more on Fantastisk Filmfestival
Fantastisk Filmfestival is now over. (Noooo! Say it isn't so! I need a job where watching twelve movies in a week is a main requirement instead of a vacation.) Time for me to write about the rest of the films I've seen!
Elfie Hopkins (trailer), with short film Dead
The short was a sweet if not terribly original Ghost-type film about a recently deceased man having to save his child.
The feature was a detective story with a gory twist, about a girl obsessed with investigating imagined crimes, who discovers some nasty things about her new neighbours. I don't know exactly what went wrong with this one, if it was the script, or the fact that its teen star looked about my age, or just the music, but what it comes down to is that it should have been scarier. As it was, it was pretty much two thirds Midsomer Murders and one third ick, with nothing leading from one to another. It kind of irks me, because I feel that this story could have worked.
Oh, well. At least this way I've seen a film with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. :-)
The Aggression Scale (trailer), with short film Curiosity Kills
The short film was a fun and bloody affair in which a kid feeds radioactive glop to his rat, and disaster ensues. :-)
The feature has been described as "Home Alone without the comedy." It could also have been described as "how much easier things would have been for Jamie Lee Curtis had Michael Myers been on her side." Though, quite frankly, the Laurie of Halloween would have been embarrassed about the Lauren of The Aggression Scale, who is disappointingly useless. A good thing her new stepbrother is anything but, though.
This was the one film I saw with proper suspense. I mostly wanted to see it because Ray Wise was in it (as it turns out, very little), but it was an exciting, sometimes uncomfortable flick in which gangsters try to take out a family and get more resistance than they'd bargained for.
Apart from the adrenaline, the most interesting thing about this film is its antihero, Owen. I've seen him described as a psychopath, but while he shows a detachment to the people he kills, he does take care of Lauren, and he seems to have some sort of emotional attachment to his father (even if his reaction to the father's death is pretty much COLD RAGE).
Furthermore, every act of aggression he pursues is directed at someone who deserves it (except maybe the spider in the beginning). Even Lauren, cutting herself at his strewn-out traps, has it coming, seeing how she has done nothing but deride him from the very first moment she meets him. It's worth noticing that when his father comes to tuck him in, the traps are gone. The in-story reason is, of course, that Lauren kicks them away, but the symbolic reason is that the father is benign.
Owen's history of violence is aimed at school bullies, and in the film we see him take down the gangsters in highly creative ways. (With occasional help from Lauren when she's not busy screaming. I know, I know, that's a lot more realistic than Owen's reactions. Doesn't make it fun to watch.) While, psychologically speaking, he might well be a psychopath, in terms of the movie he's Righteous Wrath. In most thriller and horror films, we're ambivalent towards the violence - we don't want bad things to happen to people we care about, but at the same time we do, because that's what makes it exciting. Owen absolves the viewer from that ambivalence. Like the Cell Block Tango, he (silently) assures us that They Had It Coming.
It may not be a moral standpoint I approve of, but it makes for very entertaining viewing. :-)
A warning to viewers, though: The opening titles in alternating pink and black are pretty hard on the eyes.
205: Zimmer der Angst / 205: Room of Fear (trailer), no short film
This film is a remake of the Danish Kollegiet, but since I haven't seen that film and they're apparently not that similar, never mind that. It's a rather run-of-the-mill, but nice enough, ghost story about a girl moving into a student dorm where Bad Things Happen. It didn't really scare me, though I doubt I'd want to rewatch it alone in the dark. Still, it was an entertaining enough way to spend the afternoon.
The lead actress, Jennifer Ulrich, was also in Wir sind die Nacht last year, and she appeared both at a Q&A after the film and at the end party, which was the first time I'd been in such close proximity to someone I've entertained the thought of slashing. That was weird. I didn't talk to her, though, since I couldn't think of anything I could possibly say beyond "You are so pretty. And tiny."
