Week Ending 8/2/24
Farewell Fantasia!
Fantasia Fest ends this Sunday, so the rest of my coverage is below. (As such, I had to skip all new releases to fit everything in. So, my KNEECAP review will have to wait for next week.)
The available titles for remote coverage were the fewest since I’ve been covering the event, but I was still able to catch 10+ for review. Getting most of them was like pulling teeth (if I got a response at all) with a couple saying links weren’t available (either their client pulled it or they were lying because they didn’t want to tell the truth and just say I didn’t rate to receive one). Thankfully, everything I saw had its merits. So, maybe it was good the others never came through.
For those interested in award winners: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO won the Cheval Noir (Best Film) with ELECTROPHILIA getting the Special Jury Mention (as well as Best Screenplay and Outstanding Performance for Mariana Di Girolamo).
MASH VILLE earned Best Director. RITA got Best Cinematography. PENALTY LOOP got Best Editing and Score. STEPPENWOLF got Outstanding Performance for both Berik Aitzhanov and Anna Starchenko. SELF DRIVER took Best First Feature (CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING and KIDNAPPING INC. got Jury Mentions).
What I Watched:
FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
BLACK EYED SUSAN
(world premiere)
“McCrae is pushing boundaries with BLACK EYED SUSAN. He's forcing us to confront the limitations of our humanity through the unlimited potential of invention.”
– Full thoughts at The Film Stage.
BOOKWORM
(world premiere)
When a freak toaster accident leaves her mother in a coma, eleven-year-old Mildred (Nell Fisher) is alone. With no real friends (she “doesn’t talk like a normal child” and could probably start college next year if the process of enrollment wouldn’t also give her brainiac, “brutal realist” the opportunity to alienate the entire admissions office) and a neighbor too reluctant to give her affection (in case someone sues), her only shot at a guardian is the American illusionist father she’s never met. To his credit, Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood) does come to her aid. Unfortunately for Mildred, however, he needs her to take care of him more than the other way around.
As such, it’s not difficult to talk him into taking her on a camping trip into the New Zealand wilderness at the start of Ant Timpson’s BOOKWORM. Between the guilt of being an absentee father and the realization that she’s way smarter than him, he has no choice but to say yes—even if only as a distraction from these tragic events. Strawn thinks it will be an excuse to bond and get to know her. Mildred simply wants to hunt down an infamous “giant panther” that’s supposedly roaming the mountains. If she can capture it on camera, she’ll earn a fifty grand reward … as long as the duo is also able to escape Mother Nature with their lives.
That sounds more serious than it is as Toby Harvard’s script mostly puts father and “biological daughter” into circumstances that show how Strawn is a master of making things seem worse than they are. He’s easily scared and easily rattled (wait for an overlong monologue about his disdain for David Blaine that proves too pointed to actually be funny), ultimately allowing bad things to happen to him because of an inability to attempt to prevent them. It probably doesn’t help that Mildred is quick to loudly expose him as a pushover whenever the opportunity presents itself. She’s great at kicking him when he’s already down.
The comedy is hardly mainstream as a result. The mood often colors events darker than needed at the beginning and lighter than they should be towards a final act with much higher stakes. It’s therefore tough to pin down: sometimes a cute family adventure, sometimes a black comedy, sometimes a survival film with the assistance of magic mushrooms. Add Michael Smiley and Vanessa Stacey’s Arnold and Angelina providing a threatening presence despite their big smiles and the whole can be exhausting in its tonal and pacing shifts. One second we’re barreling through a moment with excitement and the next we’ve slowed to a crawl for a lengthy lead-up to a punch line that doesn’t quite land.
Thankfully, both Wood and Fisher refuse to let the script’s wild swings get in the way of their charming and endearing performances. The two have a wonderful rapport in their role reversal—one that’s perfectly expressed when a tired Mildred laughs that a “forty-two-year-old man woke up an eleven-year-old girl because he heard a scary sound.” She’s the pragmatist calmly hatching plans when things go awry. He’s the alarmist ready to panic and run off a cliff at the smallest wrinkle. Does this help either of their causes when help is actually needed? No. But they’re learning this fact from their journey. They’re learning that despite not being what the other expected, they might just be what the other needs.
