observe military discipline and project traditional moral rectitude, even if colleague Reverend Engelbrecht (Jacques Bessenger) seems a bit more understanding.
Apartheid as an official government policy has likely started to fade from memory a bit by now; there's a generation that has grown up after its fall, and there are times when Canary seems to fall victim to how the details can be forgotten. The long stretches where the audience doesn't see anyone with dark skin can sometimes feel like filmmaker Christiaan Olwagen is wearing blinders to make a movie that looks back at this period of South African history without showing the circumstances that largely defined it, although that may be the result of an outsider perspective. What he is doing is to show how the nation's culture of white supremacy even twists the culture of those who passively benefit from it: Talk of the Olympics has soldiers venting their indignation at their country being a pariah, while attempts to justify this order almost inevitably lead to religion (because this belief needs to seem to come from a higher authority) and homophobia (definitions of ideal people brook no deviation). Johan and his friends are in the crosshairs of the latter, and sometimes Olwagen has trouble when shifting focus between "it was bad for the gay community too" to "bigotry poisons society as a whole", though it's not really his fault that the story he's telling exists in the shadow of a much larger one.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Happy Face
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Happy Face is the odd movie where nothing that anybody does ever actually seems like a good idea, to a degree that goes beyond basic human fallibility, but the result still mostly works. It's the sort of movie where the makers' hearts are generally in the right place and which at least has the benefit of being something you don't see every day, and that can count for a lot.
It centers on a Montreal support group for people who, whether by birth or happenstance, have some sort of disfigurement - former police officer Jocko (E.R. Ruiz) was burned, but 75-year-old Otis (David Roche), otherwise-fashionable Maggie (Alison Midstokke), and shy Beckie (Cyndy Nicholsen) have lived with this most of their lives - led by Vanessa (Debbie Lynch-White), who feels she can relate because she's carrying some extra pounds. The latest member is "Augustin" who has a secret - his actual name is Stanislas and the 19-year-old is actually quite handsome, using tape and bandages to distort his appearance. This deception doesn't last long, but Stanislas (Robin L'Houmeau) says he is not mocking them, but is instead trying to build the skills to deal with his mother, whose cancer treatments have left her a shell of herself. Let him stay, and he'll be their link to a world they have difficulty approaching.
Does this really make sense? Kind of, but it takes a certain amount of self-awareness for it to work. The group chooses to welcome Stanislas in part because Vanessa doesn't want them to; she means well but can't help but be mildly patronizing in how she assumes she has the same sort of problem or that you can make a breakthrough by following directions. Actress Debbie Lynch-White and filmmaker Alexandre Franchi do well to resist validating any desire Vanessa has to be the hero of the story, letting her be testy at times or, while not phony, not quite as deeply invested as she thinks. She's never insincere, but there's a certain deliberate clarity to how she represents the way that well-intentioned people can approach those who are different.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Diddie Wa Diddie"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
The title tune is catchy as heck, which never hurts a short film, especially one like this which is in large part goofy nonsense.
Den blomstertid nu kommer (The Unthinkable)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
The Unthinkable is better than a lot of movies that try to link massive calamity to personal melodrama, mostly because it lets them be separate things despite the significant overlap, but "better" in this context can be kind of a tricky thing: It's never as empty as the other genre movies it shares a basic shape with, but that also makes the moments when it uses the same sort of storytelling devices a little less forgivable. The filmmakers will occasionally do something that makes a viewer say they're supposed to be better than this, though the fact that they are most of the time makes up some.
The priorities are somewhat clear with an opening that focuses on young Alex and Anna, a pair of teens who are obviously fond of each other but going through some tumult: Alex's parents are breaking up in a loud, rancorous manner; Anna's are moving, having only settled in this small town with other family temporarily. Ten years later Alex (Christoffer Nordenrot) is a successful musician who has not returned home for years but will for his mother's funeral, while Anna (Lisa Henni) has resettled there. There's a mysterious explosion on the news as Alex hits the road, and soon enough Sweden is in a state of near-chaos, with more attacks focused on infrastructure. Anna's main concern is for her daughter while Alex's is for Anna, while his father Björn (Jesper Barkselius) - the sort of crank who always warned everyone that this could happen - may be the last line of defense as the only person on duty at the electric station while most of the town is at Midsommar festivities.
Anna also has a family member or two who would be conveniently important if this movie was just about the attack, which creates a bit of a small-world issue once things start coming together. It's not as problematic as it could be in terms of sheer overwhelming coincidence, but there is a bit of danger of becoming one of those movies where the massive calamity with all loss of life comes across as primarily a catalyst to show this small group of people what's really important rather than incidentally such. The filmmakers manage to walk that line fairly well - for instance, the threat is human rather than natural, so they're hard to see as some sort of higher power, but their motivation is disconnected enough to keep the focus on Alex, Anna, and the like. There are still some moments when the self-reflection gets a little heavy, but seldom to the point where the rest is diminished.
Full review on EFilmCritic
(Did)
First up, the crew from Assassinaut, who made what was often a very impressive little movie although they occasionally confessed to winging it or putting a bit in that maybe didn't make complete sense but which was cool. I kind of think the prologue and revisit at the end were like that - I apparently got a completely different impression than what they were going for, and didn't feel entirely set straight when it was done.
I also kind of got the impression that the filmmakers at times had a little more trouble with the on-again, off-again schedule that independent films can have, or at least more than they usually let you see - that raising money, shooting, raising money, shooting at a different location, raising money, doing effects, raising money, doing other post-production, raising money, submitting to festivals… there can be gaps in there where it's hard to get rolling again with the same enthusiasm one had before. Not many admit it, especially at a festival where one's excitement is at such a high level, but I suspect it happens with a lot more of these movies than people will admit.
Next up was the animation program, with (l-r) the festival host and filmmakers Ashley Gerst of "The Spirit Seam", Yasmin Mistry of "For a Better Life", Simon Allen of "Mother's Peak", Elena LaCourt of "Maintain Yourself", Santiago Castaño of "Morphosis", and Diedre Beck of "Night Train". As is often the case with this block, the introductions took place before the films, so there really wasn't much chance to talk about them.
Last guest of the festival was Alexandre Franchi of Happy Face. It's always a bit odd for me to see Montreal films at BUFF (though there's often one there), like I'm supposed to see them at that city's festival even if they fit this one better. A big topic for this conversation was casting, which was tricky - people who look like those in this movie often don't go into acting, so you get a mix of amateurs and professionals, and it's hard to ensure that there's no exploitation.
… so that's a wrap on BUFF, which means I've got a whole other festival to write up before heading to Montreal in, yikes, five days.
"The Obliteration of the Chickens"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
Izzy Lee's short goofing on/paying tribute to the inimitable Werner Herzog has at least one line that was good enough to write down, and a number of others that are pretty all right, and given that it is basically a few minutes of author Bracken McLeod doing stentorian oration over images of seemingly pointless minor chaos, that's a win. Not everyone's going to land, but she got me to laugh, and it was good.
I do wonder, a bit, if celebrating this aspect of Herzog in isolation does him a bit of a disservice. You take the seemingly-nihilistic quotations made in a manner that is too dry to be arch, and you lose the fact that this part of his personality is the complement to a powerful curiosity which otherwise animates his films. Izzy has some fun here with the things that get Herzog noticed, though perhaps not what makes people fans.
Assassinaut
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
On a scale of Turbo Kid to Prospect, Drew Bolduc's Assassinaut probably lands closer to the latter; in terms of the amount of youthful exuberance on display (or relative lack thereof). It's a bit of sci-fi horror that is not messing around any more just because most of its characters are kids, but that also helps it feel a bit more thrilling and enjoyably homemade than the same movie with gorwn-ups might have been.
The first of the kids the audience meets is Sarah (Shannon Hutchinson), about 15, selected for a trip to space to meet the President of Earth, though her former-astronaut father (Jeffrey Alan Solomon) has his eyes much closer to the ground these days. There are three others - Tom (Johnathan Newport), a pre-teen who is already a cynical-enough know-it-all to see this as a publicity stunt but one that will look good on his transcripts; Brooke (Yael Haskal) the most openly enthusiastic; and pretty but shy Charlie (Jasmina Parent). The initial meeting goes well, but soon the station is under attack, and the kids are sent down to an unknown planet in an escape pod, with a gruff, wounded officer (Vito Trigo) needing their help as much as they need his. Plus, it seems that the terrorists from the station are not their only concern.
Parts of the film display extremely impressive genre fundamentals, and not just in terms of quality gore. The attack on the station, for instance, is a nifty little piece of work, giving the kids plenty to do while also not putting them immediately and improbably at the center of the action. The folks around them are doing what they should be doing, and even if they're not long for the film, they're fleshed out enough to be interesting. Bolduc spends a little time setting the stage in interesting ways, giving the audience the feel if not the full layout of the space and including touches that make this sort of violence seem inevitable. When the people in power are trying to go for JFK's "we will go to the Moon" speech and it comes out unnerving, there are going to be uprisings.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Maintain Yourself"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
Lots of respect to this bit of stop-motion, which packs a lot of grooming-related discomfort into four minutes. It's an impressive example of what this particular medium can allow director Elena LaCourt to do, as there's a sort of inherent distortion to the doll-sized figures and faces that can't venture too far from one expression. It makes what many do to conform to societal standards of beauty seem like a twisted misery, and if nothing else, that certainly makes this an effective short film.
