Festivals Reviews
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...
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...
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...
Neuchâtel 2024 Review: MEANWHILE ON EARTH Wanders Through Grief
Fantastic genres like science fiction, fantasy and horror lend themselves for hiding a message in your entertainment. Throw in monsters, aliens or revolting transformations and you can make the most difficult ethical dilemmas palatable for a larger audience. But some...
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...
Neuchâtel 2024 Review: ETERNAL Takes Its Sweet Time Getting... Somewhere
At the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival back in 2021, several films directly tackled the subject of environmental issues (including the International Critics' Jury Winner that year). This year, the selection skewed more towards emotions of grief, loss, failed relationships....
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...
BiFan 2024 Review: DEATH SONG, Colonial-Era Romance Sings a Lush, Eye-Poppingly Melodramatic Tune
Kim Ho-sun, one of the key directors of 1970s cinema, returned to the spotlight in the early 1990s with the sprawling period romantic epic Death Song, about the torrid affair between Korea's first professional soprano and a playwright during Korea's...
BiFan 2024 Review: THE TENANTS, Freaky Korean Real Estate Horror Allegory Lingers in the Mind
Real estate woes, job security anxiety and social inequality, all neatly packed into a metaphorical dystopia. No doubt about it, The Tenants is definitely a Korean film. Yet by providing a novel twist on its elements and staying true to...
Mediterrane 2024 Review: LIFE, Novelistic Philosophical Drama Tackles Loss and Redemption
Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz weaves a tale of provincial patriarchy and existentialism, following the intertwined lives of a rural baker and a young woman after a derailed arranged marriage.
Mediterrane 2024 Review: VIET AND NAM, Mesmerizing Slow Drama Explores Personal and National Histories
Vietnamese filmmaker Truong Minh Quy has crafted one of 2024's most intriguing films, using contemplative visuals exploring personal and national histories against the backdrop of a romance of two young queer Vietnamese miners.
Mediterrane 2024 Review: TO A LAND UNKNOWN Challenges Conventional Immigrant Dramas
Palestinian-Danish filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel navigates the harrowing realities of exile and survival, set against the dilapidated backdrop of Athens, in a bold departure from his documentary roots.
Mediterrane 2024 Review: MEETING WITH POL POT Unmasks Khmer Rouge Genocidal Utopia
Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh offers a haunting exploration of the Khmer Rouge regime through the eyes of three French journalists and the utopia gone wrong.