Le Tableau (trailer) with short film Noise
The short film won the Méliès D'Argent, though I found it a bit stressful to watch - maybe that was why it won! It consisted of visual representations of a noisy apartment block, where a guy tries to get some peace and quiet.
The feature may have been the technically best film I saw during the festival (though it doesn't hold the place in my heart that Zombadings does). I brought my mother, and she was completely floored by it, wishing that her voting card went all the way up to ten.
The story is about a painting where some figures have been fully painted, some still lack a colour or two, and some are just sketches. The fully painted ones are the ruling class and oppress the others. A few characters escape and go off to search for the Artist, trying to find out his meaning behind it all.
It is a beautifully animated and told film, and though I saw it dubbed to Swedish, I forgot about that after about five minutes. I wouldn't show it to small kids (it gets a bit dark at times), but to older ones and (especially) adults, it's a treat!
Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal (trailer), no short film
I was a bit hungover that last day (memo to self: having drinks five hours after a salad is NOT THE SAME as having drinks after a meal) and wasn't really looking forward to having to work at a cannibal movie, but Eddie was quite fun and not all that gory. (Okay, a little bit gory.) At its core, it's about the cannibalistic nature of art: an artist with a painter's block moves to a small Canadian town and ends up as the temporary guardian of a mild-mannered developmentally disabled man, Eddie. The artist is shocked to discover that Eddie, in times of stress, eats animals (and people) in his sleep... but the shock soon turns to inspiration, and the artist keeps telling himself that he'll allow it just once more, one more painting...
I have a feeling that I've seen or heard about something very like this before, but I can't recall what. Either way, this version had some nice touches. I think my favourite was the radio voice that kept playing classical arias ("Der Hölle Rache" and others) and gushing over the "beautiful" death and tragedy surrounding them.
That's all, for this year! From most to least favourite, I'd probably rate them like this:
Yay
Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings
Le Tableau
The Aggression Scale
Vampyr (though mostly for the music)
Okay
The Extraordinary Voyage
Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal
Violet & Daisy
Jack & Diane
Akam
205: Room of Fear
Nay
Elfie Hopkins
Lee Hardcastle: Claymation from the Breakfast Table
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/595045.html and has
comments there.
Elfie Hopkins (trailer), with short film Dead
The short was a sweet if not terribly original Ghost-type film about a recently deceased man having to save his child.
The feature was a detective story with a gory twist, about a girl obsessed with investigating imagined crimes, who discovers some nasty things about her new neighbours. I don't know exactly what went wrong with this one, if it was the script, or the fact that its teen star looked about my age, or just the music, but what it comes down to is that it should have been scarier. As it was, it was pretty much two thirds Midsomer Murders and one third ick, with nothing leading from one to another. It kind of irks me, because I feel that this story could have worked.
Oh, well. At least this way I've seen a film with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. :-)
The Aggression Scale (trailer), with short film Curiosity Kills
The short film was a fun and bloody affair in which a kid feeds radioactive glop to his rat, and disaster ensues. :-)
The feature has been described as "Home Alone without the comedy." It could also have been described as "how much easier things would have been for Jamie Lee Curtis had Michael Myers been on her side." Though, quite frankly, the Laurie of Halloween would have been embarrassed about the Lauren of The Aggression Scale, who is disappointingly useless. A good thing her new stepbrother is anything but, though.
This was the one film I saw with proper suspense. I mostly wanted to see it because Ray Wise was in it (as it turns out, very little), but it was an exciting, sometimes uncomfortable flick in which gangsters try to take out a family and get more resistance than they'd bargained for.
Apart from the adrenaline, the most interesting thing about this film is its antihero, Owen. I've seen him described as a psychopath, but while he shows a detachment to the people he kills, he does take care of Lauren, and he seems to have some sort of emotional attachment to his father (even if his reaction to the father's death is pretty much COLD RAGE).
Furthermore, every act of aggression he pursues is directed at someone who deserves it (except maybe the spider in the beginning). Even Lauren, cutting herself at his strewn-out traps, has it coming, seeing how she has done nothing but deride him from the very first moment she meets him. It's worth noticing that when his father comes to tuck him in, the traps are gone. The in-story reason is, of course, that Lauren kicks them away, but the symbolic reason is that the father is benign.
