FANTASTIC FEST Day 3…
Saturday, September 24th…
Today, I was fired up for four films… Again, I picked four films when met upon their own terms were absolutely fantastic. I didn’t have a lot of research on these in advance. I prefer to allow the fates to guide me. Let’s just dive straight on in.
SCIENCE FICTION VOLUME ONE: THE OSIRIS CHILD
Ok… So that’s a mouthful right? All I knew going into this film was that it was apparently an Australian Independent Science Fiction film. That’s all I needed to know. Fantastic Fest was getting it’s world premiere – and this would give me an excuse to wear my very sci fi shirt with the space girl tie… and yes I do think about that kind of silly stuff.
But really – I had no clue visually as to what kind of science fiction film it was going to be. As it turns out… it exists in the far flung future where humans have settled into the inhabitable worlds of our Galaxy, if not others. It seems the Galactic version of humanity is using Prison labor to quickly settle into various planets. We’re not really seeing Aliens in this film, there’s something wicked odd, but it ain’t really an alien. More on that later.
Anyways, the story is centered upon Daniel MacPherson’s Lt. Kane Sommerville who is essentially a corporate military man all into the infrastructure of the corporate planet we’re mainly at here. His daughter, Indi, is played by Teagan Croft, who also narrates parts of the story here and there. Talking about the story, it’s divided up into 7 Chapters, that will play back and forth with time.
Essentially, this is one of them stories where the unmonitored greed of the corporate overlord bastards have been doing secret biotech experiments at the prison facility on the planet below. I say, “Planet Below” – because the people in charge of this hunk of real estate hang out in basically a really cool Cloud City looking tech… which kinda reminds me of some of those early proto-Cloud City designs, before it got crazy Art Deco in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
As things do with Corporate Monster Experiments… the shit hits the fan, let’s nuke from orbit happens – so word of this clusterfuck doesn’t leak out. Our hero Lt. Kane is on an all or nothing mission to pick up his daughter and get the fuck out of dodge… or OSIRIS as it maybe. The VFX are quite a bit of fun… and the biotech monsters… They look like Jim Henson DARK CRYSTAL characters resembling humanoid Snapping Turtles, that can infect and turn you into more of them – and apparently they regrow limbs. Handy and problematic for our characters.
Along the way to collecting his daughter, he meets Kellen Lutz, who tells him he’s a nurse, although he escaped from the prison during the shit hitting the fan part. He signs aboard to help Lt Kane to save his own neck in the process. Then we meet a brother & sister named Gyp and Bill played by Isabel Lucas (awesome character) and Luke Ford (really wanted more panicky Bill Paxton-y shit, from him)
Oh – did I mention that Jango Fett is the Warden of the prison? I love that. Anyway, the film reminded me of a better produced METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN. I know that doesn’t sound like a recommendation to some of you, but I’m specifically talking about the way it played when I was a kid. The Australian enhanced landscapes and mining facilities all were wonderful – and oddly, I got a bit caught up with the Father/Daughter storyline – and well, I’ll just stop there. Check it out. There’s a need dogfight aerial badassery with some cool ships, multiple cool Sci Fi locales – and Kellen Lutz is a bit scuzzed up in this film and it’s the first time that he’s actually kinda worked for me in a really solid way. That was surprising. MacPherson does a very good job here. I’ve liked his work in the MTV show THE SHANNARA CHRONICLES, but he’s better here. Totally excellent surprise at the fest. Very accomplished.
Next up was…
THE CREW
This was the very best film of the day for me. I love HEIST FILMS. The film is directed by Julien Leclercq and is the fourth film of his that I’ve enjoyed. Beginning in 2007 with CHRYSALIS, then 2010 with THE ASSAULT, then THE INFORMANT in 2013… but I have to say… This is a director that has sharpened his skills with each film. I chose the film without knowing Julien had directed it, I just knew it was a German Heist film – and that’s such a rich and storied genre, that I felt it’d be a perfect palate cleanser after an Aussie Sci Fi flick. Sure enough… I fell in love with it.
