Fantastic Fest 2016 Wrap: Screen Anarchy's Massive Team Picks The Best

What was your top film of Fantastic Fest 2016?

Ben Umstead: My most hotly anticipated title, Toni Erdmann, totally delivered. Maren Ade's Palme d'Or nominee (and let's be honest, it should have won) is full of some of the greatest cinematic surprises of the year that I dare wouldn't spoil the experience for you. But if you want more, then my full review is linked above.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Toni Erdmann. Never have nearly three hours flown by for me while watching a film, and never have I been so humoured and aghast at the same time. Marin Ade's film is a masterpiece, a perfect blend of drama and comedy, an honest look at parent-child relationships against the backdrop of late capitalist Europe. I could have watched it over again immediately.

James Marsh: I came away this year loving two films unabashedly: Toni Erdmann and Raw. Both family relationship dramas in their own way, one an epic absurdist comedy featuring karaoke, big hairy monster suits and naked office parties; the other an utterly believable descent into adolescent cannibalism. Don't make me choose. I refuse.

Todd Brown: I’m going to stick with the same answer I gave pretty much every time anyone asked me at the fest what they should be checking out and that answer was Abe Forsythe’s Down Under. Not only is it a film that I / XYZ have no involvement in whatsoever – so no conflict of interest in steering people this way – but it’s just fucking fantastic. Amazing writing, fabulously well directed, hysterically funny until it needs not to be, and incredibly timely given current social and political realities. God, I love this film.

Peter Martin: Frankly, Down Under didn't sound that appealing to me from the one-liner. I had the impression it was just a juvenile comedy about Australian race riots. And that it is, yet it's far more perceptive and insightfully than I expected. The movie ridicules actions but holds out hope that its characters will evolve, somehow, into mature adults who will somehow not screw up the world. Maybe. It's also very, very funny.

Michele "Izzy" Galgana: That's a tough one. Critically, it'd be the provocative and luscious The Handmaiden from Chan-Wook Park, but for nostalgia and pure enjoyment it would have to be Phantasm Remastered with Don Coscarelli and the cast in attendance.

Pierce Conran: I didn't get around to everything I wanted (Toni Erdmann comes to mind), but the most fun I had in a theater in Ausitn this year was without a doubt Elle.

Dave Canfield: Picking a top film is difficult at best. This year it’s made more difficult by the presence of three major directors (Kim Jee Woon, Park Chan Wook and Dennis Villeneuve) at the height of their powers (Age of Shadows, The Handmaiden and Arrival, respectively). Add in impressive debut work by a host of newcomers and the question almost seems ridiculous. But I’m resisting the urge to elect some relatively large scale film here and am casting my vote for Fashionista. Director Simon Rumley skirts the edges of genre more powerfully than anyone I know, regularly turning in work that refuses to be categorized even as it delivers a visceral punch. His new film blends elements of horror with what seems like a simple story of marital strife. But like all Rumleys movies, what seems simple is anything but. This isn’t as dark as Red, White and Blue but it is powerful, tragic and redemptive. Rumley also works the living hell out of the medium creating in essence a film that is both experimental and narrative. No other FF film this year is as visually ambitious or well realized.

J Hurtado: Even though it arrived at Fantastic Fest with the tremendous disadvantage of hyperbolic reactions from TIFF, my favorite film of this year was Julia Ducournau's cannibal drama Raw. Immediately prior to the film's appearance at Fantastic Fest, entertainment channels were flooded with stories of the movie that made people faint in Toronto, leading me to immediately discount it as another film that relied on shock factor to numb its audience into submission. However, what I got was very different indeed. Raw is a thoughtful, introspective, well-written family drama that happens to feature cannibalism as the impetus behind a young woman's transition into adulthood. Is it extreme? Well, perhaps for the most squeamish among us, but for seasoned horror vets it's nothing outrageous. What it is, however, is an exceptional film from a wonderfully promising new talent. Remember the name, Julia Ducournau is going places.