"The Spirit Seam"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
There's a nifty sort of folk-art look to Ashley Gerst's "The Spirit Seam", all her characters featuring beads for eyes and clothing that sometimes seems made from scraps, toys meant to be played with and worn out. It's a look that matches the setting, as Polliwog and her Pap-Paw live in an Appalachian company mining town, which itself can be a rough, eroding existence. That rears its head as Pap-Paw's health quickly fails, trigger both an end to innocence for Polliwog and the practical questions of how she'll get on now that the place where she lives has chewed up everyone she loves.
Even with that as the focus, there's still a great deal of the bucolic about "The Spirit Seam"; a hand-drawn map that connects reminds the viewer how such towns are both close and open, and there's sheer joy as Polliwog and Pap-Paw play together, the sort that's different for seniors and kids but complementary. It's deliberately a bit scrappy to keep one from romanticizing it too much, but serves to remind the audience that what happiness was found in these situations was real.
"Phototaxis"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
To what extent is The Mothman a thing people know about? I ask because, as someone who can say he's heard the name but has no idea what its deal is, I suspect that Melissa Ferrari's sometimes difficult to classify film might play better with a little knowledge. It's perhaps not vital, but just knowing where all of this is in the cultural context, and the general details of it, might be useful in stitching together how she sees the urban legend and the narcotics addiction in the places it is best known intersecting. I don't have that.
Even without it, though, I liked her film; it balances the otherworldly and the sadly down to earth well and finds a common link in their sense of doom. It uses the sort of limited model-making that sets an atmosphere well and is all the spookier because the camera sometimes seems to be doing most of the moving. I don't necessarily know more about the Mothman or addiction because of it, but I've got a sense of how they can seem connectedly apocalyptic.
"For a Better Life"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
Yasmin Mistry's "For a Better Life" is a great example of how well the sometimes-strange combination of animation and documentary can be strikingly informative. Without the animation, it's a guy talking, maybe with his face hidden for anonymity, and the filmmaker trying to figure out a visual that matches. Realized like this, Mistry can fill in the blanks that her subject normally just assumes, and can sometimes tamp down the intrusiveness of the camera, letting him tell his story without invading his space as he tenses up or recoils.
His story is harrowing, a tale of human trafficking and abuse that is presented almost casually at times, not so as to be cynical but to keep focus on this person's survival and recovery rather than the natural anger toward those responsible. The animation is simple but effective, and doesn't make a show of transitions in the way that some animated films built around a piece of narration will. Mistry also does a nice job of being specific without positioning the characters and institutions involved as uniquely good or evil, and that's important. This is stuff that is best understood through experience but which needs to be seen as problems general enough to be tackled and solved.
"Night Train"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
A nifty-looking film built around silhouettes and driving out to the railway crossing to watch the train go by. Not a whole lot of story there - Deirdre Beck's film is two minutes long, after all - but the atmosphere is terrific and the sense of adventure and seeing the train as a massive, powerful thing that cuts through everyday life but is taken for granted comes through.
"Mother's Peak"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
An atmospheric enough haunted-house tale, although in the middle of a group of much shorter films its fifteen-minute runtime can seem like a slow, noodly build. Not that filmmaker Simon Allen has any control over that; of course, and on its own the film isn't bad at all, capturing the right sort of small-town atmosphere around the spooky center with some pretty fair stop-motion animation to boot.
"Harls"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
Kenzie Sutton goes for the slapstick in this two minutes, with his anthropomorphic duck on his 356th reincarnation and kind of burnt out on the whole thing. Of course, going to a support group for this is just asking to get killed and revived in rapid succession. The fun of it is that he'll keep coming back as different species, and the fun is in how Sutton manages to make the same personality come through despite the rapidly changing models.
"Lilly Goes Fishing"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
A larger "The Bum Family" series is implied, and it's the sort of thing that I kind of think my younger nieces would go for until the points where its brightly-colored monster characters start kind of acting like monsters. It's not the sort of cartoon where cheery innocence crashes hard into black comedy, but you can see it from here.
It's fun, though, colorful and mostly friendly with Lilly and her friends cut out of paper and given hand-drawn expressions, stumbling through this thing they're not entirely suited for on the way to more than a few enjoyable gags. Big orange beast Lilly has got charm to spare and her simply-conceived friends add chuckles as amusing sidekicks.
"MORPHOSIS"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
It is not at all difficult to be impressed with something like "MORPHOSIS", which combines some fairly impressive animation with revolutionary zeal. It's not hiding anything, as it features frog slaves grinding food to paste for their corpulent leader who is apparently too lazy and weak to chew until someone rises up to fight the system. Filmmaker Santiago Castaño knows where he's going with this, presenting his villains as having little but numbers (which, obviously, is not insignificant) and always being pointed with what every single thing in the short is meant to represent.
The film is also impressively gorgeous work, from its mirror planet to the detailed setting which combine grandeur and a bunch of moving parts without bringing the two into visual conflict. The action is nicely done, just generally fun to watch and almost always hitting the right notes. A properly heroic score helps set the mood, and Castaño is focused enough not to make the action gross for gross-ness's sake.
"Wunderkammer"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
And here, my memory fails me. Sorry, Jennifer Linton, because I love cabinets of curiosity and as such would love to talk about your film.
"The Switch"
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: A Lot Like Life, digital)
"The Switch" is the sort of music video that makes me wonder, a bit, how these things get put together - I didn't hear anything particularly specific to the story that the video tells in the lyrics, so it makes me wonder if someone like director John Paul Grigsby is one of several people pitching for the video and then files away or discards the idea if the band doesn't like it. Has he had this idea for a story about a lighthouse-keeper having to choose whether or not to light the way for a refugee craft or not for a while and was lucky to find the opportunity to use it, or was it inspired by this song and would have vanished into the air if not used for it?
It doesn't matter, I suppose; the work itself is impressive. It sketches its story well in four minutes, looking at its main character with interest: The stop-motion figure looks charming, a friendly-seeming old man who nevertheless is trying to block out his view of the people on their way that are suffering. It's an uncomfortably frank admission that others suffer because of the weakness and discomfort of people who seem kind on first impression, and works well with the lyrics to convey the disappointing nature of this reality.
Kanarie (Canary)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
There's a line in Canary that doesn't so much save the movie as affirm that the filmmakers know exactly what they are doing, and while it may be a little bit on-the-nose, it's not necessarily a bad thing for characters in a coming-of-age film to have what they've earned spelled out, especially when the film seems ready to go in the opposite direction. This one's smarter than that, enough to impress and be worth one's attention no matter how far it may seem from one's own experience.
It takes place in South Africa, the middle of the 1980s, with Johan Niemand (Schalk Bezuidenhout) graduating high school and about to begin his compulsory military service. Johan is nobody's idea of a soldier - music is his thing, with Culture Club his current obsession - so it seems best for all involved that he gets chosen for the South African Defense Force's Church Choir and Concert Group, also known as The Canaries. He quickly makes two friends in Ludolf Otterman (Germandt Geldenhuys), a big, affable classical music buff who seems to have less business being in the military than Johan, and Wolfgang Müller (Hannes Otto), a handsome fellow whose tastes match Johan's. Of course, they can't act on their attraction too obviously; though the Canaries are where a place where gay men in the SADF can find sanctuary, Reverend Koch (Gérard Rudolf), one of the two chaplains in charge of the group, is very keen that they observe military discipline and project traditional moral rectitude, even if colleague Reverend Engelbrecht (Jacques Bessenger) seems a bit more understanding.
Apartheid as an official government policy has likely started to fade from memory a bit by now; there's a generation that has grown up after its fall, and there are times when Canary seems to fall victim to how the details can be forgotten. The long stretches where the audience doesn't see anyone with dark skin can sometimes feel like filmmaker Christiaan Olwagen is wearing blinders to make a movie that looks back at this period of South African history without showing the circumstances that largely defined it, although that may be the result of an outsider perspective. What he is doing is to show how the nation's culture of white supremacy even twists the culture of those who passively benefit from it: Talk of the Olympics has soldiers venting their indignation at their country being a pariah, while attempts to justify this order almost inevitably lead to religion (because this belief needs to seem to come from a higher authority) and homophobia (definitions of ideal people brook no deviation). Johan and his friends are in the crosshairs of the latter, and sometimes Olwagen has trouble when shifting focus between "it was bad for the gay community too" to "bigotry poisons society as a whole", though it's not really his fault that the story he's telling exists in the shadow of a much larger one.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Happy Face
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Happy Face is the odd movie where nothing that anybody does ever actually seems like a good idea, to a degree that goes beyond basic human fallibility, but the result still mostly works. It's the sort of movie where the makers' hearts are generally in the right place and which at least has the benefit of being something you don't see every day, and that can count for a lot.
It centers on a Montreal support group for people who, whether by birth or happenstance, have some sort of disfigurement - former police officer Jocko (E.R. Ruiz) was burned, but 75-year-old Otis (David Roche), otherwise-fashionable Maggie (Alison Midstokke), and shy Beckie (Cyndy Nicholsen) have lived with this most of their lives - led by Vanessa (Debbie Lynch-White), who feels she can relate because she's carrying some extra pounds. The latest member is "Augustin" who has a secret - his actual name is Stanislas and the 19-year-old is actually quite handsome, using tape and bandages to distort his appearance. This deception doesn't last long, but Stanislas (Robin L'Houmeau) says he is not mocking them, but is instead trying to build the skills to deal with his mother, whose cancer treatments have left her a shell of herself. Let him stay, and he'll be their link to a world they have difficulty approaching.
