Hey Harry, I've been a long time reader of the site without having much motivation to contribute much beyond talkback, but I'd like to share some of my thoughts on the first half of the festival with you as I've seen it. The Good - I believe movies can be objectively good. How successful they are is completely subjective to the individual but here are handful that made the cut for me, forces of light in an otherwise bleak cinematic universe. Fear(s) of the Dark - There is jump out of your seat scary and keep you up at night scary. The latter is the kind of scary that you get after happening upon a late night NOVA special on the cosmos or seeing any number of History Channel specials about the many varieties of end the earth seems inevitably headed towards. That is the kind of scary that leaves you in bed, starring up a blank ceiling, re-evaluating how much of your hope your willing to concede to the perceived darkness of reality. And that's really what watching Fears of the Dark is like. Strikingly beautiful black and white animation combines with one the most effective sound designs I've heard all year to create what can only be described as a black hole of existential dread that only ends with the word 'fin.' I do not consider this an anthology of animated shorts. It's too coherent in its 'oneness' in my opinion, even though the stories are only tonally and thematically related and the art design is different from artist to artist. Interestingly enough, this is the film that generated the most varied debate I've witnessed so far at the festival, opinions and criticisms changing from conversation to conversation, shifting from person to person. Too French, too long, too much for that early in the day...and yet somehow, I'm glad I didn't see this one at midnight as I'm already low on sleep as it is. Let the Right One In - Out of all the movies that have shown at the festival this year, this is the one I've heard the most people talk about. Anytime a conversation involving the movie is broached, the immediate question: What did you think? The movie itself is as much a meditation on the nature of human relationships as it is a vampire horror movie. Oskar is a bullied 12 year old nerd with a morbid fascination with murder and thirst for knowledge that probably gets him beat up by the school bully and his cowardly cronies. When he meets Eli, a mysterious 12 year old girl who turns out to be a vampire, she pushes him to stand up for himself. And in turn, Oskar grows as a person and even begins to see more clearly the nature of the human relationships around him and how that molds people. He and Eli essentially fall into each other and a romance/friendship ensues. However, for me, the movie is flawed in two major areas that keep me from heaping praise on it as willing as others have. First off, it is undeniable that Oskar will come to regret the decision he makes at the end of the film as Håkan's tragic end clearly illustrates. There are a couple of logical solutions to the problem he and Eli will face and the choice he makes isn't really one of them. (Maybe we'll get a sequel dealing with that whole problem). Second, it feels like we're missing a major piece of the puzzle with Oskar's parents. I felt the impact of the reason Oskar's father left his mom, and the obvious hurt and resentment that instilled in him towards his mother could have been better articulated. It's articulated in small ways, but not in any ways that create a satisfying portrait of what's going on there. Perhaps, Alfredson cut it to put the parents on the back burner and make Oskar's final choice less troublesome, or maybe he just overlooked it in the scripting process. Either way, those two flaws together create a bit of willful self-denial that kept the picture from being a classic for me. Perhaps on another night when my suspension of disbelief is working a bit better, it'll click for me the way it has for others. Sauna - The problem with many atmospheric and high minded existential horror films is that they build up your fears and thoughts to a climax that simply doesn't pay off in the end. Luckily, Sauna isn't one of those pictures. Feeling deeply influenced by Tarkovsky and Bergman, the film follows a delegation of Russians and Swedes dividing up the territory of Finland after a long war over the land as they enter a swamp that draws parallels to the space station in Solaris or the Zone in Stalker. The Swedish representatives are two very different brothers, one an intellectual and the other a cynical, broken down warrior who are carrying with them the baggage of an incident that is pieced together throughout the movie. The action centers around a village that the delegation stumbles onto where villagers are less than forthcoming about the mysterious sauna built in the middle of a swamp on the outskirts of the village or the origin of the village. This is a movie where people say deeply philosophical things to one another in grim voices and have bouts with their conscience that would make Dostoevsky proud with enough scares sprinkled in here and there to keep things moving along. As action unfolds, the viewer shifts alliances from one brother to the next, leading to a climax that I can only describe as devastating. It's the kind of ending that makes you feel obliged to question and re-evaluate the meaning of everything that's come beforehand. Zack and Miri Make a Porno - Much has been written about this film being Kevin Smith channelling Judd Apatow. It seems anything these days containing actors who've worked with Apatow or have his name stamped on the film in any capacity becomes somehow attributed to the man, good and bad, as if he's some comic spirit that has chosen to haunt Hollywood low these past three years. But for me, and it's been said before on this site, all Zack and Miri Make a Porno is an example of is one might've happened sooner had Kevin Smith chosen to cast his movies with actual actors and not just comedians and funny guys he knew. What was it that drew people to Kevin Smith's style in the first place? The dialogue. So it shouldn't be a surprise that in a time when dialogue heavy movies about guys who can't grow up are popular, here we