I know I said I'd be back in 2018, and here it is nearly a month in. I don't think I explicitly said I'd be back at the beginning of 2018, but that was the intention. I didn't account for how busy the beginning of each quarter is for me.
Anyway, I've seen a small handful of movies since I went on hiatus. Of course, I finished of Another Hole in the Head and the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival (both fun festivals, and frustrating that they're at the same time. But I think the entire crossover audience of Jewish films and horror fans is...me.)
I caught THOR: RAGNAROK, which was hilarious is excellent the Taika Waititi way I hoped it would be.
COCO made me cry. OLAF'S FROZEN ADVENTURE made me wretch.
I spent a lot of time with silent films, mostly at my beloved Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, but also at the glorious Castro for SF Silent Film Fest's Day of Silents.
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI deserves all the praise it's getting, and none of the baffling backlash.
Of course I saw STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI--twice. It also deserves all the praise and...very little of the backlash. But then, I didn't feel that way until after the second screening. I didn't get all of what Rian Johnson was going for the first time. Also, I have to say that scene--you know the one I'm talking about--is just about the greatest thing ever put on cinema. I'll always call it the "Oh, SHIT!" scene, because the first time I saw it, on opening night (thanks to a good friend who scored some tickets) when that scene came up, the movie was silent and the audience was silent save for one guy who yelled out, "Oh, SHIT!"
And the night before taking off to see my family in Anchorage, AK, I celebrated a Noir City Xmas with Eddie Mueller, MANHANDLED, and ALIAS BOSTON BLACKIE.
And then earlier in 2018, I kicked it off with a little Midnites for Maniacs tribute to Gus Van Sant. TO DIE FOR is hilarious and provocative, a great satire on celebrity culture, with a faux-documentary format that it seems every sitcom is copying now (no, it didn't start with THE OFFICE, it at least goes back to 1995. And then Van Sant's controversial shot-for-shot remake of PSYCHO (1998.) I'll admit I was one of the snobs who didn't care to see it back then because, heck, the original is already perfect (I am a big fan of remaking shitty, forgotten movies, though.) But I do remember my sister and cousin seeing it, and saying they liked it better than "the black and white version." I chalked it up to them being young and stupid, but.... Okay, it might still be unnecessary, since the original is still perfect. But it's also a good movie, and good movies are totally necessary. I'm happy I finally saw it.
Oh, I saw THE SHAPE OF WATER. Yeah, that chick totally has sex with a fish-dude. And it's an exciting story about love, acceptance, and the Cold War. But what really excited me about it was...she lives upstairs from a theater! Oh my God! I wanna live upstairs from a theater! Especially a grand movie palace! Why aren't there apartments above the Castro?
THE POST is...pretty good. I can't say there's anything particularly wrong about it. But here's a sampling of what I was thinking when I watched it:
Man, Meryl Streep is a great actress. Yup, that's totally Meryl Streep being a great actress playing...what's her name, the owner of the paper. Yup, in this movie The Washington Post is owned by Meryl Streep.
Man, Tom Hanks is a great actor. Yup, that's totally Tom Hanks being a great actor playing...what's his name, the editor of the paper. Yup, in this movie The Washington Post is edited by Tome Hanks.
Hey, that's Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, from MR. SHOW WITH BOB AND DAVID. They're both playing serious roles. They've both played serious roles before. I don't know if I've seen them do that together, though. They probable have. But still, it's weird that Bob and David are doing scenes together but it's not a Mr. Show sketch.
Hey, remember when Tom Hanks was a comic actor, and then he made the leap into serious drama with PHILADELPHIA? Tom Hanks is in this movie, too. Maybe Bob and David are hoping some of that magic rubs off on them.
Boy, they're really, really hammering the point that it's bad for the President to attack the press. They seriously hope Trump will watch it...but even if he does there's no chance he changes his tune.
A whole lot of other thoughts....
...
And somewhere near the bottom...
...
The Pentagon Papers.
I had more fun at Niles, included the long-awaited DVD release of our brand new (a couple of years old) silent film, BRONCHO BILLY AND THE BANDIT'S SECRET. Stop by the museum and pick yourself up a copy.
And finally, I'm currently in Noir City. But that deserves it's own post.
My Total Minutes:466,047
Showing posts with label holehead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holehead. Show all posts
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Jason...takes a hiatus
Some might notice I basically already have. Anyway, it was just about a year ago today that I rebooted, because 2016 just...broke me. Turns out this year has been just as hard. So I'm not even rebooting. I apologize to the remainder of Docfest, to the day I spent at Frameline (especially Julie Sokolow's excellent WOMAN ON FIRE,) to the Niles Film Museum, both for Charlie Chaplin Days (featuring the excellent insights and entertainment of Dan Kamin, the guy who taught Robert Downey, Jr. to play Chaplin) and for the Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival.