- 6/10
DEAD DEAD FULL DEAD
(world premiere)
When Mr. Patil (Abhijeet Chavan) is prescribed a book for his unexplained, electrified Vulcan salute hand ailment, you can’t help but squint your eyes in confusion. When he rips a page out of the book, crumples it into a ball, and swallows it like a pill, you realize writer/director Pratul Gaikwad isn’t simply being weird with DEAD DEAD FULL DEAD. He’s gone full-on absurd. It’s therefore nice to get that first example so early. We’re able to understand the tone and stop ourselves from taking things too seriously. Because anyone who does will miss out on just how insane this murder mystery gets.
The victim: Swastika Mukherjee’s Era. To listen to her try and fool the demonic bureaucrat saddled with completing her paperwork on a space craft orbiting a distant planet (rendering Hell wouldn’t be as much fun) is to believe she’s an astrologist. To hear her husband (Ashwin Mushran’s Rahul) and number one suspect tell it, however, she was easily bored and prone to fixate on whatever new obsession came her way—even if it does so as a random non sequitur from the last one regardless of her spending any time on it first.
So, it’s no surprise when out-of-their-depth constables (and lovers) Balram (Yug Italiya) and Zubi (Monica Chaudhary) enter the crime scene to find no one realizes Era is dead despite her body lying face-down in the middle of the living room. Rahul thought she was just pretending (as she had mere hours earlier for an Instagram reel) and their servant Chotu (Sachin Vidrohi) is too busy filling balloons at her instruction to decorate the apartment for that evening’s eclipse. Only the neighbor across the hall (Flora Jacob’s Basanti Bachhan) cares enough to do something, but she’s addled with dementia and hardly an expert eyewitness.
The film is thus a farce from start to finish as Balram and Zubi attempt to find answers. He does so to prove he can. She does it because she’s caught rummaging through the deceased’s closest … by the deceased. Yes, Era gets to be a witness to her own death, albeit a hostile one. So hostile that whenever the police officers finally get someone talking about what happened (transporting themselves into the memory to better understand the situation), she ends up pissing them off to the point where they end up being the ones holding the knife.
Guilty consciences aside, becoming the murderer in their imagination is hardly an efficient way of finding the real culprit. Unless, of course, they actually did do it. But that’s impossible. As impossible as Era giving her afterlife warden the slip to return to Earth and wreak havoc. So, don’t take anything at face value. Gaikwad is in this to throw curve balls and they come fast and often. Add a pet goat who may or may not be dead, a clandestine revolutionary, and a disgruntled Mr. Shah and the whole ordeal becomes one big distraction. Era might therefore be the only person who can truly say what happened, but she’s having too much fun to tell.
DEAD DEAD FULL DEAD is a lark that doesn’t try to be more. We’re in it less to find the murderer’s identity than we are to see what wild event will occur next. It’s all a setting for Balram and Zubi’s latest love spat too as she’s constantly egging him on (being that he refuses to forgive her for an overblown misunderstanding) while he keeps angrily biting off more than he can chew to prove his smarts. But none of these characters are smart. They’re all “duffers” caught in an unexplainable circumstance that they easily accept as shocking yet normal. So, we do too. No matter how far-fetched the next curve ball, it’s played poker straight.
Maybe we’ll get our answers. Maybe none of it matters as long as Balram and Zubi escape with tempers erased. Because the one thing treated like more than a speed bump getting in the way of selfish desires is their romance. Era’s corpse is merely an obstacle preventing everyone from doing what it was they planned to do that night. But maybe it’s also the excuse for these two silly creatures to realize life is too short for petty arguments. They haven’t even been together long enough to want to kill the other yet. That’s when you know the love is real.
- 6/10
THE G
(North American premiere)
“It's a fantastic premise that provides Dickey a perfect showcase to remind audiences why she's such a sought-after commodity in Hollywood. How it all unfolds is sadly too often on-the-nose.”
– Full thoughts at The Film Stage.
HELL HOLE
(world premiere)
“[Arguing] to keep the specimen alive inside an unwilling host perfectly parallels the ongoing abortion issue. It's a fantastic layer of subtext that gives what is ultimately a low-budget creature feature a lot more merit beyond cheap thrills.”
– Full thoughts at The Film Stage.
INFINITE SUMMER
(world premiere)
I was nervous when looking at the images released for Miguel Llansó’s latest feature INFINITE SUMMER. They looked too polished. I’m used to the filmmaker’s Ethiopian productions CRUMBS and JESUS SHOWS YOU THE WAY TO HIGHWAY with their DIY lo-fi sci-fi aesthetic, so the special effects work of smoky arms and cosmic color threw me for a loop. Not that he couldn’t make polish work with the same quirky charm as before. I simply had to get on-board with reality and leave my expectations behind.
