Reviews
Evolution
Not every movie we managed to see this year’s Fantastic Fest could get a full review or discussion. There’s just too many and not enough time. However, we wanted to share as much as we could, so here are some quick thoughts and first impressions on films screened.
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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.
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“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.
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What’s in a trailer? If it’s a horror movie, it’s terror. It’s the exceptional fear of the narrative crammed into a span of two minutes. It evokes the primal need to experience the film, to tiptoe into the unknown and conquer your fears, all with a guarantee that you’ll pee your pants in the process. That’s exactly what the trailer for Goodnight, Mommy, a mysterious new Austrian horror film, accomplishes. The trailer lit up the internet like a house on fire last week, and with very good reason. It features a mummy-like bandaged mom, children in masks, a desolate setting, and most importantly, a giant roach going into a mouth, and a subsequent crunch. Aglow with midday light in milky, shadowed interiors, the trailer encapsulates the fear of something you once knew and loved turning into something foreign and terrifying right before your eyes. But does the movie behind this much-talked about trailer live up to its ominous expectations? Yes and no. We saw a rooftop pre-release screening at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a very cool venue, and very much worth the trek for those in other parts of the city. Their rooftop screening series hosts an outdoor setting which oddly added to the experience, as did the giant and enthusiastic crowd that came out for the showing.
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Being young parents is enough to drive you mad, and that’s just what happens in this quiet little indie from IFC. The story conquers new love, moving in together, getting married, meeting the family, and, finally, having a baby. And that’s just the first half hour. What follows is an unexpected, and deeply complicated, piece of a yuppie couple’s challenging life puzzle. With an intimate gaze at the cozy confines of a New York City apartment, this disturbing, sometimes muddy thriller delves into some big ideas with varying degrees of success.
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Few recent films series have successfully infiltrated the collective pop culture consciousness as The Human Centipede series has. Even if you’ve never seen one of the films, you’ve certainly heard of them. More often than not, when bringing up the series, I hear, “I’ll never watch it,” or “That’s disgusting.” Of course, my favorite response is, “They made more than one?” Because after one film in which a depraved lunatic sews his live victims together ass-to-mouth to create the titular human-arthropod hybrid with a single digestive system, is there really more to be said? Writer-Director Tom Six certainly thought so. After unleashing The Human Centipede (First Sequence) in 2009, he upped the ante from a three-person centipede to a twelve-person one in 2011’s The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). Instead of a traditional sequel where the evil Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) strikes again, the follow-up went the meta route, taking place in a world like ours, where The Human Centipede is just a film and a deranged fan of the film named Martin (Laurence R. Harvey) set out to make his own horrible, “100% medically accurate” creation. Now Tom Six is back with The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence), making good on his promise (i.e., threat) of a trilogy.
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Furious 7 opened over the weekend with the largest box office debut in the 14-year-old series. The upward trajectory of the franchise has been astonishing especially when it seemed all but exhausted after The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2006. The appeal of this big, loud, and silly series is undeniable. Wesley Morris, film critic for the Boston Globe, summed it up perfectly when he called the franchise “the most progressive force in Hollywood.” Short of a LGBTQ character or two, the series reflects today’s world better than most.
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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.
Read MoreAh, it’s that magical time of year when all the scary things in the dark can finally show their face. A celebrated season of spooky fun and gruesome delights, where kids can dress up like monsters and their parents have full permission to scare the shit out of them.
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What to say about The Tribe? Let’s start with this: it’s a very difficult film to watch in every respect. It’s a Ukrainian film entirely cast with deaf-mutes, most of them non-actors. There is no speaking in the film and no soundtrack, only ambient noise, and no subtitles, only sign language. It’s also terribly grim and brutal, and it’s unlike any movie you will ever see.
First time Ukrainian feature writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s film seems daunting from description, a 2-hour and ten minute movie featuring only deaf-mutes with no names. However, the movie is transfixing from the opening scene, and somehow through actions and reactions, you know what is unfolding before you. After a few moments you’re so engrossed you don’t even miss what’s not there.
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