I especially apologize to my friends who made the hilarious webseries Doucheaholics. I had a great time at the premiere and after party, and if I can find some time in my hectic life, I really want to be part of season 2.
I apologize to the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival and to Another Hole in the Head, both playing right now and for the next couple of weeks. In fact, I'm emceeing Another Hole in the Head, so please come out and watch some horror films with me. And I'll be back at SVJFF for the end, just as soon as Holehead is over.
And I apologize to my readers (I hesitate to imagine I actually have fans) because I'm sure you were just dying to hear my insights about all these festivals as well as some feature films like SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (very good, but missing a scene where the people of New York come to the rescue, which were the best parts of previouse Spider-Man movies) or WONDER WOMAN (awesome!!!!) or MOTHER! (yikes! Darren Aronofsky hates God, and isn't afraid to say it!) or BLADE RUNNER 2049 (Gorgeous, liked it, still processing what it's "about"--much like the first BLADE RUNNER.)
Anyway, this time I'm not even up for a reboot. This is a hiatus. I'm officially giving myself permission to walk away from this blog...until the New Year. See you in 2018. If something strikes me as especially noteworthy, I'll write about it on my Facebook and/or Twitter.
Of course, I'm still counting the minutes I spend watching movies.
My Total Minutes: 434,109
I especially apologize to my friends who made the hilarious webseries Doucheaholics. I had a great time at the premiere and after party, and if I can find some time in my hectic life, I really want to be part of season 2.
I apologize to the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival and to Another Hole in the Head, both playing right now and for the next couple of weeks. In fact, I'm emceeing Another Hole in the Head, so please come out and watch some horror films with me. And I'll be back at SVJFF for the end, just as soon as Holehead is over.
And I apologize to my readers (I hesitate to imagine I actually have fans) because I'm sure you were just dying to hear my insights about all these festivals as well as some feature films like SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (very good, but missing a scene where the people of New York come to the rescue, which were the best parts of previouse Spider-Man movies) or WONDER WOMAN (awesome!!!!) or MOTHER! (yikes! Darren Aronofsky hates God, and isn't afraid to say it!) or BLADE RUNNER 2049 (Gorgeous, liked it, still processing what it's "about"--much like the first BLADE RUNNER.)
Anyway, this time I'm not even up for a reboot. This is a hiatus. I'm officially giving myself permission to walk away from this blog...until the New Year. See you in 2018. If something strikes me as especially noteworthy, I'll write about it on my Facebook and/or Twitter.
Of course, I'm still counting the minutes I spend watching movies.
My Total Minutes: 434,109
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Jason goes to Holehead--Closing Night
Still doing an overdue data dump. So apologies for super-quick reviews.
DRUGS IN THE TENDERLOIN: This 1966 documentary gets down and dirty, but real and sympathetic with the denizens of the Tenderloin district of SF. And it was a pretty amazing little treat.
BEYOND THE GATES: A celebration of the bygone era of videotapes, and especially VCR board games, with a Jumanji-like twist. Two brothers meet at their missing father's video store. They play the game, they get sucked in, and adventure commences. With a special appearance by Barbara Crampton (THE RE-ANIMATOR) who was there in person to talk about the film afterwards. A pretty great way to end the 2016 version of Another Hole in the Head.
Total Running Time: 159 minutes
My Total Minutes: 437,472
DRUGS IN THE TENDERLOIN: This 1966 documentary gets down and dirty, but real and sympathetic with the denizens of the Tenderloin district of SF. And it was a pretty amazing little treat.
BEYOND THE GATES: A celebration of the bygone era of videotapes, and especially VCR board games, with a Jumanji-like twist. Two brothers meet at their missing father's video store. They play the game, they get sucked in, and adventure commences. With a special appearance by Barbara Crampton (THE RE-ANIMATOR) who was there in person to talk about the film afterwards. A pretty great way to end the 2016 version of Another Hole in the Head.
Total Running Time: 159 minutes
My Total Minutes: 437,472
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 13
Continuing my overdue data dump.
FEMALE WEREWOLF: It sucked. Some movies are painful to watch. Some movies are boring. This was so boring it was painful to watch. That's all.
DRACULA'S WIDOW: Chris Coppola was cool (and not as drunk as he was the last time he showed up at Holehead) and this 1988 movie of his was a freakin' load of fun. Pretty cool.
Total Running Time: 151 minutes
My Total Minutes: 437,313
FEMALE WEREWOLF: It sucked. Some movies are painful to watch. Some movies are boring. This was so boring it was painful to watch. That's all.
DRACULA'S WIDOW: Chris Coppola was cool (and not as drunk as he was the last time he showed up at Holehead) and this 1988 movie of his was a freakin' load of fun. Pretty cool.
Total Running Time: 151 minutes
My Total Minutes: 437,313
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 12
Two features on Monday...about a month...and a half...ago. I apologize, but it's time for a late data dump.
