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Montréal 2024

Testing has confirmed that my Fantasia press badge does not, in fact, open up my hotel room door.

8/1: “Lantern Blade”; Episodes 1-3

Stop-motion? Wuxia? Eldritch? Yes, yes, and, oh yes. Ziqi Zhu and his team at Tianjin Niceboat Animation tell a fast-paced story with action, comedy, and mystery. Powerful factions collide in pursuit of an ancient force and the power it holds. An undead Samurai protects a catalyst for peace or destruction, embodied by the Bride who somehow survived her wedding massacre. Also enter: the Hoof gang; a trio of specialized warriors under the command of an unlikely leader; and a mysterious stone carver, hiding in a ramshackle temple. Ziqi Zhu demonstrates a clear sense of action in the many fight-scenes-in-miniature. Recommended for any lover of genres listed above.

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In

One of the more violence-filled of the many violence pictures I’ve enjoyed over the festival, Soi Cheang’s Twilight Warriors takes advantage of its locale for many compelling martial arts set-pieces. The action unfolds in Kowloon Walled City, a derelict cluster of city blocks ungoverned by the municipal authority. Instead, it is the turf of master fighter—and capable barber—Cyclone, who oversees this sanctuary of sorts after winning control during a gang war some decades prior. The uneasy peace between the Walled City and a rival gang (headed, of course, by “Mr. Big”) begins to rupture when an illegal migrant seeks refuge within its walls after a boxing match gone sour. There are so many breath-taking fights to witness, with an upward trajectory of epic intensity. That makes sense, though, as Twilight of the Warriors is not only a story of legends, but features a number of Hong Kong’s silver-screen legends of the genre.

8/2: Azrael

E.L. Katz, you very nearly lost me. Thank goodness Azrael ended on a cute & horrible reveal after an hour and a half of action that managed to be both interesting and a bit tedious. Azrael plays out, for the most part, like a cinematic interpretation of a survival horror game, with our mute protagonist semi-constantly pursued by religious fanatics, who crop up now in a third Fantasia film—hate those guys. Anyhow, I enjoy the video game genre more than most, but without the interaction, the hope is that the director will keep upping the ante. But no, not really. Heroine is always in danger, always survives. To get some whingeing out of the way, I don’t expect realism in my violence pictures, but if someone is hit by a modern pick-up truck going around 50 miles per hour, not only are they going to have the fight knocked out of them, they’re almost certainly in multiple pieces. But! I’ve gone on a tangent. The payoff for all this deadly tomfoolery is more than enough compensation for sitting through it; though I was advised by another reviewer after the screening, it finished very much like [Redacted].

House of Sayuri

This film is tonally all over the place. That is much to Koji Shiraishi’s credit, seeing as we bounce from cutesy-horror, to depressing-horror, to training-montage-horror, to laugh-out-loud-horror, to scary-horror, before landing on “Dear God, there isn’t a trigger warning big enough for this back story”-horror, then ending with a melancholy-sweet coda. A family of seven—mom and pop, three siblings, and a set of grandparents—move into their dream home only to find that it is still occupied by a restless spirit demanding revenge on humanity. Deaths pile up quickly until the dementia-stricken grandmother bursts out of her mental prison and becomes an ass-kicking hippie with a lust for life and a renewed capacity for violence. (Elder son, and main character, relates briefly that once she took down five yakuza in one blow.) This is a great piece of horror with blasts of comedy, but man oh man is Sayuri’s spirit justifiably furious, for reasons both heart-breaking and sinister. If you have any trouble watching childhood trauma (or sharp, sudden violence), stay away; otherwise, enjoy this J-Horror, dark drama, violence-comedy hybrid.

8/3: Circo Animato (Anthology)

“The Parade” – dir. by Ryan Benjamin Lee

Repurposing the Ferris Bueller dialogue which catalyzes his day off, Lee proceeds to bombard the screen with wild crayon and paper cut-outs in motion. Music crescendos, and the young boy stares wistfully from his family apartment balcony.

“Trumpet Voice” – dir. by David Monarte Serna & Pilar Smoje Gueico

Keenly inspired by classic Disney (101 Dalmations comes to mind in particular), Serna and Gueico play extensively with the relationship between a jazzy, trumpet-heavy musical score and the travails of cool-cat trumpeteer and his quietly unhappy memories. Some stop-motion is thrown in for good measure, and the montage of Gilliamesque noodlings make this a diverse, well-executed outing.