You should too because he’s crafted another wildly idiosyncratic adventure around Mia’s (Teele Kaljuvee-O'Brock) last high school summer. Unsure of what she wants to do and to which colleges she should apply, her hope is to clear her mind with a fun month spent away from home (and Ivo Uukkivi’s Dad and Anne Paluver’s Grandma) alongside an old friend Grete (Johanna-Aurelia Rosin) who already graduated and has been studying abroad. A lot happens in a year, though. Whereas Mia is still the straight-A, straight edge student, Grete has evolved to sex, drugs, and Sarah (Hannah Gross).
So, rather than be one half of a whole, Mia becomes the third wheel attached to Grete and Sarah’s party. Anytime she tries to engage her friend in something she thinks is cool, Sarah interrupts and steals her attention. Then the boys arrive. Then the alcohol. Finally, Mia (who already went out of her way not to ditch Grete when Sissi Nylia Benita’s newcomer asks despite being ditched herself) gets fed up with being judged as the quiet girl in the corner and goes inside to use her neural VR device to play “Extreme Dating” and unwitting bring Dr. Mindfulness (Ciaron Davies) into their lives.
There’s a line during the opening prologue about an open-air zoo where the animals learn to forget they’re in captivity that resonates once we see how technology is used by Mia and the others. It’s similar to how we use it today—volunteering our data and identity to corporations and the government in exchange for the convenience of instant social interactions. We are captive to the terms and conditions we do not read (but love to get angry about when someone finally points out the fine print). We accept our exploitation as an unavoidable cost to our freedom.
Llansó alludes to this via an employee of the enigmatic Eleusis company who is surveilling (and laughing at) everything that goes on just like the Interpol detectives (Katariina Unt’s Katrin and Steve Vanoni’s Jack—the most Llansó characters of the bunch) searching for the entity behind a potential cyber-crime. Add the blind trust we give to online purveyors selling us goods that they themselves are reselling with less knowledge and the journey taken by these women can’t help but end in tragedy … or salvation depending on whether you believe the product is providing them entry to a new plane of existence rather than simply erasing them from this one.
It’s peer pressure. Escapism. Experimentation. It’s a desire to rebel against authority and a spiritual awakening. Do we know what’s going on? Surely not. While INFINITE SUMMER might be the best looking Llansó film of the three I’ve seen, it’s also the most confounding at face value. Just because we can sense the ideas swirling at the back of the narrative doesn’t mean we fully grasp the construct he’s projected them upon. But that’s also part of the appeal. To go with the flow, experience the first-person shifts to app-generated emotion-based meditation, and enjoy the eccentric comedy only Llansó can deliver.
- 7/10
ODDITY
(Quebec premiere)
“How McCarthy exposes his truths is more effective than the plausibility and narrative soundness of them, but I'd rather that than the other way around.”
– Full thoughts at HHYS.
PÁRVULOS
(world premiere)
It’s up to Salvador (Farid Escalante Correa) to protect his two younger brothers amidst the apocalypse now. Between the monster they’ve caught and hidden in the basement and the ones roaming the wild outside their house, death seems like an inevitability no matter how many precautions he takes. With no other adults around and only one leg, Salvador needs Oliver’s (Leonardo Cervantes) help to do most things and he can’t yet trust Benja (Mateo Ortega Casillas) to not make matters worse via youthful curiosity. But if they just hold on a little longer, maybe their parents will return. Maybe a cure will be discovered.
An obvious commentary on the COVID pandemic, director Isaac Ezban and co-writer Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes’ PÁRVULOS takes place in a world ravaged by disease. Humanity survived the first wave thanks to hastily made vaccines, but the virus kept mutating and the Band-Aids kept losing their effectiveness. Eventually, the science couldn’t keep up with nature and a last-ditch effort to save the species came via the form of an untested vaccine whose side effect was zombification. The original ailment is therefore no longer a concern—just the undead seeking to feed on living flesh.
It’s a dire situation, but Salvador and his brothers are surviving. Forcing these kids to make life or death decisions is an intriguing avenue considering most zombie movies deal with the politics and morality of adults. They don’t know what they don’t know, so sentimentality often proves their main motivation. And it gets them in trouble as much as it provides them opportunity to see how things might not be so black and white. They want to protect the beast they have locked up. It’s like a pet to them. Maybe they can tame it. Maybe it can one day protect them. Or maybe it will be their demise. Not that they don’t have other worries.