SAVE YOURSELF is a clever and knowing look at the role of women in horror films. A team of female horror filmmakers are on a cross-country trip, traveling from their film festival premiere screening back to their homes in L.A. They met some...interesting people at the screening, and they'll meet a couple of them again. And they'll get kidnapped and held for twisted experiments by an ex-Nazi scientist with some interesting ideas about eugenics. That's pretty spoiler-y for a short-ass review. Oops.
Then the highlight of the festival MAD MAX: SILENT FURY. I should say, as someone who has attended the festival from the very beginning (even before the beginning, if you count the final horror-themed weekend of the 2003 SF Indiefest as the proto-Holehead) they roped me into a volunteer job for the festival. Specifically, my job was to introduce the films and (when there were filmmakers present) lead the Q&A. Which turned out to be a lot of fun. And nothing was more fun that introducing a packed house to MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, in black and white, with the sound removed, and with a live score by The Firmament. Especially as a silent film fan, I got to wax eloquent on how silent film is still alive today. It's inspiring your favorite filmmakers, I guarantee it (unless you have no taste.) And, in fact, silent films are still being made today--you just don't know it, because of all the talking in them. The fact is, the art of a silent film is not in the lack of dialogue--that's just the technical limitation. The art of a silent film is in conveying an idea--an emotion, a story point, a little piece of information--through a moving picture, rather than through exposition. Show, don't tell. And every time that happens in a movie (and it happens all the time in a good movie) silent films are still alive. And what we watched that night completely validated my theory, as MAD MAX: FURY ROAD still works in black and white, and it works without dialogue, and it was brilliant.
Total Running Time: 211 minutes
My Total Minutes: 437,162
SAVE YOURSELF is a clever and knowing look at the role of women in horror films. A team of female horror filmmakers are on a cross-country trip, traveling from their film festival premiere screening back to their homes in L.A. They met some...interesting people at the screening, and they'll meet a couple of them again. And they'll get kidnapped and held for twisted experiments by an ex-Nazi scientist with some interesting ideas about eugenics. That's pretty spoiler-y for a short-ass review. Oops.
Then the highlight of the festival MAD MAX: SILENT FURY. I should say, as someone who has attended the festival from the very beginning (even before the beginning, if you count the final horror-themed weekend of the 2003 SF Indiefest as the proto-Holehead) they roped me into a volunteer job for the festival. Specifically, my job was to introduce the films and (when there were filmmakers present) lead the Q&A. Which turned out to be a lot of fun. And nothing was more fun that introducing a packed house to MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, in black and white, with the sound removed, and with a live score by The Firmament. Especially as a silent film fan, I got to wax eloquent on how silent film is still alive today. It's inspiring your favorite filmmakers, I guarantee it (unless you have no taste.) And, in fact, silent films are still being made today--you just don't know it, because of all the talking in them. The fact is, the art of a silent film is not in the lack of dialogue--that's just the technical limitation. The art of a silent film is in conveying an idea--an emotion, a story point, a little piece of information--through a moving picture, rather than through exposition. Show, don't tell. And every time that happens in a movie (and it happens all the time in a good movie) silent films are still alive. And what we watched that night completely validated my theory, as MAD MAX: FURY ROAD still works in black and white, and it works without dialogue, and it was brilliant.
Total Running Time: 211 minutes
My Total Minutes: 437,162
Friday, December 2, 2016
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 11
Okay, catching up from about a month behind...
The final Sunday of Holehead started with a program of local films that just didn't quite fit into the festival theme, but were great anyway--Not Another Hole in the Head
I HATE THE COLOR RED: The comic struggles of a family working hard to keep their business afloat. Difficulty level: that business is a video rental store. A film about cinephilia with a touch of nostalgia.
IMPRESSIVE STACKS: Trying to impress with the books you pick up at the library. Very funny.
THE LAST SUMMER: Five friends on a road trip, sharing a night in a cheap motel, and pondering their future. And comically struggling with the lights.
REBEL CHILD: A kid can't be a kid forever. And when you're raised in war, personal tragedies can determine which side you'll join.
And then more shorts. These ones fit in the festival, but not in any particular program. Beacause they're Random Acts
THE BRIDGE PARTNER: A nice, genteel bridge club gets a new member. And the timid housewife she's partnered with gets quite a shock.
CRUEL FORGIVENESS: A cool Mexican horror film about strange religion.
D.C.E.: Fight over a mysterious box, in a post-apocalyptic world.
DARK_NET: A man, with a problem, finds his solution...an assassin. Or maybe he just found a scammer online as is about to be taken for everything. Pretty amusing, either way.
THE EASTERN SEA - THE FOOL: Love and UFO conspiracies.
THE EDGE: Primitives, refugees, and anarchy in the woods. Pretty cool.
THE GREAT EMU WAR: The only surviving documentation of the time emus and humans fought a war.
LAURA, LOST: Friends believe a creepy woodsman is responsible for the disappearance of a local girl.
ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE: Surprises, as a man picks up a stranded woman. But who will be victimizing whom?
THAT'S HOW I ROLL: A Dungeons & Dragons game goes badly out of control.
WHISTLE IN THE DARK: Brother and sister in the woods. And some demons. Pretty cool.
Then more shorts, with people doing bad things. It's Inappropriate Behavior
AFTER WORK: A black and white animated normal evening at home. Getting ready for dinner...with a little sexual assault.
THE DUCHESS OF MARS: A noise complaint is not at all what it appears to be, as a racist, homophobic cop is going to be put through an awkward situation. Actually, it's strange enough it would be awkward for anyone.
HARMFUL SENSATIONS: The night life takes its toll. This time, in the form of a particularly gross venereal disease.
IN A WORLD OF BAD BREATH: Ummm...I remember this one was pretty weird, but not much else about it.
INK, COCKS & ROCK'N'ROLL: Steve Martin (not that one) talks about his graphic artist alter-ego, Krent Able, and his outrageous works.
LAVENDER: A drug that will make you live your greatest sexual fantasy. But what if you find out something about yourself you weren't prepared for?
THE MUFFLER TEST (A SHORT FILM ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS): An emotional connection to something an old man left in his VW bus.
SCARY LITTLE FUCKERS: Goes on a bit long, and is heavily inspired by GREMLINS, but a lot of fun.
Then guess what? More shorts! These ones with an LGBT theme, because it's Dark Rainbow
AXIOMATIC: When seeking revenge, it helps to suppress your conscience. A few nanobots can do the trick, and make you unstoppable.
THE DOODLER HOMOCIDES: A fascinating documentary about a serial killer who victimized the gay community of San Francisco in the 1970s. Scary stuff.
DREAMS WE SHARE: Outside, there's war. Insider an abandoned house, there are memories of when there wasn't war.
EDEN: In 2042, "curing" gay people is once again the norm. And gay youth are sent to the Eden Institute to betortured cured. A story of an attempted escape.
A FALL FROM GRACE: The prequel to EDEN.
HARD BROADS: Three women are living it up on a celebrity's money...as long as nobody finds out she's dead.
NUOC: Experimental narrative of a Vietnamese American kid trying to understand his mother's experience as a war refugee.
PYOTR495: In Russia, after the passage of a "Gay Propaganda" law, online hookups come at a great risk. But a little monsterism makes the risk a two-way street.
And then the one feature of the day, the very strange THE ALCHEMIST COOKBOOK. A young black man hides out in a trailer in the woods. His supplies--including his anti-psychotic medication--is provided at regular intervals by his friend. But he's out there to crack the secrets of alchemy--to turn base metals into gold, and to make a fortune. And the isolation and...irregular medicine intervals...they take their toll on him. Either that, or he's really tapping into some satanic forces to get his fortune at a terrible price. The movie is an excellent, slow-paced burn, that keeps a surprising amount of tension for what is mostly one guy puttering around his trailer alone. Actor Ty Hickson deserves a heck of a lot of credit for keeping it intense but believable. And director Joel Potrykus deserves just as much credit for keeping the audience guessing and interested in the little glimpses into a broken mind.
Total Running Time: 463 minutes
My Total Minutes: 437,052
The final Sunday of Holehead started with a program of local films that just didn't quite fit into the festival theme, but were great anyway--Not Another Hole in the Head
I HATE THE COLOR RED: The comic struggles of a family working hard to keep their business afloat. Difficulty level: that business is a video rental store. A film about cinephilia with a touch of nostalgia.
IMPRESSIVE STACKS: Trying to impress with the books you pick up at the library. Very funny.
THE LAST SUMMER: Five friends on a road trip, sharing a night in a cheap motel, and pondering their future. And comically struggling with the lights.
REBEL CHILD: A kid can't be a kid forever. And when you're raised in war, personal tragedies can determine which side you'll join.
And then more shorts. These ones fit in the festival, but not in any particular program. Beacause they're Random Acts
THE BRIDGE PARTNER: A nice, genteel bridge club gets a new member. And the timid housewife she's partnered with gets quite a shock.
CRUEL FORGIVENESS: A cool Mexican horror film about strange religion.
D.C.E.: Fight over a mysterious box, in a post-apocalyptic world.
DARK_NET: A man, with a problem, finds his solution...an assassin. Or maybe he just found a scammer online as is about to be taken for everything. Pretty amusing, either way.
THE EASTERN SEA - THE FOOL: Love and UFO conspiracies.
THE EDGE: Primitives, refugees, and anarchy in the woods. Pretty cool.
THE GREAT EMU WAR: The only surviving documentation of the time emus and humans fought a war.
LAURA, LOST: Friends believe a creepy woodsman is responsible for the disappearance of a local girl.
ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE: Surprises, as a man picks up a stranded woman. But who will be victimizing whom?
THAT'S HOW I ROLL: A Dungeons & Dragons game goes badly out of control.