Ryland Aldrich: I'm gonna look past the fact that three of my favorite films of the year played at Fantastic Fest since I saw them elsewhere and give my award to the film that I also called my most anticipated of the fest, They Call Me Jeeg Robot. This super charming and very well made Italian super hero origin story is a joy from beginning to end, even if the end is a bit later than it probably coulda been.

What was the biggest surprise or discovery of the fest?

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Zoology. I hadn't even heard of this film until it came up in Fantastic Fest programming, and it's the kind of film that often gets neglected because it is neither flamboyant nor overtly outrageous. A neglected, shy middle-aged woman grows a tail, and her life is transformed, while everyone around keeps trying to put her down or exploit her. A quiet gem of a film.

Dave Canfield: Science Fiction Volume One : The Osiris Child actually made me care about space opera again. This was an absolute blast that looked so good and felt so dynamic on the big screen you’d swear the filmmakers are lying about how much it cost to make. It should also be mentioned that last minute additions Playgroundand The Untamed were, simply put, so, so worth the trouble it took to program them. Everywhere I went they were being discussed in ways that showed how the medium of film can reach beyond inspiring conversations merely about itself.

Michele "Izzy" Galgana: That's a three-way tie for me. The Red Turtle was a beautifully rendered, touching animated drama --- I can see why it played Cannes. The Autopsy of Jane Doe held great scares, tension, and thrills, while Buster's Mal Heart lead us down the road of a very flawed but interesting character.

Peter Martin: I declare a tie between Jungle Trap and Zodiac Killer. Produced 20 years apart, they share a rough aesthetic that is more focused on the filmmakers' vision, namely, ghost cannibals and a deadly serial killer, respectively. Emerging from obscurity, they demand attention as prime examples of American outsider art.

Ryland Aldrich: If we're allowing ties than I'm gonna give both Down Under and The Crew a nod. Plenty has been said about the hilarious Aussie racism comedy but I've hear less buzz about Julien Leclercq's flawless French heist drama. Both had me raving.

J Hurtado: My biggest surprise of Fantastic Fest has to be Sarah Adina Smith's Buster's Mal Heart. This film also came with a rather effusive amount of praise out of TIFF this year, but that isn't why it surprised me. Prior to Buster's Mal Heart, Smith made a film called The Midnight Swim that I saw last year and absolutely loathed. Not just regular-old dislike, I fucking HATED it with a white-hot passion. I decided to give her work another chance with Buster, and while it didn't exactly light my world on fire, I certainly enjoyed it more than I expected. Even the bullshit ending - details of which I'll spare you here - was light-years more tolerable than the ending of The Midnight Swim. Overall, it's an above average film, and while that may sound like faint praise, what I see in the director after this one is potential, which is almost more exciting than success.

Ben Umstead: That'd have to be Amat Escalante's beguiling The Untamed. Escalante won the Silver Lion for best director at Venice just a week before Fantastic Fest, but even then I barely had the film on my radar. I am utterly relieved then that I didn't miss it in Austin. A minimalist work that plays within the realm of realism more than straight up genre, Escalante's vision of an alien monster and the strange, sexual spell it casts over a Mexican family recalls the films of Carlos Reygadas, Christian Petzold and Jonathan Glazer. Indeed, The Untamed is the best alien-related film since Glazer's Under The Skin. It is also an instant favorite of 2016.

James Marsh: S is for Stanley. I'd heard nothing about this straightforward documentary about Emilio, Stanley Kubrick's personal driver of 30 years. Not only does the film present a unique perspective on one of cinema's greatest artists, but also explores the tender, respectful and shockingly codependent relationship between two wildly different personalities. The incredible archive of Kubrick’s personal memos alone makes the whole endeavour worthwhile.

Pierce Conran: Much of what I saw was already on my radar but on that wasn't and turned out to be quite impressive was the Polish slow-burn The Playground.

Todd Brown: That’s gotta be both Bad Black and the way the audiences at the festival embraced this gonzo slice of Ugandan madness. This is the sort of thing that makes Fantastic Fest so unique.

