Festivals: Fantasia
Fantasia 2022 Review: OUT IN THE RING, The History & Future Of Pro Wrestling From A Queer Perspective
A compelling documentary about the history of LGBTQIA+ wrestlers prowling the squared circle, Ry Levey’s Out in the Ring is solid enough to engage even those unfamiliar or even uninterested in professional wrestling. For over one hundred years, professional wrestling...
Fantasia 2022 Review: RELAX, I'M FROM THE FUTURE, Rhys Darby Charms In Time Travel Comedy
A casual time traveler unintentionally makes a mess of the future when his latest trip winds up having potentially catastrophic consequences in director Luke Higginson’s feature debut, Relax, I’m From the Future. Based on Higginson’s 2013 short of the same...
Friday One Sheet: CHOROKBAM
Is the man smoking a cigarette while his ride waits, or is he about to be hit by a moving vehicle? This festival poster, designed by the director of the film, Yoon Seo-jin, for the Busan International Film Festival, captures...
Fantasia 2022 Review: THE ELDERLY (VIEJOS), Who do They Turn to When No One at Home is Listening?
Manuel’s world comes to a sudden, screeching halt when his wife, Rosa, jumps from the balcony of their apartment building, killing herself. Beset by grief his son, Mario, insists that Manuel come and stay with him and his family, his...
Fantasia 2022 Review: THE BREACH, Squishy Lovecraftian Horror In The Woods
A police captain in his last days on the job gets sent on a mind-bending journey when a boat carrying a horrendously mutilated corpse ruins a family picnic in Rodrigo Gudiño’s latest horror story, The Breach. Based on the Audible...
Fantasia 2022 Review: COUNTRY GOLD, The Second Best Legend After Johnny Cash
Mickey Reece, prolific indie filmmaker, is no stranger to tackling stories of famous musicians (according to my partner, Reece's film Alien is a far superior look at the life of Elvis than the recent Baz Lurhmann film). After his previous...
Fantasia 2022 Review: MY GRANDFATHER'S DEMONS, Portugal's First Stop Motion Feature Is A Heartfelt Winner
It’s always exciting when a director breaks new ground, whether it is on an international level or even local. Nuno Beato’s My Grandfather’s Demons is Portugal’s first stop motion animated feature, which would be a feat to be proud of...
Fantasia 2022 Review: ON THE LINE, A Voice Phishing Action Thriller From Korea
As the world gets smaller and technology gets more advanced, scamming has become big business for industrious criminals around the world. Director Kim Gok’s On the Line takes dissects and attacks the growing voice phishing schemes that have destroyed so...
Fantasia 2022 Review: THE HARBINGER, Don't Sleep On This Novel Pandemic Horror
If there’s one thing that has shown the interconnectedness of humanity in the last few years, it is the global Covid-19 pandemic. While responses may have been different in different regions, virtually every person on the planet was forced to...
Fantasia 2022 Review: Franklin Ritch's THE ARTIFICE GIRL, A Bold New Voice In Science Fiction Is Here
The popular image of science fiction or speculative fiction is often one filled with whiz-bang gadgets, flying cars, futuristic shapes, and neon lights illuminating a dystopian world-yet-to-be. However, when you get down to the nitty gritty of it all, that’s...
Fantasia 2022 Review: DETECTIVE VS. SLEUTHS, An Over-The-Top Action Packed Return For Wai Ka-Fai
After a very long hiatus from the big screen, Wai Ka-Fai is back with Detective Vs. Sleuths, a wildly over the top revenge thriller that reminds of the bad old days of Hong Kong genre cinema while frequently tipping into...
Fantasia 2022 Review: EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH, A Pointed Workplace Comedy
Inès deserves a raise. She is the poster girl for EcoClean products. Literally. When she started at the company as a bright young thing, she was the model in the catalogue, the booth babe. It seems mostly men make the...
Friday One Sheet: LYNCH/OZ
Ladies & Gentlemen, put your hands together for this theatrical and smoky poster for Alexandre O. Phillipe's film theory documentary Lynch/Oz. Ostensibly, the film about David Lynch's obsession with the Wizard of Oz, and it certainly is that. Really though,...
Fantasia 2022 Review: GLORIOUS, This Rest Stop Is A Special Cosmic Hell
There is a certain level of hell that can only be reached by the most heinous of hangovers. For those of us who’ve been there – maybe more than once – it feels like you’re going to die, you’re going...
Fantasia 2022 Review: CHOROKBAM, Green is the Loneliest Colour
I grew up what can charitably be descried as lower middle class. Like the central family Chorokbam essays, conversations almost always revolved around what things cost, going to and from work, and what we (or other people) are spending money...
Fantasia 2022 Review: WE MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD, With Neighbors Like These
In the not too distant future, the outside world is a profoundly unsafe place. It is more broken, more threatening that it is today. Note that things can always be worse. A family tensely walks through the woods, with frightened...
GLORIOUS Teaser: Fifteen Seconds of Cosmic Chaos And Glory
Well, this looks like Rebekah MeKendry's Glorious is going to dance all over our eyeballs and brain, don't it? Glorious will have its world premiere tomorrow at Fantasia before it is whisked away to Shudder next month. A short...
Fantasia 2022 Review: ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS, A Lo-Fi Gross-Out For Weirdos
The pantheon of films about imagined illicit substances is varied and wide. First time feature director Alex Phillips throws his hat into the ring with his avant horror buddy trip, All Jacked Up and Full of Worms. This story...
Fantasia 2022 Review: MOLOCH, Dark Whispers of Intergenerational Trauma
The camera glides up the stairwell of an old home at the edge of the bog, there are several portraits on the wall of trios of generations of just the women, grouped into trios: Grandmother, mother, daughter. A low rumble...
Fantasia 2022 Review: ONE AND FOUR, Chilly and Paranoid and Uneven
Cabin fever and paranoia collide in this frigid whodunnit set in the wintery Tibet woods. Sanggye, the lone forest Ranger in the region, wakes up one morning with ice on his breath, and booze still in his veins. He glances...