WHISTLE IN THE DARK: Brother and sister in the woods. And some demons. Pretty cool.
Then more shorts, with people doing bad things. It's Inappropriate Behavior
AFTER WORK: A black and white animated normal evening at home. Getting ready for dinner...with a little sexual assault.
THE DUCHESS OF MARS: A noise complaint is not at all what it appears to be, as a racist, homophobic cop is going to be put through an awkward situation. Actually, it's strange enough it would be awkward for anyone.
HARMFUL SENSATIONS: The night life takes its toll. This time, in the form of a particularly gross venereal disease.
IN A WORLD OF BAD BREATH: Ummm...I remember this one was pretty weird, but not much else about it.
INK, COCKS & ROCK'N'ROLL: Steve Martin (not that one) talks about his graphic artist alter-ego, Krent Able, and his outrageous works.
LAVENDER: A drug that will make you live your greatest sexual fantasy. But what if you find out something about yourself you weren't prepared for?
THE MUFFLER TEST (A SHORT FILM ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS): An emotional connection to something an old man left in his VW bus.
SCARY LITTLE FUCKERS: Goes on a bit long, and is heavily inspired by GREMLINS, but a lot of fun.
Then guess what? More shorts! These ones with an LGBT theme, because it's Dark Rainbow
AXIOMATIC: When seeking revenge, it helps to suppress your conscience. A few nanobots can do the trick, and make you unstoppable.
THE DOODLER HOMOCIDES: A fascinating documentary about a serial killer who victimized the gay community of San Francisco in the 1970s. Scary stuff.
DREAMS WE SHARE: Outside, there's war. Insider an abandoned house, there are memories of when there wasn't war.
EDEN: In 2042, "curing" gay people is once again the norm. And gay youth are sent to the Eden Institute to be
A FALL FROM GRACE: The prequel to EDEN.
HARD BROADS: Three women are living it up on a celebrity's money...as long as nobody finds out she's dead.
NUOC: Experimental narrative of a Vietnamese American kid trying to understand his mother's experience as a war refugee.
PYOTR495: In Russia, after the passage of a "Gay Propaganda" law, online hookups come at a great risk. But a little monsterism makes the risk a two-way street.
And then the one feature of the day, the very strange THE ALCHEMIST COOKBOOK. A young black man hides out in a trailer in the woods. His supplies--including his anti-psychotic medication--is provided at regular intervals by his friend. But he's out there to crack the secrets of alchemy--to turn base metals into gold, and to make a fortune. And the isolation and...irregular medicine intervals...they take their toll on him. Either that, or he's really tapping into some satanic forces to get his fortune at a terrible price. The movie is an excellent, slow-paced burn, that keeps a surprising amount of tension for what is mostly one guy puttering around his trailer alone. Actor Ty Hickson deserves a heck of a lot of credit for keeping it intense but believable. And director Joel Potrykus deserves just as much credit for keeping the audience guessing and interested in the little glimpses into a broken mind.
Total Running Time: 463 minutes
My Total Minutes: 437,052
Sunday, November 6, 2016
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 10
It was a long, long day last Saturday. 7 shows, from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.
We started with the shorts program Adventures in Time and Space. Two of my favorite dimensions.
ALEKTO: Julia Forward from Earth finds out that the Alekto corporation is more than a multi-national insurance company, when she wakes up on a distant world and the locals tell her the truth.
ATTRACTIVE FORCE: An excellent Russian animation. A cosmonaut crash-lands on a planet, where local shadow creatures help him fix his ship. They're very friendly, as long as you don't try to take their beautiful sparkling jewels.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE PASSENGER: Every time our hero falls asleep, he wakes up in a slightly different universe. Something subtly changes, but those changes multiply over time to make his many lives very different--like choosing beer or pot, or maybe even bigger differences.
ENTROPIC: A scientist has come up with the perfect way to find the meaning of the universe--create a simulated universe, and analyze the meaning of that. It's not as easy as you'd think.
INFINITY: A cool time-travel mindbender, as an investor bullies a scientist to perfect her time travel device. Which leads to the question--with time travel, can you die an infinite number of times?
LONG TIME CALLER: A man can call himself in the past or in the future, to try to make sense of his life. But future self can't tell past self anything, or it will fuck everything up. Very funny.
THE QUESTION: A cool animation that ponders the great question of life out there in the universe. And more importantly, who's asking?
SPUTNIK: From Spain, so the American characters don't quite speak right, and I assume the same for the Russian characters. It imagines a different first man in space, Nikolay. He's just not the first person to return, since an accident makes landing impossible. As he's supposed to initiate the sequence to crash land (rather than become the first corpse in space and a great national embarrassment) he makes contact...with Sarah Sullivan of Los Angeles. A little girl confined to a wheelchair but dreaming of space. He pretends to be a Martian, and they become close friends in his final hours before his oxygen runs out. Despite what I said about the awkward accents, it's an amazing, beautiful, touching movie.
