Tag Archives: Fantastic Fest

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

Review: Queens of Drama — Fantastic Fest 2024

Queens of Drama is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

Alexis Langlois’s Queens of Drama is a riff on the A Star is Born formula, wherein the young, bright-eyed ingenue is thrust into a world of celebrity that bends and breaks them. The young star-to-be in question is Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura), a quiet 18-year-old auditioning for an American Idol-adjacent singing competition. While there, she meets Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura), another competing hopeful. In some ways, their drastically different experiences with the singing audition paves the way for their diverging paths toward pop notoriety.

The film quickly establishes a dichotomy between the American Idol-ization of mainstream pop and a much more sonically potent underground music scene. In both cases, Continue reading Review: Queens of Drama — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape — Fantastic Fest 2024

Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

I have said my piece about the “compilation” film on this website before. In fact, I made some complaints about the format a few months ago when From My Cold Dead Hands played the Fantasia Festival. I’ll be brief about it here. The compilation/mixtape format is, by its design, artistically limiting. In borrowing from existing content, the artistry of the resulting film derives mostly from the edit. Why is this found footage being compiled, organized, and edited in this way? If the answer is, “I don’t know,” then the compilation has not succeeded in properly compiling.

The best of the format will create new meaning out of existing materials, or will resituate the original meaning of the materials in a way that produces new understanding. In short: the compilation film ought to Continue reading Review: Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Touched by Eternity — Fantastic Fest 2024

Touched by Eternity is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

The opening of Touched by Eternity suggests that the secret to immortal life is yeast. In particular, yeast KC1822V, which is the subject of experimental research to test its life-sustaining properties. A man who is never given a name, but he claims everyone calls him Fatso (Andris Keišs), lives alone in a trailer, watching video podcasts on the study of this yeast and purchasing it by the box load. He eats the yeast raw, despite the plea of scientists that doing so could be dangerous. This disclaimer proves to be, at least partially, true, as when the courier delivering the latest shipment curiously tries some himself, he keels over with foam bubbling from his mouth.

None of this is of too much consequence to the plot of Touched by Eternity, the quirky vampire film from Mārcis Lācis. Fatso stumbles upon a fitting substitute for immortal yeast: Egons and Carlos (Ivars Krasts and Edgars Samītis) two pansexual vampires that show up immediately following the delivery carrier’s poisoning in search of a screwdriver. Soon, Fatso is thrust into Continue reading Review: Touched by Eternity — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Bookworm — Fantastic Fest 2024

Bookworm is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

I recall seeing Ant Timpson’s Come to Daddy back in 2019 at midnight at the Alamo Drafthouse during Fantastic Fest. I also recall being dead tired and not particularly jazzed by the Ant Timpson experience. I’ve since returned to his feature debut following an adequate amount of sleep, and I can still see why I had been turned off by the experience at the time. It’s slow-build story structure and unlikable characters require a little bit of patience. However, while the film is by no means perfect, it is clever and nasty in the right moments.

Timpson’s latest, Bookworm, is a much different type of film (although, both films have a fascination with estranged dads). Far from the oddball comedy thriller of Come to Daddy, Bookworm is an oddball, mostly family-friendly comedy about dangerous predators in the New Zealand wilderness.

After her mother falls into a coma due to a Continue reading Review: Bookworm — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Steppenwolf — Fantastic Fest 2024

Steppenwolf is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

Steppenwolf is a formally striking piece of grand existential absurdism. Within the confines of a brutal civil war, the characters in the film (in particular, the sociopathic Brajyuk) face death with an ironic distance that would make Camus’ Meursault proud.

The film opens with the violent takeover of a remote police compound where political prisoners are being tortured. When staring down the barrel of a gun, Brajyuk (Berik Aitzhanov), a corrupt police interrogator, tells his rebel captors that Continue reading Review: Steppenwolf — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Ebony and Ivory — Fantastic Fest 2024

Ebony and Ivory is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

Ebony and Ivory is absolute nonsense, and that isn’t entirely a bad thing. Imagine a biopic about the creative experience behind one of the best-selling duets in pop history (the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder song of the title), then pay a back-alley surgeon to lobotomize that idea out of your brain forever. What remains might be Ebony and Ivory.

Jim Hosking, the director behind the divisive cult gross-out film The Greasy Strangler, brings the two legendary musical icons together in a cabin in rural Scotland, only to Continue reading Review: Ebony and Ivory — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: Apartment 7A — Fantastic Fest 2024

Apartment 7A is screening as part of the 2024 Fantastic Fest, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

I’d be lying if I said I’ve read Ira Levin’s 1967 novel Rosemary’s Baby. Although, it sits on my dining room table (because the one bookcase I own overflows). It is a burnt orange hardcover volume, slim, with similarly orange-y paper, as the book is from the original Random House printing. I found it on the side of the road when I was 16, in a box of other very old books ready to be tossed into the back of a garbage truck.

So I haven’t read it. But I thumbed through it after watching Natalie Erika James’ Apartment 7A, because it Continue reading Review: Apartment 7A — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

Horror, Lists, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

2024 Fantastic Fest Program Preview

Austin, TX’s Fantastic Fest returns this September for its 19th edition, with eight days filled to the brim with genre films big and small. We will be covering a variety of films as they premiere at the fest. In the interim, here are some individual titles which may be worth adding to your watchlist.

The 2024 edition of Fantastic Fest will run September 19 to September 26.

Cloud (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the prolific genre filmmaker, is pushing 70. Yet, he has three separate projects circulating film festivals in the past year. One of them, Cloud, is officially Continue reading 2024 Fantastic Fest Program Preview →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Third Saturday in October Parts 1 and 5 — Fantastic Fest 2022 Movie Review

So often in horror, people want to return to the past. Netflix’s Stranger Things reinvigorated the ’80s aesthetic. The new Halloween films hearken back to the 1970s look. Et cetera. This backward-looking adoration is all well and good. I can appreciate a good pastiche.

Jay Burleson’s The Third Saturday in October sets its backward-looking eyes on sleazy, regional horror of the late 1970s. It borrows its opening title narration from Texas Chainsaw and much of its plotting from Halloween. Positioned as a “lost” film, it comes off like the latest Vinegar Syndrome or AGFA release — a glossy remaster of a hazy, decidedly non-glossy 1979 low-budget slasher.

The emulation of the ’70s aesthetic is pretty handily nailed, from the floral pajamas to the wood-paneled walls to the excessive fog and southern-fried haze. And the film is Continue reading The Third Saturday in October Parts 1 and 5 — Fantastic Fest 2022 Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Loath It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle — Fantastic Fest 2022 Movie Review

A phenomenon occurs when a cult bad movie becomes big enough. The reputation grows to the point where it becomes implausible that the director would not grow aware that their film is not enjoyed for the reasons they intended. When and if they do become aware, they have a choice to make. They can go the Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2) route and insist that they made a good movie in spite of the criticism, or they can go the Tommy Wiseau (The Room) route and claim that they set out at the beginning to make a dark comedy.

I cannot tell for the life of me if Birdemic 3′s James Nguyen has reached this self-aware state. The quality of his filmmaking has not Continue reading Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle — Fantastic Fest 2022 Movie Review →