Fantastic Fest 2018

Back in Austin Texas for another run at Fantastic Fest, the festival dedicated to horror, action, thrillers, and the just plain weird from throughout the world. With several premieres and with cast, directors, writers and producers in attendance, all in the movie palace that is the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, there's not a place I'd rather be for the 8 days and 37 movies I got through. Some truly exceptional film hit the screen this year, and it was a delight to be in the audience for it.

Short writeups for all 37 films follow. I'll write longer ones if/when these show up in Australian cinemas.

Film 1 - Halloween - 40 years later Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield - Laurie Strode is ready - great horror sequel with lotsa good tension and a great final line. 4 stars

Film 2 - The Unthinkable - family drama gets bigger scale as disasters overtake Sweden. I liked the big story here but the lead character becomes increasingly petty and awful and it made it awkward to watch this film through possibly the least attractive angle. 3

Film 3 - In Fabric - new fill from the maker of Duke of Burgundy and Barbarian Sound Studios. Very 70s style thriller about a dress described as "artery red" and the people effected by it. Erotic, hilarious, tense, strange and bizarre. 4

Film 4 - the wolf house - chilean/German animation about colonisation, individuality and creeping everybody out. Found this a little too "wow that's a lot of homemade art" - it clearly took a lot of effort to physically realise this, but as storytelling this came across that little bit too opaquely to make an impact with me. 2.5

Film 5 - Border - a Swedish customs agent is particularly good at drawing out people with contraband but finds herself drawn to a man who crosses her desk. This is a film with huge surprises and depth and emotion and I can't say anything else except 4.

Film 6 - Apostle - brother goes looking for his sister living on a cultist island in 1905 - feels a little overstuffed but has good action moments although less than directors previous (Raid + raid 2). The plot feels a little muddled and there's not exactly a good control of tone - this can get a bit weird for the sake of it. 3.5

Film 7 - One cut of the dead - Japanese zombie one cut story goes beyond delightful in ways that completely surprise. This is absolutely a stay to the very end movie. And you will think I'm insane rating this as highly as I do in the first 15 minutes. 5.

Film 8 - You might be the killer - guy at summer camp starts seeing victims pile up, calls friend who knows their slasher flicks - two likable leads but this doesn't offer much unfamiliar and it's more lightly amusing than wildly hilarious. 2.5

Film 9 - After the screaming stops - Bros, the boyband reform for an O2 arena gig but sibling rivalry continues to play against them - Music Documentaries often contain a fair bit of Spinal Tap, and this is no exception -but it contains enough spinal tap to be both hilarious and sorta moving. Matt Goes in particular is an inspired idiot. 4

Film 10 - Slut in a good way - Quebecois coming of age as a group of girls deal with the complications of teen sex - funny and with incisive ideas on female sexuality and gorgeously black and white. 3.5

Film 11 - Hold the Dark - wolf expert goes to remote Alaska to find an abducted child but more is going on - bigger scale follow up to Green Room is proof bigger sometimes means bloated. It meanders too much and gets too fond of digressions. There's good sequences (particularly one in the middle of the film) but a messy whole. 2.5

Film 12 - Overlord - a ww2 squad is looking to blow up a transmitter but find strange experiments on site - this is big budget pulp action horror and serves up a decent platoon -on-a-mission plus monsters - but after a great opening on board a plane full of parratroopers in the midst of german gunfire, some of the rest feels a bit more rote and by the numbers. 3

Film 13 - the standoff at sparrow creek - a militia has been accused of firing on a police funeral and they gather to find out who's guilty and who can be framed - reasonable small scale thriller (most of the film takes place in one warehouse) and with a good climax but a bit laboured getting to the climax. 3

Film 14 - Shadow - Zhang Yimou directs a story with a commander and his secret double determined to reclaim a city for their king - peak late Yimou (this is up with things like Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower), and while the opening is a little heavy going with all the chinese politics (though a gorgeous black-and-grey design scheme keeps the attention) the final battle when it comes is strange, beautiful and satisfying. 4

Film 15 - Dogman - dog groomer is dominated by local bully until things go too far - strong and intimate with a great supporting dog cast -4

Film 16 - secret screening - suspiria - ballet school in 77 Germany gets a new pupil and things get weird and nasty - beautiful and brutal and strange - it's political and personal and thoughtful and gut grabbing - strong work 4.

Film 17 - the night comes for us - Indonesian action about a triad guy who tries to quit and the large amount of death that follows. So much violence, just enough plot, and thoroughly fun. It's also a Netflix original so should be visible by everyone and should be watched with a collection of your most violence-happy friends. 4.5

Film 18 - Deadwax -vinyl collectors find a record that is able to kill and must find where it comes from - this was fairly plodding with only a few decent moments - both leads in particular were quite dull 2

Film 19 - school's out - French talented and gifted class get a substitute teacher after their current one commits suicide during class - moody and intense and , I presume, a good demonstration of the psychological effects of spending time with a lot of teenage ennui - solid without tipping over to compelling, though results for teaching professionals may vary. 3

