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Montréal 2025
More than once I was quickly impressed by a film’s animation only to discover that I was only watching the production company credits.
7/30: Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo
Crank down the musical score by half, and this would land in a far better place. Tsai Chia Ying attempts something risky here as he aims to fuse deep character emotion with ghostly horror. Chia Ming awakens every morning from an overhead drip. Every morning: this love-struck fellow is stuck in a loop wherein he witnesses the object of his affections die somehow while on a hiking trip taken to search for the remains of a mutual friend lost to the haunted mountains. Major No-No Points are awarded to the original trio, who decide to cut through a rather creepy barrier in the surrounding woods, accidentally disrupting an esoteric ceremony. Very nearly ending badly, the movie upgrades from regrettable to merely “meh” with its final, actual, conclusion.
$Positions
Mike meets his daily struggles with unwavering optimism and friendliness, which is no small feat in face of director Brandon Daley’s ceaseless abuse. Crypto (oh how I loathe you) sinks its talons in our hapless hero, clouding his judgment with every dip and spike. We follow a series of increasingly nasty twists of fate (and concurrent ill-decisions) as Mike’s already crummy life hits rock bottom—making true an early, optimistically-stated declaration that no, he’s “nowhere near the bottom yet!” With polyamory, drug addiction, medical debt, and somewhat more urine consumption than I might have preferred, $Positions is simultaneously icky, wacky, and heartfelt. Special shout-out to leading man Michael Kunick. I passed him after the screening commending his performance as one of the best depictions of Job to hit the screen.
Désolé, Pardon, Je m’excuse
Like many of her generation, office-worker Ella loves Internet videos. Unlike many of her generation (at least, I hope), she loves Internet videos released by a Continue reading 2025 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: TRADITIONAL CUISINE, PART THREE
7/23: Every Heavy Thing
8/1: “Lantern Blade”; Episodes 1-3
miniature. Recommended for any lover of genres listed above.
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
8/2: Azrael
Sarangi (Tarun Thind, United Kingdom): Florescent eeriness, late-night study, and then an incongruous, but familiar sound. An unnamed student hears the tones of “God Save the Queen,” but performed on an instrument native to his ancestral land. When the witch appears, each run of the bow and turn of the wheel further traps the young man as the echoing pitch of his adopted home’s anthem severs him from his past.
Two Sides (Luo Mingyang, China): This animation was cryptic and circular, and prominently featured an ominous blade. Effectively silent, as well, as a troubled boy, the least-worthy member of a gang of toughs, is alternately challenged to rough up a victim, or petrified by a vision of a two-faced spirit. It doesn’t make much sense, but it has a “vibe”, a climax, and a post-credits coda that, for whatever reason, seared a deep impression in me.
English Tutor (Koo Jaho, South Korea): Comedy and horror from Korea! Few things are more of a delight. An (you guessed it) English tutor seeks work and is summoned by a mother desperate for her young daughter to write, one word, any word (!), in English. The tutor succeeds in her task after calming the weeping child. But, alas, something is very wrong: and things turn from sweet to creepy to violent with due haste.
Foreigners Only (
An ornately told tale from Iran about an enthusiastic child who ends up trading his ability to sing and shout for a spinning top. The animation is distinctly non-Western, and beautiful. The little boy in question travels within an ever-shifting frame of stylized flowers as he encounters the quilt man, pool man, and the salt man. The up tempo feel is brought down to earth when the salt man takes away the boy’s youthful vigor, leaving only the memories within the top.
This is the only foam-imation I’ve ever seen, and accompanying the weird look achieved by animating its weird narrative about a young man who is protected by his mother’s dreams with polystyrene. Four dreams in particular–“Fire,” “Insect,” “Pumpkin,” and “Corpse”–are highlighted, each heavily symbolic and lovingly rendered in Styrofoam. The short ends with the mother advising her son (grown, with wife and child) not to go out that day; the grateful lad thanks the heavens for the meticulous fence his mother has constructed around him.
By a whisker, this was the strangest short of the crop—both to listen to, and to look at. The sound is purposely muted, as if one is listening to the dialogue (actually, mostly monologues) through a telephone propped against an old tape recorder. The visual element, however, practically shouts from the screen. What is going on here? There are too many clues, too many things going on, to be certain; the final shot suggests a hospital. And the garbled vocal exposition suggests a mental one, at