Who gave the best performance?

Dave Canfield: Amy Adams in Arrival seems like a fair nod. Her performance is absolutely rooted in the real even as her character is faced with almost unimaginable events. But Amanda Fuller and Ethan Embry in Fashionista are hard to ignore.

Pierce Conran: Isabelle Huppert was fantastic in Elle but I was also very impressed by Marina Fois in Faultless.

Peter Martin: Lau Ching Wan (aka Sean Lau) in Call of Heroes. When I first started watching Hong Kong movies in the late 1990s, Lau stood out in Milkyway Films because of his plainly expressed humanity, embracing comedy, drama, romance and tragedy with equal measures of grace and dignity. He's simply wonderful in this movie as a true hero; the sort of man I aspire to be some day.

Todd Brown: Conflict of interest be damned, I’m going to go with the young leads of Irish comedy The Young Offenders (which XYZ represents) with this one, because they are so much the heart and soul of that film and it’s just so incredibly charming. Garance Marillier in Raw is just a very close step behind, in a film that could not possibly be more different.

Ryland Aldrich: I'm going Claudio Santamaria in They Call Me Jeeg Robot, bam!

J Hurtado: I'm going to cheat here and say that the dual lead performances of Sandra Hüller and Peter Simonischek of Toni Erdmann are my winners in this category. This story of an aging father trying to reconnect with his adult daughter is just the right kind of absurd to get me in its corner. To have a pair of male and female leads work so incredibly well off of each other without any romantic angle is almost unheard of, but Hüller and Simonischek pull it off with ease. Each of them is mesmerizing in their neuroses and the extent to which they'll go to make the film work, and that deserves my respect and much more. I don't think I've ever seen either performer in a lead role before, but I know that now I'll be digging back through their careers to see what they have to offer, and that's about the biggest compliment I can give.

Michele "Izzy" Galgana: Najarra Townsend in the short film The Stylist was stunning in her emotional complexity, and that didn't go unnoticed; she won the Special Mention Award for acting.

Ben Umstead: By far the hardest question here to answer. Fantastic Fest offers up such a dizzying variety of movies, that performances are equally as varied, from the whimsical types to the deeply scared and defiant ones. As it goes I've narrowed it down to three. First, let's give it up for Toni Erdmann himself, Peter Simonischek. Rarely do we get such pathos with such gut-busting humor. Next up, Sennia Nanua is indeed The Girl With All The Gifts. As Melanie, one of the brightest heroines to come along in some time, Nanua more than holds here own against the likes of Glenn Close and Paddy Considine. Lastly, Anne Hathaway has never been better than she is in Colossal.

James Marsh: There was such a bevvy of riches this year: Sandra Hüller & Peter Simonischek in Toni Erdmann were incredible, as were Garance Marillier and Ella Rumpf in Raw, Amy Adams in Arrival, Sasha Lane in American Honey and Lewis MacDougall in A Monster Calls.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Anne Hathaway in Colossal. She's normally relegated to standard Hollywood dramedies, and I've never taken much notice of her. But she knocks it out of the park with a pitch-perfect performance, aided by a fantastic script by Nacho Vigalondo. Her Gloria is the kind of female character we need more of: flawed, funny, kind of annoying, but with a great heart.

Any big disappointment of the fest?

Pierce Conran: While I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to see it, Paul Schrader's Dog Eat Dog was a bit of a slog. Some showy performances for Nic Cage and Willem Dafoe and a few interesting scenes stood no chance of overcoming the messy plotting and flimsy finale.

Dave Canfield: I think this was a relatively weaker year for the indie horror entries. Of course that was almost a given since last year's program included The Black Coat’s Daughter, The Babadook and It Follows. Plus this year's entries had to compete with the Remastered Phantasm screening which was a reminder of just how great horror on a budget can be.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Tim Burton has been pretty much phoning it in for years, but with headlines like Eva Green and Samuel L. Jackson, I had hoped for me. Not the worst of Burton's films, but it put me to sleep.