Owen's history of violence is aimed at school bullies, and in the film we see him take down the gangsters in highly creative ways. (With occasional help from Lauren when she's not busy screaming. I know, I know, that's a lot more realistic than Owen's reactions. Doesn't make it fun to watch.) While, psychologically speaking, he might well be a psychopath, in terms of the movie he's Righteous Wrath. In most thriller and horror films, we're ambivalent towards the violence - we don't want bad things to happen to people we care about, but at the same time we do, because that's what makes it exciting. Owen absolves the viewer from that ambivalence. Like the Cell Block Tango, he (silently) assures us that They Had It Coming.
It may not be a moral standpoint I approve of, but it makes for very entertaining viewing. :-)
A warning to viewers, though: The opening titles in alternating pink and black are pretty hard on the eyes.
205: Zimmer der Angst / 205: Room of Fear (trailer), no short film
This film is a remake of the Danish Kollegiet, but since I haven't seen that film and they're apparently not that similar, never mind that. It's a rather run-of-the-mill, but nice enough, ghost story about a girl moving into a student dorm where Bad Things Happen. It didn't really scare me, though I doubt I'd want to rewatch it alone in the dark. Still, it was an entertaining enough way to spend the afternoon.
The lead actress, Jennifer Ulrich, was also in Wir sind die Nacht last year, and she appeared both at a Q&A after the film and at the end party, which was the first time I'd been in such close proximity to someone I've entertained the thought of slashing. That was weird. I didn't talk to her, though, since I couldn't think of anything I could possibly say beyond "You are so pretty. And tiny."
Le Tableau (trailer) with short film Noise
The short film won the Méliès D'Argent, though I found it a bit stressful to watch - maybe that was why it won! It consisted of visual representations of a noisy apartment block, where a guy tries to get some peace and quiet.
The feature may have been the technically best film I saw during the festival (though it doesn't hold the place in my heart that Zombadings does). I brought my mother, and she was completely floored by it, wishing that her voting card went all the way up to ten.
The story is about a painting where some figures have been fully painted, some still lack a colour or two, and some are just sketches. The fully painted ones are the ruling class and oppress the others. A few characters escape and go off to search for the Artist, trying to find out his meaning behind it all.
It is a beautifully animated and told film, and though I saw it dubbed to Swedish, I forgot about that after about five minutes. I wouldn't show it to small kids (it gets a bit dark at times), but to older ones and (especially) adults, it's a treat!
Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal (trailer), no short film
I was a bit hungover that last day (memo to self: having drinks five hours after a salad is NOT THE SAME as having drinks after a meal) and wasn't really looking forward to having to work at a cannibal movie, but Eddie was quite fun and not all that gory. (Okay, a little bit gory.) At its core, it's about the cannibalistic nature of art: an artist with a painter's block moves to a small Canadian town and ends up as the temporary guardian of a mild-mannered developmentally disabled man, Eddie. The artist is shocked to discover that Eddie, in times of stress, eats animals (and people) in his sleep... but the shock soon turns to inspiration, and the artist keeps telling himself that he'll allow it just once more, one more painting...
I have a feeling that I've seen or heard about something very like this before, but I can't recall what. Either way, this version had some nice touches. I think my favourite was the radio voice that kept playing classical arias ("Der Hölle Rache" and others) and gushing over the "beautiful" death and tragedy surrounding them.
That's all, for this year! From most to least favourite, I'd probably rate them like this:
Yay
Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings
Le Tableau
The Aggression Scale
Vampyr (though mostly for the music)
Okay
The Extraordinary Voyage
Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal
Violet & Daisy
Jack & Diane
Akam
205: Room of Fear
Nay
Elfie Hopkins
Lee Hardcastle: Claymation from the Breakfast Table
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/595045.html and has
comments there.