The film begins with a Soccer match where the titular Crew seem to be enjoying their team building sport and camaraderie… But quickly we see them taking on different demeanor as they prepare to take an armored vehicle. So instantly I’m in CRISS CROSS territory, but without that INSIDER aspect. Here, we have a team led by Yanis Zeri, played by Sami Bouajila – and it involves family and the family he has found from his exciting criminal life. The sibling nature of this film – made me notice that all 4 films today were sibling tales, but as varied as you could possibly imagine.
Sami’s Yanis looks a bit like an old grizzled world weary Dominic Torreto – and the way he treats those around him is a bit like Vin’s Dom… but completely non-Hollywood. They use vehicles in a demolition derby style fashion – and all the heists in the film are road plays. So I couldn’t get FAST & THE FURIOUS out of my head… but while that series of film glorifies what are essentially criminal scumbags (until they become the US Government’s Scumbags) – And I LOVE THOSE MOVIES… but THE CREW… well, a quick aside…
Years ago, Quentin Tarantino came to Austin for his QT Fests – and at this one particular occasion he introduced us to the Fernando Di Leo mafia pics. I can still do a fairly dead on QT talking about Di Leo, but the jist is… The Italians were always following the trends in American cinema – in the Seventies – when THE GODFATHER his – Mafia films became the rage, but they were these somewhat glamorizing portraits elevated to cinematic opera. Well, Fernando Di Leo, who had done all the genres in Italy took this on, but he fucking hated the Mob, what it had done to Italy was disgusting to him – and his mafia films – you can rest assured… Criminal fucking pieces of shit did not go off into the sunset and dance with their daughters. They beat their daughters, called them whores – and were positively despicable onscreen. Check out THE ITALIAN CONNECTION, THE BOSS, MISTER SCARFACE, CALIBRE 9.
Having said that, THE CREW – is a German version of essentially a FAST & FURIOUS crew of streetwise likable enough characters… but CRIME DOES NOT PAY in this film – and like the Fernando Di Leo’s Mob pics… Nothing is perfect – and every member is slightly delusional or off. All with people trying to get them to stop. But the physical action and character work is just fantastic. In particular – I really loved Guillaume Gouix’s ERIC – who got badly scarred when an explosive got set off by cops – and he pops Oxycontin to take the edge off… He has a beautiful wife and child and a dream to move to South America with their ill begotten wealth.
The film is spectacular in what it chooses to show you and what it holds back. I was sitting between Father Geek and Joe Leydon who like Denholm Elliott to Cassavetes in SAINT JACK… is often times a great seatmate as we swap tales both tall and true. He’s gonna shoot for BNAT this year. Smart man. Anyway – after the film – Leydon and I just loved upon the smarts of the director and team on this film. One character discovers bad news in a fashion where the horror is in their eyes having the soul ripped out of them. Witnessing the aftermath for us – and not letting us see. Less is more as we discussed the worst things we could imagine in that moment.
THE CREW is smart smart scintillating entertainment. You’ll root for the bad guys and know they’re bad guys. LOVE IT!
Then the most controversial film I saw of the day…
WE ARE THE FLESH…
Going in, I new it had that title and was Hecho de Mexico! Man. You know everything about the HEIST film – exquisite restraint, smart intelligent and logical filmmaking. Heh. Here’s a film that will slap you and shock you with the imagery. And I could go down the line listing atrocity after atrocity that they audience is hit unknowingly with. But that’s like listing an assortment of types of Trees instead of describing the forest to you. Directed by Emiliano Rocha Minter – this film isn’t for many people.
To me… this film is HANSEL & GRETEL.
The film begins with a disheveled man that I’m just gonna call Mexican Charles Manson… he’s got that style stare and facial hair. He smiles and it sends a shiver down your spine… speaking of spines and bones, in the beginning he’s rendering bones and cartilage into various gross stuff – that seems to eventually become GASOLINE and LSD. He trades the stuff through a slit in a wall and a pull tray to get stuff like EGGS and MEAT. We never learn what’s on the other side of the wall. I love that.
