After 25 years in prison, Mi-Hee (Yunjin Kim) is released to serve out the rest of her sentence in her own home, where decades earlier her husband was killed and her son disappeared. She was convicted of killing them both. Though she can’t explain the events of the night that irrevocably altered her life, she maintains her innocence and still seeks to find out what happened to her son. With the help of Priest Choi (Taecyeon), the centuries-old mysteries of the house start to come to light.
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Replace - A Fantasia International Film Festival 2017 Review
The beautiful Kira (Rebecca Forsythe) isn’t doing so well. What started as a small patch of dead skin is spreading at an alarming rate across her body. She’s also suffering from memory loss. She seeks the help of Dr. Rafaela Crober (Barbara Crampton), who appears concerned but not alarmed. Fearing the loss of her beauty, Kira grows desperate. Lotions and medication aren’t doing anything. But a skin graft from a living donor provide a temporary remedy and Kira spirals out of control as she continues to perform skin the grafts on herself with the aid of some very unwilling donors.
Read MoreAnimals - A Fantasia International Film Festival 2017 Review
With Anna (Birgit Minichmayr) and Nick’s (Philipp Hochmair) marriage on shaking ground following his affair with a neighbor, the couple venture to a cabin in the Swiss Alps. In addition to providing them some much needed time together, the trip is meant to boost their creative endeavors. Anna, a writer, is struggling with a novel and Nick, a chef, is intent on researching the region’s cuisine. But the tone for the getaway is set early on when they hit a sheep on a country road en route to the cabin. A series of increasingly inexplicable occurrences all but guarantee the couple will not be having a peaceful time for which they hoped. Meanwhile Mischa (Mona Petri), the woman they hired to watch their apartment, is being harassed by Harald (Michael Ostrowski), a man convinced she is his deceased ex-girlfriend Andrea, the neighbor with whom Nick had the affair. Like with Anna and Nick, reality appears to be crumbling around Mischa.
Read MoreThe Honor Farm - A Fantasia International Film Festival 2017 Review
After a truly disappointing prom night, Lucy (Olivia Grace Applegate) and her lifelong best friend Annie (Katie Folger) agree to tag along with some classmates and take mushrooms at an abandoned–and possibly haunted–prison work farm in the woods. The ringleader of the group, Laila (Dora Madison) is intent on holding a séance, though her cousin JD (Louis Hunter) may be a little too distracted by the presence of Lucy, who is equally drawn to him. As the drugs kick in, the group wanders through the seemingly empty property, but soon discover they aren’t alone, and even without the drugs, not everything is as it appears to be.
Read MoreThe Birth of an Artist – A Review of Endless Poetry
“But there are poems on the ground! This wonderful work will be lost!”
Until a few years ago, the notion of a new Alejandro Jodorowsky film seemed far fetched. The acclaimed artist had not made a film since 1990’s The Rainbow Thief. While other endeavors occupied him, a new film never seemed to be one. Then came the surprising and well-received documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune, which reunited him with his old producer Michel Seydoux and lead to the production of The Dance of Reality, a surreal look back at Jodorowsky’s childhood in Tocopilla, Chile, and the relationship with his father Jaime Jodorowsky.
Read MoreThe Alejandro Jodorowsky Primer
No word could better describe Alejandro Jodorowsky than hyperbole. He’s the embodiment of enthusiastic and emphatic energy unfettered from the physical world. He dances on a plane of existence to which we should all strive.
Read MoreThe Romp by the River – A Review of Lost in Paris
“We are here to say goodbye to… Sorry, I have a blank.”
Fiona (Fiona Gordon), a Canadian librarian in a small and snowy town, is called away to Paris by her 88-year-old aunt Martha (Emmanuelle Riva), who is about to be sent off to a nursing home against her will. Fiona rushes across the Atlantic to discover her aunt is nowhere to be found. But that’s only the start of her problems, as she loses all her belongings after accidentally falling into the river Siene. Lost and alone, Fiona struggles to get by, only able to speak a little French. Her things find their way into the hands of Dom (Dominique Abel), a local homeless man who sleeps in a tent at the river’s edge. Fiona and Dom’s paths cross more than once as she searches for her aunt, who continues to do some of her own wandering to avoid being taken away. The film charms from start to finish as the trio dance their way from one misadventure to the next in Fiona’s attempts to reunite with Martha.
Read MoreFear and Laughing Near Las Vegas – A Review of Middle Man
“You know what the hardest part of cutting someone into pieces is? It’s the bones.”
Following his mother’s death, the middle-aged Lenny Freeman (Park and Recreation‘s Jim O’Heir) leaves to confines of his safe life as a CPA and sets off to Las Vegas in his mother’s ’53 Oldsmobile to take a shot at his long-time dream of becoming a stand-up comic. Naively hiring a stranger named Hitch (Andrew J. West) as his manager, Lenny soon finds himself in way over head. He’s forced to confront the fact there’s no audience for the wholesome 1950s humor on which he was reared. To elicit laughs at a dive comedy club on the outskirts of Vegas, he has to cultivate far more sinister material that juxtaposes his usual harmless demeanor. The laughs come a plenty but at the cost of much spilled blood. The lights of Vegas glow in the distance but it’s becoming increasingly unlikely Lenny is ever going to reach them.
Read MoreA Colossal Interview with Nacho Vigalondo
Filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo defies classification. He’s a sensation that exists somewhere between a contagious laugh and a sinister whisper. He’s a rare element formed by ancient mystics using unknowable alchemy. Nacho is hyperbole personified. Both he and his films exert a powerful gravity that pulls you in immediately.
Read MoreThe Ultimate Party Game – A Review of A Game of Death
An afternoon of partying turns into a bloodbath for a group of teens when they decide to play a mysterious board game, the Game of Death. The high-stakes game requires them to kill two dozen people or face a truly horrific demise themselves. The clock is ticking and survival trumps loyalty as the group embarks on a violent killing spree.
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