Does this really make sense? Kind of, but it takes a certain amount of self-awareness for it to work. The group chooses to welcome Stanislas in part because Vanessa doesn't want them to; she means well but can't help but be mildly patronizing in how she assumes she has the same sort of problem or that you can make a breakthrough by following directions. Actress Debbie Lynch-White and filmmaker Alexandre Franchi do well to resist validating any desire Vanessa has to be the hero of the story, letting her be testy at times or, while not phony, not quite as deeply invested as she thinks. She's never insincere, but there's a certain deliberate clarity to how she represents the way that well-intentioned people can approach those who are different.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Diddie Wa Diddie"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
The title tune is catchy as heck, which never hurts a short film, especially one like this which is in large part goofy nonsense.
Den blomstertid nu kommer (The Unthinkable)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
The Unthinkable is better than a lot of movies that try to link massive calamity to personal melodrama, mostly because it lets them be separate things despite the significant overlap, but "better" in this context can be kind of a tricky thing: It's never as empty as the other genre movies it shares a basic shape with, but that also makes the moments when it uses the same sort of storytelling devices a little less forgivable. The filmmakers will occasionally do something that makes a viewer say they're supposed to be better than this, though the fact that they are most of the time makes up some.
The priorities are somewhat clear with an opening that focuses on young Alex and Anna, a pair of teens who are obviously fond of each other but going through some tumult: Alex's parents are breaking up in a loud, rancorous manner; Anna's are moving, having only settled in this small town with other family temporarily. Ten years later Alex (Christoffer Nordenrot) is a successful musician who has not returned home for years but will for his mother's funeral, while Anna (Lisa Henni) has resettled there. There's a mysterious explosion on the news as Alex hits the road, and soon enough Sweden is in a state of near-chaos, with more attacks focused on infrastructure. Anna's main concern is for her daughter while Alex's is for Anna, while his father Björn (Jesper Barkselius) - the sort of crank who always warned everyone that this could happen - may be the last line of defense as the only person on duty at the electric station while most of the town is at Midsommar festivities.
Anna also has a family member or two who would be conveniently important if this movie was just about the attack, which creates a bit of a small-world issue once things start coming together. It's not as problematic as it could be in terms of sheer overwhelming coincidence, but there is a bit of danger of becoming one of those movies where the massive calamity with all loss of life comes across as primarily a catalyst to show this small group of people what's really important rather than incidentally such. The filmmakers manage to walk that line fairly well - for instance, the threat is human rather than natural, so they're hard to see as some sort of higher power, but their motivation is disconnected enough to keep the focus on Alex, Anna, and the like. There are still some moments when the self-reflection gets a little heavy, but seldom to the point where the rest is diminished.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Friday, September 07, 2018
Fantasia 2018.18: Penguin Highway, International Science Fiction Shorts, Circo Animato, One Cut of the Dead, and Five Fingers for Marseilles
I am not sure whether having two shorts programs on the same day is sensible or crazy, but it probably means that this particular post will wind up very late, though only this post.
Plenty of filmmakers, though!
So, for the International Sci-Fi shorts, we have "Spin" director Leticia Belliccini, "Be My Guest" director David Jermyn, "Greater Good" director Andrea Ashton, "One Day the Sun Turned Black" director Joe Lueben, and "They Wait For Us" directors George Thomson & Lukas Schrank.
It was a pretty good group of shorts, with Belliccini noting that they didn't have a location until relatively late in the process, because permitting didn't come through at the other places, and it didn't become a one-shot movie (or at least cannily edited to look like one-shot) until that location was chosen. It's a pretty impressive result, as was what Ashton achieved with her short, initially part of a 72-hour-film project, which is usually good fun and good practice but doesn't necessarily produce something worth a festival entry. Some folks had nit-picky questions, but, guys, 72 hours is not a lot of time to smooth everything out, and in the case of some of the particular questions asked, sometimes people don't act perfectly in real time, and it's okay if a movie captures that.
Also: "One Day the Sun Turned Black" was something Joe Lueben came up with inspired by something in a paper by one of the kids he teaches (though the kid doesn't seem to be credited), and let me just say that though I think it's based on a neat idea and a pretty good movie, folks in the audience had opinions on the white guy making a movie about white people who have to change their skin color to survive in a world where the sun has changed. As they should! It's an intriguing what-if that goes some questionable if unintended places when you look at it closely. I don't know if it works at another scale, but it's an idea that kind of fascinates me.
(Another one where people were nitpicking afterward, about how a less-bright sun probably wouldn't necessitate more melanin or how one character didn't have white-person hair, and, folks, please remind me to not be that guy, especially when the movie is 14 minutes long! At that scale, it is okay to leave a lot of explanation out, because there's just not time and those details, fun as they may be when you get them right, just aren't important.)
For the animated shorts, fewer movies were represented but often more of the team. Here we have "Building 108: Barnacle Bill the Tailor" animator Raph Bard and director Rick Trembles (though that is but a small sample of the jobs each did); "Albatross Soup" illustrator Fiona Smyth, composer Daniel Rosato, and Director Winnie Chung; and "Space Between the Stars" director Samuel Bradley. An interesting group, with a fair number of questions for Bradley because the company which produced the short (and for which he works), Guru Studio, is apparently kind of a big deal in animation, working on a number of series, but not necessarily doing these one-off things so much, although Bradley found it incredibly gratifying.
Winnie Chung came at "Albatross Soup" from a different angle; she mostly works in live-action and documentary, came across the albatross soup riddle from some friends, and thought the process of working it out would be nifty to visualize. She said she probably could have just gone from there, but wound up bringing in other groups so that the audience would hear different accents and ethnicities, a sort of audio contrast to how Smyth went with different visual styles. Smyth, from what I gather, doesn't do a whole lot of animation work herself, so that made for an interesting, unique short.
Then there was Trembles, who can seem to land in that weird spot where you're not sure whether he is trying really hard to be iconoclastic or if he's the genuine article. It doesn't really matter. Having Raph Bard around to kind of puncture that a bit ("are you going to explain my process when I'm standing right here?") made that team's questions go down easier, and it was an interesting talk about how their styles contrasted and made the short better - he's very Fleischer-like with lots of short motion loops while she tends to go for something bigger and smoother.
After that, it was across the street for One Cut of the Dead and Five Fingers for Marseilles, which was pretty good, although I get the feeling that the audience for that 9:30pm movie on the third Sunday of the festival is roughly 50% tired but committed people and 50% folks with a serious interest in (South) African cinema. It's pretty good, but I was pretty worn out.
Next up…. Okay, let's not pretend that I posted this and some chunk of 30 reviews the next day. It's taken some time.
Penguin Highway (Pengin haiwei)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, digital)
For a movie about penguins just showing out of nowhere in a precocious kid's hometown, and that being the tip of the iceberg as far as weirdness gets, Penguin Highway is kind of dry. There's an angle from which that's kind of nifty - the film and its hero don't just love science as a reference book that contains interesting facts, but as a rigorous process that allows them to expand their knowledge - but that does cut down on the goofy antics, and the strangeness gets kind of straight-faced at times. It's got a bunch of fun scenes when things do get silly, but its whimsy and focus do sometimes work at cross purposes.
Aoyama (voice of Kana Kita) is a very focused fourth-grader, whether one is talking about his studies, his attempts to beat his classmate Hamamoto at chess, retaliating at the guys who bullied his friend Uchida without throwing a punch, pursuing his intense crush on the busty receptionist at the dentist's office (voice of Yu Aoi), or investigating just where the heck all the penguins who show up out of nowhere are coming from and going. What he doesn't initially realize is that there's another scientific mystery, just outside of town, that may dwarf a bunch of random penguins.
Most kids' movies position the kid like Aoyama as a side character - even when the main character is a meant to be sort of a nerd, this guy is so eccentric that he makes the other guy more relatable for a large audience. He is, at times, humorous and frustrating in equal measures and often for the same reasons: The very serious, self-important knowledge of just how smart he is can make a viewer nod every time someone seems exasperated with the little brat, but is also fantastic raw material for voice actress Kana Kita to make deadpan magic (aided by animators giving him a small mouth inside a big, round kid's face for those lines). He's definitely a weird kid that takes some effort on the part of the audience, but the filmmakers make his quirks add up to something rather than making them things that must be chipped away.
Full review at EFC.
"Be My Guest"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
It's natural to snicker a bit at sci-fi shorts like "Be My Guest" which build an ambitious story around a prop that looks to be made out of junk found in the director's garage, but a lot can be forgiven if it actually uses that as a jumping-off point for something interesting, which writer/director David Jermyn manages here. It's kind of basic, telling the story of a guy (Zachary Bennett) who rents the use of his body out to someone online almost entirely from his perspective, so the audience experiences time jumps rather than tha actor sort of playing a dual role, and its early talk of "hibernation" at times makes it feel like the filmmakers hae their sci-fi concepts confused.
It winds up working well enough, though, because the audience can see the relevance to real-world concerns easy enough - a husband who is literally not present, a gig economy that offers people a bit of money but no actual experience, being destroyed by envy that one has helped create. Jermyn occasionally just lays the metaphor right out there, but clarity is often better than ambiguity when you actually have something to say.
"Exit Strategy"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
As with the short that preceded it, "Exit Strategy" lays what it was going for down without a lot of embellishment when it gets to the finish, but it's interesting how it gets there, and likely fairly rewatchable as the audience discovers what is actually going on. Which isn't hard; if you're seeing it in a science fiction block, it telegraphs where it's going pretty hard, and even if you're not, you can probably guess. Still, writer/director Travis Bible plays just exactly which fantasy cardy he's playing fairly close to the vest, enough to keep a viewer guessing about where it's leading for a while.
