Breaking my unspoken rule about seeing films I can watch elsewhere, I went to The Little Hours [2017] – John Baena. Its offbeat, profane humour was an entertaining addition to the Fantasia International Film Festival.
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Typically, I try to approach Fantasia showings with more curiosity than hype: you never know which film is going to affect you the most! This attitude was thoroughly rewarded during yesterday’s showing of Brigsby Bear [2017] – Dave McCary.
Day 2 at the Fantasia International Film Festival had me attending a sold out showing of the Australian film Killing Ground [2017] –Damien Power, which as its title suggests, has a whole bunch of death. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
A Ghost Story [2017] – David Lowery is a patient film-lover’s absurd and hopeful tragedy just shown at the Fantasia International Film Festival. Rooney Mara plays Casey Affleck‘s widow, sitting on the kitchen floor mournfully eating a pie as his specter watches on. She eats the pie over five long minutes in a single static shot, and he motionlessly observes from under a Casper the Ghost-style sheet with eye holes cut out. This is like an entry bar at a reverse roller coaster: you must be this patient to watch. Do!
The excruciating pace of the opening sequences (pie eating being just one) grants the viewer the freedom to cycle through emotions. First you laugh because the Casper sheet is ridiculous. And then you feel her pain. And then, despite the faceless, featureless sheet and his robotic, motionless presence you somehow feel his. It must be projection, but somehow (as I heard during the Q&A afterwards) most of the audience projected the same thing. This is a kind of genius.
After almost a third of the film she moves out, taking her healing process with her, and he is left behind. We are rewarded then for our patience with a lasting connection which will carry us through the rest of the film. As other people come to inhabit the home in which his ghost is now trapped, his identity seems to unhook from time. The cycles which we felt in the drawn out opening scenes are revealed to be a sort of foreshadowing: his path through the film is to cycle through the stages of grief as a lost and trapped observer. The climax is all of heartwarming, haunting and just a touch of friendly cliche.
This isn’t a scary ghost story. It’s a meditation on the prison of grief. It’s daring in a thoughtful and unexpected way, and I want to show it to the people I care about because sitting here two hours after it ended I just want them to experience the catharsis.
I couldn’t find any release date information aside from some showings in Europe, but keep an eye open for news on this one. It’d be a desperate shame if it didn’t get some wider release than the festival circuit.
It’s the start of yet another edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival! That’s exciting! We’re hype! We are so hype that we recorded a whole episode just to talk about the movies that we hope are good. CULT MTL’s Alex Rose joins our new Fantasia correspondent Sam and I to talk about the movies that are part of this year’s edition of Fantasia that have managed to catch our eye already. Stay tuned for more Fantasia coverage as the festival rolls on! Thanks for listening!
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Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Yesterday was the very first day of the Fantasia International Film Festival, and I decided to pop in on opening film The Villainess [2017], being screened with director Jeong Byeong-Gil in attendance. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
A few years ago, we got to see The Dirties and it blew our minds. So those guys (Matt Johnson and company) made a new movie, set in the Cold War about a team of filmmakers trying to fake the moon landing. If this doesn’t get you excited then I don’t even know man. I don’t even know. Listen now!
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Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Jon and I checked out the late-night Kevin Smith extravaganza that was Yogo Hosers and Jono checked out the indie documentary about beloved D&D terrain manufacturer Dwarven Forge The Dwarvenaut. Listen now!
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Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Man, it’s Sunday, I sure hope Jon is feeling better and has seen some movies this weekend! We talk about indie ghost-story horror flick We Go On today and this is another “sorry it sounds weird” episode as something strange seems to have happened in the compression that I can’t really seem to track down. This our 14th podcast in 18 days you guys, cut us some slack. We’ve still got a few more episodes in us so don’t go anywhere! Or, you know, go literally anywhere since this is podcast and it can go with you.
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Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
As you learned yesterday in our episode with Alex, Jon has the plague. That means I’ve been going to movies solo. Well, not really, I went to one of these with Sam who also writes for the site from time to time. I watched the latest Jackie Chan film and also a movie about a great big house made up out of murder rooms. Fantasia International Film Festival is almost over, enjoy the show!
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Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.