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Montréal 2023
The other day, I gave a fellow a cigarette, the favour returned with a compliment on my “overalls.” They’re called suspenders, people, and they hold up trousers. At least I can take comfort that later in the week I was offered a black-market bow tie.
7/27: The Becomers
This Easy-Going Sci/Fi Escapist Genre (“EGSFEGG,” as I suspect I may need this acronym further down the line) piece is appropriately narrated by Russ Mael, and is among the few earth invasion films I’ve seen whose story is told from the point of view of the alien. Zach Clark’s aliens have fled their home world, and have relocated on Earth. Sure, the bodies that the aliens “become” are disposed of via nasty disintegration liquids, but the imitators are endearing, and they mean well. Influenced by most of the alien movies from cinema’s golden age of that kind of thing, The Becomers is delightfully performed (the traveling “lead,” in particular, is impressively transferred through four or more actors), with humor both clever and silly (loved the cult who snuck into the action), and visual treats.
7/28: Hundreds of Beavers (A Personal Experience)
Mike Cheslik & Co. have achieved a glorious devolution with Hundreds of Beavers. Their feature film debut was at least a talkie, but now all dialogue has been stripped away to make room for the raw and masterful idiocy of the premise. We’ve covered this before, so I will just add here: they added a heckuva fun live-bit during the screening, and were just as delightful for the Q & A.
7/29: Empire V
It was impossible for me to watch this without bearing in mind the current war in Ukraine, and what deplorable scum Russia is governed by. That said, Victor Ginzburg’s film is banned in his homeland, which is probably to his credit. Empire V concerns vampires as a global (but Russo-centric) cabal of Earth’s true overlords, being parasitic vessels for some neat-o cosmic bat entity. Their modus operandi is very much like the Russian mafioso-style government: always punch down, always fight dirty, never Continue reading 2023 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: “MEGA-MEMORANDA”, PART TWO
I’ve been mulling over what to say about this movie for close to twenty-four hours and I’ve still got nothing. My fear is, I suppose, that if I started going on about the various misteps, I might not stop, and that would send an inaccurate message about Jennifer Reeder’s earnest, feminist, melodramatic feature debut. Various crummy home lives are explored as we observe a small cross-section of No Name, USA, in this movie about people making decisions of varying degrees of emotional stupidity during the aftermath of a student’s disappearance and death.
And boy did it. And in so coming, my faith in J-Horror was restored. Obviously this is mainstream fare—I wasn’t jumping out of my seat or suffering nightmares afterwards—but it had an unsettling edge to it, characters who evolved, and a really gangbusters finale involving exorcists from all known religions, cracking timbers, and blood-soaked caterpillars. Director Tetsuya Nakashima made what will be looked upon fondly as one of my favorite Christmas movies (yep, things come to head on 12/25), as well as one of my favorite dream sequences, where we can see the rice-omelette visions of a cheerfully sleeping two-year-old girl. I’ll admit it was a bit long-winded, but that allowed for a rare, full dissection of all the characters’ motivations—and while I didn’t find them entirely