I suspect that a second time through will make one really appreciate the work done by Christopher O'Shea as Shane, the brusque genius brother. It's a performance that initially just looks like a socially-stunted nerd but more clearly becomes a man carrying a weight as it goes on, but with a little hint of not exactly being unhappy to spend time with Matt. Richard Kohnke turns in a nice, simply sincere performance as that brother. His job is to basically be a good guy and mean what he says, which is earnest when the audience might be braced for another twist. It lets the movie back off a bit in its last scene, giving it a low-key but emotionally satisfying ending.
"Spin"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Director Léticia Belliccini said in a Q&A that the location they found would determine the shape of this short, and it's hard to imagine it in a place where she didn't have just enough room to play while still making her characters feel boxed in. Two or three minutes in, you realize you haven't seen a cut yet, and as she keeps her camera a few steps behind Mallard (Johan Libéreau) as he races about the apartment building and courtyard in a panic after witnessing his wife (Armelle Gerbault) being attacked, it becomes a nifty trick. He seems unstuck in time, chasing a doppelganger and visiting happier times but being shadowed by his own guilt.
Story-wise, it's the sort of thing one might have to watch two or three times in a row to really absorb all of what's going on, but it's the sort of propulsive movie where you can enjoy getting about 75% there because seeing it come vaguely into shape is enjoyably tantalizing, not slowed down much by dialogue, as Belliccini mostly advances the story through action and movement. There's the occasional quick change without a hidden cut, the feeling of pieces coming together, and it's a strong enough mood with everything else working together so well that even those who prefer a more thoroughly explained narrative should enjoy it.
"One Day the Sun Turned Black"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
The neat idea behind "One Day the Sun Turned Black" could probably become an impassable minefield if not handled carefully, but the thing is, a big part of the appeal is that it's got a land mine or two buried in it, placed kind of indiscriminately, just waiting to explode in a hail of well-intentioned but misdirected commentary on race and appropriation. It's a fertile enough universe that it might be interesting to see it as an anthology, put together by a more diverse group of filmmakers than the white man who made this one.
Joe Lueben and his collaborators tell a good story, though, first positing that something happened with the sun, not only causing it to appear black in the sky but showering the Earth with some sort of radiation that does a number on fair skin. So dark-skinned Harmony (Shavonna Banks) can jog around the park but her very Caucasian father (Daniel Martin Berkey) can't, leading to him living the life of a shut-in, his already aggrieved mental state exacerbated by the talk radio he listens to. It's not a story that has a lot of events, or dramatic speeches, but it works in large part because most people will get the generational conflict there - young people embracing a world that is less white-by-default while their elders are torn between retreat and defiance.
The devil is in the details, and my favorite one comes when Harmony buys a bottle of "pigment" at the corner store - it's not just that what's going on starts to fully snap into place, but that the African-American woman ringing her up packs a lot of context into just a couple of looks and lines, telling us that, yes, there is a lot more to this situation than things being uncomfortable for a woman and her prejudiced father. Lueben strikes a nice balance between the personal story and the larger world, making sure that the audience sees that these two sides don't exist in isolation. It's good enough and rich enough to make one curious about more stories within that world even if one also worries that it's the sort of scenario that stokes white paranoia.
"Expire" ("Exhale")
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
It's been a month, my notes stink, I'm basically giving this a pass. It looked gorgeous, a quality vision of a post-apocalyptic world where breathable air must be zealously conserved, but pretty much no story that stuck.
"Greater Good"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Products of 48-hour film challenges don't often actually make festival programs; they're more about having fun and maybe just convincing people that making a movie is an actual thing that they can do rather than something that requires trained professionals and huge budgets. Sometimes, though, you get something like "Greater Good", which has a simple but solid idea, just the right resources to tell the story, and no time to second-guess all the details.
It is, after all, very easy to second-guess this one. The plot involves pregnant Madeline Knight (Miranda Plant) surprised by the arrival of Dr. Alexis Livingston (Annelies Lee-Reid) of the Department of Alternate Timelines along with a woman said to be her future daughter (Lauren Kneteman), who has committed an atrocity in 2041; Livingston offers Madeline a syringe that will safely, painlessly induce miscarriage. The three actresses all play their roles well, and the filmmakers keep the focus squarely on the classic moral dilemma of what one should do with that sort of foreknowledge. It's sad but not manipulatively so - it doesn't celebrate the doing of bad things for good reasons to excess - and finishes quickly without ever having strayed far off course.
Which is where it could have become a mess; it's exceptionally easy to look at this story and say "but how does she know Livingston's on the level" or "as far as the people in the future know, this Department has never actually changed anyone's mind" or want to dig into just what Isabelle's crimes were and if time travel might just be the ultimate tyranny, preserving not justice but the status quo. These are good questions, but for the purposes of this story, not actually important, and I suspect that making the movie fast kept the filmmakers from undermining themselves trying to answer them. There is just no time, so you focus on what can be controlled, and that works out pretty well in this case (plus or minus a plinky, maudlin score).
"El aleteo del colibrí" ("The Flapping of the Hummingbird")
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
This short is a stylish enough bit of work, but one that falls into the category of films that feel like they have weighty concerns (the festival description talks about fate and free will, while the opening points out that of the 60 thousand thoughts humans have per day, 90% are about imagining the futre) but which in practical terms, aren't really saying anything important. This one follows Fran (Adrià Collado), a middle-aged man not really satisfied working at a gas station/convenience store, who is having a spat with his wife Sara (Melena Miquel) and thus doesn't let her call distract him from a shoplifter (Igor Szpakowski). Writer/director Mertxell A. Valls rewinds, goes into bullet-time, takes different perspectives and plays with how small changes could alter the action. It's the sort of thing that seems profound, but maybe actually isn't.
It's still put together in terrific fashion, though - writer/director Mertxell A. Valls is good at focusing the audience's attention on small but important things, highlighting the way that small choices seem like they can have much riding on them, pointing out pathways that could cause things to go differently, accepting complexity but not overwhelming the audience. The small cast is generally excellent, as well - Collado gets the most room to create his character, but all of them create characters that fit their purpose perfectly, but also seem like they have a life beyond the film, that they've arrived at the start of the film through a messy process, and as a result are easy to root for. Not so much to win, but to stumble through, which is all most of us can hope for.
"They Wait for Us"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Another one I'm going to pass on I'm afraid; it's just not registering a month later.
"The Origin of Sound"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
You can fall down a rabbit hole considering "The Origin of Sound" as part of a festival shorts block; it's got smaller animations of different styles within it, making the whole thing a kind of fractal experience (now, imagine if you're at a festival that shows multiple animation blocks in a day…). That's not quite the most interesting thing about it, but it's fun to think about.
It also makes the short kind of inside-baseball, in a way, God creating sound as a metaphor for animators adding sound to their creations, though it's a fun one. The creation he's adding it to is something of a cliche - an amusingly resigned husband and his perpetually annoyed wife - but it's played out in visually distinctive fashion with live actors being manipulated like stop-motion puppets or at least giving the impression of such. It's neat to look at, although maybe a bit too drab after a while, compared to the bright and varied cartoons the sound man is taking his rude noises from.
It goes on a while and eventually this gag gets a little worn, especially since a lot of these cartoons are either little but (or reduced to) basic gross-out gags. It feels like directors Paul Driessen & Toon Loenders are taking the long way around to get to a single pratfall, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - what better ending is there for a cartoon, really?
"Island of the Deceased"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
A kind of impressively gross bit of animation which starts with a man plucking the eye from a mummified corpse to place into a taxidermied girl and continues from there to feature a whole bunch of cadaver art and surreal, spooky imagery. It's impressive and atmospheric - director Kim Ji-hyeon has a fine eye for macabre design and uses churning backgrounds to make the island setting feel even tighter, like there's some sort of force field around it. The story is thin - of course these grounds are cursed and the people who trespass will be consumed - but presented well enough that it's okay.
I must admit, I often feel like shorts like this are just on the border of something - very impressive for those who already find the macabre enticing but not quite able to convince those who don't already love that sort of thing of its twisted beauty. It's impressive, and others will like it more than me, just not transcendent enough to cross the gap.
"I Don't Like the Comics You Drew"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Maybe you need a little context for this one. Lei Lei's animations are often filled with fine detail, color, and a scrolling two-dimensional world that seems overwhelming while still being somewhat abstracted and whimsical. This has a lot of the same style, but the drawings are simplified, more monochrome, with thick black lines, and attention much more focused on the foreground than the environment. It feels like a guy who, having generally been nice and encouraging to all the people seeking his approval, has finally snapped.
It's a style that pairs nicely with the music by Shanghai Restoration Project (who did the soundtrack for Have a Nice Day, last year's memorable Chinese animated noir), a diss track that is catchy and funny while getting some genuine frustration to come through. It's a project that integrates both halves well, not feeling like music slapped onto a cartoon or like a music video, but an excellent collaboration all around.
"Crazy Cat"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
I liked this one a lot. I'm not much of a gamer, and even though the pixel-art style of this one harkens back to when I actually really did play video games, that's not an automatic plus. There's a lot to like about its particular cute designs (which can handle a little violence being done to them) and synth-y soundtrack; they don't necessarily reference something especially specific to my eyes and ears, and director Seo Ji-hyeong's world of anthropomorphised animals seems fun and eccentric on its own.