are with what will hopefully translate as a major comeback for Smith. Rogan, Banks and Robinson all hit their parts out of the park as do any number of smaller roll featured players. The Bad - I have a personal rule about what makes a movie worthwhile for me, actually three of them. If a movie can do one or more of three things for me as a viewer, I will usually view my experience as favorable. It needs to entertain me, create empathy for its characters or teach me something about human nature in a new light. These are movies that failed to do any of those things for me. Cargo 200 - Essentially this is a movie that makes a strong case for the value of charismatic actors. Place one actor you can't take your eyes off in any of the key roles and I guarantee this movie would be talked about more at the festival. As it stands, essentially you have a tale in which various unlikable representations of Soviet culture do nasty things and get nasty things done to them. The main action of the story involves a corrupt police officer who abducts a beautiful young girl and violates her in the most fucked up way imaginable. Meanwhile, two men who unwittingly have information that might lead to her discovery bumble along on the outskirts of the main action, one an aetheist college professor who may or may not be having a religious awakening (ostensibly representing the Soviet intellectual) and a dumb young college aged kid from Georgia who goes to rock concerts, gets drunk and later schemes future business ventures (likely representing the new Russian capitalist). If you like Haneke or Von Trier or are interested in Russian history, this film might be worth seeking out. But ultimately, it just didn't work well enough for me to embrace. Apparently in Soviet Russia, life was a barf sandwich and every day was a bite. Kingz - I don't usually pick on shorts when talking to friends or writing reviews because I don't particularly like the format much. I think it's one of the hardest things to do. But this is absolutely the worst piece of shit I saw at the festival, and stupid piece of shit is what it is. It's as if someone took everything I hated about the last two Matrix films and shoved them into one way too long 20 minute short film and then forced me to watch it at the very end of a long day with a sinus headache bearing down on me. If you take these filmmakers seriously, the reason you don't run drugs is you might run into your little sister at an S&M club while a group of mind controlling aliens are trying to abduct her and it will really screw up your deal and probably ruin your life. The only thing dumber I've seen in the past month is that National Guard music video with Kid Rock that plays at movie theatres before the previews. I am dumber for having seen it. Tokyo! - Here is a movie anthology with the problem of most movie anthologies, that is to say, the filmmakers are presented a theme with 30-45 minutes to tell their story and rarely any criteria that makes the stories match other than locale. In Interior Designs, Michel Gondry follows a young couple trying to make it in Tokyo. The man is an aspiring filmmaker whose artistic self involvement alienates his girlfriend, ultimately leading to a series of events that turns her into a chair. Gondry writes movies mostly about male protagonists obsessed with art, so here's it's nice to see a protagonist who is female. However, there's not enough there to not feel slight and a little long in the set up. The second short, Merde, by French filmmaker Leos Carax, suffers from the opposite problem. The set up is fantastic. A bearded red headed man looking a bit like a leprechaun comes out of the sewer and starts acting rude to unsuspecting Japanese passerbys. Eventually his behavior escalates to violence and leads to a lengthy trial that ultimately goes nowhere as the short loses its sense of fun and decides it needs to say something. But of course, being French, what exactly is being said and who it's being said to is completely ambiguous. The final short, Joon-ho Bong's segment, Shaking Tokyo, I will address later in the review as it cannot in any way shape or form be considered "bad." Tokyo Gore Police - If you had told me someone would make a movie where a dude has a giant penis gun or a main character has a armless, legless pet gimp that he carries around on a leash and has infusions of visuals and satire that will remind anybody movie literate of Verhoeven or Cronenberg, and that I would find the thing fucking boring as hell, I would not believe you. But with Tokyo Gore Police, that is exactly what happens. Often, movies like this get a free pass in the geek community because they're not meant to be good, they're meant to be shocking or over-the-top. But the fact is, Nishimura has too much to say to make a movie this shitty. Maybe he'd prefer to shock and awe us with his arsenal of severed limbs and private parts that turn into weapons, but mixed in all the chaos, he's clearly got some critiques of Japanese culture that are interesting, at least to me. And when you find yourself as a viewer rooting for one of the main characters, in fact one of the only likable characters, to get ripped into four parts because the possibilities there, you've lost your ability to say anything with your story because there's no empathy. That said, I know there will be people who will go gaga over this movie because of its sheer craziness, some of them are my friends. I'd just wished it would be more about the sharp satire of the "Harikari Is Suicide" commercials and not the S&M party where the hermaphroditic body sprays what might be any number of liquid substances into a cheering crowd of leatherheads. The Weird - Some movies have major flaws in them that for most movies would sink the entire production, but through a sheer element of eccentricity elevate the movie to another level of enjoyment and pleasure. These are movies you cannot objectively recommend to people because as a viewer you fetishize them into another category of classification. Chocolate - Chocolate is a really stupid perhaps misguided movie wrapped around amazingly awesome action sequences that make its shortcoming charming rather than mind