Film 20 - ladyworld - after a disaster 8 young women are stuck underground in a house. As the days pass insanity increases. This feels very student film but has its moments of ott insanity along with a wildly disconcerting sound design that had me look at other members of the audience wondering if there was something physically wrong with them. 2.5

Film 21 - Level 16 - girls are held in an orphanage waiting to be adopted but more is going on - it's very Canadian sci-fi but with some nice moments (in particular when the evil conspiracy turns out to be running less than smoothly) - 3.5

Film 22 - Mid 90s - young kid joins a skate crew and experiences growing up moments - great debut for Jonah Hill as writer director - heartbreaking and funny and full of unwise life choices - 4.5

Film 23 - Climax - Welcome to Gaspar Noe land. It's a dance movie. It's a drug movie. It's a sex and violence movie. It's extraordinarily packed with characters and incidents and it's compelling throughout. 5

Film 24 - Modest Heroes - collection of 3 Studio Ponoc anime shorts - last year's Mary and the witches flower suggested Ponoc was a slightly lesser Ghibli and the first short with two underwater child creatures continued that impression (in particular it had a bunch of crying underwater which seemed weird). But the middle short, Life ain't gonna lose, had a remarkable art style and a sweet story about a kid with an allergy to eggs that got my heart engaged. Story 3, Invisible, about an invisible man finding his place in society, was a bit messy with its metaphor but also pretty tight. 3 for the collection, 4.5 for the middle film

Film 25 - Quit your life - 1971 Korean revenge melodrama about a wrongfully executed man, his friend who tries to persuade the perpetrator to kill himself to save the wrongfully accused man's soul, and the widow who has gone blind with grief. Somewhat cheesy and the melodrama is very hefty to a ridiculous extent but enjoyable in its own nutso way. 3

Film 26 - The Perfection - a cellist returns to her tutor after time away looking after her dying mother - but her relationship with her replacement gets very complicated - twisted and a little bit schlocky but effective as it pulls repeated surprises and just how far this will go. 4

Film 27 - Tenacious D's Apocalypto - this has a lot of dick jokes and bad Schwartzanegger impersonations, all in hand drawn images. It also is goddamned hilarious. 4

Film 28 - Between Worlds - truck driver with a dead wife meets a mother whose daughter is near death, when her daughter recovers she starts behaving like the dead wife - this is Nic Cage exploitation in a bad way - it takes the out there line readings and broad performance but doesn't give proper background support to it so this feels like mid level Zalman King (guy who did 80s crap like Two Moon Junction, Wild Orchid and similar films that crashed Mickey Rourke's career. At one point Nic Cage's character reads a poem from a volume entitled"Memories by Nicolas Cage". I almost wanted to stick around for the q and a and say "how dare you" to the writer director but sleep seemed wiser. 1

Film 29 - I used to be normal - a boyband fangirls story - Australian documentary tracking four fans of different eras from The Beatles to One Direction and how their lives have been impacted by fandom in surprising ways. Very sweet natured look at fandom and appreciation over a range of women and years. Funny but not in a "laughing at the silly fans" way. 4

Film 30 - Holiday - a Danish group of friends gather on holiday but for one young woman bad things are on the horizon - this is sorta a film of two halves - the events before the bad thing are a bit vague (character relationships in particular are left unclear) - the bad thing itself has some technical issues where a prosthetic is a bit over obvious but after that the relationships crystallise and this becomes more compelling. 3

Film 31 - Donnybrook - various rednecks head to a big fight and along the way have smaller fights - this just felt grim a lot without anything in particular beyond "gee being poor sucks". Won best of the fest but not my thing. 2

Film 32 - Under the silver lake - a modern LA noir with a mysterious blonde, a missing billionaire, a number of mysterious conspiracies and oddness. Intriguing, a bit self indulgent and ultimately a bit silly but I enjoyed much of it anyway. It's playful rather than navel gazing most of the time which makes the difference. 3.5

Film 33 - Cam - Webcam girl Alice is pursuing greater popularity but extreme aftereffects start to mess with her chosen career - an effective black-mirror-ish thriller that aims to not demonise sex work but still demonises the clients a fair bit. It works OK but has a few plot bumps. 3

Film 34 - Chained for Life - on a film set a relationship develops between an actress and an actor that is affected by his deformity - an exploration of genre films use and misuse of disabled/impaired/unconventional performers - frequently funny and a fair bit meta. 3.5

Film 35 - The man who killed Don Quixote - yes I now admit it's really a movie. It's messy and inconsistent but there is magic in there that really works particularly in the relationship between Driver and Pryce. 3.5

Film 36 - Lords of Chaos - the story of the creation of Norwegian black metal , complete with suicide, church burning and generally foolish young men - interesting but it's weirdly un-Norwegian - the leads are Americans, it's in English and there's not a lot of social context or background to where this comes from. 3

Film 37 - Bad times at the El royale - Four strangers check into a hotel. They all have secrets and over one night they will find out secrets about each other and the hotel. I loved this noir flavoured thriller in a late 60s setting - at the centre it has a great launch performance for Cynthia Errivo, one of the best Jeff Bridges performances of recent times, and not a bum note anywhere. 5