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Well we are officially through the second week of the Fantasia Film Festival, so I figured we should do a quick look back at all the reviews we have posted in the past seven days. In seven days our crew has managed to post over another eleven reviews, bringing the total to thirty three. Keep coming back to the site in the next two weeks for more coverage, and don’t forget to also check out our podcast. Lately we’ve recorded several episodes dedicated to the movies playing at the fest.
Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano
Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano may not be the film for me, but this is hardly a slight on the film itself. Fans of Japanese Pink cinema, or those with an interesting in the goings on of the Japanese porn industry will not regret this unique cinematic experience… (read the full review)
Deadball
Deadball is a funny comedy of excess and is in almost every possible way a better cinematic achievement than its predecessor, but Battlefield Baseball remains a better, funnier film.
True Legend
What makes True Legend a step above most forgettable Kung-Fu films is the way that legendary director and martial arts choreographer Woo-Ping Yuen seems to be reflecting on the history of martial arts movies and asking whether Kung-Fu is worth the generational cycle of violence that it creates, when all that it seems to do is create dead bodies, monsters and lunatics… (read the full review)
You Are Here
Equal parts video essay, fragmented “thought experiment,” and social satire, Daniel Cockburn’s You Are Here is one of the most audacious English Canadian features to come down the pike in years. (Admittedly, that’s not a terribly prestigious body of films.) Imbued with enough dry wit and obscure observations to fill a dozen Charlie Kaufman treatments, the film dares to invent a cinematic language at least partially its very own in a scant 78 minutes… (read the full review)
The Wicker Tree
The film’s wicked sense of humour cannot be emphasized enough, nor can the film’s strong sense of aesthetics. Most of the joy that the film supplies can be found in its colourful pastiche of symbolism (notably, the raven, a fine match for the hare), music (celtic meets cowboy hymns) and panoramic landscapes. Only time will tell if The Wicker Tree will live up to Robin Hardy’s first pagan horror film, which has been unofficially dubbed in some circles the “Citizen Kane of Horror,” but it stands out in this year’s Fantasia line-up as a fully realized work of a cinematic visionary. This is not only a great genre film, but a film that pushes the boundaries of cinema itself, easily on par with the works of our greatest contemporary filmmakers… (read the full review)
The Divide
The Divide inhabits the same immature, nihilistic space as the similarly pointless Clive Barker adaptation Dread, though that at least contained a modicum of tension. Here, with no one to root for and never a moment of redemption or even faint hope, spiraling downwards into madness at the end of existence has never been so dull… (read the full review)
Bellflower (Review #2)
We were promised scarred tattooed bad-asses riding apocalypse bikes with biker sluts. We were promised Tina Turner in dominatrix gear. We were promised deserts filled with broken glass and rusted abandoned machinery. Most of all, we were promised Detroit muscle cars belching fire… (read the full review)
Monster Brawl
It may seem to some foolish snobs a modest cinematic ambition to present a fake wrestling pay-per-view featuring monsters fighting to the death, but Monster Brawl executes that ambition perfectly. In wrestling jargon, it earns all five of its snowflakes… (read the full review)
100 Years of Evil
Those searching for a film with a dark sense of humour are the most likely candidates to enjoy this film. They will at the very least get a kick out of hearing a story about Hitler ranting and raving about hot dogs. Though overlong and unfocused it is still quite enjoyable and certainly presents an unconventional premise. It’s a shame this amounts to little more than a one joke film… (read the full review)
Burke and Hare
Nothing is more subjective than comedy, but whether you laugh or not, Burke and Hare is an exceptionally well made Victorian-era horror-comedy about friendship, love and good old fashioned grave-robbing. Perhaps its unapologetically old-fashioned sensibility may put off contemporary audiences, but genre fans will rejoice knowing Landis has finally returned to form… (read the full review)
The Corridor
Tackling a difficult premise is often the kiss of death for first-time filmmakers. Many get lost in their “high-concept” vision, losing track of the human element that is needed to engage an audience. Though not impervious to the flaws symptomatic of these kinds of films, The Corridor succeeds where it counts as it focuses on a conflicted friendship disrupted by mental illness… (read the full review)
Check out the twenty two reviews from our first week wrap up
