Tag: fantasia
Fantasia 2025 Interview: KAKUKAKU SHIKAJIKA, Akiko Higashimura and Mei Nagano Talk Bringing a Mangaka's Autobiographical Work To Screen
A beloved manga artist and her on-screen counterpart discuss the live-action adaptation.
Fantasia 2025 Review: THE BOOK OF SIJJIN AND ILLYYIN, Payback Is a Bitch
When Yuli was a child, she watched in horror as her mom was possessed by an spiritual force before killing her father. Parentless, she was treated as an outsider, a bastard. Twenty years have passed, and she is now a...
Fantasia 2025 Short Film, Short Review: BARLEBAS
Shot in lush and misty black & white, with superbly framed large-canvas photography, and truly exceptional production design, Malu Janssen’s Barlebas is a 20-minute short of a literal witch-hunt. One which perfectly balances the epic and the intimate, the tender and...
Fantasia 2025 Review: HI-FIVE, A Super Funny, Super Powered, Superhero Movie
Five strangers are the beneficiaries of organ transplants. More than a life-saving gift, each of them is unwittingly bestowed a superpower, dependent on which organ they received from this mysterious donor. On their roads to discovery, they learn that...
Fantasia 2025 Review: FORBIDDEN CITY, Cooks Up Quality Kung Fu in Rome
This glossy Martial Arts extravaganza from Gabriele Mainetti (Freaks Out, They Call Me Jeeg Robot) is the real deal, and leading contender for action picture of the year. From its superb opening ‘bait and switch’ involving China’s One-Child policy, to...
Fantasia 2025 Review: I LIVE HERE NOW, The Mothers Are Not All Right
Rose is in a state of quiet panic. The young (but no longer young) actress receives a last-minute opportunity, a part for which the no-nonsense casting agent -- played by a delightfully wicked Cara Seymour, who smokes cigarettes like she...
Fantasia 2025 Review: I AM FRANKELDA, Mexico's First Stop-Motion Feature Is A Magical Treat
A confident young girl with a head full of strange and fantastical ideas partners with the prince of the realm of imagination to restore the balance between fantasy and reality in the Ambriz Brothers’ historic first feature, I Am Frankelda....
Fantasia 2025 Review: BLAZING FISTS, Takashi Miike Explores Wayward Young Boys In Battle. Again.
A pair of wayward teens stuck in a juvenile detention center find inspiration in MMA fighter Mikuru Asakura's Breaking Down competition in Miike Takashi's Blazing Fists. Ikuto (Kinoshita Danhi) and Ryoma (Yoshizawa Kaname) meet in juvenile detention after both are...
Fantasia 2025 Review: THE DEVIL'S BRIDE, An Impish Demon Vies For A Mill Owner's Daughter In This Chaotic Musical
Mischievous devil Pinchiukas makes a deal with mill owner Baltaragis to help him marry his true love and ensure the success of his business in exchange for the hand of his daughter in marriage in director Arunas Zebriunas’s raucous 1974...
Fantasia 2025 Review: FIND YOUR FRIENDS, A Girls Trip Turns Into A Toxic Nightmare In This Harrowing Thriller
We are only three days into Fantasia 2025, and we may already have one of the festival’s most controversial selections in director Izabel Pakzad’s harrowing revenge thriller, Find Your Friends. When a squad of Gen Z besties make the trek...
Fantasia 2025 Review: HOLD THE FORT, A Suburban HOA Hilariously Fends Off Demons From Hell
The 2025 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival got off to a hell of a start with the opening day world premiere of William Bagley’s suburbanites vs. monsters from hell horror comedy, Hold the Fort. Freshly christened homeowners, Lucas...
Fantasia 2025: 25 Films To Watch in '25 - Raising the Bloody Curtain on Genre Film Paradise
Fantasia is nearly upon us, and with almost two hundred feature films spread out over three weeks of cinematic bliss, we thought you could use a bit of a roadmap to success in what to look forward to at this...
Fantasia 2025: First Wave of Titles Announced
Here. We. Go. The first wave of titles from this year's Fantasia International Film Festival have just been announced. Steve Pink has a new film, Terrestrial, starring Jermaine Fowler. Kurtis David Harder follows up their 2022 film Influencer, with the return...
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: 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: 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: 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...
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...
Friday One Sheet: INFINITE SUMMER
Pink and Grey is the new Orange and Teal. The new film from the strange brain of Miguel Llansó, Infinite Summer, will premiere at Montreal's Fantasia film festival later this summer, however in advance of this, we have this love...
