FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL 2006
Blood Tea and Red String (USA, 2005)

This is a sci-fi animation tale for adults. It is about a group of mice who play cards and drink blood tea at the same time. That’s it? No, of course not. On the other hand, a group of squirrel-like animals called the Oak Dwellers, start a journey in order to recover a doll for which they all fell in love. This doll now belongs to the mice. During this journey, they get to taste the yellow fruit, which produces hallucinations. At one point, a strange butterfly comes out of the doll’s stomach and before this happens, the squirrel-like creatures hang the doll on a tree and make it look like Jesus Christ. Is this twisted enough for you? This is an interesting little animation that resembles the work of the Czech director Jan Svankmajer.

FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL 2006
Storm (Sweden, 2005)

Eric Ericson lives by himself in an appartment in downtown Stockholm. Suddenly, the city is menaced by a huge storm. In the meantime, Eric crosses road with a red-haired woman who is being chased by some very mysterious looking individuals. She is carrying a small silver box that she cannot open by herself. Things get more strange when the woman knocks on his door the same night, and the mysterious guys start chasing Eric too. Soon enough, he is involved in this chase without anyone explaining why. When the flashbacks to his childhood start, and when Eric discovers a copy of an old comic book he used to read when he was a kid, what appears as just a murderous chase becomes a personal quest and rediscovering of Eric's childhood misbehaviours. A very unique film that defies categorizing, this is another example of new Scandinavian cinema. A lot of action scenes and good editing, along with cool background music and a few scares (deadly ghosts appear now and then) will keep you alert throughout the whole movie.

FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL 2006

White of the Eye (USA, UK, 1987)

According to movie experts, this is director's Donald Cammell best movie. He is rarely known in the industry because he has had a rather cursed career. However, his films are visual masterpieces not to be missed. This movie has not been released for cinema; being shown only at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montréal. The film was kept in the shelves of the British Council of Censorship (or whatever the name is). For strange reasons and distribution complications, the movie was never released.

This is the story of Paul White, an audio and video equipment repairman. He has a strange hobby though: he kills rich and lonely women. When he commits his murders, he arranges the crime scene as a work of art, using the furniture (and body parts!) available to rearrange it all and create a new grotesque visual work of art, according to him. When his wife finds out and the local police start looking for him, all hell breaks loose. Paul White tries to stab his wife to death and shoot at his own little daughter.

The whole movie is very visual with a lot of opera and classical music playing in the background. The music sets the tone for several crime scenes and the ending is very well made. It reminds me somewhat of The Shining, but this movie might be a little bit more original.

FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL 2006

Art of the Devil 2 (Thailand, 2005)

This sequel has nothing to do with the original apparently. In up-town Thailand, a group of students decide to take revenge on a gym teacher who abused one of the students. They sollicit the help of a Cambodian witch doctor. He warns them, however, that whatever they do, karma will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Whatever bad you do, it will come back to you one way or another. In this case, everyone has a curse on everyone, and the fun begins when they are invited to their teachers house to spend some time with her. This teacher (see photo), who seems at first to be the nice and gentle, ends up killing the students in such a gruesome way that censors will have a hard time figuring out what scenes to cut. Lizzards come out of someone's back, one students gets burned alive with a fire torch provided by our dear teacher, hooks come out of the skin of another person, and terrifying ghosts appear at every corner to one of the students. This is clearly not for the faint of heart or stomach.

Viridiana (Spain, 1961)

Director Luis Buñuel was considered a surrealist. I like to think of his movies, especially his last movies shot in France, not so much as surrealism but as absurd, like Ionesco's theatre of the absurd. It is a combination of mockery, comedy and surrealist scenarios that are sometimes hard to follow. In any case, his controversial topics awarded him the Palme d'or in Cannes with this movie.

