At Fantastic Fest, the largest genre film festival in the United States, you tend to get two types of films. First, there’s the wacky, chimerical, excess-for-the-sake-of-it, ratings-be-damned insanity. Then you get the very pensive, David Fincher- or David Lynch-type narratives. A Dark Song, the debut effort from Irish film director Liam Gavin, is very much the latter. An expertly constructed film, and one that moves at a snail’s pace, asks you to not just have the patience of the main character, Sophia (Catherine Walker), but also have faith that the payoff is worth all the prep. A Dark Song is a claustrophobic picture about a woman who, following the traumatic loss of her son, has…
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[Fantastic Fest Review]…Terry Teo
Four years ago, Danger 5 screened at Fantastic Fest to a welcome response. In 2014, Wastelander Panda was met with similar acclaim. Now, a similarly entertaining and fairly wacky television show arrives, this time from Housebound writer/director Gerard Johnstone no less. We’d like to introduce Terry Teo. Whether you’re familiar with book series that inspired this (and the popular ’80s children’s television series it spawned) is irrelevant. In less than 60 seconds, we learn a whole lot about Terry, the teenage cat burglar, as soon as he opens his mouth. After entering a property that is clearly not his dwelling, Terry takes off his shoes and proclaims, “I know I’m robbing the place, but that’s no reason to be disrespectful.” And so…
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[Fantastic Fest Review]…Dearest Sister
People say that there is art through adversity. As such, to begin, it’s worth stating that Mattie Do‘s latest feature is the 13th film to come out of Laos… in its history. Furthermore, it is worth noting that she is a female filmmaker in a Marxist state. So while the country is fraught with local censorship, Do is able to deliver quality films in a place where there is no film industry or infrastructure for that kind of entertainment. Creative struggles are one thing, but judging the finished product, Dearest Sister is an admittedly hard film to review. The premise seems straightforward, yet vague enough to pique your interest: “After moving to the city, a poor…
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G-S-T Review…Lazer Team
One of the darlings of Fantastic Fest, and others like it, this sci-fi buddy comedy – about four morons being Earth’s only hope against pending galactic doom (would you expect any less from a genre film?) – is everything you could want in a midnight movie. As such, it joins a long line of preposterous romps, namely Idiocracy, Hobo With A Shotgun, Machete Kills, and Turbo Kid, and all the zaniness they can deliver. Lazer Team is a modern yarn, but the premise has a decidedly throwback vibe which will make any fan of the ’80s happy – especially the absurdly over-the-top elements. It’s highly irreverent, and tries to channel a Nation Lampoon level of humor, but sadly, the results…
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Off the Shelf…Ernesto Díaz Espinoza’s ‘Redeemer’
Genre filmmaking staple, and Fantastic Fest regular, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza has been working with Marco Zaror for years. With each succeeding film, the two have been crafting yarns meant to be a little more serious than their B-Movie homages and send-ups from the glory days of VHS. Even if, like us, you’re a fan of Espinoza (check out our review of Bring Me the Head of Machine Gun Woman here), the Dark Sky trailers that precede this, his fifth feature, don’t give a lot of confidence. Yet one need not worry, this is not the pinnacle of Espinoza’s career. It’s an opportunity to let Marko Zaror be a badass, again. These days,…
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G-S-T Review…Man From Reno
Editor’s Note: This review has been republished. It originally posted with the rest of our reviews and coverage at Fantastic Fest this past September. Even though it’s a slow-boil mystery, Man From Reno is film that engages quickly and keeps you transfixed. Like the hard-boiled detective films, and noir fiction which inspired it, Dave Boyle‘s involving story is layered with sly, pensive and effective reveals. Further, it’s punctuated by just the right amount of wrong elements that help keep us in suspense for the duration. In San Francisco, hugely popular Japanese novelist Aki (played by Ayako Fujitani) becomes caught up in something more elaborate than one of her best-selling books. On…
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G-S-T Review…It Follows
Editor’s Note: This review has been republished. It originally posted with the rest of our reviews and coverage at Fantastic Fest this past September. The darling hit of the 2014 Fantastic Fest, the overly pensive and highly original stalker film, It Follows, is sure to pick up fans wherever it screens. In an effort to stay progressive, and put a one-of-a-kind stamp on the horror genre, David Robert Mitchell actually gives us a story that feels somewhat like a throwback. The last time we were at the Fest, writer Robert Cargill and director Scott Derrickson told us that the genre had been dumbed down to mindless teen slashers. Well, they set out to help fight…
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G-S-T Review…My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn
Editor’s Note: This review has been republished in conjunction with the theatrical and the VOD release on February 27, 2015. It originally posted with the rest of our reviews and coverage at Fantastic Fest this past September. When a filmmaker sets out to tell a story, their goals are simple: get the ideas they have in their head on to the screen, and have the audience enjoy it. Seems straightforward enough, but there are a multitude of challenges to achieve either goal. Really, the odds are stacked against every filmmaker simply because we the audience are becoming increasingly tougher to satisfy. A lot of it comes from how much content is…
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Video Interview…’My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn’ Director Liv Corfixen
Editor’s Note: This interview has been republished in conjunction with the theatrical and the VOD release on February 27, 2015. It originally posted with the rest of our reviews and coverage at Fantastic Fest this past September. Fantastic Fest is a festival where anything can happen. Further, while there, you can meet just about anyone including one-of-a-kind filmmakers like Nicolas Winding Refn. To calm your nerves, no, he wasn’t there promoting a new film (though he is working on one). In fact, this intense and uncompromising auteur is the subject of his wife’s film. Directed by Liv Corfixen, My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn is a very personal making-of documentary that…
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G-S-T Review…The Babadook
Editor’s Note: This review has been republished. It originally posted with the rest of our reviews and coverage at Fantastic Fest this past September. Back in 2012, director Scott Derrickson and writer C. Robert Cargill screened Sinister (click to read our review). Critic Brian Salisbury introduced the film to the eager Fantastic Fest crowd, and, very fittingly, called it “nightmare fuel“. Well, in the same vein as that film (and other modern horror game changers like Insidious, and The Conjuring), Australia’s own The Babadook shows that there are still untapped areas in the human psyche that, when tapped just right, are plenty capable of scaring even hardened horror fans. The Babadook is written…