I like the way it does a bit more than just tell a story without words, too - you get that the cat of the title has some pretty severe anxiety issues, probably related to her bunny nemesis, and copes with it by imagining her life as an RPG or dungeon crawl and everyday challenges she has to face as boss battles. Seo does a nice job of differentiating the pixel art so that there's a clear distinction between an actual game, the real world, and how the character copes. There's enough in common to keep transitions from beig jarring, even though there's some delightful absurdity in someone being a jerk on the subway becoming a fight to the death.
It's funny and cute, but also good communication, which always impresses.
"Building 108: Barnacle Bill the Tailor"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
This isn't quite a pilot for a series, technically - I believe director Rick Trembles did an even shorter take on his monster-inspired characters to get this one made - but it feels like one, spending its ten minutes to both introduce the characters and their world and also give them an adventure, and it feels kind of insufficient on both counts: Drac, Cobweb, Ghost, and Braindead are all more concepts than friends and neighbors, while the whole thing with the barnacles never quite feels like either a story or a joke about how crazy apocalyptic stuff intersects with these guys' lives and they just shrug it off. Double the running time to broadcast-series length or get a couple more episodes under the belt, and maybe it comes into focus.
It's kind of fun, though - the characters do pop as individuals despite being obviously inspired by classic monster imagery, and Trembles does a fair job of indulging his campier impulses without having them become the entire short. He's very much a fan of the spookier Fleischer toons, referencing their obvious animation cycles and happily increasing the gore, but he's wise enough to let co-director Raph Bard break those cycles when something more free-flowing is needed.
I don't know if more "Building 108" would get things working or wear out the joke, but I'd kind of like to see him get the chance to find out, if that's his intention.
"The Voice Over"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
The gag behind "The Voice Over" isn't a new one - there have been a number of short films where the narrator was revealed to be a voice in the protagonist's head - but its filmmakers do a fine job of sneaking up on that, playing the kind of cutesy cartoon gag where "going crazy" is just aggravation before jumping right to antipsychotic drugs, and that feels downright ruthless. It shifts the feel of the film, which was kind of cute but nervy, into something with a genuine edge.
"One Small Step"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
"One Small Step" is such a beautifully designed dialogue-free short, built to efficiently grab at the audience's heartstrings and pull, that someone watching it without logos would almost certainly presume that it's this year's Pixar short film. That's not what every filmmaker aspires to, but when you hit that goal as well as this one does, you're doing something right.
Admittedly, this hits a lot of my sweet spots, with a kid who absolutely adores space; an immigrant dad working hard to support her dreams, both making her adorable moon boots as a kid and to send her to college; bright, colorful visuals that emphasize the excitement of the goal; and bright, sharp design that can feel a bit mocking when she is falling short. The falling short isn't necessarily a sweet spot in and of itself, but it's the unexpected thing that makes the story work - there's a moment when it genuinely feels like this may become a movie about learning to still love something after it's clear you won't be part of it in the way you'd dreamed.
And it may be that story, eventually; it ends with hope but no guarantees. Still, it's a charmer, and a delightfully sweet moment in the middle of an often-bloody program.
"Lovely Girl"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
I remember this vaguely from my notes ("Girl accepting flowers puts guy in trippy happy place… then not"), and that I kind of liked it, especially with the Chubby Checker song in the background - it communicated in the moment, the heady experience of being loved and then having doubts.
"Albatross Soup"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
A pretty good "animate-to-voices" piece, although I wonder how it would play if you've heard the "Albatross Soup" riddle before. Do the various voices trying to puzzle it out become frustrating, or does the impressive, varied art still impress. Truth be told, I kind of didn't like the riddle itself, finding myself reacting "wait, what?" to each step toward solving it. It's a mean one.
Not liking the riddle itself, though, doesn't mean you can't enjoy the sound of people solving it. That variety of voices clearly enjoying the mental exercise is the strong base that the filmmakers start from, and artist Fiona Smyth gives director Winnie Chung creative, constantly-shifting imagery to illustrate it. It's a fine example of a film depicting not so much what is happening but a thought process, with what's shown having a properly ephermeral, not-solid feel.
"Simbiosis Carnal"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Images stick, but not the whole. There were, I recall, some very nice bits of design where the male and female figures hit both "sexy" and "cute" even as they shifted shape and position.
"Space Between Stars"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Something initially misfied in my brain while watching this, thinking it was about alien astronauts whose spaceship has been overrun by robots, when it's actually the other way around, with those cute octopi actually being the interstellar equivalent of parasites being fought off by the ship's automatic defenses. That's kind of the point, minus the credentialed dummy missing a couple of important seconds to write something down: Both are travelers in the void, doing what evolution or engineers have made them to do, their conflict inevitable and as fierce as anything in nature, with human viewers subconsciously taking sides for entirely superficial reasons.
Part of the reason for being able to take such a claim is that it is consciously and brilliantly designed, with the aliens in round shapes pastel blues and while the machines are foreboding reds. The audience is perhaps hypersensitive to that because director Samuel W. Bradley and his animators present the action with the smooth lines and bold palette of an infographic, switching the brain into learning mode and helping the viewer pick up geography, capabilities, and the like as the well-orchestrated and high-stakes action (accompanied by a nifty Jim Guthrie score) begins. From there, it's smooth and thrilling, despite the way that its abstraction could be distancing.
"The Ricochet Splendid"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
It's hard to review "The Ricochet Splendid" without more or less repeating what it says in the festival program or sounding like you're trying to write a blurb for the program: It's the terrific opening credits for an anime series that sadly does not really exist. I kind of doubt that 2Veinte has any plans to make a series out of it, because it's probably too big to fit the budget, but I am impressed as heck that filmmaker Pablo Gostanian so often manages to find a spot where a viewer will think "not sure if parody or awesome" at least two or three times. It's a canny act of pastiche, with its footage deliberately leaving a lot of gaps that might be hard to reconcile, action that is over the top but maybe not more than the real thing, and a legitimately catchy theme song and a title that, like a lot of Japanese adventure series, seems pretty meaningless but sure as heck sounds cool.
I'll take more if you've got it, but enjoy it as a singular work otherwise.
"Crying Bitch"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
Well, there's a title I'll have a hard time recommending to the women I know who would probably enjoy the heck out of this short. I love you when you're at your weirdest, Japan, but you don't always make it easy!
Still, I enjoy the heck out of this one, which offers Sho Mineo as a philandering husband, Miko Terada as his young lover, and Hinako Saeki as the wife who is just about ready to snap. Writer/director Reiki Tsuno often builds the movie like it, personally, is about to snap, with sudden changes from day to night implying that something you're taking as a given might flip instantly, with violence that may be spontaneous and excessive or reluctantly practiced, but which is probably a long time coming but hard to stop.
The film seems a little rough at times, like there was a hard cap on how much they could shoot so they accepted good enough rather than perfect, but it's a steady good enough, and the conception and editing was solid enough to hold that together. That leaves "Crying Bitch" memorable inn its outrageousness, but not sloppy or poorly-executed.
Kamera wo Tomeru na! (One Cut of the Dead)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: Fantasia Underground, DCP)
It's not unusual to have a conversation about a television show and have someone say that the first year isn't very good, but if you hang in there for something like fifteen hours, it starts to get good, but also occasionally have the same people say that they turned a movie off ten minutes in. One Cut of the Dead is an odd movie because is more or less counts on at least part of the audience cutting it the same slack they would a serial whose early segments aren't actually that good. A risky play, but one that is eventually rewarded.
It opens in fairly conventional manner, in some sort of abandoned factory setting with a zombie attacking his girlfriend - a scene ruined by the boom operator (Hiroshi Ichibara) being caught in the shot, but by actor Kazuki Kamiya (Kazuki Nagaya) apparently not not committing fully to his part as the zombie, for which director Takayuki Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) excoriates him after yelling cut. But the camera keeps rolling, capturing makeup artist Nao (Harumi Syuhama) telling Kazuki and co-star Aika Matsumoto (Yuzuki Akiyama) that the director is just high-strung, and there are actually legends about the place where they are shooting - legends which appear to be all too true, which means Higurashi will have a heck of a one-shot zombie movie, at least if anybody survives the shooting.
How much a viewer likes cheap, cheesy zombie movies is an important factor in how much they will enjoy One Cut of the Dead, because while that description above is not the entirety of what the movie has to offer, it is a long unbroken stretch where filmmaker Shinichiro Ueda is not spoofing sub-streaming zombie movies or presenting it with any sort of irony or wink at the audience - it is effectively what it appears to be, with the long-take gimmick feeling like an overreach. Some folks go for that, and they'll probably dig that first half-hour or so on its own merits, but if that's not your thing, it is a lot of pretty awful set-up to get to a hilarious last act - you have to dig through three layers of bad to get to the good stuff, and that good stuff doesn't really work without the bad. Throw some bland flashback material in, and It is a slog for nearly an hour to get to 30 minutes of good material.
Full review at EFC.
Five Fingers for Marseilles
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
Five Fingers for Marseilles is being labeled a "South African Western", which describes it as well as anything but also doesn't feel quite right. There's too much history to the characters, and not enough frontier, but that seems a bit like quibbling. It feels more like a western than anything else, especially once it gets to the end.