In Viridiana, Mexican actress Silvia Pinal plays the role of Viridiana, a nun that goes to visit his uncle. He falls in love with her, tries to seduce her and finally commits suicide. Afterwards, Viridiana tries to create a shelter home for the poor people in her uncle's town. Unfortunately, the poor soon destroy the house of her uncle, prepare a feast for themselves and end up drunk and trying to rape Viridiana. It sounds pretty harsh, and considering this was shot in 1961, just imagine the reaction of the Catholic Church. This movie was banned in Spain for many years. It still remains controversial and original.

Match Point (USA, 2005)

Christian, a tennis instructor, gets a job in an exclusive London country club. He becomes very good friends with a student of his, whose sister he finally marries. Christian soon finds himself living with the rich and bourgeois of London. He has a beautiful apartment, beautiful cars, everything he strived for. Things start to go wrong when he has an affair with his friend’s fiancé, played by Scarlet Johannson. When Scarlet gets pregnant with Christian’s baby, he will have to make the most difficult decision of his life: either leave the life of the rich and famous or get rid of Scarlet and his soon to be born baby.

Director Woody Allen brings us once again another atypical love story. His latest films have a certain feeling to them. They are at the same time mysterious and intriguing. This one will keep you guessing until the end. Of course there are many dialogue scenes, but the way he writes his dialogues is really remarkable. He definitely has his very own style of filmmaking. Not that I am a fan of Woody Allen, but his last couple of films (Melinda and Melinda, for example) cover topics that are of particular interest to me.

Nekromantik 2 (Germany, 1991)

This is the story of a woman who digs up a corpse from the local cemetery, takes it home and makes love to it. Yes, you read it right! I will not go into the details of this, but I must say the film is quite graphic. Not only does she make love, she then proceeds to clean the corpse, dresses him up and finally cuts him into pieces in her bathtub. There is very little dialogue and a lot of romantic music with violin and cords, as if to make us believe that the woman is really in love with the dead guy. And that is not all: this woman, whose name we never get to know, is also dating a guy (alive) who starts to question her new girlfriend’s postmortuary habits, like showing him her photo album full of coffins from her relatives. When one day he discovers a part of the dead guy in the fridge, she has no other option but to kill him, and of course have sex afterwards.

Needless to say, this is one of the most graphic movies I have seen. It is a low-budget film, but it is so realistic it makes your stomach weak. This one is just for hardcore gore fans.

Genealogies of a Crime (Généalogies d'un Crime, France 1997)

Director Raoul Ruiz likes to confuse viewers, at least make them thing throughout his films. The story is based on the real life and works of psychoanalyst Hermione Helmut van Hug, who worked with children. She went so far as to determine that her nephew would be a killer someday, and at the end his nephew actually killed her for reasons that will remain unknown. Ruiz takes this interesting premise and creates the story of Solange, played by Catherine Deneuve. She is known for losing all her cases, but she decides to take one case that resembles Helmut van Hug's. There is a Parapsychologist Group involved who tries to convince Solange that the killer is someone else. The whole movie shifts from real-life to dreams, without really telling the audience what is real and what is not. There is also a hint of what I call "absurd cinema" like the great movies of Luis Buñuel that he made in France.

The Fiancée of Dracula (France, 2002)

"A Van Helsing-like professor and his protegé are tracking Dracula's descendants through the world of "parallels", creatures who are human in form but live quite distinct psychic lives. A circus dwarf who is in love with one of these creatures leads them to a mansion filled with oddly behaving nuns, The Order of the White Virgins. The nuns are detaining a beautiful woman who is the betrothed of the still-extant Dracula. When she escapes, everyone follows her to Dracula's seaside castle, on the way dealing with a baby-eating ogress and a wolf-woman (Brigitte Lahaie in a cameo), witches and madwomen. The bizarre wedding ritual commences." Source: amazon.com

The movie sounds interesting, it actually looks a little cheesy and fake. The actors try to do their best at acting, but sometimes it' just not enough. That makes the story not very credible. The background music is really creepy and the otudoor sets and landscpaes are correctly chosen. Director Jean Rollin likes to combine horror and comedy in his films, and the end result is an erotic and richly visual film that is worth watching.