“African American Express” – dir. by Sydnie Baynes

Baynes’ visuals are nearly abstract, and make heavy use of negative space. She explores propaganda and “Blackness” with voiceovers while the stylized retail experience on display quivers.

“Haru-tsuge Fish and Fu-rai Boy” – dir. by Takeshi Yashiro

11/10 for whimsy. Fu-rai Boy is a fur-clad flutist seeking a musical companion to join him, eventually finding one among the hovering wooden fish who call a farmer’s woodpile their home. Delightful stop-motion, with a simple but jolly tune throughout, as Yashiro’s boy and fish riff between the high instrumental notes and the woody clack of the rhythmic fish. They travel fields about the area, bringing the land to life as Spring begins. Amusing inclusion of a human character, animated also in the stop-motion style.

“The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess” – dir. by Anna-Ester Volozh

Good enough, and beautiful. The narrated tale of the proud princess tells of a horrible age of war as she refuses to marry anyone but the greatest of all kings. Sleeping Beauty tapestry and lace visuals, with a delightful flow of line, and striking colors. Volozh’s short explains the origins of wispy white clouds: they are the impossibly long veil tatted by the princess and her maidens while she awaited her dark champion.

“Variations” – dir. by Yao Xu

Man in car, or frog on horseback? The imagery alternates, in bright oranges, mellow greens, and eye-catchingly simple, blocky figures. A man awaits traffic to begin at a stop light, which makes Xu’s short something of a re-imagining of the Frogger experience, from a commuter’s perspective.

“Itch” – dir. by Maggie Zeng

Zeng’s visual presentation of one of mankind’s most immediately vexatious discomforts is always in motion, and appears as if it is filmed in one “take.” A young woman experiences an itch by her watch, which spreads, retreats, jumps, and then actively pursues her.

“Extremely Short” – dir. by Koji Yamamura

Yamamura’s film is short, but not the shortest of the bunch. However, it does examine one of the shortest sounds in the Japanese language: “Da”. Primarily through line, we first observe interplay between a fetus growing into the corpse, merging and separating from Japanese character symbols from a number of words beginning with the sound. In the second half, the animator intensely explains what we’ve just seen, and then expands on his thought process. Turns out that the title refers to life .

“Pantheon Bird” – dir. by Eunyoung Choi & Asami Murakoshi

This is, perhaps, the shortest of the bunch. Choi and Murakoshi’s flight of fancy begins with a bird circling high above, soaring around the underside of a domed ceiling. The city and its people are rotoscoped in water color, the respective precise and broad techniques successfully meshing, and showcasing the interrelations between the bird, the museum it flies within, and a young woman passing by a portrait of a Renaissance toddler holding… a bird.

“Anthropocene” – dir. by Huang Yun-Sian & Raito Low

Strangely cheery, with a saccharine Taiwanese classic underscoring the images, Yun-Sian and Low’s piece is bright and bubbly, until it suddenly isn’t. (Its trajectory reminds me of Devo’s video for “Beautiful World”.) Balloons are put to heavy metaphorical use after the tone dives from idyllic childhood romps into a dispiriting vision of oppression. The evil monster, for better and worse, is darkly adorable as it gathers the brightly colored balloons from us, hoarding them, and creating in their place flight after flight of black replacements. It travels through the city, the globe, and ends up clinging to Earth-as-a-pile-of-junk, before crashing down alone; but humanity’s better nature gives both the monster, and the viewer, a closing sense of hope.

“Formes” – dir. by Tsz-wing Ho

This is an exercise in oscillating line and color, set to a thumping synth score. It is a beauty to behold, however, as Ho’s screen of musically tuned geometry juggles shades and form for five lively minutes.

“Weiqi Fantasy” – dir. by Yuanru Liu

Close competition with the “Fish & Boy” frolic for playfulness, Liu uses Go pieces as his source form while playing around with motion through clay. Perhaps something of a “Look what I did!” tone to this, but what they did is nothing but fun to watch.

