366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
Montréal 2023
I have now been told by a Canadian filmmaker that I look like a cartoon character. (But in a good way.)
8/4: My Animal
There’s a lot going on in Jacqueline Castel’s story about Heather, a fairly awkward, fairly out-of-place teenager in a small town where there’s little to do but play hockey at the local rink and get hammered at the local dive. Damaged families, coming of age, and the challenges of being queer are all explored in My Animal, as well as the unique difficulties of lycanthropy. While Bobbie Salvör Menuez capably carries much of the dramatic weight, and Stephen McHattie is a pleasure, as always, the real star is the fusion of cinematography and editing. The well-crafted visuals shift between the beautiful, the unworldly, and the frightening as days and months go by leading up to a striking “Blood Moon” when all the emotional whirlwinds eddying around Heather converge. She breaks curfew, seeks out the girl she loves, and has a nasty encounter with the local scumbag baseballer.
Mad Cats
With his silly, violent, cat-filled first feature, Reiki Tsuno plants a big ol’ kiss on Fantasia. The story of yet another deadbeat, Mad Cats chronicles an epic-in-miniature concerning Taka and his twin quests to retrieve the legendary catnip of Ancient Egypt and to save his brother, captured in the claws of a mysterious group of very feline femmes fatale. With plenty of firepower and a limited budget, Reiki puts together a laid-back slacker buddy comedy, with Taka and a homeless man ending up in over their heads. There’s a very “Japanese movie” moment with the pair chatting over lunch after being saved from a cat woman assassin by the unlikely presence of a master combatant; after dispatching the feline foe, the savior gratefully knocks back a full pint of milk. Somewhat-recommended silliness that works more because of the easy chemistry between the three leads than for the premise.
8/5: International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase 2023
Rift (dir. Farhad Bakhtiarikish)—Welcome to the age of the age of iEscape, Rupert Holmes’ near-future vision of a young man and his avatar who has fallen in love with the avatar of an online stranger. This world is full-tilt VR, and looks Continue reading 2023 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: “MEGA-MEMORANDA”, PART THREE
Flowing from a deep well of tedium, this J-Horror Ringu “re-boot” made me nostalgic for a film I haven’t actually seen. (Shame, shame.) Over the course of one-hundred long minutes, I was challenged to feel sympathy for young hospital psychologist, Mayu (Elaiza Ikeda), find her insufferable brother, Kazuma (Hiroya Shimizu), endearing, and be remotely crept out by the “mysterious girl” (Himeka Himejima). It failed on all counts. The director of the original franchise, Hideo Nakata, was at the helm and managed to drain whatever life was present in the original to present an over-lit, under-developed story which only managed to elicit an enthusiastic response from the audience on two occasions. The first was from a direct nod to the video of “girl-with-hair-emerging-from-well”; the second was a raucous laugh at the discovery of a victim that reminded me of nothing else so much as
Director Abe Forsythe accomplishes what I had thought impossible: wringing another blood droplet from parched Zombie Movie cloth. (Bad metaphor: forgive me, it’s early.) Little Monsters opens with an hilarious montage of a couple constantly bickering while the credits run, setting things up nicely for dead-beat, former musician Dave (Alexander England) to hit rock bottom and crash at his sister’s place. While there, he connects with his nephew, and ultimately meets the nephew’s kindergarten teacher, Miss Clementine (Lupita Nyong’o, playing her as a cross between a schoolmarm and a manic pixie dream girl). What follows is a field-trip to a local zoo, which happens to be situated right next to an American military research facility. (Forsythe knows well that he’s re-treading the zombie thing; when troops are called in there’s the exchange, “Zombies? Again?” –Yeah. “Fast ones, or slow ones?” –Slow ones. “Thank God it’s the slow ones.”)