Ezban’s film is expertly structured to constantly expand our scope of this fictional Earth. At first, it’s just three boys hanging on by a thread. Then we learn they aren’t quite alone both through danger with the potential for good (Norma Flores and Horacio F. Lazo’s undead) and good with the potential for danger (Carla Adell’s Valeria). And beyond just the threat of what this virus did to humanity on a biological level also lies its psychological effect. Because the zombies aren’t what any of them fear most. No, true terror arrives in response to the so-called “trumpeters.” Are they another type of monster? Or are they the result of mankind’s desperation to give meaning to horror?
So, with that expansion of the mythology through the introduction of new characters also comes an increase in violence and gore. What was once off-screen soon pivots to blood-soaked terror while innocence is replaced by the necessary evil that’s inherent to protecting one’s own above all else. As the bookending voiceover narration states, “the only natural constants are family and change.” Chaos may reign, but family is forever. That means not letting anything get in the way of keeping this brotherhood alive by altering the definition of being a compassionate Samaritan from avoiding sins altogether to committing them in service of each other.
PÁRVULOS gets extremely dark as a result. Much darker than you’d pretend to expect at the beginning. Because even though we watch Salvador kill a dog and walk past a severed torso hanging on a wall, the camaraderie and choices these boys make at the start are justified and, in many cases, funny when you consider context (domesticating zombies can never not include comedic elements). As soon as their unsafe plans take a turn towards tragedy, however, there’s no going back. The descent to all-out carnage is unrelenting as the body count increases and the tone turns from hopeful delusion to bittersweet grief. Because there’s no going back. There’s only the fight to maintain what little you have left.
- 7/10
THE ROUNDUP: PUNISHMENT
(Quebec premiere)
“This one might be the tamest so far (I still haven't seen THE OUTLAWS), but it's still a lot of fun. Park Ji-hwan steals the show. Kim Mu-yeol is brutally menacing. And Don Lee is having a blast.”
– Full thoughts at HHYS.
STEPPENWOLF
(North American premiere)
“I laughed out loud a few times during STEPPENWOLF and I'm certain Yerzhanov intended for me to do so [despite its brutality]. That's how unhinged Aitzhanov's character and performance are.”
– Full thoughts at HHYS.
THE TENANTS
[Seibja]
(Canadian premiere)
Shin-dong (Kim Dea-geon) is about to be evicted by a child dubbed “Mr. Bastard” in his phone. Why? Because the boy and his mother want to remodel the building. He tries to tell Shin-dong that it’s for his own good. That he shouldn’t still be there anyway and that this is an opportunity to upgrade. Except, of course, that Shin-dong can’t upgrade. He can barely afford this tiny apartment in a highly polluted Seoul despite having zero social life beyond hologram calls with a friend dubbed “Mr. Dork” who may or may not be AI-generated considering how often Shin-dong simply hangs-up on him.
Well, Shin-dong should be nicer to Mr. Dork considering he provides an answer to his woes. Because of how poor conditions are in the not-so-unbelievable future setting of Yoon Eun-kyoung’s THE TENANTS, there are options to put a wrench in a landlord’s plans by becoming a landlord yourself. If Shin-dong rents space out, either via Wolwolse (subletting a single room) or Cheonjangse (subletting the ceiling crawlspace), the building’s owners will need to consider all those other tenants in their eviction process. Maybe it’s not really enough to stop them, but it is a lot of additional red tape to decide it might not be worth the trouble.
Unlike a traditional horror film, Yoon uses horror tropes in very satirical ways. For instance: Shin-dong’s advertisement isn’t up for a minute before he gets his first prospective resident. And when the stranger says he’ll stop by to check the place out that night, the doorbell rings as soon as the clock turns 9pm as though he was waiting to press the button. If that’s not creepy enough, Shin-dong opens the door to a giant of a man (Heo Dong-won) and his new, diminutive bride. The husband talks as if they’ve been friends forever. The wife perpetually smiles with a face-contorting squint that looks painful. Have these two arrived from a parallel universe? Are they going to kill Shin-dong during the night?
Considering they reject his offer of the living room and instead request the bathroom as their permanent residence, nothing is off-the-table. Cue the jump scares of him standing above Shin-dong’s bed at night or her recreating the JU-ON poster by staring through the cracked open bathroom doorway and you can’t help laughing at how strangely this dynamic progresses. Because these two aren’t Wolwolse novices like Shin-dong. They know the rules much better—almost to the point where they might be manipulating him to secure the upper-hand in a relationship where he should have control. Add a third tenant in the ceiling, stolen property, and a violent streak and Shin-dong is suddenly ready to do whatever he can to break the lease he desperately fought to retain.