Ben Umstead: I wasn't as taken with Elle or The Red Turtle as much as I was expecting. I may eventually revisit both titles for reevaluation, but for now they remain acceptable disappointments.

J Hurtado: Easy. Emiliano Rocha Minter's We are the Flesh is a piece of shit, and not in a nice way. The film attempts to utilize shock art tactics to rile disgust in the audience as a way to explain and criticize Mexican polite society. However, what it actually does is re-use over-exploited trash art staples in a horribly tiresome manner without expressing a single new or exciting idea. I consider myself to be a connoisseur of trash and shock art, I've seen these images, to quote Morrissey, "a hundred times, maybe less, maybe more", and they just aren't shocking anymore. You can't force me to stare at a 40 foot high vulva for a full minute, and then a 40 foot scrotum, and expect me to do anything but roll my eyes into oblivion. It's stupid, slow, boring garbage. I know this description will make people want to see it, because it's the kind of description that would make me want to watch something, but please, don't say I didn't warn you.

Ryland Aldrich: There was a secret screening. It stunk.

James Marsh: Disappointment is linked with expectation, and in that regard nothing I saw at the festival this year let me down. However, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, which was this year’s Secret Screening, was one of the worst films I saw…and I’m kind of disappointed in how easily the crowd was baited by the film’s lazy, wholly unearned twist ending.

Todd Brown: As one of the programmers my own perspective on that question inevitably goes back to the titles we spent months trying to land without success. But I’m not going to name those.

Michele "Izzy" Galgana: Having to leave before the closing night film and party.

Peter Martin: No.

What was your highlight from the non-film entertainment?

Ryland Aldrich: The Satanic Panic Room was a total blast and had people talking all week. It also injected some much needed new excitement into Fantastic Fest. That's not to say that old faves like the Debates and Nerd Rap aren't still fun, but I think we can all admit not much changes from year to year with those. So adding Itchy-O last year and the Panic Room this are the kind of additions I've been thrilled to see.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: Completing the Satanic Panic Escape Room with two seconds to spare!

Peter Martin: Loved the Fantastic Feud (again), in which two teams of attendees compete to show their knowledge of lesser-known film facts. Mostly, though, it's an opportunity to sit back, drink an adult beverage (or two or three), and relax with friends; so it's quite wonderful.

James Marsh: Despite dropping out of the Fantastic Feud at the eleventh hour, it remains one of my favourite events and I thoroughly enjoyed cheering on SA teammate Shelagh Rowan-Legg and her crew as they stormed to victory.

Dave Canfield: Always an easy question. Time spent with my Screen Anarchists and the amazing group of cinephiles that crowd this fest every year. As good as the Fantastic Feud was, and as delicious as the Star Wars Cocktails event was, the conversations, disagreements and affirmations out in the lobby.

Michele "Izzy" Galgana: Fabio Frizzi and his band playing a live score to Lucio Fulci's The Beyond! It was an "off campus" event put on by Mondo in the Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin.

Ben Umstead: It was pretty damn entertaining to watch Chilean action star Marko Zaror kidnap our very own James Marsh and manhandle him, blind folded, into the back of a van... all for the sake of getting him to a waning bachelor days celebration!

Pierce Conran: While not an official event, there's no question that the highlight was getting action star Marko Zaror to kidnap ScreenAnarchy's Asian editor James Marsh and throw him into a van for his surprise bachelor party. Let's just say he didn't see it coming.

J Hurtado: This year I had the honor and privilege of programming the Indian film sidebar at Fantastic Fest. While it's not exactly non-film entertainment, it became more about watching the audience experience the delights I'd worked so hard on for almost a year than watching the films themselves. I programmed five features at Fantastic Fest, and I sat through each of them with the audience just to see what they thought of what I was able to bring, and I was absolutely chuffed and gratified that the reactions to the films I programmed were above and beyond anything I could've possibly imagined. We programmed 5 films in 4 different languages from different industries within India and every one of them got an amazing response from the audience. I'm actually tearing up thinking about it, and I wish I could do it all over again. Thank you to anyone who attended any of the early morning screenings, you don't know how much your laughter, cheers, hoots & hollers, and love means to me.