His habitat is like something out of the post-apocalypse – and you’ve no sense of where you are. There’s a cave like system and well… This young Brother and Sister wander into the place. Who knows where they were going or why. They’re hungry and the man feeds them and helps them settle in. Then things – start accelerating into FUCKING WEIRD MAN. Instead of candy – he gives them LSD and speeches – high energy weird ones. Babbling, but he’s trying to get the brother and sister to fuck – to give into their flesh – and yeah, that’ll be graphically happening and going into awesome infrared heat based psychedelic photography. You will see incest happening in this film – and you could feel the audience reeling in disgust. The proper reaction frankly. You’ll see him turning them into cannibals and helping to kill victims – all for the survival of this new twisted family.
I found the film to be powerfully artistic and the charisma of the eldest character is just undeniable. Also, I can intellectually know these are actors playing brother and sister and so – I don’t over react to that stuff. But the twists and turns and the frankly oddly beautiful nature of the film – which we were not seeing in its finest fidelity due to the DCP not functioning. If you like the films of Jorg Buttgereit – or find a level of appreciation for his work, you might want to check this out. Just try to resist going “FUCK THIS MOVIE” in your inner monologue as the foul stuff arrives and just take it all in. The reveal at the end of where everything is – really chilled me. Hard stuff, but that’s part of why I come to FANTASTIC FEST – to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. This one takes you deeper than many will feel comfortable with. Be a cinematic spelunker my friends.
Then – the FUCKING GREAT TIME arrived…
HEADSHOT
Let’s recap – we got the amazing brother sister team in the Sci Fi realm, then the Brothers & sister drama in a great German Heist film, then the Mexican mind and every other sort of fuck version of Hansel & Gretel on LSD… and here – we get an intense Martial Arts and Violence Mayhem film starring the great IKO UWAIS.
I’ll let the whole brother / sister aspect of this film hit you how it hit me. I didn’t see it coming, mainly because our star wakes up from a Coma with a bullet fragmented in his brain pan, and a beautiful doctor who falls from him while he’s out – and names him… ISHMAEL as he was collected from the sea upon a beach. Essentially – you got a bit of a REGARDING HENRY amnesia thing happening, but in Iko’s case… everybody is trying to kill him – but luckily after the two months in a Coma – he is rusty – but as more and more and more shit hits the fan, he becomes even more competently badass.
The film begins with Sonny Pang breaking out of prison… spectacularly. Truly. LOVE. Sonny Pang is in the David Carradine KILL BILL roll as the personification of fatherly evil. All the other purveyors of violence in this film have worked with Iko before, like Hammer Girl / Julie Estelle and Baseball Bat Man / Very Tri Yulisman.
I can’t help myself in movies like this one. Especially with an audience as primed for badassery like you get at Fantastic Fest. The groans at the pain of injuries, the giggles (not just me) that came from anticipation and destruction of human beings. That finishing move “WOAHS” - This shit is my life blood. I forget that I’m in zero danger – and when knives are slicing skin I flinch, when a character I love is being hit viciously over and over and over again… I have to hold my head on from launching into orbit – PHYSICALLY. I know why. That Kung Fu Trailer reel Dad put together for me back in the Seventies in 16mm, it began a life long love affair with the cinema of martial arts. GUNS – I can handle without a twitch. Blade weapons and Chi harnessing super fuck you up shit… I spaz like the spazziest motherfucker on the planet and I don’t care – especially in my isolated personal wheeled transport device. Which I need to trick out like the baby cart from LONE WOLF & CUB!
In the hallway before the film I ran into Sunny Pang and told him I was dying to see the film and he thanked me. He’s much younger and healthier in reality than his character gives off in the film.
HEADSHOT was my FAVORITE film of the day, while I still feel THE CREW was the BEST film. But like MERANTAU and the two RAID films – this is a film to watch with friends and lose your minds over. There’s nothing like the feeling of badassery unleashed.
Another great day – that had a bit of catching up with Elijah Wood, Dolph Lundgren pointing at me and saying… “NEW ORLEANS!” and me saying, “You are correct sir!”… And honestly – after seeing HEADSHOT – I adore getting to meet Sunny Pang – he’s such an awesome bad daddy! However, the “Daddy” from WE ARE THE FLESH would have me climbing the walls to get away.
Keep it cool,
Harry
