Fantastic Fest, the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world, starts here in Austin in just four days! Over the next several days, I’m previewing the movies I plan on seeing and blogging about over the course of the week long festival.
In the 1980s, a scientist and entrepreneur named Paul Bennewitz made what was—at least to him—a shocking discovery. Using powerful testing equipment, he learned that the U.S. government was conducting secret UFO research at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After reaching out to the Air Force, Bennewitz was contacted by special agent Richard C. Doty. The Air Force determined that Bennewitz uncovered classified—and purely terrestrial—projects. Doty’s job was to put an end to the snooping. He convinced Bennewitz that his discoveries were related to secret government UFO research. Doty’s disinfo campaign literally drove Bennewitz crazy and planted the seeds of several UFO myths that still persist in popular culture.
MIRAGE MEN, which is based on a book of the same name by Mark Pilkington, explores the government’s UFO disinformation. Numerous people are interviewed, including Bennewitz’s associates, former government officials like Doty, various figures in the UFO movement (e.g. William Moore, Linda Moulton Howe), UFO enthusiasts, and eyewitnesses. MIRAGE MEN isn’t a standard talking heads documentary. All voices are given equal weight. Seemingly reasonable assertions are presented side-by-side with bizarre statements that defy credulity. The interviews are expertly woven together with a judicious smattering of public domain footage to create a mind-bending narrative that seems designed to both confound and provoke. Who is telling the truth? Who is lying? Who knows? Interviewee Linda Moulton Howe calls the quest to unravel the truth behind government involvement in UFOs is like a “fractured hall of mirrors with a quicksand floor.” The same can be said of MIRAGE MEN. (Rodney Perkins)
Goldberg & Eisenberg
While waiting for a blind date in a Tel Aviv park, a computer programmer named Jonathan Goldberg (Yitzhak Laor) meets a mysterious man with a penchant for obscene poetry. The man goes by the name of Eisenberg (Yahav Gal). Immediately after their initial encounter, Eisenberg inserts himself into Goldberg’s life. He follows him to the movies. He shows up at his home. He confronts him with a gang of thugs, including a guy who must be the only Nazi in Tel Aviv. The situation eventually reaches a boiling point, forcing Goldberg to take extreme measures.
GOLDBERG AND EISENBERG is the feature debut of Israeli director Oren Carmi. There are numerous points of reference for Carmi’s genre-bending style of filmmaking. For example, the dark deadpan humor and absurdism of the Coen Brothers is an obvious source for comparison. However, this film is coming from an unique and original place. In addition to being a skilled storyteller, Carmi has a special knack for extracting humor out of grave situations. He pushes this scenario into extremely uncomfortable territory without ever losing his grip on the characters and narrative. GOLDBERG AND EISENBERG is an exceptional work from a fresh new talent. (Rodney Perkins)
Chanthaly
Beautiful young Chanthaly has scarcely experienced life outside the walls of her family home. Stricken with the same heart condition that claimed the life of her mother while in childbirth, Chanthaly is a fragile creature watched by her overprotective father. And though he means well, Chanthaly chafes against her father’s restrictions as any young woman would.
Chanthaly’s relationship with her father would benormal, except for one thing. Chanthaly has begun to have visions of her dead mother; begun to experience vivid flashbacks of memories she should not have. Her mother died in childbirth, after all, so Chanthaly cannot possibly remember her face. Or has her father been lying this entire time?
There are two possibilities. Either Chanthaly’s father has been lying to her for her entire life and her mother is now reaching out from beyond the grave, or the “memories” are nothing but hallucinations brought on as side effects of her powerful medication. Chanthaly must choose, with her own health lying in the balance.
Mattie Do’s Chanthaly is a different sort of ghost story, a slow burning debut that represents the first feature film ever directed by a woman in Laos, and also the first ever horror picture in the history of a nation that is still under Marxist rule and therefore officially disavows the presence of ghosts or, indeed, anything supernatural at all. The tension between past and present, between parents and children, science and tradition all factor in large here with the limitations of all building to a tragic conclusion.(Todd Brown)
The Congress
In THE CONGRESS, Robin Wright, playing a fictionalized version of herself, gets an offer from a major studio to sell her soul and cinematic identity so that she’ll be “scanned” and her digitalized alias can be used with no restrictions in all kinds of Hollywood films – even the most commercial ones that she previously refused. In exchange, she receives a massive financial reward, but most importantly, the studio can keep her forever young, for all eternity, in all her movies.
To say that Ari Folman’s THE CONGRESS has a lot going on is a massive understatement. It successfully presents an indictment of Hollywood’s age-old sexism and ageism while incorporating Stanislaw Lem’s somewhat accurate forecasting of a worldwide chemical dictatorship run by the leading pharmaceutical companies. Amazingly, Folman even manages to merge these ideas as Wright’s digitalized identity can be made into a drug, available for any fan, allowing them to see in their own minds any fantasy they can imagine.
Folman divides the film into thirds: two parts live action, one part animated, so that Folman, in his words, can “illustrate the transition made by the human mind between psychochemical influence and deceptive reality.” For him, this allows the freedom that animation can allow on “cinematic interpretation” and also provide a “cry for help and a profound cry of nostalgia for the old-time cinema we know and love.”
THE CONGRESS also stars Jon Hamm, Harvey Keitel, Paul Giamatti and Danny Huston and is the most subversive, surreal, metacinematic experience of this year’s fest. (James Shapiro)
Love Eternal
Ian Harding has never been one for the living. Never having found any real connection to society, Ian retreated years ago, scarcely leaving his room, with his only direct human contact being the mother who cared for him. But when his mother dies, Ian has no choice. He must find his way in the world.
What Ian finds is that he cares for humanity no more now than he did years ago when he first withdrew. But the dead… there are possibilities there. The dead are a blank slate poised to receive his hopes and dreams and feelings. And so Ian sets out to find himself through whatever means are necessary, online suicide support groups providing Ian with ample options.
Irish director Brendan Muldowney’s second feature, LOVE ETERNAL is a remarkable work that treads on controversial and challenging ground. Adapted from the novel by Kei Oishi, it’s a poignant study of isolation, loneliness and longing that engages necrophilia as its central image without ever lapsing into exploitation or shock for shock’s sake. Robert de Hoog and Pollyanna McIntosh deliver wonderfully nuanced performances while Muldowney establishes himself as a fiercely talented new voice. (Todd Brown)