Hey folks, Harry here... I kind of hate that Fantasia overlaps COMIC CON, mainly because so many of the world's best genre journalists have to leave to cover the 5 mayhem filled days of Comic Con, instead of focusing upon the independent awesome of genre filmmaking at one of the best Genre film festivals in the world! That said - Rex Kramer & MsSolo teamed up to give us the latest that they've partaken in at FANTASIA. Before that though - one of the films they're reviewing, MondoTees has just released a poster of... so here's that. BTW - THE DIVIDE is a tremendous basement apocalypse movie. Michael Biehn is awesome in it.
More reviews from Fantasia XV in Montreal from Rex Kramer and MsSolo. We're wrapping up our 10th anniversary and we realized at the halfway point we were lacking in horror films. Well, there was The Wicker Tree but as we covered in the last set of reviews it was more of a flat satire.
So we began our 4th day here with Takashi Miike's Ninja Kids...
and I promptly fell asleep.
Yep, it was obvious at this point not being a critic was a wise choice. Long hours, coming off a sugar rush from the sweet crepes served in this fine city, and subtitles... I knew the schedule was tough when planning it, but it got to me. I could tell you the plot started out resembling Harry Potter, with a 1st grader off to Ninja school where he hoped to become a good ninja. His parents and the generations before all went to Ninja school and became mediocre ninjas. There were some cool teachers, and the dean entered explosively but then became comic relief. The plot got convoluted with hairdressers, rival ninjas, factions, and a villain with a heavy forehead and a nutsack for a chin. There were poop jokes. There was a penis that was either (depending on how you interpret it) so magical, majestic, or horrific that it changes allegiances. The ending was all about teamwork and friendship. But I can tell you it's not one of Miike's classics, even if I missed 15 minutes or so. MsSolo stayed awake and found the whole thing amusing but wasn't wowed.
So after that film we caught some chow and did some walking, and prepared for The Divide. My wife knew more about this one having done more reading on SXSW and this was #3 on her must-see list, after The Wicker Tree and Blackthorn. Director Xavier Gens, Michael Biehn and Michael Eklund were all there to introduce the film and take questions afterward.
Nukes rain down in NYC, and we follow several survivors holed up in the super's (Biehn) basement apartment. You have the gamut of survivors – a mother (Rosanna Arquette) caring for her daughter, a couple whose relationship appears rocky, three brothers, and Biehn and Courtney B Vance as the short-tempered ones who will ignite the conflict.
Soon after the missiles strike some Hazmat-suited gunmen come down and steal Arquette's daughter. After a botched attempt to rescue her the boys on the outside decide to seal the place up. Trapped inside, you know where this is going.
I enjoyed it but it but found it too cliché. Tempers flare, sides are drawn, and betrayals abound. Lauren German plays Eva, who's already bored of her controlling yet weak lawyer-boyfriend Sam. From the beginning, you realize this is her story.. According to the filmmakers the role was supposed to be played by Melissa George, who left due to a scheduling conflict with Fantasia fave A Lonely Place to Die. She came on board days before shooting. And she's excellent, acting with her eyes in many scenes. But overall you see the film is going into dark places, and then gets bizarre as the characters devolve. MsSolo found this film more entertaining than I did – she was willing to forgive some of the predictability because the actors played it so well. And these actors were not playing it safe. Props to the director and cinematographer for nailing the claustrophobic situation.
So the next day we had a lot of fun walking around Old Montreal. If anybody’s coming here before the end of the month you've got to go to Gallerie Bielik on Rue St Paul south of Rue Ste Francios Xavier. They'll be out of business in days but have some nice Polish artists-interpreted movie posters for Apocalypse Now, Rosemary's Baby and the Elephant Man, among others. End of unsolicited ad.
Last night we watched the legendary Ilsa, She-Devil of the SS. I won't spend too much time on reviews since it's an old movie but I guess I was expecting more based on the reputation. The sex is infrequent and soft-core and the worst physical atrocities happen off camera. Sure, you see large amounts of blood splattered, but none of the close-ups we're used to in 2011. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, and for its time it must've been horrible enough both physically and thematically, but in some respects it's another stepping stone in gorno.
This morning I risked another subtitled film in the morning, and glad I did – Helldriver. Outside of Miike I haven't drifted too far into ultraviolent Japanese cinema. I know of Battlefield Baseball and Rickie O but never watched them. So this was an introduction, and what an introduction...
Helldriver hits you hard from the start and never lets go – and that's before the credit roll. But since they roll 40 minutes or so into the film, that's to be expected. Zombies have forced Japan to create a wall that divides the nation into North and South. Through the backstory of our heroine Kika, we learn her evil mother was infected by a meteorite and is queen zombie.. Zombies don't infect you, they just eat. There's also this wishbone-like structure growing out of their heads. It's highly sought after as it's a potent drug, but explosive if you don't handle it properly. There's a whole movement of non-infected led by Japan's prime minister who believe we should protect them until a cure is found. Throw in some Verhoeven-inspired PSA shorts and you've got a society falling apart.
But all this is secondary to watching Kika and her artificial heart using her katana-shaped chainsaw to slice through hordes of zombies. She hooks up with some other survivors, and are then forced into going over the wall to hunt the queen. There are tons of movie references here – Escape from New York, The Running Man, Road Warrior, Blade Runner – as blood spurts from every bite and slice. The zombie get pretty creative after some time, coming up with different configurations and methods to combat everything our heroes throw at them. There's a few sideplots going on to keep the film fresh. We both highly recommend this if Brain Dead and Evil Dead are your kind of thing. So far, it's our favorite film of the eight. We're not saying it's the best of them, but it's the most fun we've had.
That's about it. We're preparing for Blackthorn, which might be the most conventional film of the ten. But hey, the writer of Abre los Ojos directs Sam Shepard, Eduardo Noriega and Stephen Rea in a western – who says Fantasia's all about genre?
Signing off from the air traffic tower in Montreal, Rex Kramer is out.