The action opens not in the South African city of Marseilles, but "Railway", the black-populated township that was just outside, during the apartheid era, and introduces six kids: Zulu, the group's leader; Tau, his hard-headed brother; "Pastor" Unathi the storyteller; "Pockets" Bongani, from a richer family; "Cockroach" Luyanda, a big, quiet boy - the "five fingers" who fancy themselves rebels - and Lerato, the girl the brothers both like. A clash with the white police sends Tau on the run, where he'll eventually become an outlaw. Twenty years later, he's released from prison and decides to return home, though the Marseilles that Tau (Vuyo Dabula) finds is different: Zulu has died and his son Sizwe (Lizwi Vilakazi) is having little luck as a farmer, while Lerato (Zethu Dlomo) is one of the few that has stayed in Railway after main city's integration. Pockets (Kenneth Nkosi) is mayor, Luyanda (Mduduzi Mabaso) is chief of police, but both of them tend to let a gangster calling himself "The Ghost" (Hamilton Dhlamini) have his way. Tau had hoped to live a quiet life, but it looks like his hometown still needs heroes.
Five Fingers takes the shape of a Western, and a beautiful one. The deserts and scrublands of South Africa feel just as open as those of California, dangerous and beautiful. Director Michael Matthews and his crew never pretend that it's anything but the late twentieth century, but by and large make the movie feel like it's got a foot in multiple eras - the shantytown of Railway feels like a western town, there aren't a lot of familiar product logos on display, and some of the wardrobe and prop choices feel meant to evoke another era even if they are modern. If a weapon seems personalized and weathered, it doesn't really matter that it's a Kalashnikov. Matthews and cinematographer Shaun Lee happily quote Sergio Leone, sometimes using kids with slingshots, sometimes with their weary adult selves. The raids by the Ghost are horrific and violent.
Full review at EFC.
Plenty of filmmakers, though!
So, for the International Sci-Fi shorts, we have "Spin" director Leticia Belliccini, "Be My Guest" director David Jermyn, "Greater Good" director Andrea Ashton, "One Day the Sun Turned Black" director Joe Lueben, and "They Wait For Us" directors George Thomson & Lukas Schrank.
It was a pretty good group of shorts, with Belliccini noting that they didn't have a location until relatively late in the process, because permitting didn't come through at the other places, and it didn't become a one-shot movie (or at least cannily edited to look like one-shot) until that location was chosen. It's a pretty impressive result, as was what Ashton achieved with her short, initially part of a 72-hour-film project, which is usually good fun and good practice but doesn't necessarily produce something worth a festival entry. Some folks had nit-picky questions, but, guys, 72 hours is not a lot of time to smooth everything out, and in the case of some of the particular questions asked, sometimes people don't act perfectly in real time, and it's okay if a movie captures that.
Also: "One Day the Sun Turned Black" was something Joe Lueben came up with inspired by something in a paper by one of the kids he teaches (though the kid doesn't seem to be credited), and let me just say that though I think it's based on a neat idea and a pretty good movie, folks in the audience had opinions on the white guy making a movie about white people who have to change their skin color to survive in a world where the sun has changed. As they should! It's an intriguing what-if that goes some questionable if unintended places when you look at it closely. I don't know if it works at another scale, but it's an idea that kind of fascinates me.
(Another one where people were nitpicking afterward, about how a less-bright sun probably wouldn't necessitate more melanin or how one character didn't have white-person hair, and, folks, please remind me to not be that guy, especially when the movie is 14 minutes long! At that scale, it is okay to leave a lot of explanation out, because there's just not time and those details, fun as they may be when you get them right, just aren't important.)
For the animated shorts, fewer movies were represented but often more of the team. Here we have "Building 108: Barnacle Bill the Tailor" animator Raph Bard and director Rick Trembles (though that is but a small sample of the jobs each did); "Albatross Soup" illustrator Fiona Smyth, composer Daniel Rosato, and Director Winnie Chung; and "Space Between the Stars" director Samuel Bradley. An interesting group, with a fair number of questions for Bradley because the company which produced the short (and for which he works), Guru Studio, is apparently kind of a big deal in animation, working on a number of series, but not necessarily doing these one-off things so much, although Bradley found it incredibly gratifying.
Winnie Chung came at "Albatross Soup" from a different angle; she mostly works in live-action and documentary, came across the albatross soup riddle from some friends, and thought the process of working it out would be nifty to visualize. She said she probably could have just gone from there, but wound up bringing in other groups so that the audience would hear different accents and ethnicities, a sort of audio contrast to how Smyth went with different visual styles. Smyth, from what I gather, doesn't do a whole lot of animation work herself, so that made for an interesting, unique short.
Then there was Trembles, who can seem to land in that weird spot where you're not sure whether he is trying really hard to be iconoclastic or if he's the genuine article. It doesn't really matter. Having Raph Bard around to kind of puncture that a bit ("are you going to explain my process when I'm standing right here?") made that team's questions go down easier, and it was an interesting talk about how their styles contrasted and made the short better - he's very Fleischer-like with lots of short motion loops while she tends to go for something bigger and smoother.
After that, it was across the street for One Cut of the Dead and Five Fingers for Marseilles, which was pretty good, although I get the feeling that the audience for that 9:30pm movie on the third Sunday of the festival is roughly 50% tired but committed people and 50% folks with a serious interest in (South) African cinema. It's pretty good, but I was pretty worn out.
Next up…. Okay, let's not pretend that I posted this and some chunk of 30 reviews the next day. It's taken some time.
Penguin Highway (Pengin haiwei)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, digital)
For a movie about penguins just showing out of nowhere in a precocious kid's hometown, and that being the tip of the iceberg as far as weirdness gets, Penguin Highway is kind of dry. There's an angle from which that's kind of nifty - the film and its hero don't just love science as a reference book that contains interesting facts, but as a rigorous process that allows them to expand their knowledge - but that does cut down on the goofy antics, and the strangeness gets kind of straight-faced at times. It's got a bunch of fun scenes when things do get silly, but its whimsy and focus do sometimes work at cross purposes.
Aoyama (voice of Kana Kita) is a very focused fourth-grader, whether one is talking about his studies, his attempts to beat his classmate Hamamoto at chess, retaliating at the guys who bullied his friend Uchida without throwing a punch, pursuing his intense crush on the busty receptionist at the dentist's office (voice of Yu Aoi), or investigating just where the heck all the penguins who show up out of nowhere are coming from and going. What he doesn't initially realize is that there's another scientific mystery, just outside of town, that may dwarf a bunch of random penguins.
Most kids' movies position the kid like Aoyama as a side character - even when the main character is a meant to be sort of a nerd, this guy is so eccentric that he makes the other guy more relatable for a large audience. He is, at times, humorous and frustrating in equal measures and often for the same reasons: The very serious, self-important knowledge of just how smart he is can make a viewer nod every time someone seems exasperated with the little brat, but is also fantastic raw material for voice actress Kana Kita to make deadpan magic (aided by animators giving him a small mouth inside a big, round kid's face for those lines). He's definitely a weird kid that takes some effort on the part of the audience, but the filmmakers make his quirks add up to something rather than making them things that must be chipped away.
Full review at EFC.
"Be My Guest"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
It's natural to snicker a bit at sci-fi shorts like "Be My Guest" which build an ambitious story around a prop that looks to be made out of junk found in the director's garage, but a lot can be forgiven if it actually uses that as a jumping-off point for something interesting, which writer/director David Jermyn manages here. It's kind of basic, telling the story of a guy (Zachary Bennett) who rents the use of his body out to someone online almost entirely from his perspective, so the audience experiences time jumps rather than tha actor sort of playing a dual role, and its early talk of "hibernation" at times makes it feel like the filmmakers hae their sci-fi concepts confused.
It winds up working well enough, though, because the audience can see the relevance to real-world concerns easy enough - a husband who is literally not present, a gig economy that offers people a bit of money but no actual experience, being destroyed by envy that one has helped create. Jermyn occasionally just lays the metaphor right out there, but clarity is often better than ambiguity when you actually have something to say.
"Exit Strategy"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
As with the short that preceded it, "Exit Strategy" lays what it was going for down without a lot of embellishment when it gets to the finish, but it's interesting how it gets there, and likely fairly rewatchable as the audience discovers what is actually going on. Which isn't hard; if you're seeing it in a science fiction block, it telegraphs where it's going pretty hard, and even if you're not, you can probably guess. Still, writer/director Travis Bible plays just exactly which fantasy cardy he's playing fairly close to the vest, enough to keep a viewer guessing about where it's leading for a while.
I suspect that a second time through will make one really appreciate the work done by Christopher O'Shea as Shane, the brusque genius brother. It's a performance that initially just looks like a socially-stunted nerd but more clearly becomes a man carrying a weight as it goes on, but with a little hint of not exactly being unhappy to spend time with Matt. Richard Kohnke turns in a nice, simply sincere performance as that brother. His job is to basically be a good guy and mean what he says, which is earnest when the audience might be braced for another twist. It lets the movie back off a bit in its last scene, giving it a low-key but emotionally satisfying ending.
"Spin"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Director Léticia Belliccini said in a Q&A that the location they found would determine the shape of this short, and it's hard to imagine it in a place where she didn't have just enough room to play while still making her characters feel boxed in. Two or three minutes in, you realize you haven't seen a cut yet, and as she keeps her camera a few steps behind Mallard (Johan Libéreau) as he races about the apartment building and courtyard in a panic after witnessing his wife (Armelle Gerbault) being attacked, it becomes a nifty trick. He seems unstuck in time, chasing a doppelganger and visiting happier times but being shadowed by his own guilt.
