Montreal Fantasia Festival 2020 Archives - Page 2 of 2

27 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘Free Country’ is a stark, engaging mystery

Reconciling the past with a new and different present is a difficult task. A radical change in circumstances can upend your entire world and all the rules you live by. This is, in part, the setup for Free Country, director Christian Alvart’s murder mystery thriller.

Set in Eastern Germany, just two years after Germany was no longer two countries, two detectives come to a small town to investigate the disappearance of two teenage girls. Patrick, the detective from the West, is an idealist moulded by the democracy he’s lived under his entire life. Markus, the detective from the East, is a brute with a dark past and cynicism held over from a career under Soviet rule.

These opposing perspectives create conflict between the two men as they try to solve the mystery. As a result, each is forced to examine themselves and question whether they are genuinely the men they believe themselves to be.

26 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘Survival Skills’ is way more than just a weird VHS nostalgia trip

There are many ways a film might examine some aspects of our society. Whether drama, comedy, horror, or science fiction, each genre provides a different lens to examine what and who we are. Satire is the most powerful of these lenses if used correctly. By taking some subject and twisting it to an extreme position, we can expose some of the absurdity of our world.

Survival Skills is one of those movies. Taking the form of a lost 1980s police training tape, it follows Jim (Vayu O’Donnell), a childlike rookie police officer going through his first day. Things take a turn, though, when the narrator (Stacy Keach) walks him through a domestic violence call, and he begins to disagree with the proper procedure.

26 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘A Witness Out of the Blue’ is a solid action thriller

When you think about Hong Kong Action, many people automatically think of martial arts. This is a bit of a shame because there is so much more on offer from the cinema of Hong Kong. Case in point, A Witness Out of the Blue, is a cops and robbers story.

Opening with a gang of thieves storming a jewellery store only to be cornered by the police as they finish filling their bags, some quick thinking leads to the thieves escape but arrange in their wake. Then, three months later, a gang member is murdered, and the only witness to the crime is a parrot.

Is that a hell of a setup? Yes! Does it live up to that setup? Mostly!

25 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘Climate of the Hunter’ is dark, weird, stylistic throwback

There’s no denying that Climate of the Hunter is a weird movie that won’t be for everyone. Set in a group of remote cabins, it concerns two sisters, Alma and Elizabeth, who are there to reconnect with their old friend Wesley.

Wesley has been travelling the world, is an author and a storyteller. He has fantastic hair, a deep, gravelly voice, and a distinct sense of style. The women are, in a word, obsessed.

As the story goes on things, get weirder and weirder, though. First, the sisters are competing for Wesley, who seems to want them both. Also, Wesley sleeps all day and has a severe allergy to garlic.

24 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘Bleed With Me’ is a slow, but sure, burn set in the Canadian wilderness

There is always an interesting dynamic between new friends. Some people take to one another immediately, but new friendships usually take time and energy to create and strengthen. Time needs to be spent, conversations must be had, and trust needs to be built.

This is where we find the three characters in Bleed With Me: in the no man’s land between having met and having forged a real relationship. Emily (Lauren Beatty) has invited Rowan (Lee Marshall) to her family cabin to spend time with her and her boyfriend Brendan (Aris Tyros). It is at first awkward, as any trip like this between tentative friends might be.

Emily and Rowan have a connection, but that connection is not yet fully defined. After their first night spent drinking, Rowan wakes up feeling the worse for wear, and with mysterious cuts on her forearm, the question becomes how will it be defined?

24 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘The Columnist’ is a revenge story we’ve all fantasized about

“It’s just the internet; it isn’t real.”

“Never read the comments.”

“It was only a joke.”

If you have ever spent any time on the internet, on social media, forums, or any site where people can leave comments, these phrases should sound familiar. The internet is the great democratizer, rendering everyone’s voice the same volume no matter what they say. The problem is that many people only have awful things to say.

This is the world we inhabit. It’s the same in the world of Femke Boot, a successful columnist for a Dutch website and magazine. She writes, and people comment. Femke doesn’t live in our world, which means that when she has had enough, she has really had enough.

23 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘Perdida’ is a satisfying thriller

There’s a lot I wish I could tell you about Perdida, but it’s one of those thrillers full of twists and turns, and almost everything I want to tell you is probably a spoiler. What I can tell you is the following.

Eric, a man in crisis, meets Fabiana, a waitress serving him whiskeys all night. Eric is obviously going through something. He ends up blackout drunk and passes out on her couch. After awkwardly running out, he returns to apologise, and they begin a torrid affair.

