Hey folks, Harry here with another fantastic filmfest rundown by Rellik about the goings ons in that country... oh so far away from Austin, Texas -- but that I'll be stopping in on in October on my way to Sitges, Spain for that Film Festival!!! Well, not that I'll get anytime in Frankfurt - I'm just changing planes there... sadly... But hey... I'll be in Germany finally - if only upon a tarmac and an air terminal! Anyway... I'm dying to see THE EYE, but I won't pick up the DVD yet, because it is a film they're showing in Sitges, so I'm saving the experience for the big screen! Can't Wait! Here we go....
Hi Harry, Rellik is back for days 5,6 and 7 of the Fantasy Filmfest. Since Autumn was nice enough to supply a review of Cube 2, I will just add to the review and focus on the other films.
Oh and day 4 was Say Yes and Wendigo, in case your are wondering, it just got mixed up in the email. If you have any question about the films I saw , just drop me a line or wait a while for my own complete coverage that I will post when it´s done on my website. I will mail you when it´s done so you can get a summery about the filmfest.
Day 5
The Untold
Lance Hendiksen starrs as a CEO of a biotech company that hires some experts to retrieve survivors from a planecrash. It´s passagers
were all from his company, including his wayward daughter. The rescue squad becomes the prey of a mysteroius beast in the woods, a
Sesquatch or Bigfoot. Sadly, this "supposedly" real story lacks a proper staging of the plot, character interaction, and is missing an
engaging backstory. The plottwist is clear from the getgo and sadly even the end is so out of character that not even Lance Hendriksen (who I admire) can save this picture. Not a good pic, but hey, they can´t all be great.
29 Palms
This film was way more enjoyable then The Untold. It features Jeremy Davies (the leading man), Rachel Leigh Cook, Bill Pullman, Chris O´Donnell and Keith David in a small, but interesting and funny picture about a man who looses all he had in life in one day, and while he trys to straighten out his life, he gets chased by crooked cops, the native american mafia and a bus station clerk. The characters in this one are a joy to watch because with the exception of Keith David (he plays a slightly crooked Sheriff) and Michael Rapaport (a way two crooked policeman) all the actors are cast against their stereotype. Rachel Leigh Cook proved that she can play other roles in the Stallone remake of Get Carter and here she plays a girl who is thrown into the hunt for a bag of money (the reason for all the action and chasing scenes) and delivers a good performance. Bill Pullman gives us the most weired busstop clerk ever and Chris O´Donnell is a Killer with a heart (to some degree). The music is pretty cool, even though I recognized a piece from Get Shorty (by Morphine, I had my chance). Not very surprising, since the music supervisor on both films was Karyn Rachtman. Jeremy Davies is fun to watch, but for a leading man he is too passive. He only reacts, very seldom gets events starting, which is a problem with the screenplay. The first part also drags a bit but the end is quite satisfying. Overall a good small picture that could, with some editing, be made into a cool film to watch. Since no distributor has picked it up, we will hace to wait and see.
Cube 2: Hypercube
I agree with Autumn on this one to a large degree and thought it to be a worthy successor to the first film. It certainly adds to the concept without needing to endlessly explain what is going on to the audience. This is good because the theories that are involved in this story are just that: unproven theories. If a movie tries to explain too much, it can easily be declared unrealistic or illogical. The opening sequence has the blueprints for the first cube, rather then this one, which i found to be a nice touch (although I know a lot of people will argue it may be the new one, if you refer to the equations, you can see it is a smaller scale with 3 not 4 dimensions...). I did not perceive the acting in the first one to be worse then in this one, the characters are just different and more involved since the cube itself is this time more complex and weired then the first. I think that both movies achieve their goal and give the audience something different from the typical mainstream movie market. I really recommend seeing it and not reading to much about the story to experience it in a theater, where this one certainly belongs. One more thing: The announcer rightfully proclaimed it as the premiere, as ALL showings of this film (Munich,Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg) are the very first time the print is shown in a theater. The Festival is the same, it just has "tour dates" in different cities. And the print wasn´t even there in time for Munich. It came a week too late and was shown seperatly a week later. Not even the producers and the director have seen this final release print. I hope a US presentation will follow soon, as I am eager to get some feedback who Harry and the AICN crew liked it.
