Festivals: Fantasia
Fantasia 2024 Review: RITA, A Magical Realist Tragedy From The Director of LA LLORONA
A young girl endures brutalization at the hands of her caregivers in a Guatemalan home for girls in Rita, director Jayro Bustamante’s eagerly anticipated follow up to the critically acclaimed La Llorona. Bustamante once again draws from his country’s dark...
Friday One Sheet: THE SECOND
This beautiful watercolour poster for Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos's The Second is hiding a subtle secret in plain sight. The short film centres around a pistols-at-dawn kind of duel, and the underlying complexity of motivations across two generations. The lead...
Fantasia 2024 Review: CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS, A Plucky Podcaster Hunts A Serial Killer In Her Hometown
A true crime podcaster heading home for Christmas finds herself in the middle of a murder spree that she has to solve before she becomes the next victim in Alice Maio Mackay’s Carnage for Christmas. Mackay’s latest feature marks her...
Fantasia 2024 Review: FRANKIE FREAKO, Steven Kostanski's Chaotic Puppet Adventure Is Freakin' Great!
A painfully bland office worker gets his world turned upside down by a trio of tiny cosmic weirdos in Steven Kostanski’s latest gonzo comedy, Frankie Freako. After hit cult comedy gold with 2021’s Psycho Goreman, Kostanski and his usual bunch...
Fantasia 2024 Review: GHOST CAT ANZU, Farts in the General Direction of Studio Ghibli
To the sounds of cicadas during a Tokyo summer, 11-year-old Karin and her father Tetsuya leave the city by train to visit a countryside temple where the caretaker is the grandfather she has never met. It is a grand old...
Fantasia 2024 Review: CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING, A Gleefully Gory Musical Ten Years In The Making
Bursting with ingenuity and good old fashioned, “come on pals, let’s make a movie!” can-do energy, Sander Maran’s debut feature, Chainsaws Were Singing, is a gleefully gory musical romantic horror comedy that really hits the spot and proves that sometimes...
Fantasia 2024: SINCOPAT, Short Film Short Review
During the opening credits of short film, Sincopat, many festival laurels are initially displayed onscreen. Then, following a loud ‘bang’ on the soundtrack, several dozen more appear. This is a first for me, but it is in sync with the...
Fantasia 2024 Review: SCARED SHITLESS, A Creature Feature Worth Taking The Plunge
A friend of mine, an astute and well travelled film-lover, once told me their ‘big theory’ of audience engagement for most movies: The viewer will like the movie more if the main character is simply good at doing their job....
Fantasia 2024 Review: TATSUMI, A Gritty Yakuza Street Drama With A Broken Heart
I am happy that these kinds of gritty, but emotionally tragic crime films are still being made. Hiroshi Shôji’s Tatsumi is one of those skuzzy neighborhood dramas, the kind soaked in poverty, spit, blood, and tears. Where the crime feels...
THE DEAD THING: New Poster Debuts Ahead of World Premiere at Fantasia
A young woman lost in a series of meaningless connections falls in love with a charismatic and sensitive man, who hides a dark secret that turns her affair into a dangerous obsession.
Fantasia 2024: ESCAPE ATTEMPT, Short Film Short Review
In the future Saul hitches a ride with Anna and Vadim, a young couple on their way off planet for a vacation. Saul requests that they simply drop him off at the nearest uninhabited planet. He says he's done with...
Fantasia 2024: THE SECOND, Short Film Short Review
Editor Tony Zhou and Illustrator Taylor Ramos are perhaps best known for their YouTube channel Every Frame A Painting, their video essay side-hustle away from their day jobs in the TV animation industry. Early pioneers in this space nearly...
Fantasia 2024 Review: 4PM, Where the Social Contract Is Weaponized
Jay Song’s two-hour implosion of the social contract, 4PM is delightfully frustrating, and terribly absurd. It is loosely based on the Belgian novel The Stranger Next Door, written by Francophone author Amélie Nothomb, and plays as if that scene from ‘The Burbs —...
Fantasia 2024 Review: BOOKWORM, A Parenting Adventure In The Wilderness
Early on in Bookworm, a doctor struggles to have a conversation with a child about her injured mother. The medical professional tries to ease the child’s anxiety and kind of makes a fool of himself, because the young girl just...
Friday One Sheet: TATSUMI
I remain ever a fan of taking a compelling still frame form the film itself, and composing it into key art. Below is the poster for Yakuza drama, Tatsumi, in which leads Yûya Endô and Kokoro Morita offer each other...
Fantasia 2024: Let Us Raise the Curtain on North America's Largest Genre Festival
The 28th Fantasia International Film Festival runs from July 18 to August 4 in a hot hot hot Montreal. For those of us located in North America, it is one of our favourite times of the year. Due to its...
BANGS Trailer: Comedy Short Part of Fantasia's Mieux vaut en Rire Program
A Quebecois entry into the vast array of short film blocks that make up part of the schedule at Fantasia this year. This time we've got an existential comedy short called Bangs from Montreal-based comedy duo Emelia Hellman and Nancy...
Frontieres 2024: Co-pro Market Adds a New Music Section to Program
An out of the blue announcement from Frontieres but it totally makes sense. One of the often unnoticed parts of making a movie are the invaluable contributions of music composers and editors. Frontieres is going to bring some much needed...
HOWL AT THE DEAD: It's The Family Dog Against a Haunted House in Gregg Bishop's Short Film
When a family moves into a haunted house, their loyal pet dog struggles to protect them from the malevolent ghosts that only animals can see.
ESCAPE ATTEMPT Trailer: Fantasia-Bound Sci-fi Short Film is Too Big For This Format
The award-winning short film, Escape Attempt, from Daniel Shapiro and Alex Topaller, will have its Canadian premiere in the International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase at Fantasia on July 21st. It is award-winning for a reason. Holy moly does this look impressive....
