Plenty of perfectly good movies of various types at this FF!
The Animal Kingdom, a French movie where some people start gradually turning into one animal or another, causing French style social unrest. A boy and his dad move to a smaller town to be close to “the center” the mom has been remanded to when the boy starts showing signs of animalism too…. Well shot and well made. We all watch tv with subtitles on nowadays, let’s get this going here in the US. 4/5.
Saltburn – Very well made Harry Potter slashfic I saw as a secret screening. The lad from Banshees of Inisherin goes to Oxford and meets a rich boy who takes him back to his manor house of Saltburn to hang out with his decadent/goofy family leading to both homoeroticism and The Talented Mr. Ripley style supplantation. Suspenseful, with some super gross scenes causing the audience to scream “oh god why” a couple times – like Babylon x2. 4/5 or 3/5 if you have a weak stomach. [Editor’s note from a year later – this came out in theaters and made a good splash.]
The Last Stop in Yuma County – A fun entry in the “stuck in a diner under threat of violence” genre, with great characters which is what you need out of one of those. Various people with various agendas, some criminal, drop in on a diner out in the middle of nowhere and things start to get tense. Good writing and acting and use of the location. The producer sold his house to make it, which is a little drastic but I think it’ll pay off. 4/5
Cobweb – A fun Korean movie about the rigors of moviemaking, which I was prepared to dislike because I don’t like filmmakers masturbating about how cool they are but Jee-woon Kim successfully subverts expectations. Song Kang-ho does a great job as the director who is trying to re-shoot his movie to make it Brilliant(tm) despite the government censors being against it, although I am not sure any of the performances count as “nuanced.” The spider won me over, 4/5
Dream Scenario – A secret screening. Nicolas Cage (well, his character, an average Joe professor) starts appearing in people’s dreams, it turns into an Internet meme once people clue in, and then it all goes bad. Less blood-covered shrieking Cage than many of his recent movies – but not zero. Good A24 type stuff, though a little heavy handed on the social media/cancel culture theme. 4/5 [Editor’s note from a year later – this also came out in theaters and made a good splash.]
Dogman – A secret screening. Luc Besson directed (but all American English) movie about a… drag queen dog whisperer in a wheelchair! It was really interesting, and mostly hinged on Caleb Landry Jones’ virtuoso performance. As an aside, that is one Joker looking son of a bitch if ever I saw one, DC needs to call him up. Anyway, very interesting narrative structure, mostly “The Usual Suspects” style extended interrogation flashback style. Similarities to The Professional in that it ends up in a bit of apocalyptic shootout but also in that it has real heart and compassion for its characters. Really enjoyable. I appreciated that drag was part of the main character’s ongoing healing process from his abusive childhood, not related to his “crimes” in any way. No distribution in North America yet because of the anti-Besson sentiment. 4/5
Spooktacular! – A documentary about the Spookyworld theme park that rose and fell in the 1990s in the Northeast and spurred the rise of the modern hardcore haunted house industry. Mixes park content with business realities and social change and its interaction with the park. And plenty of Alice Cooper and Tom Savini, who were involved at points. Really interesting, and makes me wish I had been to Spookyworld! We have House of Torment here in Austin but it only does a third of what these folks did! 4/5 at least in documentary terms. https://www.spooktacularthemovie.com
When Evil Lurks – an Argentinian movie following two brothers who desperately try to escape a demonic presence that moves and spreads kinda like Legion but with more people being affected. I like that the government has standard protocols for handling this but generally is inefficient and sucky so it gets out of hand before they start actually following them. Reminds me of the Mexican movie “We Are What We Are” I saw a previous year at FF where cannibals on a rampage were called in by the police as a “code 17”, a concerningly low number for such an event. The seven rules for dealing with the “corrupted” are basically “run” which is what they do. Shocking violence against kids. Some holes but fewer than most modern horror movies! 4/5
Your Lucky Day – a $156 million lottery ticket winner in a bodega at night close to the holidays results in a robbery gone wrong, the winner and a policeman getting capped, and then the survivors – a robber, the clerk, and a married and expecting couple, deciding “well… maybe we should cook up a story about what happened and split the winnings.” Needless to say such plans are unstable and things go from bad to worse as more people get involved, with the increasing body count resulting in yet more convoluted schemes. P.S. ACAB. 4/5
Sri Asih: The Warrior – Indonesian Wonder Woman, basically, in the “Bumlangit Cinematic Universe” which is as much or more fun and high budget as the DCEU. A girl is born during a weirdly supernatural volcano eruption, grows up in an orphanage, gets adopted and trained as a MMA fighter as visions of a fire goddess try to convince her to unleash her anger and give in to the dark side… and then basically she becomes a superhero! She then combats the ever popular combination of supernatural evil, the criminal rich, and the patriarchy. Good mostly practical fight scenes, top quality cinematography, action choreography by the company the Raid guy founded. Great work here, better than most DC movies and at least half of the Wonder Woman movies. 4/5
I’ll Crush Y’all, aka Os reviento – Spanish movie where a boxer and ex-criminal trying to just live a clean life gets caught up in a bunch of accidentally colliding criminal schemes after his father dies of old age, requiring him to beat the stuffing out of various waves of local goons. His brother and ex-girlfriend and new would-be girlfriend and father’s old flame put in appearances as well, and you understand the relationships between the various groups here they’re not just arbitrary unrelated criminal armies like in so many less good movies. Bloody and funny with a lot of friendly fire and self injuries by the street level thugs as the bodies pile up. Got the Fantastic Fest audience award, I wouldn’t go that far but it was fun and violent, 4/5
Totally Killer – A Blumhouse joint in the vein of Happy Death Day’s vibe and a plot that’s Halloween crossed with Back To The Future. A modern gen-Z girl has parents whose friends got serial-killed back in the 1980s by a masked killer leading up to Halloween, and the killer suddenly returns and kills her mom! This then leads her to get her friend’s time machine she’s been developing (eye roll) to to back in time to stop the murders. Most of the humor is from a modern kid being back in the unsafe 1980s, and it’s pretty funny, it doesn’t spend time on cheap pop culture references, but shows her culture shock with the lack of security and such. A ride in a station wagon with all all windows rolled up and completely full of cigarette smoke with kids in the back gave me IRL flashbacks. Fun, silly, stabby, 4/5, take a point off if you weren’t around in the 80’s.
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