Day 6
The Avenging Fist (Kuen sun)
Andrew Lau is the producers name, and this means over the top fighting (directed by Corey Yuen of Matrix/CTHD etc) and great visuals. This movie combines a city like in the Blade Runner PC Game with characters out of a Tekken game. No wonder that the original title in Hong Kong is: God of Fist Style (2001) (Hong Kong: English title: literal title) Legend of Tekken (2001)Legend of the Fist Master (2001). So it is a movie like Streetfighter (the Bad Guy looks like a chinese version of Bison) but offers a little more eye-candy and humor. Even Sammo Hung is in the
movie. The plot involves three twens that are trained by her mother/aunt in martial arts. Of course the obvious speech about not using it in public is given once again as the two children inherited special powers from their father, called The Avenging Fists. Of course it doesn´t take
long to find a perfect reason to use that power because the evil guy turns up and reveals that he has turned their Dad into a vegetable who
fights for him to gain power over the world. What the movie really succeeds in is creating a believeable world in the first reel with features like hoverscooters, cell phones consisting of only rings on your fingers and everpresent videowalls. It is a not too distant future that is portrayed
here. The problem with the movie is that after a great first reel, all is pretty much said and done so there is nothing left but clichés and pathetic
speeches about Love being the true source of your fighting power etc.. This one is fun on a friday at home on video, but be prepared for a silly
movie or you´ll be disappointed.
Horror Hotline (Hung bo yit sin)
It promised a film that would make The Blair Witch Project a harmless bedtime story, but failed in telling any story properly at all. The film is
about a radio show called Horror Hot Line (yes it is written this way), in which callers talk about strange and scary incidents. An american TV crew with a chinese reporter joins a live broadcast to make a story about the station when a caller tells them a strange tale he witnessed in
his youth. At the very end, he mentions a big head creature with multiple eyes that lived in a cage. The next day, the show is flooded with calls
about this incident so the producer of the show and the TV crew start to investigate. They uncover that story behind it and are drawn deeper into the madness of the big head monster. The sad thing is that even though the plot is a good idea for a creepy story, it´s creators did not
care to write a proper script that follows the story. We are introduced to the hosts of the show (good performances here) but those are later
forgotten about. The problem is that a lot of loose ends are left and the film desperatly wants to creat a "Ring" like atmosphere but is too
tame for that. The ending is a total letdown where one really thinks they stoped writing the script halfway through.
Versus (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0275773)
I heard some different things about it but was not expecting much. It was described as a sort of "Braindead" movie, only with asian actors.
Well they have zombies in the movie allright. But that is where the similarities stop. "Versus" is a non-stop ride that really belongs in a festival
like this Fantasy Filmfest. It has really funny scenes (to say they are off-beat is a big understatement), great action and a main character that delivers. The thin plotline about an ancient forest of resurrection that (you guessed it) ressurects the dead servers as a backdrop for the fight between two foes for one girl (is there another reason?) that leaves the forest literally covered with bodyparts. Since the hero learns all this while he is slashing undead left and right, there is no need for exposition, which in this movie, is a good thing. This film has it all: Hardcore
fighting, very funny scenes and every handgun and weapon known to man (all but the lame basics). It is simply a kick-ass movie, there is no other way to describe it. Although most people complained that it would be better if they cut it down by 30 minutes, I did not hink it needs that
much cutting. Maybe 5-10 minutes to get it right. (The version I saw was 119 minutes long) The movie features some of the strangest ykuza thugs you will ever see (one might be a distant relative of JarJar Binks, the other is a not-too-distant offspring of a chimp). The audience loved it and it was easily one of the best movies this year. Oh and I found an AICN quote in the progamme guide for this film: "One of the most fun horror-action-comedy-cult-films I´ve seen in a very,very long time." Amen to that.
