Fantastic Fest Grinder

[ Mood: Happy ]
Cargo 200

This Russian horror film made for a perfect start to Fantastic Fest and epitomizes what the festival is all about. Director Aleksei Balabanov turns out a unique Jim Thompson style story set in the crumbling industrial town of Leninsk in 1980s.

When his car dies, Artem, a professor of scientific atheism, finds himself the guest of backwoods vodka distillers and gets embroiled in an argument about the existence of God and of morals. By morning, the several lives have intersected, a man has been murdered, and a young girl raped and kidnapped. Lika’s assailant turns out to be the sociopathic Zhurov, a captain in the Leninsk police force. Zhurov’s corrupt deeds built up one after another in a relentless, very slow burning film that keeps you guessing where it will go next.

Cargo 200 (the manifest code use for bodies shipped back from the Afghan front) is deeply disturbing, see it if you get the chance.

Muay Thai Chaiya

Unfortunately, this is a bit of a guilty pleasure for martial arts geeks, not something that can really be recommended as a good movie. Equal parts sports hero movie, crime drama, and love story (both romantic and fraternal) it is all over the map.

Set in the 70s, Muay Thai Chaiya follows country boys, Pao, Piak, and Samor, as they rise through the rural muay thai circuit and get a shot at the pro scene in Bangkok. They quickly find that the Bangkok fighting scene is corrupt and they split, one taking the high road, and two taking the thug life. Soon their live intersect violently thanks to the ever-changing turf wars between crime lords and bookies. When not focusing on the ring or mob hits, the film is jerky, making cursory hits on emotional moments without really doing the work to build up to them. And lordy! The music dramatically swells like a fat lip the moment anyone of the three thinks, says, or does anything to reference their friendship. Really. The emotional music rolls up when Piak gets Samor a stripper for his birthday.

I liked the parody of Ramon Dekkers as a steroidal foreign fighter and loved the ring fights. Even the Goodfella’s like crime scenes were beautiful, but the weird by-the numbers yet not quite there emotional beats make this a hard film to watch.

Astropia

This is quite possibly the first film from Iceland I have ever seen. Turns out this was the highest grossing film in Iceland for 2007, even beating the mainstream Hollywood blockbusters. While never rising to cinematic greatness, it is a sweet and honest confection packed with lots of laughs without going for cheap gag.

Astropia tells the story of Hildur, the beautiful trophy fiance for a shady car dealer. Once he is busted by the police, her world collapses leaving her no where to live and without money or a job. She ultimately takes a job at Astropia, a comic/RPG shop. While she brings valuable bookkeeping skills, she can’t connect to the customers. The store employees invite her into their gaming circle and she learns that her previous fairy tale world and theirs are not all that different. The filmmakers deserve a nod for making a film that pokes fun at beauty queens and nerds alike without ever being insulting.

Combine Hildur’s story wit a loony jailbreak and gorgeously low budget in-game fantasy footage filmed against the beautiful Icelandic landscape and you have a real charmer. LEEEEEEEEEEEROY JENKINS never looked so good.

Fanboys

This film has a ten year on again, off again history and is closely tied to the Austin scene in several ways. So seeing it in Texas at Fantastic Fest probably makes for a different experience than the rest of the world will have. But fact: some of the delay in bring Fanboys to the screen was due to the studio asking for reshoots. There’s probably a reason for this.

Fanboys follows a gang of die hard Star Wars geeks reunited after a falling out to make The Last Big Road Trip(tm) to Skywalker Ranch in hopes of breaking in and being the first mere mortals to watch The Phantom Menace. Along the way they cross the desert between Ohio and Iowa (?), defile the future birthplace of James T. Kirk, do peyote, do Vegas, and learn a little something about themselves on the way. But most of the characters were predictable enough that you knew what they were going to learn well before they did.

The dialogue is cloyingly thick with in jokes and movie references to the point that outside of festival crowd or Comicon, it is hard to say if there’s really an audience for this. Sure you have some really funny cameos and a dude channeling Jack Black and Curtis Armstrong at the same time, but if you think this film is for you, you’ve probably been there and done that already.