Festivals: Fantasia
BLISS: Joe Begos' Latest Indie Horror Bleeds Into US Cinemas And on Digital in September
After a quick run through the North American genre festival circuit Dark Sky Films has announced that Joe Begos' (Almost Human, The Mind's Eye) latest horror flick Bliss will have its U.S. theatrical and digital release on September 27th. ...
Fantasia 2019 Review: HARD-CORE, A Tale Of Right-Wingers, Robots, and Redemption
Yukon (Yamada Takayuki) Gondo is a hard-headed ne'er do well who can't quite seem to hang on to anything in his life. Having no relationships, no real job, and no goals sends him adrift in ways that often get him...
SATANIC PANIC: New Trailer And Poster Deliver Hot And Fresh Horror Right to Your Door
Chelsea Stardust's horror flick Satanic Panic is coming to U.S. cinemas and On Digital/ On Demand on September 6th. Written by friends to the Screen Anarchy family, Ted Geoghegan and Grady Hendrix, Stardust's sophomore feature film premiered at the Overlook...
Fantasia 2019 Review: A Relationship Disintegrates Over And Over In THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WKND
It's been over a week since I first saw Jon Mikel Caballero's fantastical relationship drama, The Incredible Shrinking Wknd at Fantasia and I just cannot shake it. An incredible fantasy film that blends elements of Groundhog Day and Timecrimes into...
Fantasia 2019 Review: AMERICAN FIGHTER Puts a Different Face to The 80s Style Fighting Genre
The year is 1981. Ali is a student from Iran attending university on a foreign scholarship. The war between Iran and Iraq is early into their years long conflict and Ali's parents are try to flee Iran and get his...
Frontières@Fantasia 2019: Five Standouts From Official Selection Pitch Session
The Fantasia organized Frontières Market is the premiere event for filmmakers looking to take the next step in making their ideas into reality. For years Frontières has helped connect creative talent with the resources needed to translate great concepts into actual films....
Fantasia 2019 Review: THE ODD FAMILY: ZOMBIE ON SALE, A Story Of Gore And Greed In A Korean Town
What would you do if you stumbles across the fountain of youth, or better yet, a fountain of youth stumbled across you? In LEE Min-jae's The Odd Family: Zombie On Sale, the answer is clear, you monetize! The issue here...
Fantasia 2019: Award Winners Announced, IDOL Takes Top Prize
The dust has settled from industry weekend at Fantasia but the good times keep rolling on at the fest through to next week. Yesterday the award winners were announced and Lee Su-Jin's Idol took home the Chevel Noir Award...
Fantasia 2019 Review: IDOL, An Opaque South Korean Crime Procedural That Will Overheat Your Brain
Let us get this out of the way first: In over 40 years of watching movies and more than 20 years writing about them, this South Korean neo-noir was perhaps the first film to ever to leave me reeling to...
Fantasia 2019 Review: A GOOD WOMAN IS HARD TO FIND
Sarah Bolger shines in new Irish revenge thriller.
Fantasia 2019 Review: DARLIN', An Effervescent, Entertaining Exercise in Empowerment
There is a story told between teen girls, midway through Darlin', about survival. How do you deal with the constricting snake trying to consume you in the forest? You let yourself get partially eaten, and kick the shit out of...
Fantasia 2019 Review: Nakashima's IT COMES, A Wild Multi-Thread Horror Ride
There are few filmmakers in Japan whose work is quite as immediately recognizable as Nakashima Tetsuya. Even as he has evolved over the last fifteen years from the candy-colored pop explosion of Kamikaze Girls to his gritty 2015 thriller, World...
Fantasia 2019 Review: KILLERMAN Feels Like a 1990s Thriller
The opening moments of Killerman are a masterclass in moving money on the streets. In a sequence that runs 8 minutes or so, a mid-level money launderer first swaps a banker's box full of cash for a solid block of...
Fantasia 2019 Review: In 1BR, Apartment Hunting Can Be Murder
There is nothing fun about finding a place to live, especially in a new city where you have no friends or relatives to help you. Sarah (Nicole Bloom) has just arrived in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a costume...
Friday One Sheet: JESUS SHOWS YOU THE WAY TO THE HIGHWAY
This striking poster is for Ethiopian avant garde science fiction satire (or farce) Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway, which is the follow-up feature to equally strange, but more subdued Tarkovsky-Jodorowski inspired Crumbs (2015). Taken from a still from...
Fantasia 2019 Review: SWALLOW, Gorgeously Composed, A Film About Pica and Personal Empowerment
We are introduced to young house-wife, Hunter, in a pastel Christian Dior outfit. Surveying the picturesque Hudson River in Upstate New York, from the raised terrace of her expensive home, she is the kept woman of a wealthy family and...
Fantasia Review 2019: ODE TO NOTHING Tells a Curious Ghost Story of Death and Minimalism
In deep focus photography and an olive-pewter colour palette that is nearly monochrome comes a crafted and curious film out of the Philippines. We first meet Sonya winding up the innards of a cassette tape so she can keep...
Interview: Tilman Singer on LUZ, His Wildly Experimental Demonic Possession Film
In 2018, at the Berlin Film festival and then later at Fantasia, a wildly sophisticated student film by the name of Luz, flabbergasted moviegoers and blew some minds. The story of a demon attempting to possess 'the girl that got...
Fantasia 2019: Kim Joo-hwan's THE DIVINE FURY (사자) to Wrap up Festival
Film Festivals are in a constant state of flux. It is almost against the very nature of festival for things to go smoothly, their administrative equivelant of, 'It's quiet. Too quiet'. So we always have to be at the...
Fantasia 2019 Review: Kimo Staboel's DREADOUT, Yet Another Solid Solo Debut From The Former Mo Brothers
In an amazing coincidence that I presume will become more and more common as time goes along, Fantasia 2019 boasts not just one, but two films that utilize people entering buildings wherein deadly tragedies have occurred as a method of...
