This morning in the first slot they were also running some D&D! How could I resist.
Courtesy of the nice folks at Tiny Minotaur, they ran a Dungeon in a Box adventure where we all ended up taking over mecha to fight a giant bug. I played Scylla the bronze dragonborn Circle of the Sea druid. I had a fun group, the other players were a guy and his dad both of who come to the fest, and two lovely ladies on their honeymoon. We rocked through the adventure with nary a hit point lost.
Theater is Dead – A really fun movie about a college engineering major lured into acting in a local theater production! I won’t give away the twist but it’s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Glee. A lot of the cast and crew had worked together on Juniper and self funded this, did like 3 jobs each, and filmed it in in 14 days. Most “we did this on a shoestring” movies are “good, you know, considering that” but this looked perfectly big budget and well done! High energy, funny, tightly edited, and very engaging, the audience was really into it. This is the kind of “theater people making stuff for themselves” premise that has fueled many indifferent kinda-cringe horror movies but this was really skillfully executed and was a joy to watch. Sure, it had goofy bits but that was part of the point, they never let it lag. 4/5 stars.
Then the big evening showing was a secret screening. What could it be, everyone buzzed? And we were psyched to find out we were going to see One Battle After Another!
One Battle After Another by Paul Thomas Anderson, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland. Leonardo DiCaprio and Regina Hall are revolutionaries, part of the French 75, who rob banks and free detainees from immigrant concentration camps. As so often happens, the feds get people to rat and it all falls apart and people go into hiding, and Leo and his daughter go to ground for decades while he bakes his brain on drugs and she grows up and hangs out with her high school friends. But the forces of law, mostly driven by racism and sex perversion, never let it go and then they’re on the run again – and that’s when they run across Benicio Del Toro, the daughter’s karate teacher, who is involved in a big immigrant underground railroad. It’s an interesting and lively take on resisting injustice, and the different approaches to that and the terrible cost of it. See it before Trump bans it! 5/5 stars.
After, they gave out fake beard-thingys, which was fun. VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!
Her Will Be Done – a teenage girl lives on a mud-covered (modern day) cow farm in the hillbilly region of France. Is she a lesbian, a witch, or just Polish? The locals don’t really like any of those options. Then slime molds start growing everywhere and cows start dying as the girl who offed her abusive boyfriend tries to sell her house, also garnering the ire of the locals. Very slow burn and suspenseful. It’s one of those “so was that supernatural horror – or not?” movies. There’s nudity and cows dying, so it would never play here in the US where we tolerate those things worse than mass murder in film. Very well done! 3.5/5 stars.
Beast of War – Remember the story Quint tells in Jaws about his naval vessel in WWII sinking and nearly everyone getting eaten by sharks? This is that but Australian. Totally serviceable survivor horror shark movie. But is the real enemy the shark – or racism? Find out here. 3/5 stars.
Not much more to say. Shark! More tomorrow.
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