“Number 32. Giant Fish” – dir. by Seunghyun Si

A boy wins a large piece of candy: No. 32, Giant Fish. Will he share? Fat chance. Seunghyun Si manages a very caramel-y look for this unlikely character study. As the boy considers his first gnash into his prize, he falls into a flight of fancy, and self discovery. Manifesting in mind as a model puppet form, he encounters his memories and some theoreticals: among them a stack of candy-seeking frogs. At this point, the boy is candy, and he happily feeds them portions from his regenerating self. Making peace with his detached conscientious consciousness, he eventually returns to reality to find his prize broken and being devoured by ants. A lesson is learned, however, and he emerges less full of candy and more full of knowledge.

“The Yearbook” – dir. by Charlie Galea McClure

To hear McClure tell it during the post-screening Q&A, they just kind of threw this together over a couple of days for an assignment. But golly if it doesn’t look neat-o. I couldn’t guess how many yearbook pages were taken to the X-Acto, but faces and buildings of yore come to life through cut-outs and superimposition. There’s even some printer ink / acetone-paper play tucked in the mix, lending itself to a novel shaking effect. Keep an eye on this young student.

“A New Account of Tales of the World” – dir. by Meiyi Che

Over the course of five titled scenes—”Enjoy the Music,” “Enjoy the Dance,” “Rest,” “Fluting,” and “Farewell”—Che plays a whole lot with pop art and high medieval Chinese portraiture. The luminaries of dynasties gone by boogie down to lounge jazz and, I swear, a voice-free version of “Don’t Worry (Be Happy).” Yet another exhibit exploring sight and sound, with an ancient twist.

“Mothership: the Awakening” – dir. by Joseph Burrascano

Big freaking eyeballs, wide toothful mouth, and a not quite skin-layered skeleton with a circulatory system: Burrascano’s beast awakens in a lake, rises, and summits the volcano, whose flaring peak looms above the cloud line. This, apparently, is a snippet from an in-the-works project of the Nathan Love studio. “4 Billion years in the making?” All right, fine: I’m intrigued.

“Les Bêtes” – dir. by Michael Granberry

Lovers of beasts, stop-motion, and “Merry Melodies” à la grotesque, look no further than Michael Granberry’s (comparative) epic. The sheer variety of creatures amazes, from the tiny paper moths to the ghoulish nobles who comprise the audience of a danse incroyable. Why is there such a hearty menu of odd and uncanny beasts? Granberry furnished the amusing and prosaic reason during the Q&A. He had bunches of 20+ year-old animation puppets on the verge of disintegration, and reckoned they deserved one last hurrah. Shot in sequence from beginning to end and without a plan, “Les Bêtes” has a pace and cohesiveness which is enviable. Frickin’ amazing stuff.

Wake Up

Not brought you by KMFDM (which is better than the best), but by RKSS (which, being a fun Québécoise film collective, is still pretty good). Wake Up unspools like a nasty Home Alone-style thriller when half-a-dozen young activists infiltrate a home furnishings and supply store for the purposes of graffiti-based awareness raising. Kevin, the security guard on duty, is having none of this—particularly after his brother-in-arms (and literal brother) is seriously injured during a scuffle. Fun times and pointy objects await the trespassers, all witnessed by an enthusiastic crowd full of gratitude for each creative, bloody blow: no matter which “side” delivered the punishment. Directorial trio Anouk Whissell, François Simard, and Yoann-Karl Whissell continue their streak of mayhem here with a slice of ambiguous social commentary. (And I must admit, I prefer a mixed message over a one-sided message; reality is complicated.)

8/4: 100 Yards

Penultimate screening of the festival; totally ultimate hellah awesomeness. Xu Haofeng and Xu Junfeng, keep doing what you’re doing, because while I’m certain 1920s Tianjin didn’t look quite this Cool, 100 Yards is both believable and stylish. Competing, would-be masters of a martial arts school have a falling out, which sets the scene for plenty of action, culminating with a bold display of the “Short Sabres Technique” (this film hews to classic Hong Kong wuxia tropes, by the by). To cut myself off before I ramble too long about the sheer Cool of the sets, costumery, and violence (did I mention this thing was Cool?), let me sum up with this: despite killing off my two favorite characters—one of them rather early on—100 Yards kept my eyes peeled and my body glued to the seat.

Oddity

Watch out, Scratchy, Damian McCarthy’s creepy puppet is Ir—