Revelation
Udo Kier and Terence Stamp star in this promising movie about the Revelation when Christ´s DNA is to be used to give birth to the messiah.
Kier plays the bad guy and succeeds in this role, but sadly the plot takes on that of a bad TV movie after the first reel. It offers great locations
at first, with all the typical places for the Templar/Freemasons/Illuminati story like Rennes-Le-Chateau, Malta and the Vatican. But the movie takes such a nosedive after the confrontation that when the end really leaves you unsatisfied, you are not even surprised. I really recommend staying away from it.
Black Serenade (Tuno Negro)
This one is not as bad as it(and the imdb comments) sounds. It can´t deny that it belongs to the IKWYDLS- Slasherfilm genre, but the story is more interesting then that of typical US slashers and the location makes this one stand out from the crowd. The performances are quite good and give us a variety of red herrings to follow. The plot revolves around a College in Salamanca where the urban legend of the Dark Minstrel is becoming awfully real as students turn up murdered at the end of each term. The newly arrived Alex (played by Silke Hornillos Klein, or just Silke) joins our group of main characters to investigate the murders. All the classic elements are there (sex,partys,strange policemen and weired teachers) but it is not overdone, and the film is moving at a good pace to keep you guessing what´s next. Since it is partly a whodunnit, I won´t spoil anything here but I found the movie not a spredictable as other slashers and for once, motive and profile fit the murder.
and now for the one to rule them all...
The Eye (Jian gui)
The closing night gala of the Filmfest had something special for the audience in store: A really good and scary thriller, based in the world of "souls with unfinished buisiness" but with a resolution that did not seem contrived or overdone. The Eye, done by the Peng Brothers (watch out for those in the next years) sends chills down your spine and offers a good plot, great visuals and a haunting score (that had the audience gripping their seats more then once) combined with great acting. The film involves a young women named Mun, who has been blind since the age of 2. Now, at 20, she agrees to get a corneal transplant to restore her eyesight. After the successful operation, Mun is slowly adapting to her new surroundings when she has confrontations with unpleasent visitors that are eerie and not seen by other people. She realizes that those people are dead souls that wander in our world. Scared and frightend by these events (they are very disturbing, i can assure you) she isolates herself and tries to shut out these "visions". Her psychotherapist, however, does not give up on her and forces her to confront her problem in order not to live a sheltered existence for the rest of her life. So they set out to find out about the doner of her new eyes and what unfinished buisiness lead to these horrible visions. While the story sound like an asien version of the sixth sense, it is very different as the fact that she sees the dead is not the "gimmick" per se, but a means (and motivation) to solve the mystery and find a way to live a life without fear. The movie cares about its characters and does not just use them as tools to tell a story. The story is ultimately about redemption and the cruelty that can be carried out from supposedly "civilised" people that are ignorant towards others that are different from them. The film premiered in may in Hong Kong and will hopefully come to more theaters because this is where it belongs. It is already out on DVD in asia (those guys are sick the way they put out those films) but I recommend waiting for a theater release if the chance exists. It was without a doubt, the best film in the festival.From its haunting and original title sequence to its last frame, THE EYE is one of those films why I spend 7 days in a row in a packed theater watching 21 films in a row. Once again, if you have a chance to see it, do so by any means. If your only chance is DVD, please see it on a large screen with a good audio system and at night. The film deserves it. One of the best films of the year so far.
Check http://www.eyethemovie.com/ for a sneak. If you dare.
Get info here: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0325655
That´s it for the Fantasy Filmfest this year, I hope you guys get to see those good ones as well in the weeks and months to come,
Rellik