The Sun (Sontse, Russia, 2005)

Director Alexander Sokurov shows us the last days of the Japanese empire under the Emperor’s reign after the defeat suffered during World War II. Just as in his earlier film Moloch, in this movie we see how the Emperor spends his days alone in his residence, surrounded by his servants. One day, the American army comes to the residence and arrests the Emperor. He is taken away for interrogation. All along he is treated really nicely, like a member of a royal family. For the Japanese, this defeat meant a great loss of confidence in their Emperor. He was regarded as a superior being by the people. This movie shows in an extraordinary way how his servants reacted and spoke to the Emperor during this time of crisis. With very few actors, Sokurov is able to achieve what many directors strive for: a real interest in the main characters.

L'Aventure c'est l'Aventure (France, 1973)

This comedy is one of the most famous movies from France. It is a classical, according to many, and it includes a very good group of French actors who unfortunately passed away. It is the story of a group of individuals who want to create a new political movement based on stability within confusion. What that means basically is that they end up kidnapping famous people and getting ransoms for their liberation. At one moment they kidnap Che Guevara and even the Pope. The idea is quite original, but I did not find the movie very funny. There aren't a lot of laughs as in other French comedy films. There is nice theme song if that helps.

Fratricide (Brudermord, Germany, 2005)

Ein eindringlicher und rauer Film über das immer aktuelle Thema der türkischen und kurdischen Einwanderer in Deutschland und die oftmals gewalttätig ausgetragenen Konflikte zwischen den beiden Gruppen. Zwei junge Kurden, Azad und Ibo, ringen um ihr Überleben angesichts der Gewalt, der Blutrache, des Exils und der Gleichgültigkeit, mit der sie konfrontiert sind.

"Boasting astonishing performances from a largely non-professional cast, Fratricide is an explosive tale of desperate conflict and bloody revenge, a savage, furious, and heartbreaking portrait of raw humanity struggling for safety, for dignity, for survival in the face of violence, exile and the brutal indifference of a society that wants no part of them." (www.german-films.de)

Moloch (Russia/Germany, 2003)

Sokurov's version of Hitler is portrayed in Moloch, a film about the Führer and his and her closest friends. The film is quite slow, but the photography is excellent. The dialogue is a little poetic: I wonder if Hitler ever made such reflections, but in any case, we get a glimpse of what it was like living with him on an everyday basis. There are no war or violent scenes from the concentration camps. Although it is a Russian production, director Alexander Sokurov decided to shoot the film in German to keep the original atmosphere. I especially like the last dialogue, where Hitler says: "We have to find a way to control death", and Eva Braun replies: "What are you talking about? You cannot control death!" Maybe a this point she realizes how insane Hitler really was.

Onibaba (Japan, 1964)

Director Kaneto Shindo is one of the most prolific film directors from Japan. His tenth film, Onibaba, tells the story of two women trying to survive in medieval rural Japan by killing lost warriors and stealing their belongings. When one soldier comes back, a triangle of love is formed. Then all of a sudden, a warrior shows up with a demon mask. One of the woman kills him and uses the mask to scare the other woman from going to visit the soldier at night. The movie is black & white, and the cinematography is excellent. For a movie from the sixties, it looks really new. The eerie music and atmosphere makes the film scary and worth watching. The story is apparently an adaptation of a Buddhist tale. Director Shindo made this film during the summer of 1964 in the middle of a swamp, in the middle of too many production difficulties (the hot humid weather, constant flooding, crabs, mosquitoes, etc.) This is one of the most interesting Japanese films I have seen.