Story-wise, it's the sort of thing one might have to watch two or three times in a row to really absorb all of what's going on, but it's the sort of propulsive movie where you can enjoy getting about 75% there because seeing it come vaguely into shape is enjoyably tantalizing, not slowed down much by dialogue, as Belliccini mostly advances the story through action and movement. There's the occasional quick change without a hidden cut, the feeling of pieces coming together, and it's a strong enough mood with everything else working together so well that even those who prefer a more thoroughly explained narrative should enjoy it.
"One Day the Sun Turned Black"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
The neat idea behind "One Day the Sun Turned Black" could probably become an impassable minefield if not handled carefully, but the thing is, a big part of the appeal is that it's got a land mine or two buried in it, placed kind of indiscriminately, just waiting to explode in a hail of well-intentioned but misdirected commentary on race and appropriation. It's a fertile enough universe that it might be interesting to see it as an anthology, put together by a more diverse group of filmmakers than the white man who made this one.
Joe Lueben and his collaborators tell a good story, though, first positing that something happened with the sun, not only causing it to appear black in the sky but showering the Earth with some sort of radiation that does a number on fair skin. So dark-skinned Harmony (Shavonna Banks) can jog around the park but her very Caucasian father (Daniel Martin Berkey) can't, leading to him living the life of a shut-in, his already aggrieved mental state exacerbated by the talk radio he listens to. It's not a story that has a lot of events, or dramatic speeches, but it works in large part because most people will get the generational conflict there - young people embracing a world that is less white-by-default while their elders are torn between retreat and defiance.
The devil is in the details, and my favorite one comes when Harmony buys a bottle of "pigment" at the corner store - it's not just that what's going on starts to fully snap into place, but that the African-American woman ringing her up packs a lot of context into just a couple of looks and lines, telling us that, yes, there is a lot more to this situation than things being uncomfortable for a woman and her prejudiced father. Lueben strikes a nice balance between the personal story and the larger world, making sure that the audience sees that these two sides don't exist in isolation. It's good enough and rich enough to make one curious about more stories within that world even if one also worries that it's the sort of scenario that stokes white paranoia.
"Expire" ("Exhale")
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
It's been a month, my notes stink, I'm basically giving this a pass. It looked gorgeous, a quality vision of a post-apocalyptic world where breathable air must be zealously conserved, but pretty much no story that stuck.
"Greater Good"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Products of 48-hour film challenges don't often actually make festival programs; they're more about having fun and maybe just convincing people that making a movie is an actual thing that they can do rather than something that requires trained professionals and huge budgets. Sometimes, though, you get something like "Greater Good", which has a simple but solid idea, just the right resources to tell the story, and no time to second-guess all the details.
It is, after all, very easy to second-guess this one. The plot involves pregnant Madeline Knight (Miranda Plant) surprised by the arrival of Dr. Alexis Livingston (Annelies Lee-Reid) of the Department of Alternate Timelines along with a woman said to be her future daughter (Lauren Kneteman), who has committed an atrocity in 2041; Livingston offers Madeline a syringe that will safely, painlessly induce miscarriage. The three actresses all play their roles well, and the filmmakers keep the focus squarely on the classic moral dilemma of what one should do with that sort of foreknowledge. It's sad but not manipulatively so - it doesn't celebrate the doing of bad things for good reasons to excess - and finishes quickly without ever having strayed far off course.
Which is where it could have become a mess; it's exceptionally easy to look at this story and say "but how does she know Livingston's on the level" or "as far as the people in the future know, this Department has never actually changed anyone's mind" or want to dig into just what Isabelle's crimes were and if time travel might just be the ultimate tyranny, preserving not justice but the status quo. These are good questions, but for the purposes of this story, not actually important, and I suspect that making the movie fast kept the filmmakers from undermining themselves trying to answer them. There is just no time, so you focus on what can be controlled, and that works out pretty well in this case (plus or minus a plinky, maudlin score).
"El aleteo del colibrí" ("The Flapping of the Hummingbird")
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
This short is a stylish enough bit of work, but one that falls into the category of films that feel like they have weighty concerns (the festival description talks about fate and free will, while the opening points out that of the 60 thousand thoughts humans have per day, 90% are about imagining the futre) but which in practical terms, aren't really saying anything important. This one follows Fran (Adrià Collado), a middle-aged man not really satisfied working at a gas station/convenience store, who is having a spat with his wife Sara (Melena Miquel) and thus doesn't let her call distract him from a shoplifter (Igor Szpakowski). Writer/director Mertxell A. Valls rewinds, goes into bullet-time, takes different perspectives and plays with how small changes could alter the action. It's the sort of thing that seems profound, but maybe actually isn't.
It's still put together in terrific fashion, though - writer/director Mertxell A. Valls is good at focusing the audience's attention on small but important things, highlighting the way that small choices seem like they can have much riding on them, pointing out pathways that could cause things to go differently, accepting complexity but not overwhelming the audience. The small cast is generally excellent, as well - Collado gets the most room to create his character, but all of them create characters that fit their purpose perfectly, but also seem like they have a life beyond the film, that they've arrived at the start of the film through a messy process, and as a result are easy to root for. Not so much to win, but to stumble through, which is all most of us can hope for.
"They Wait for Us"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Another one I'm going to pass on I'm afraid; it's just not registering a month later.
"The Origin of Sound"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
You can fall down a rabbit hole considering "The Origin of Sound" as part of a festival shorts block; it's got smaller animations of different styles within it, making the whole thing a kind of fractal experience (now, imagine if you're at a festival that shows multiple animation blocks in a day…). That's not quite the most interesting thing about it, but it's fun to think about.
It also makes the short kind of inside-baseball, in a way, God creating sound as a metaphor for animators adding sound to their creations, though it's a fun one. The creation he's adding it to is something of a cliche - an amusingly resigned husband and his perpetually annoyed wife - but it's played out in visually distinctive fashion with live actors being manipulated like stop-motion puppets or at least giving the impression of such. It's neat to look at, although maybe a bit too drab after a while, compared to the bright and varied cartoons the sound man is taking his rude noises from.
It goes on a while and eventually this gag gets a little worn, especially since a lot of these cartoons are either little but (or reduced to) basic gross-out gags. It feels like directors Paul Driessen & Toon Loenders are taking the long way around to get to a single pratfall, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - what better ending is there for a cartoon, really?
"Island of the Deceased"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
A kind of impressively gross bit of animation which starts with a man plucking the eye from a mummified corpse to place into a taxidermied girl and continues from there to feature a whole bunch of cadaver art and surreal, spooky imagery. It's impressive and atmospheric - director Kim Ji-hyeon has a fine eye for macabre design and uses churning backgrounds to make the island setting feel even tighter, like there's some sort of force field around it. The story is thin - of course these grounds are cursed and the people who trespass will be consumed - but presented well enough that it's okay.
I must admit, I often feel like shorts like this are just on the border of something - very impressive for those who already find the macabre enticing but not quite able to convince those who don't already love that sort of thing of its twisted beauty. It's impressive, and others will like it more than me, just not transcendent enough to cross the gap.
"I Don't Like the Comics You Drew"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Maybe you need a little context for this one. Lei Lei's animations are often filled with fine detail, color, and a scrolling two-dimensional world that seems overwhelming while still being somewhat abstracted and whimsical. This has a lot of the same style, but the drawings are simplified, more monochrome, with thick black lines, and attention much more focused on the foreground than the environment. It feels like a guy who, having generally been nice and encouraging to all the people seeking his approval, has finally snapped.
It's a style that pairs nicely with the music by Shanghai Restoration Project (who did the soundtrack for Have a Nice Day, last year's memorable Chinese animated noir), a diss track that is catchy and funny while getting some genuine frustration to come through. It's a project that integrates both halves well, not feeling like music slapped onto a cartoon or like a music video, but an excellent collaboration all around.
"Crazy Cat"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
I liked this one a lot. I'm not much of a gamer, and even though the pixel-art style of this one harkens back to when I actually really did play video games, that's not an automatic plus. There's a lot to like about its particular cute designs (which can handle a little violence being done to them) and synth-y soundtrack; they don't necessarily reference something especially specific to my eyes and ears, and director Seo Ji-hyeong's world of anthropomorphised animals seems fun and eccentric on its own.
I like the way it does a bit more than just tell a story without words, too - you get that the cat of the title has some pretty severe anxiety issues, probably related to her bunny nemesis, and copes with it by imagining her life as an RPG or dungeon crawl and everyday challenges she has to face as boss battles. Seo does a nice job of differentiating the pixel art so that there's a clear distinction between an actual game, the real world, and how the character copes. There's enough in common to keep transitions from beig jarring, even though there's some delightful absurdity in someone being a jerk on the subway becoming a fight to the death.
It's funny and cute, but also good communication, which always impresses.
"Building 108: Barnacle Bill the Tailor"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
This isn't quite a pilot for a series, technically - I believe director Rick Trembles did an even shorter take on his monster-inspired characters to get this one made - but it feels like one, spending its ten minutes to both introduce the characters and their world and also give them an adventure, and it feels kind of insufficient on both counts: Drac, Cobweb, Ghost, and Braindead are all more concepts than friends and neighbors, while the whole thing with the barnacles never quite feels like either a story or a joke about how crazy apocalyptic stuff intersects with these guys' lives and they just shrug it off. Double the running time to broadcast-series length or get a couple more episodes under the belt, and maybe it comes into focus.
It's kind of fun, though - the characters do pop as individuals despite being obviously inspired by classic monster imagery, and Trembles does a fair job of indulging his campier impulses without having them become the entire short. He's very much a fan of the spookier Fleischer toons, referencing their obvious animation cycles and happily increasing the gore, but he's wise enough to let co-director Raph Bard break those cycles when something more free-flowing is needed.