THEREFORE I AM: A man goes back in time to try to convince his younger self to take action and avoid a tragedy. He does this many, many, many times, with different branching results. But always leading to him having to go back in time and warn himself.
Next up was more shorts, Androids, AI's, and Other Good Neighbors.
APPLE: An android malfunctions, killing his owner. But only because his owner was malfunctioning and abusing his daughter. And the daughter was a friend--she gave the android an apple.
CAPACITY: A farmer invents a robot to carry on his work after he's gone.
ELF: From South Africa, an android learns about being human. Especially, she wants to feel the all the feels.
QUBITPUNK: A hacker girl delivers pizza--and vengeance against the punks who stole her cubes and killed her father.
ROCOCO NEURON: Rococo and Mori-maaa develop apps--virtual reality cosmetic surgery and such. Mori-maaa's latest is a bit strange. It creates an Arumata--an alter-ego. A vulgar man who does all the things that Rococo can't. And a battle of wits ensues over control. Very inventive.
THE SHAMAN: A scene from a future battle. A Shaman, using the power of music and...I don't know, astral projection? Goes into a netherworld trying to convert a battle colossus to his side. You know, it's a very well realized scene, that would be cool in a movie that expands on this universe more. I like story.
STREAM OF DOUBTS: Very inventive. A character in a streaming video makes a call to a crisis worker. You see, as a character in a streaming video, she's afraid that she doesn't actually exist. Nice little mind-bender.
GIFT OF LIFE: The human-android war has begun, and two androids are on the run seeking the sanctuary where they can ride it out until there's peace. But one escaped from the factory, and isn't quite all put together yet. Nevertheless, he appreciates his gift of life.
Next up, more shorts! Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales
BETA PERSEI: At the planetarium, the legend of Perseus and Medusa lives on. Or at least in the head of one guy.
THE BUNNY MAN: Don't go out at night, or the Bunny Man will get you, in this bit of rural horror. Pretty cool, but needs more bunny. Then again, that's just me. I think every movie needs more bunny (except one.)
A HOUSE OF ILL FAME: A legendary house, previously a brothel, where the owner froze to death. Now it's haunted, as an Okie during the Great Depression is about to find out.
LAMP: A woman rubs a tiny lamp, and immediately a genie is at her door. She gets three wishes, but instead they spend a little time bonding and becoming friends.
LEGEND OF DARK RIDER: The king's men, on the northern outposts, looking for the legendary Dark Rider. Nobody who sees him lives. But he's just a legend, so instead they'll spend their time bossing around the locals in the tavern. Cool scene, wish I could see the rest of the story. I like story.
MADRE DE DIOS: A gory little movie about a woman being turned into a flesh-and-blood icon.
QUENOTTES (PEARLIES): From Luxembourg, a cute little story about a mouse--not a tooth fairy--who steals teeth. Just don't lose them. That mouse can get vicious.
WOLF OF VENGEANCE: From Japan, some stylish sword-fighting as a man known as The Wolf kills everybody. Then more come. Cool scene, wish I could see the rest of the story. I like story.
And then up next, guess what? Even more shorts! The Bold, The Beautiful, and The Bizarre.
ABSENCE: 15 goddamn minutes of a lady in a bathtub. I think it's supposed to symbolize birth. And then after dumping her out, it catches on fire.
ANIMA RADIX: Dark, ghostly animation. Very evocative.
AYMARA: A strange little story, that creates an other-worldy look by shooting in infrared black-and-white.
BØLGE: A funny little animation about a brain-damaged box who is almost tricked by an old friend into helping out an anarchist collective.
DECISION: The anxiety of choice. Do you go with the black and white? Or the white and black?
DOGSTEIN:SUPER SCIENCE ADVENTURE: A dog is taught to play catch with a disk. He loves it. This skill will come in handy.
FIST BIRD FLIES THE GAUNTLET: The most literal interpretation of "hand-made animation" I've ever seen.
GINGER AND SNAPPER: In the zombie apocalypse, Ginger survived by going to high ground. But now she's lonely. Not even zombies have come by in days. So when one is trapped in her fence, she has a new friend. Turns out zombies get lonely ,too.
MY QUEEN: The memories of an old house, as layers are stripped away.
NEMESIS: A bounty hunter, on a mission, but always checks in with his wife. She's his reason to live.
THE PAST INSIDE THE PRESENT: A freaky little story of a couple reliving their old memories. Like literally their heads become video input panels and they plug into old VHS tapes of their life together. Hopefully that will rekindle a spark.
RIPTIDE RHAPSODY: A cool little paper puppet stop-motion animation of a band of furries swept up in a flood. Cool music, too (the project started out as a music video for the band, but took on a life of it's own, and several years later, here it is.)
SUBMERGENCE: A woman looks at her fish bowl, while remembering a time when water did something awful to her.
SUFFER NOT A WITCH: Hand-drawn animation of superstition and violence.