Mother and Son (Mat i sin, Russia 1997)

In this 73-minute film, director Alexander Sokurov portrays the life of dying mother and her son. They both live together in the countryside. There isn't much happening in the film, other than occasional walks in the forest. The landscape scenes are beautiful and the classical music used in some sequences combines perfectly with the overall atmosphere, which is quite sad, to say the least. Mother and son talk about life and death, about happiness and sadness and about the fear of dying. However, there is very little dialogue. For a feature length film with only two actors, this is good stuff.

Mephisto (Hungary, 1981)

This Hungarian movie (spoken entirely in German!) was directed by Istvan Szabo. It won an Oscar award for best foreign film and it is actually pretty interesting. It is the story of Hendrik Hoefgen, a very famous theater actor during Nazi Germany. Mephisto is actually the name of the play that launched his career into stardom. As soon as the Nazi party starts ruling Germany, many actors flee the country because they are afraid their creativity might be censored. Hoefgen, on the other hand, decides to stay, and becomes more and more famous. He has the Nazi leaders on his side because they actually liked his plays. Unfortunately, he later realizes that even as the director of the National Theatre in Berlin, he has no power whatsoever and space for artistic creativity remains very limited.

Russian Ark (Russia, 2002)

Alexander Sokurov is one of Russia's most important movie directors. He has made a couple of award-winning movies in the last decade. Perhaps Russian Ark is the most ambitious one. The story is about a French aristocrat who walks through the Hermitage Museum in St. Petesburg and encounters different chracters from the history of Russia. The movie was shot in one scene. In other words, the scene lasts 96 minutes, and there are no cuts in between. In order to do this, the movie was shot with the newest digital camera technology. It took the work of more than 800 extras placed in the different rooms of the museum. The last minutes of the film contain the famous ballroom dance, with hundreds of people dancing and a live orchestra playing, just like in the time of the czars. The costumes are incredibly detailed and the movie is an exhilarating non-stop ride into the history of Russia and its beloved Hermitage Museum.

Re-Animator (USA, 1985)

Director Stuart Gordon directs this classical gore horror movie about a medicine student and his girlfriend, who start bringing people back from the dead using a special drug created by a newly arrived student. Chaos breaks loose the moment they all step into the morgue to try their drug on human beings. The effects are terrifying and the pace is excellent. This movie is based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, a classic American horror writer. This is bound to become a horror movie classic. The music, inspried by Hitchcock's Psycho, suits very well the overall atmosphere of the film. There is plenty of blood and guts all over the place, all in the spirit of those old gore movies from the late 70's and early 80's. This is a must-see for horror fans.

Le Petit Soldat (France, 1963)

Jean-Luc Godard is one of the most famous French directors ever. In one of his first movies, Le Petit Soldat, we learn about a private detective working and living in Switzerland. During the Algerian war, where rebels fought for the independance of Algeria from France, detective Bruno Forestier is communicating secret information between terrorist groups in Geneva. He meets a Russian girl, Veronique Dreyer, whose accent sounds more French than anything. There are lots of fast shots, cars driving fast along the streets and highways of Switzerland and people running around chasing each other. There is a lot of voice off telling us what our main character, Bruno, thinks about every situation he is experiencing. A little too philosophical and reflective at times, the movie nonetheless keeps you interested until the end.

The Church (Italy, 1988)

Director Dario Argento is very famous for his horror movies. His unique style shaped Italian horror cinema. In this movie, a group of archeologist work in the catacombs of an old church. Apparently, a group of devil worshippers were buried beneath this church before its construction, at the time of the Crusades. When one of the archeologists opens a door by mistake, all hells breaks loose, literally! He becomes infected with the "zombie" virus, or whatever you wish to call it, and he starts killing other people. A group of persons, including small children who were doing a tour of the church with their teacher, get trapped inside the holy recinct and one by one they start to die. I did not like the sect and devil worshipping scenes, it makes it look a little cheezy. Nevertheless, the story is coherent and the suspense does build up nicely up until the end.