Fabiana joins him at his luxurious, remote house and over several days, she comes to enjoy the new man in her life and the comforts of his home. However, it quickly becomes apparent that something isn’t quite right. Something is definitely off between the weird groans coming from the pipes and the police officers who show up looking for Eric’s wife, Carolina.

It probably sounds like I am spoiling the movie, but rest assured that this is only a brief outline of the film’s first half-hour.

22 August 202022 August 2021

Fantasia Fest: John Carpenter Masterclass & Lifetime Achievement Award Livestream

Today as part of Fantasia 2020 John Carpenter is being given a lifetime achievement award. See the stream below the jump!

22 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘Crazy Samurai Musashi’ is a technical marvel, but exhausting

If there is one thing that a film nerd loves, it’s a good long take. A long take needs planning and rehearsal; the longer the long take, the more planning and rehearsal it will require.

Spielberg and Cuarón use them frequently. Martin Scorsese probably produced the most famous long-take scenes in Goodfellas, and Park Chan-wook produced one of Oldboy’s most famous action long takes. One of the more ambitious examples is the historical epic Russian Ark, which runs 96 minutes and is entirely one take.

The envelope is constantly being pushed in filmmaking, and Crazy Samurai Musashi aims to push it a little further. The film tells the story of a Samurai, Musashi, as he faces off against 588 opponents in a single 77-minute take.

And that’s pretty much the entire movie, for better or worse. Technically, it is one of the most impressive films I have seen all year, but the 77-minute scene is actually just exhausting, and not just for lead actor Tak Sakaguchi.

21 August 202023 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘Special Actors’ is a wacky good time

Imagine being an aspiring actor and suffering an anxiety affliction so severe that you collapse every time you are nervous or confronted. This is the plight of Kazuto (Kazuto Osawa) in Special Actors, the new film by Shinichiro Ueda.

Of course, that’s not the movie’s plot, and honestly, I am loathed to tell you much about the story. It involves a talent agency specialising in hiring actors out to real-life events, a family-owned inn, and a cult. That’s pretty much all I can tell you without taking an express train to spoiler country, but to say this movie gets a little wacky would be an understatement.

21 August 202018 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘Feels Good, Man’ asks if Pepe the Frog will ever be good again

Imagine for a moment that you have created something. Something good, something pure, something that draws influence from your own life and childhood. Now imagine that thing being taken from you and co-opted as a symbol of hate. That is precisely what happened to Matt Furie, creator of the now infamously well-known Pepe the Frog.

Director Arthur Jones’s documentary, Feels Good Man surveys the character’s history from creation to where he stands now and asks if Furie can ever reclaim his creation.

20 August 202018 September 2023

Fantasia Review: ‘The Reckoning’ is a disappointment

There might not be another movie with so timely a premise: a witch hunt during a plague. In these times of our society starting to address how we treat women and, you know, a plague, The Reckoning has a lot going for it right out of the gate.

Add to this writer and director Neil Marshall, a man with a history of putting out high-grade B-movies, and suddenly, you have a compelling sales pitch for a film.

I’m pointing all of this out because The Reckoning is a stunning example of a film with everything going for it but fails to capitalize on any of it.

20 August 202022 August 2021

Fantasia Review: ‘Clapboard Jungle’ takes a personal journey through the indie film business

There’s a romantic image of the indie film scene, of scrappy filmmakers bringing their artistic vision to the screen for the masses to enjoy and breaking all the rules to do so. That image isn’t inaccurate so much as it is only the fun parts. The whole picture includes long days, hard work, and lots of schmoozing and glad-handing.

Justin McConnell has been working within the indie film business in Canada for most of his life and has had some successes and setbacks. Over the course of five years, he documented his journey through the business, revealing just how hard it can be to get to your breakout moment.

8 August 202022 August 2021

Heads up: Fantasia Festival 2020 is coming!

Let’s face it: big crowds of people all in one place aren’t going to be a good idea for a while. The coronavirus has changed the way we go to the movies and it has changed the way we go to festivals.

One bright spot, if there is one at all, is that festivals going online means that they’re easier to attend. Case in point, this year I’ll be covering Fantasia Festival, Montreal’s annual festival of genre films.

There are a ton of great films on the program this year, and I am excited to start watching. There will also be some cool special events. John Carpenter will be given a lifetime achievement award, for example, and Mike Flannigan (writer-director of Doctor Sleep, and Netflix The Haunting of Hill House) giving a talk on adapting books to screen.

There’s a lot to look forward to, and with the entire festival being online this year it will be available to people across Canada.

As always, if you enjoy reading my work here please considering becoming a patron and helping me continue to do it.

Look for coverage to begin at the start of the festival, on August 20th.

Awesome Friday!

Tag: Montreal Fantasia Festival 2020