River, #Manhole and Femme are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.
Junta Yamaguchi’s Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes was a delightfully quirky experiment with time travel tropes. The film was rough and tumble from a visual standpoint, but its charm withstood its Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — River, Femme, #Manhole
Sometimes I Think About Dying and Hippo are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.
Fran (Daisy Ridley) leaves her office job each day, microwaves herself a dinner, and sits alone on her couch. Occasionally, during these quiet moments, she does what the film’s title suggests, roving through fantasies of death in her mind. Then she returns to Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Sometimes I Think About Dying, Hippo
Satan Wants You and Devils are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.
Kim Jae-hoon’s Devils is a crime thriller with a premise similar to that of a body swap movie. Police detective Jae-hwan (Oh Dae-hwan) disappears for a month after pursuing a sadistic serial killer (Jang Dong-yoon), only for both the cop and the killer to resurface unexpectedly. Jae-hwan wakes in a hospital to find himself Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Satan Wants You, Devils
Aporia, Hundreds of Beavers, and Emptiness are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.
A year after Sophie’s (Judy Greer) husband dies, her daughter remains despondent. She is truant from school, failing classes, and she wants nothing to do with her friends or mother. When her late husband’s best friend (Payman Maadi) shows her a time machine he’s been building, Sophie decides to Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Hundreds of Beavers, Aporia, Emptiness
With Love and a Major Organ and A Disturbance in the Force are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.
Annabelle (Anna Maguire) is an aspiring painter working at a customer service call center who avoids Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — With Love and a Major Organ, A Disturbance in the Force
Blackout, Stay Online, and Vincent Must Die are screening as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 20 to August 9.
Eva Strelinkova’s Stay Online is a Screenlife film that follows Katya (Yelyzaveta Zaitseva), a woman who is Continue reading Fantasia Festival 2023 Movie Reviews — Blackout, Stay Online and Vincent Must Die
As an amateur critic (who conjures a perception of credibility by the skin of his teeth like a snake oil salesman trucking across the unpaved west), I like to break down the calendar year by what it offers in terms of film. Summer comes with blockbuster season (more emphasis on the “busts” this year), but it also comes with genre fest season. In truth, there is very little reason to codify July through (roughly) October as the time for genre film festivals. Genre festivals run all over the world all throughout the year. But some of the most prominent fests fall in that stretch between Cannes and the lead-in to awards season. FrightFest, Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest.
And the festival that kicks off this arbitrarily defined season is the Fantasia International Film Festival. Taking place in Montreal from July 20 to August 9, this year’s 27th edition of the fest features new, cutting edge genre films from across the globe, as well as a quality selection of older films. Here are, in no particular order, seven films from the program worth keeping an eye on.
Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh, a Lovecraft adaptation starring Heather Graham and Barbara Crampton, appears satisfyingly Continue reading Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 Lineup Preview
July Jung’s Next Sohee is a story told in two nearly equal halves. In the first half, high schooler Sohee (Kim Si-eun) is awarded an externship to work at a call center office. Conditions at the call center are tense and only get worse as Sohee tries to acclimate to a highly competitive environment and training which has her doing everything in her power to delay unhappy customers’ service cancellations.
As Sohee tries to weather the hostile work environment, she grows distant from her friends, suffers in school, and amplifies her alcohol consumption. When she hits the brink, the film fades to black and we switch perspectives to Continue reading Review: Next Sohee — Fantasia Festival 2022
Megalomaniac, The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra and Incredible But True are screening as part of the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 14 – August 3.
Megalomaniac is the bleakest film I’ve seen at this year’s Fantasia (and I also watched Speak No Evil, so that’s a high bar to clear). In the case of Speak No Evil, I could better stomach the Continue reading 2022 Fantasia Festival Movie Reviews — Megalomaniac, Incredible But True, The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra
Bjorn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) are on holiday in Tuscany with their daughter (Liva Forsberg), where they meet a Dutch family of similar makeup. They share a day or two together and then part ways. Back home in Denmark, Bjorn and Louise receive a postcard from their newfound acquaintances with an invitation to come stay in the family’s home in Holland. They agree, and slowly, methodically, this second vacation becomes one of nightmares.
For the first significant stretch of Speak No Evil, everything reads exceedingly normal, almost unremarkable. Save for that foreboding score. And that Continue reading Review: Speak No Evil — Fantasia Festival 2022
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