Todd Brown: The debates are always a highlight but, really, as a guy who spends his days working in his kitchen with his cats the real plus of the festival is always the simple fact that I get to spend time with the other Screen Anarchy folk in person. It doesn’t happen nearly often enough and I know this is an incredibly schmaltzy answer, but it’s totally true.

Name your single most Fantastic moment of the festival.

Shelagh Rowan-Legg: I participated in the Fantastic Feud for the second time in three years, and was on the winning team this time! It's always great to see what questions come up, what areas of genre film I need to improve upon, and of course, get very drunk in front of a large audience!

Peter Martin: Somehow managing to keep a secret from a friend so he could enjoy a surprise gathering in his honor. Hey, I sat next to him for two hours! It was difficult not to give it away! So I'm proud of myself for not betraying the secret. Film-wise, it was Fantastic to see Nacho Vigalondo's Colossal close the festival on a high note, nine years after watching Timecrimes at the festival and not knowing what to expect.

Ryland Aldrich: Late night heated film discussions at random Austin homes, Panic Room record times, and sweaty Satanic marching band mania are all pretty fantastic, but the top moment for me had to be gathering with half the Fest programmers and most of our SA family to publicly kidnap our pal Marshy, throw him in a van, and go driving around in circles until it was time to drink a bunch of whiskey.

James Marsh: Being accosted by Chilean martial arts star Marko Zaror in the Alamo lobby, tossed over his shoulder and thrown into the back of a van with a black sack over my head. When I next saw daylight I had been whisked off to a nearby watering hole for an impromptu bachelor party to toast my impending nuptials. Not only was I taken completely by surprise, I was overwhelmed with love and gratitude for all the fantastic people who came out to drink with me, when they could - nay, should - have been watching movies. It is moments like this that make me really appreciate my Screen Anarchy and Fantastic Fest families, and the film festival community as a whole. You are all incredible people and your awesomeness has not gone unnoticed!

J Hurtado: Well, outside of the response to the Indian program, I'd have to say that my Fantastic Fest Dishoom Reigns karaoke debut has to be my personal highlight. It was the first year they were employing an executioner on stage to chop the lame-o's whose performances didn't stack up. So when I hopped on stage to take on Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law", I was literally singing for my life. However, I think Rob Halford - and hopefully the rest of my ScreenAnarchy family - would be proud, as I tore that song a new asshole and absolutely destroyed the stage. I'm a shy guy one-on-one, but give me a microphone and I'll give you magic.

Todd Brown: I got to explain the cultural significance of both Gowan and The Tragically Hip within Canada while eating (free) donuts (they were delicious) while hosting the (gloriously ridiculous) Q&A for the work in progress screening of Another Wolfcop in which producer J Joly explained to the crowd that, as a producer, it was his obligation to register the porn variations of their film’s name, thus he owns the rights to Wolfcock.com, a fact that was immediately checked and proven to be true by members of the audience. This really happened.

Michele "Izzy" Galgana: Getting to interview the cast of Ash Vs. Evil Dead; Bruce Campbell is utterly hilarious.

Ben Umstead: As some of you may recall, I was in a pretty nasty car accident on my way home from Sundance earlier this year. It was bad enough to where I was out of festival commission all the way up until... well, Fantastic Fest. As a return to the fold, to my flock, to my film family, the whole damn fest was thus... Fantastic.

Pierce Conran: Finding myself in Tim League's wine cellar with both Park Chan-wook and Kim Jee-woon.

Dave Canfield: Fantastic Fest Fiend Wendy Bowlsby letting me leave FF with her incredible wool knit Black Phillip hat. The Witch was huge highlight for me last year and this will help me live deliciously during the cold Chicago winter.