WORLD DOMINATION: A sketch animation of a mad scientist and his plan to conquer the world with an army of cloned mammoths. Not as easy as it sounds.
ROGER BALLEN'S THEATRE OF APPARITIONS: A beautifully freaky spectacle of dreams, violence, sex, and insanity. Might actually be my favorite of the whole program.
And then we got into the feature film part of the day, starting with LET HER OUT. 23 years ago, a woman was raped in the Gemini Hotel. When she became pregnant, she decided to end her life and her fetus's life, with a pair of scissors to the belly. She died, but her baby lived. Now that baby, Helen, is a bike courier in Toronto. One night she is struck by a car. She survives with just a broken arm. But then some strange things start happening. She has blackouts where she's been doing some strange things. Turns out, she has a growth in her head. Not a tumor, but her twin sister who was absorbed into her in the womb. And she's coming out, and planning to take over her life. And she's not a kind person. There's a lot to like about this very well made movie, but there were also a lot of little moments that just kind of insulted the audience's intelligence. Little clichés, like "we have to go back to where it all began" that just took me out of the movie. Don't get me wrong, it's like 90% great. Which means it's not consistently bad enough to enjoy as a bad movie. But it's also not consistently good enough for me to take seriously. But it's close enough for me to wan to see what director Cody Calahan does next.
And then to Korea for some animated re-animated in SEOUL STATION. I haven't seen TRAIN TO BUSAN (out in theaters now) but this is an animated companion piece to it. An old man, bleeding from the neck, wanders through the city and lies down in the train station. Lots of homeless there. Soon, a zombie outbreak. Meanwhile a teen runaway is living with her boyfriend, but is mad that he tried to sell her into prostitution. After all, she's done it before, she just doesn't want to do it again. As the zombie outbreak starts, she's trapped in the station, while her boyfriend is accosted by her father, who found her picture online. There's some sharp social commentary, which I'm sure if I were Korean I would get more out of. But even I can recognize the significance when the authorities can't tell the difference between zombies and homeless. It's an exciting, sometimes terrifying story. And that's the most important part. I might have mentioned before that I like story. This has a hell of a story, with action and great plot twists that kept me engaged the whole way through. It just never freakin' lets up.
And finally, we ended the night with TOKYO GRAND GUIGNOL, an anthology of weird, gory stuff going on in Tokyo. From a man who can travel back in time via murder, to a woman haunted by her mirror self, to shadows that hide, to an extremely loyal BDSM werewolf (featuring, I believe, the first werewolf transition scene that includes the dick.) Crazy, violent fun in the night in Tokyo. Gotta love it.
And that was the end of the night. And the end of a very long day. Thank goodness for the Daylight Savings Time transition. I really needed that extra hour.
Total Running Time: 679 minutes
My Total Minutes: 436,589
We started with the shorts program Adventures in Time and Space. Two of my favorite dimensions.
ALEKTO: Julia Forward from Earth finds out that the Alekto corporation is more than a multi-national insurance company, when she wakes up on a distant world and the locals tell her the truth.
ATTRACTIVE FORCE: An excellent Russian animation. A cosmonaut crash-lands on a planet, where local shadow creatures help him fix his ship. They're very friendly, as long as you don't try to take their beautiful sparkling jewels.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE PASSENGER: Every time our hero falls asleep, he wakes up in a slightly different universe. Something subtly changes, but those changes multiply over time to make his many lives very different--like choosing beer or pot, or maybe even bigger differences.
ENTROPIC: A scientist has come up with the perfect way to find the meaning of the universe--create a simulated universe, and analyze the meaning of that. It's not as easy as you'd think.
INFINITY: A cool time-travel mindbender, as an investor bullies a scientist to perfect her time travel device. Which leads to the question--with time travel, can you die an infinite number of times?
LONG TIME CALLER: A man can call himself in the past or in the future, to try to make sense of his life. But future self can't tell past self anything, or it will fuck everything up. Very funny.
THE QUESTION: A cool animation that ponders the great question of life out there in the universe. And more importantly, who's asking?
SPUTNIK: From Spain, so the American characters don't quite speak right, and I assume the same for the Russian characters. It imagines a different first man in space, Nikolay. He's just not the first person to return, since an accident makes landing impossible. As he's supposed to initiate the sequence to crash land (rather than become the first corpse in space and a great national embarrassment) he makes contact...with Sarah Sullivan of Los Angeles. A little girl confined to a wheelchair but dreaming of space. He pretends to be a Martian, and they become close friends in his final hours before his oxygen runs out. Despite what I said about the awkward accents, it's an amazing, beautiful, touching movie.
THEREFORE I AM: A man goes back in time to try to convince his younger self to take action and avoid a tragedy. He does this many, many, many times, with different branching results. But always leading to him having to go back in time and warn himself.
Next up was more shorts, Androids, AI's, and Other Good Neighbors.
