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 TOMORROW! Over the past several days, I’ve previewed the movies I plan on seeing and blogging about over the course of the week long festival.

DAY SEVEN

O’Apostolo

After escaping from prison, Ramón heads for a mysterious village where a fellow inmate claims to have hidden a stash of stolen jewels years earlier. Nestled deep within the twisted and foreboding woods of Galicia, Spain and positioned along a well-worn pilgrimage route, the village is a secluded and traditions-obsessed relic of ancient times. Its inhabitants take a peculiar interest in travelers passing through and the local church cleric Don Cesareo is quick to integrate Ramón into his flock, annoyingly preventing him from paying a visit to the house where his treasure awaits. When night falls and Ramón witnesses the entire village disappearing into the confines of the church, his curiosity is piqued. But Ramón will quickly discover that he has stumbled upon a place where archaic legends are reality and he may never be able to leave.

O’APOSTOLO is a gothic mystery and a dark adult fairy tale wonderfully realized through stop-motion animation. The world created is meticulously detailed and characters are brought to life by a cast of talented voice actors. Director Fernando Cortizo builds a palpably chilling atmosphere and injects the story with real myths and a dry, dark wit. Also featuring a memorable performance by the late and legendary Paul Naschy and an alluring theme song by Philip Glass, O’APOSTOLO is an animated film for adult genre fans with childlike imaginations. (Brian Kelley)

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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 two 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.

DAY SIX

Halley

Beto has his fair share of problems. He has oozing lesions all over his body, maggots infest his wounds and he must inject himself with embalming fluid just to keep moving. It’s no wonder he watches longingly as people exercise their able, undiseased bodies at the gym where he works a security guard. While they strive to improve their physical selves, it’s all Beto can do to maintain some sort of presence in his increasingly isolated world. When he quits his job because he’s unable to hide his accelerating sickness, his boss Luly takes a sudden interest in him. Though he’s embarrassed to do so, he allows her to penetrate his loneliness and grants himself one last glimpse of a life where his body hasn’t completely fallen apart.

Director Sebastian Hofmann’s feature film debut is a stunning mixture of grotesque banality and beautiful meditation on the disturbing loss of self that comes with death. Tropes tried and true are subverted in ways that repurpose the impact of familiar horror conventions so that they are both negated and intensified. Alluringly lethargic and containing scant dialogue, HALLEY traps viewers inside Beto’s grisly life (or afterlife, as it were), a challenging yet consistently compelling experience.

The power of the film lies as much in the impressive performance of Alberto Trujillo as it does with Hoffman’s unflinching camera. Without Trujillo, Beto wouldn’t draw the strong and sometimes confusing audience sympathies needed for the film to avoid becoming simply gross body horror. Fortunately for us, the elements combine to make HALLEY a truly unique, dramatic and downright disturbing entry in the Fantastic Fest lineup. (Brian Kelley)

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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 three 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.

DAY FIVE

The Resurrection of a Bastard

Ronnie is a bastard. And not just any bastard. Ronnie is an EXCEPTIONAL bastard. The hardest of the hard men, a gleefully heartless collector of debts and dispenser of violence whose world comes crashing down around him when a taste of his own violence splashes back upon himself. The near-death experience leaves Ronnie questioning the meaning and value of his life up until that point. But not so much that he doesn’t want revenge on the person who left him near-dead.

A richly complex, beautifully executed character piece adapted from his own graphic novel by first time writer-director Guido van Driel, RESURRECTION OF A BASTARD showcases a sly sense of gallows humor, attention to detail, and an easy way with characters that puts many better established, more widely known filmmakers to shame. Like last year’s Fantastic Fest award-winning PLAN C, RESURRECTION OF A BASTARD fleshes out its truly remarkable writing with such fabulous performances and an understatedly slick sense of style that it leaves you wondering what exactly is going on in Holland to produce such unique, strong voices. Fans of the Coen Brothers and recent Scandinavian fare such as A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN should take note: You’re about to discover a new favorite. (Todd Brown)

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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.

Mirage Men

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)

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