I don't know if more "Building 108" would get things working or wear out the joke, but I'd kind of like to see him get the chance to find out, if that's his intention.
"The Voice Over"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
The gag behind "The Voice Over" isn't a new one - there have been a number of short films where the narrator was revealed to be a voice in the protagonist's head - but its filmmakers do a fine job of sneaking up on that, playing the kind of cutesy cartoon gag where "going crazy" is just aggravation before jumping right to antipsychotic drugs, and that feels downright ruthless. It shifts the feel of the film, which was kind of cute but nervy, into something with a genuine edge.
"One Small Step"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
"One Small Step" is such a beautifully designed dialogue-free short, built to efficiently grab at the audience's heartstrings and pull, that someone watching it without logos would almost certainly presume that it's this year's Pixar short film. That's not what every filmmaker aspires to, but when you hit that goal as well as this one does, you're doing something right.
Admittedly, this hits a lot of my sweet spots, with a kid who absolutely adores space; an immigrant dad working hard to support her dreams, both making her adorable moon boots as a kid and to send her to college; bright, colorful visuals that emphasize the excitement of the goal; and bright, sharp design that can feel a bit mocking when she is falling short. The falling short isn't necessarily a sweet spot in and of itself, but it's the unexpected thing that makes the story work - there's a moment when it genuinely feels like this may become a movie about learning to still love something after it's clear you won't be part of it in the way you'd dreamed.
And it may be that story, eventually; it ends with hope but no guarantees. Still, it's a charmer, and a delightfully sweet moment in the middle of an often-bloody program.
"Lovely Girl"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
I remember this vaguely from my notes ("Girl accepting flowers puts guy in trippy happy place… then not"), and that I kind of liked it, especially with the Chubby Checker song in the background - it communicated in the moment, the heady experience of being loved and then having doubts.
"Albatross Soup"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
A pretty good "animate-to-voices" piece, although I wonder how it would play if you've heard the "Albatross Soup" riddle before. Do the various voices trying to puzzle it out become frustrating, or does the impressive, varied art still impress. Truth be told, I kind of didn't like the riddle itself, finding myself reacting "wait, what?" to each step toward solving it. It's a mean one.
Not liking the riddle itself, though, doesn't mean you can't enjoy the sound of people solving it. That variety of voices clearly enjoying the mental exercise is the strong base that the filmmakers start from, and artist Fiona Smyth gives director Winnie Chung creative, constantly-shifting imagery to illustrate it. It's a fine example of a film depicting not so much what is happening but a thought process, with what's shown having a properly ephermeral, not-solid feel.
"Simbiosis Carnal"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Images stick, but not the whole. There were, I recall, some very nice bits of design where the male and female figures hit both "sexy" and "cute" even as they shifted shape and position.
"Space Between Stars"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Something initially misfied in my brain while watching this, thinking it was about alien astronauts whose spaceship has been overrun by robots, when it's actually the other way around, with those cute octopi actually being the interstellar equivalent of parasites being fought off by the ship's automatic defenses. That's kind of the point, minus the credentialed dummy missing a couple of important seconds to write something down: Both are travelers in the void, doing what evolution or engineers have made them to do, their conflict inevitable and as fierce as anything in nature, with human viewers subconsciously taking sides for entirely superficial reasons.
Part of the reason for being able to take such a claim is that it is consciously and brilliantly designed, with the aliens in round shapes pastel blues and while the machines are foreboding reds. The audience is perhaps hypersensitive to that because director Samuel W. Bradley and his animators present the action with the smooth lines and bold palette of an infographic, switching the brain into learning mode and helping the viewer pick up geography, capabilities, and the like as the well-orchestrated and high-stakes action (accompanied by a nifty Jim Guthrie score) begins. From there, it's smooth and thrilling, despite the way that its abstraction could be distancing.
"The Ricochet Splendid"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
It's hard to review "The Ricochet Splendid" without more or less repeating what it says in the festival program or sounding like you're trying to write a blurb for the program: It's the terrific opening credits for an anime series that sadly does not really exist. I kind of doubt that 2Veinte has any plans to make a series out of it, because it's probably too big to fit the budget, but I am impressed as heck that filmmaker Pablo Gostanian so often manages to find a spot where a viewer will think "not sure if parody or awesome" at least two or three times. It's a canny act of pastiche, with its footage deliberately leaving a lot of gaps that might be hard to reconcile, action that is over the top but maybe not more than the real thing, and a legitimately catchy theme song and a title that, like a lot of Japanese adventure series, seems pretty meaningless but sure as heck sounds cool.
I'll take more if you've got it, but enjoy it as a singular work otherwise.
"Crying Bitch"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
Well, there's a title I'll have a hard time recommending to the women I know who would probably enjoy the heck out of this short. I love you when you're at your weirdest, Japan, but you don't always make it easy!
Still, I enjoy the heck out of this one, which offers Sho Mineo as a philandering husband, Miko Terada as his young lover, and Hinako Saeki as the wife who is just about ready to snap. Writer/director Reiki Tsuno often builds the movie like it, personally, is about to snap, with sudden changes from day to night implying that something you're taking as a given might flip instantly, with violence that may be spontaneous and excessive or reluctantly practiced, but which is probably a long time coming but hard to stop.
The film seems a little rough at times, like there was a hard cap on how much they could shoot so they accepted good enough rather than perfect, but it's a steady good enough, and the conception and editing was solid enough to hold that together. That leaves "Crying Bitch" memorable inn its outrageousness, but not sloppy or poorly-executed.
Kamera wo Tomeru na! (One Cut of the Dead)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: Fantasia Underground, DCP)
It's not unusual to have a conversation about a television show and have someone say that the first year isn't very good, but if you hang in there for something like fifteen hours, it starts to get good, but also occasionally have the same people say that they turned a movie off ten minutes in. One Cut of the Dead is an odd movie because is more or less counts on at least part of the audience cutting it the same slack they would a serial whose early segments aren't actually that good. A risky play, but one that is eventually rewarded.
It opens in fairly conventional manner, in some sort of abandoned factory setting with a zombie attacking his girlfriend - a scene ruined by the boom operator (Hiroshi Ichibara) being caught in the shot, but by actor Kazuki Kamiya (Kazuki Nagaya) apparently not not committing fully to his part as the zombie, for which director Takayuki Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) excoriates him after yelling cut. But the camera keeps rolling, capturing makeup artist Nao (Harumi Syuhama) telling Kazuki and co-star Aika Matsumoto (Yuzuki Akiyama) that the director is just high-strung, and there are actually legends about the place where they are shooting - legends which appear to be all too true, which means Higurashi will have a heck of a one-shot zombie movie, at least if anybody survives the shooting.
How much a viewer likes cheap, cheesy zombie movies is an important factor in how much they will enjoy One Cut of the Dead, because while that description above is not the entirety of what the movie has to offer, it is a long unbroken stretch where filmmaker Shinichiro Ueda is not spoofing sub-streaming zombie movies or presenting it with any sort of irony or wink at the audience - it is effectively what it appears to be, with the long-take gimmick feeling like an overreach. Some folks go for that, and they'll probably dig that first half-hour or so on its own merits, but if that's not your thing, it is a lot of pretty awful set-up to get to a hilarious last act - you have to dig through three layers of bad to get to the good stuff, and that good stuff doesn't really work without the bad. Throw some bland flashback material in, and It is a slog for nearly an hour to get to 30 minutes of good material.
Full review at EFC.
Five Fingers for Marseilles
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
Five Fingers for Marseilles is being labeled a "South African Western", which describes it as well as anything but also doesn't feel quite right. There's too much history to the characters, and not enough frontier, but that seems a bit like quibbling. It feels more like a western than anything else, especially once it gets to the end.
The action opens not in the South African city of Marseilles, but "Railway", the black-populated township that was just outside, during the apartheid era, and introduces six kids: Zulu, the group's leader; Tau, his hard-headed brother; "Pastor" Unathi the storyteller; "Pockets" Bongani, from a richer family; "Cockroach" Luyanda, a big, quiet boy - the "five fingers" who fancy themselves rebels - and Lerato, the girl the brothers both like. A clash with the white police sends Tau on the run, where he'll eventually become an outlaw. Twenty years later, he's released from prison and decides to return home, though the Marseilles that Tau (Vuyo Dabula) finds is different: Zulu has died and his son Sizwe (Lizwi Vilakazi) is having little luck as a farmer, while Lerato (Zethu Dlomo) is one of the few that has stayed in Railway after main city's integration. Pockets (Kenneth Nkosi) is mayor, Luyanda (Mduduzi Mabaso) is chief of police, but both of them tend to let a gangster calling himself "The Ghost" (Hamilton Dhlamini) have his way. Tau had hoped to live a quiet life, but it looks like his hometown still needs heroes.
Five Fingers takes the shape of a Western, and a beautiful one. The deserts and scrublands of South Africa feel just as open as those of California, dangerous and beautiful. Director Michael Matthews and his crew never pretend that it's anything but the late twentieth century, but by and large make the movie feel like it's got a foot in multiple eras - the shantytown of Railway feels like a western town, there aren't a lot of familiar product logos on display, and some of the wardrobe and prop choices feel meant to evoke another era even if they are modern. If a weapon seems personalized and weathered, it doesn't really matter that it's a Kalashnikov. Matthews and cinematographer Shaun Lee happily quote Sergio Leone, sometimes using kids with slingshots, sometimes with their weary adult selves. The raids by the Ghost are horrific and violent.
Full review at EFC.
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