Without saying too much, I’ll simply mention that the prospect of a promotion with new lodging included sparks a chain of events that seems beneficial for all parties until actions prove everyone involved have very different priorities. And so, we remember the words spoken at the beginning, words that also adorn the poster: “What keeps you from leaving?” The answer is almost always money. It’s like when idiot conservatives tell poverty-line Americans to “just move” as though people are lining up to purchase homes that now find themselves on the path of ever-worsening, global warming-induced weather phenomena.
The system teases us with the potential of prosperity as a means to overwork and underpay. It creates a false sense of supply and demand that pits employees against each other for promotions that are ultimately dissolved once all the work to win it is complete. And much like poor, white Red Staters voting for a party that blatantly enriches itself off their continued misfortune, those like Shin-dong pretend they have options by reminding themselves others have it worse. It doesn’t matter that they’re one bad day closer to a “ceiling person” than they’ll ever be to becoming a millionaire, the lie deludes them into believing their ship will come in. They feed the machine and receive nothing but empty hope in return.
It leads to a memorable finale wherein Shin-dong finds himself entering his ceiling for the last signature he needs to leave. This is where the true horror begins because all the frustration he’s laughed off to this point force him to wonder if he’s been the Cheonjangse this whole time. Is the result a dream? An awakening to the truth? Or the futile reality we’re all doomed to experience if we ever dare to think we have what it takes to ascend. Because those other people who tried and failed just didn’t work hard enough or didn’t know the “trick.” No, unless you’re that one-in-a-million with an unbeatable luck streak, there’s no getting out. You’re either born with money or marry into money. The rest of us are cogs maintaining the status quo of our own inferiority.
- 8/10
Cinematic F-Bombs:
This week saw ONCE UPON A DEADPOOL (2018) added to the archive since the amount of time it would take to do an R-rated DEADPOOL is too much to fathom. (cinematicfbombs.com)
Fred Savage almost dropping an f-bomb in ONCE UPON A DEADPOOL.
New Releases This Week:
(Review links where applicable)
Opening Buffalo-area theaters 8/2/24 -
AURON MEIN KAHAN DUM THA at Regal Elmwood & Transit
CATVIDEOFEST 2024 at North Park Theatre
COUP! at Regal Transit
DAARU NA PEENDA HOVE at Regal Elmwood
THE FIRING SQUAD at Regal Transit
HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON at Dipson McKinley, Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge & Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
KNEECAP at Regal Transit, Galleria & Quaker
PEAK SEASON at Regal Transit
TRAP at Dipson Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge & Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
Streaming from 8/2/24 -
DIVINITY – Shudder on 8/2
“DIVINITY will not be something you can soon forget. It's not action-packed, but it's never boring. Not if you open yourself to its themes of awakening.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – Hulu on 8/2
MODERN ASTERS: SS RAJAMOULI – Netflix on 8/2
REBEL MOON 1 & 2: DIRECTOR’S CUT - Netflix on 8/2
SAVING BIKINI BOTTOM: THE SANDY CHEEKS MOVIE – Netflix on 8/2
ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES – Max on 8/3
LOLO AND THE KID – Netflix on 8/7
ONE FAST MOVE – Prime on 8/8
Now on VOD/Digital HD -
DADDIO (7/30)
THE DEVIL’S BATH (7/30)
“Nothing is strictly horror per se, but the psychological and emotional toll definitely creates an air of anxious uncertainty. A good portion of that is also conjured through Plaschg's performance.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
GHOSTLIGHT (7/30)
“The line Dan walks is thin and you can feel that O'Sullivan wrote his trajectory through the character's voice to discover which side he'll fall at the same time he does.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
JANET PLANET (7/30)
THE PEOPLE’S JOKER (7/30)
“It's impossible not to get swept up in the creativity and sheer chutzpah necessary to get a film like this off the ground, let alone in theaters. No matter your opinion on the final result, it's undeniably impressive.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE (7/30)
TOUCH (7/30)
TREASURE (7/30)
#AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD (8/2)
BOOT CAMP (8/2)
MAXXXINE (8/2)
THE VOURDALAK (8/2)
“While the somber tone mixed with dark humor is great and the ending proves sufficiently bittersweet and damning, that slurping of bloody cotton is still what sticks with me most. What a horrific sense memory to be burned onto my brain.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.