boggling. First, and let's get this out of the way, the director has chosen to dedicate the film to special needs kids...a movie about an autistic woman who uses her special powers of autism to kick ass collecting money for her former crime lord and now cancer stricken mom. I guess not everyone's struggles with the condition of autism are the same right? Anyway, what this movie is really about is the action sequences, particularly two, one elaborate set up in a meat factory with lots of butcher knives and meat hooks put to good use, and the final showdown that bears more than a passing resemblance to House of the Blue Leaves sequence (in fact, one could argue Pongpat Wachirabunjong's portrayal as the villain owes a debt of gratitude to David Carradine in Kill Bill). The sequences are brutal, and you know that limbs were bruised and broken throughout the shooting of this film. So if you can turn your brain off for a couple hours to take in the sheer exuberance of this bloody often hokey Muy Thai ballet, seek this one out. JCVD - You know that Britney Spears video where she kills herself in the bathtub after her Justin Timberlake stand-in boyfriend is more interested in being pissed at the paparazzi than listening to her whiny ass sing about the tragedy of being rich and famous and Britney Spears? Now imagine if it was feature starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and instead of trying to kill himself, he gets caught up in a heist situation that simultaneously allows us to empathize with his regular guyness while still getting to be a badass action hero. Okay, so it's funnier and smarter, but it's just as ludicrously self-indulgent, maybe even more so...and I loved every minute of it. How many times do you get to see Jean-Claude wax poetic about life or deliver what must be the most ill advised and ballsy monologue in recent history, smashing the fourth wall like so many skulls he crushed in Hard Target (a monologue that rivals Kirk Douglas dying on the cross at the end of Spartacus for sheer audacity)? How many times does a movie star make a movie in which he gets to basically blame his bitch ex-wife or his shitty agent for his misfortunes and make himself a symbol of social injustice? The answer is only once, watching this movie, JCVD. Let the art house in. Jean-Claude did. Not Quite Hollywood - There is a growing trend of documentaries that serve as history lessons on lost eras and movements in cinema, and if you're a film nerd, these docs are like cat nip. This one was not necessarily my favorite (that would be Scorsese's My Voyage to Italy), but I certainly haven't seen one that better represented the spirit of vulgarity, nudity and over-the-top 'let's-fuck-shit-up-ness' of a particular film movement more that Not Quite Hollywood. This is not a documentary you can haphazardly recommend to your friends or show at a party unless your friends all go to events like Fantastic Fest in which you are keeping better (or worse depending on your point of view) company than I am. But if you want to learn something more about film that I'm 98.6% sure you probably don't know, this is a good starter kit for it. Just get a pen and pencil and start writing the names of the people and films down and start googling or mahaloing or whatever it is the kids are doing these days to find info on the internet. Conclusion (Or Why Koreans Do It Better At Fantastic Fest 2008) - What's stood out most to me, is something Tim League said introducing The Chaser to its first Fantastic Fest audience, "The Koreans do it better." After the first four days of the festival, I'm hard pressed to make an argument. The Chaser - Here is one complete motherfucker of a movie. Essentially this one's a serial killer movie about a cop-turned-pimp who, in the process of trying to find whoever he thinks has been selling his girls out from under him, uncovers the man behind the disappearances is in fact a serial killer. The movie isn't a whodunit. It isn't about whether or not they can catch the bad guy in time. Instead this movie is about whether or not it even matters if they do and the collateral damage caused by the bad choices, intentionally and unintentionally, the characters make every day for selfish reasons. The movie walks a tight rope between fast and heavy, speeding towards a conclusion where the only point of reference that comes to mind is the line "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." The Good, the Bad & The Weird - Everything that Once Upon a Time in Mexico tried to be with mixed success, The Good, the Bad & the Weird is, a crazy cross pollination of genres and influences that come together in a movie that's probably the most fun I've had watching all festival thus far. It's also a film that solidifies Kang-Ho Song as one of the premier actors working today. Every moment he's on the screen, he comes away. But the movie's more than just a great performance in a fun western, it's a smart take on the spaghetti western, turning genre staples on their heads and making the treasure the ultimate symbol of the end of the wild west. This is probably the most fun I've had watching a western since Tombstone was released (or Duck You Sucker was re-released if I have to be absolutely honest about it). Anyone who loves westerns and especially spaghetti westerns needs to see this movie and revel in it. Shaking Tokyo - The single best movie, feature or short, that I've seen at the festival thus far, is Joon-ho Bong's segment of Tokyo! about a shut-in who's pushed outside of his comfort zone by increasing earthquakes. A simple parable, the movie takes a twist at the end that takes the protagonist's story into broader context that resonated with me as a viewer. Alienation is becoming easier because of technology as is the illusion of self-sufficiency, and there are troubling loses as a result. Joon-ho Bong says all this in a mere 30 minutes without needing more or less time and does so with simplicity and focus of vision. It is not a monster movie or a murder mystery. It is an invitation out of darkness and comfort of our homes into the light and the possibility that love is worth the risk. If you use these reviews, call me Chaplinatemyshoe.
