OK, 22 movies in and energy is starting to flag. I’m punishing the Alamo for their QR code ordering and ridiculous prices by not eating anything in the theater and have scavenged the nearby areas for placees I can get food in the ~1 hour between screenings. So I wasn’t *totally* crushed when I didn’t get into a film in 2 slots today (I tried for Playhouse, yet another superrnatural VHA movie, and the Spanish vampire tale Upiro), though it’s still not ideal. I did get into the morning showing though…
The Spiral – What could be more terrifying to an Italian than a fat son and a lesbian daughter? Only a mother’s smothering, smothering love! The Spiral is a really interesting and psychological Italian movie, with the bargains-with-Satan(?) aspect really almost a side note in a tale that illustrates the decisions parents make within families and how they play out, along with the related guilt, shame, control, and so on. The mother makes ever-escalating deals to get her family back to its desired idyllic Italian state of garden parties, winning at football, and slapping women when they’re lippy. A slow but hard burn, a thinking movie! I loved it, 5/5.
I tried waiting in the standby line for Playhouse as I heard great buzz for it from the first half, but was unable to get in and had 2 consecutive slots free. So I went and got an Italian at Home Slice (inspired by The Spiral of course) and… Went to see a movie!!! You heard me. The 4k re-release of the original Ghost In The Shell was in theaters one week only, the exact same week as Fantastic Fest, so I zapped over to a nearby AMC and saw it. So, I may as well review it here too!
Ghost in the Shell – The cyberpunk Japanese animated classic has some fun action, with Major Motoko Kusanagi leading a futuristic cyborg special ops squad that’s part of the Byzantine Japanese government, but it takes its time to lavish you with visuals and soundtrack and philosophical meditation on – what is a soul? (A “ghost” is a soul.) If we get more and more of our bodies replaced with tech, what are we? If an AI claims to be alive, what is it? If minds and memory can be hacked and manipulated, what is self? I’ve seen it many times and the image that has started to stick with me the most each time is a hapless garbage man, whose brain got hacked so he’d make proxy hacking calls from his trash route believing he was trying to get to see his daughter via his ex-wife, but that was all implanted memories. When they catch him and he sees that the “picture of his daughter” he’s been showing is just him with a basset hound, he is crushed and ask how they can remove the false memories – but they can’t, and his dejection is profound. It’s slow and thoughtful and in my top 3 GOAT anime (Akira and Princess Mononoke being the other two). 5/5
Back to the fest! In the feature slot was a movie I had not selected in the first half but people said it was good. I learned to avoid “puppet movies” in previous fests but this one paid off.
Kylgor In the Grisly Abyss – An all-latex puppet production of a fun 1980s type barbarian fantasy movie! Kylgor and his four comrades go to slay the evil king and take his head – they do that as the setup, but then they and some of the pursuing evil-kingdom soldiers fall into an underground cavern full of demented monsters and slime and blood and monsters and blood and slime! Really good pacing and variety, this is the kind of thing that could get old at feature length but it doesn’t! Every character has an arc, and you can follow the sword and axe and dagger and punching and biting puppet fights… The final boss has an electrified flying guillotine as a weapon which is metal as hell. Made by a Canadian family in their garage for like $17k? Hell I’ll pitch in for a sequel!
I play a tabletop role-playing game called Dungeon Crawl Classics that has an aesthetic identical to this film, they totally should do a collab! 4/5
And finally, the midnight showing!
The Heretiks – A cult of witches that lives in the woods near the ‘burbs decide it’s time to sacrifice a random girl who is having drama with her older sister and little friend on Halloween. They have to fend them off with the help of one of the witches that disagrees with them on various theological points like “don’t bring on the end times” and “don’t giggle maniacally at all opportunities.” OK sure, it has a cast of 9 and props clearly liberated from a Spirit Halloween and is set in “a suburban house” and “a park”, but unlike the vast majority in this genre it has good pacing and remarkably coherent magic that obeys clear rules, which is refreshing. The mixed magic and melee fights are fun! (MMA should have spells that can throw people across the room, or set them on fire, or immediately remove all their skin; I’d watch it if it did!) I mean, it’s not Halloween, but it does have a lot going for it. 3.5/5
