As promised here’s a wrap up of the movies I screened at Fantastic Fest 2013.
Greatful Dead
Alongside the coverage here, I also wrote reviews about several of the movies for The Horn. The Japanese feature Greatful Dead, which enjoyed it’s world premiere at the Festival, fell in that category.
Greatful Dead (Gureitofuru deddo), the newest film from Japanese director Eiji Uchida (Last Days of the World), paints a darkly comic portrait of a disturbed young woman. The unsettling, but flawed, picture follows a descent into madness.
Nami (Kumi Takiuchi) grew up in a fractured household. Her mother (who cares more for poor foreign children than her own) abandons Nami and her older sister; her father spirals into depression and starts dating a beautiful younger woman; Nami’s older sister runs off with her boyfriend so she can have a “normal” life; and then her father commits suicide. All before she turns eighteen.
When she turns twenty, Nami inherits a sizable fortune, which enables her to engage fully in her secret life as voyeur. She prefers watching elderly men, who live alone with minimal contact with others. Nami calls these people “solitarians.”
Read the rest of my review at The Horn.
Jodorowsky’s Dune
Many famous unfinished movies (most notably Kubrick’s Napoleon, Hitchcock’s Kaleidoscope, Chaplin’s The Professor, and numerous Welles projects to name but a few) litter the film making landscape. In this magnificent documentary, director Frank Pavich (N.Y.H.C.) successfully argues why the never completed Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune deserves such scrutiny.
Jodorowsky assembled an impressive array of talent for the film. Legendary artists Jean Giraud (aka Moebius), H.R. Giger, and Chris Foss designed the picture. Dan O’Bannon handled the special effects. Pink Floyd and the French prog rock band Magma signed on for the soundtrack. Orson Welles was cast as Baron Harkonen. For the obscene price of $100K an hour, Salvador Dali was slated as Shaddam IV. Shut down during pre-production, Dune provided the genesis for an entire generation of movies including the Alien franchise, Star Wars, elements of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and countless others. Elements of Jodorowsky’s screenplay (illustrated by Moebius) made the core for the epic graphic novel Incal, arguably the greatest sf comic ever.
Pavich wisely relies on the charismatic Jodorowsky as the centerpiece for his movie. A master storyteller, the 83 year old, energetic creator captivates with his remembrances.
Interspersed within are interviews with some of the producers and artists involved with the production. Magnificent art from the scrapped movie tantalizes with things that never were.
Frank Pavich not only created one of the best films of the festival but a powerful documentary chronicling an important and essential piece of movie history, science fiction or otherwise. Thankfully for those who couldn’t catch it, Jodorowsky’s Dune opens in the US in early 2014.
Reviewed this for The Horn.
Director Antonio Tublén’s (Original) second outing, the clever LFO, explores a simple concept to its logical conclusions. What if you could control people with sound?
Robert Nord’s (Patrik Karlson) sneering wife (Ahnna Rasch) and disdainful son (Björn Löfberg Egner) drive him into a solitary and lonely life. He lives within his own head and the secure comforts of his basement lair where he pursues experiments with audio frequencies. While working with low-frequency oscillation (LFO), Nord stumbles across a sound that makes the human mind very open to suggestion. He first tests his discovery on himself and then his new neighbors Linn (Izabella Johanna Tschig) and Simon (Per Löfberg). Nord begins to abuse his new found power with catastrophic results.
Read the rest of my review at The Horn.
The biggest disappointment of my festival, Mirage Men promised the true story behind Paul Bennewitz, a scientist and entrepreneur who was one of the driving forces behind the modern UFO-conspiracy movement. While the film did reveal that Air Force counter-intelligence special agent Richard C. Doty fed Bennewitz largely false information in order to hide other quasi-legal government activities of the time such as the burgeoning drone program, directors John Lundberg and Roland Denning engage in sloppy and lazy documentary practices.
Numerous clips and archival interviews, all from uncredited sources, appear throughout. Only one journalist, the once acclaimed and now dubious ufologist Linda Moulton Howe, appears on screen. A crux for several of their arguments, Bill Moore, co-author (with Charles Berlitz) of the influential The Roswell Incident, is never interviewed nor any explanation given for his absence. No comment is provided by anyone currently in the Air Force nor even the mention of “no comment.”
Additionally, Lundberg and Denning, who wrote the source book for the film, provide little evidence for the validity of any of the points of view. The whole thing smacks of amateurism.
The potentially compelling Mirage Men failed on almost every level, ultimately providing only a boring mess.
Beginning as a standard cop thriller about a rookie (the excellent Vijay Varma) struggling with a corrupt boss (Neeraj Kabi), Monsoon Shootout separates itself from the rest of the genre after a split second decision tumbles the tale into a thrilling “what if” set a scenarios based on the rookie Adi actions.
Director Amit Kumar effectively uses the magnificent Mumbai cityscape for his high octane, violent thriller. The well crafted screenplay, penned by Kumar, overcomes the abundant police story stereotypes and motifs with interesting and varied portrayals of women and by resisting the urge to explain everything.
While certainly not for everyone, the energetic Monsoon Shootout provides an entertaining addition to the well worn genre.
Our Heroes Died Tonight
With his Cannes-selected debut film, David Perrault creates a serious, no camp noir thriller about masked wrestlers in 1960s Paris.
The fascinating story follows Victor (Denis Ménochet), fresh from his tour with the Foreign Legion, and his old friend Simon (Jean-Pierre Martins), who makes a living as a minor hero on a low level wrestling circuit. The distraught, lost Victor dons the mask as villain.
Perrault’s magnificent screenplay and at times surrealist direction drive the darkly tragic exploration of identity and the masks we all wear, real and perceived. Though at times tedious, the superior acting and the creative story further enhance the intelligent and excellent Our Heroes Died Tonight.