Fantasia: Day 5

Reviewing and working a day job is definitely starting to take a toll on me. I've been averaging two movies a day, but I think I'm only going to make it to The Sparrow tonight, being that I still need to get a hold of people out West and pack for my trip on Wednesday.

Films so far have been more hit than miss, with the biggest miss of all being Mother of Tears on Saturday. Actually, it almost qualifies as so bad it's good, which I'm sure isn't much consolation to Argento fans. L remarked on the fact that everyone who was leaving the theater had the same stricken look like their dad had just died. It really is saying something that the best part of the film, and everyone seemed to agree with me on this one, is the monkey. If you have a chance to see this movie, do yourself a favour and skip it, lest you break your heart. Or at least make sure you've got one hell of a buzz going on.

The other miss was opening film Truffe, which despite some cool visuals and uniformly good performances wasn't quite weird enough for me to recommend. It's unusual for a Quebecois film, but the thin story probably would have worked better as a short.

Surprises so far were MMORPG documentary Second Skin and Miike Takashi's Sukiyaki Western Django, which is way more entertaining than it had any business being. Strange? You bet, but rather accessible by Miike standards. Still, I'd be damned if I could have understood the English dialogue without the English subtitles.

Three of the stronger films I've seen so far were all Spanish: indie horror [REC], which is far more effective than it could have been (I screamed out loud more than once), sci-fi who done it Timecrimes and apocalyptic crime thriller Before the Fall (3 Dias). Out of the three, Before the Fall was my least favourite, due largely to an over reliance on cliche and Hollywood style plotting and character development.

Also good were Who's that Knocking on My Door, a quiet revenge film from Korea and Germ's biopic What We Do is Secret, although I'm going to have to meditate a bit more on this last one. Parts of it reminded me of 24 Hour Party People it the way it captured the energy and excitement of a scene, but some parts were playing it a little safer than maybe they should have.

Another highlight was watching Gordon Liu tear up during the multiple standing ovations he received before and after the screening of Disciples of the 36th Chamber, an airy and infectiously fun Shaw bros kung-fu pic.

I've got to hang out with a bunch of cool people so far, including festival programmers Mitch, Simon, Mi-jeong and King-wei, Simon and Rick from The Naked Lunch radio show and Jason and Rob of Hobo with a Shotgun fame.

And for those who are interested, Film Threat has already posted some of my reviews:

Truffe
Sukiyaki Western Django
[REC]
Who's that Knocking at My Door

And Jeremy and I also collaborated on a pre-festival piece.

My new movie night column, Meeko's Movie Night Massacre will go online tomorrow.

Ooh, and if you wanna check out the Fantasia Trailers, go here. And there are video recaps of each day of the fest on YouTube.