If Cloud Atlas and Adaptation had a lovechild who grew up to be the coolest kid in school, it would be named Zoom. This feature directed by Pedro Morelli and written by Matt Hansen dazzles with kinetic style, effectively weaving three narratives together into a singular study of the standards of beauty and the creation of artist works.

“God exists. He lives in Brussels.”

With those lines, The Brand New Testament begins.

Fueled by a playful exuberance reminiscent of Jeunet’s Amélie, this new film by Jaco Van Dormael explores the writing of a “Brand New Testament” by the 10-year-old Ea after she leaves behind her curmudgeon of a father, who is in fact God (the Old Testament one through and through, delighting in creating the annoyances that plague mankind from his relic of a desktop PC) and her quiet mother who sputters around their drab apartment embroidering, vacuuming, and admiring her baseball card collection. Ea wasn’t the first child to leave the household. Her brother JC (i.e., Jesus Christ) left and never returned, though a statue of him comes to life in Ea’s bedroom, offering himself as a sounding board for his younger sister.

One of the highlights of last year’s Fantastic Fest was Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary about a film that never got made. It’s fitting that a stand out from this year’s festival is a documentary on a studio that perhaps made too many movies. The studio was Cannon, and the crowd-pleasing documentary is Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

There are few things as satisfying as a fresh and exciting new horror film. It’s rare these days to find one with a story that stands on its own, one that honors its influences without falling back on post-modern meta genre commentary, and one that genuinely gives you the creeps. With David Robert Mitchell‘s new indie horror flick, It Follows, we find such a rarity, with well-placed, jump-from-your-seat scares and bona fide unsettling chills that sink in and stay with you long after the credits have ended.

Welcome back, Kevin Smith.

We just finished the Tusk screening at this year’s Fantastic Fest, and I’m filled with the warmth I can only liken to a lapsed Catholic being moved by mass. Once a die hard Kevin Smith fan (and, as such, a Kevin Smith apologist), I enthusiastically wore Jay and Silent Bob t-shirts every day, tracked down every international Chasing Amy movie poster I could find, attended every Vulgarthon film festival, and many, many other nerdy endeavors. Over the past decade that enthusiasm waned as Smith’s output declined in quality. When I heard he was retiring from filmmaking, my reaction was little more than a shrug.

An adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune by filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky was perhaps too bold, too incredible to ever come into existence. The jovial and boisterous Jodorowsky, the director behind the surreal cult classics El Topo and Holy Mountain, set out to make a film he believed could change the world, perhaps the cinematic equivalent of the monolith in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, heralding the birth of a Star Child in our reality.