APPLE: An android malfunctions, killing his owner. But only because his owner was malfunctioning and abusing his daughter. And the daughter was a friend--she gave the android an apple.
CAPACITY: A farmer invents a robot to carry on his work after he's gone.
ELF: From South Africa, an android learns about being human. Especially, she wants to feel the all the feels.
QUBITPUNK: A hacker girl delivers pizza--and vengeance against the punks who stole her cubes and killed her father.
ROCOCO NEURON: Rococo and Mori-maaa develop apps--virtual reality cosmetic surgery and such. Mori-maaa's latest is a bit strange. It creates an Arumata--an alter-ego. A vulgar man who does all the things that Rococo can't. And a battle of wits ensues over control. Very inventive.
THE SHAMAN: A scene from a future battle. A Shaman, using the power of music and...I don't know, astral projection? Goes into a netherworld trying to convert a battle colossus to his side. You know, it's a very well realized scene, that would be cool in a movie that expands on this universe more. I like story.
STREAM OF DOUBTS: Very inventive. A character in a streaming video makes a call to a crisis worker. You see, as a character in a streaming video, she's afraid that she doesn't actually exist. Nice little mind-bender.
GIFT OF LIFE: The human-android war has begun, and two androids are on the run seeking the sanctuary where they can ride it out until there's peace. But one escaped from the factory, and isn't quite all put together yet. Nevertheless, he appreciates his gift of life.
Next up, more shorts! Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales
BETA PERSEI: At the planetarium, the legend of Perseus and Medusa lives on. Or at least in the head of one guy.
THE BUNNY MAN: Don't go out at night, or the Bunny Man will get you, in this bit of rural horror. Pretty cool, but needs more bunny. Then again, that's just me. I think every movie needs more bunny (except one.)
A HOUSE OF ILL FAME: A legendary house, previously a brothel, where the owner froze to death. Now it's haunted, as an Okie during the Great Depression is about to find out.
LAMP: A woman rubs a tiny lamp, and immediately a genie is at her door. She gets three wishes, but instead they spend a little time bonding and becoming friends.
LEGEND OF DARK RIDER: The king's men, on the northern outposts, looking for the legendary Dark Rider. Nobody who sees him lives. But he's just a legend, so instead they'll spend their time bossing around the locals in the tavern. Cool scene, wish I could see the rest of the story. I like story.
MADRE DE DIOS: A gory little movie about a woman being turned into a flesh-and-blood icon.
QUENOTTES (PEARLIES): From Luxembourg, a cute little story about a mouse--not a tooth fairy--who steals teeth. Just don't lose them. That mouse can get vicious.
WOLF OF VENGEANCE: From Japan, some stylish sword-fighting as a man known as The Wolf kills everybody. Then more come. Cool scene, wish I could see the rest of the story. I like story.
And then up next, guess what? Even more shorts! The Bold, The Beautiful, and The Bizarre.
ABSENCE: 15 goddamn minutes of a lady in a bathtub. I think it's supposed to symbolize birth. And then after dumping her out, it catches on fire.
ANIMA RADIX: Dark, ghostly animation. Very evocative.
AYMARA: A strange little story, that creates an other-worldy look by shooting in infrared black-and-white.
BØLGE: A funny little animation about a brain-damaged box who is almost tricked by an old friend into helping out an anarchist collective.
DECISION: The anxiety of choice. Do you go with the black and white? Or the white and black?
DOGSTEIN:SUPER SCIENCE ADVENTURE: A dog is taught to play catch with a disk. He loves it. This skill will come in handy.
FIST BIRD FLIES THE GAUNTLET: The most literal interpretation of "hand-made animation" I've ever seen.
GINGER AND SNAPPER: In the zombie apocalypse, Ginger survived by going to high ground. But now she's lonely. Not even zombies have come by in days. So when one is trapped in her fence, she has a new friend. Turns out zombies get lonely ,too.
MY QUEEN: The memories of an old house, as layers are stripped away.
NEMESIS: A bounty hunter, on a mission, but always checks in with his wife. She's his reason to live.
THE PAST INSIDE THE PRESENT: A freaky little story of a couple reliving their old memories. Like literally their heads become video input panels and they plug into old VHS tapes of their life together. Hopefully that will rekindle a spark.
RIPTIDE RHAPSODY: A cool little paper puppet stop-motion animation of a band of furries swept up in a flood. Cool music, too (the project started out as a music video for the band, but took on a life of it's own, and several years later, here it is.)
SUBMERGENCE: A woman looks at her fish bowl, while remembering a time when water did something awful to her.
SUFFER NOT A WITCH: Hand-drawn animation of superstition and violence.
WORLD DOMINATION: A sketch animation of a mad scientist and his plan to conquer the world with an army of cloned mammoths. Not as easy as it sounds.
ROGER BALLEN'S THEATRE OF APPARITIONS: A beautifully freaky spectacle of dreams, violence, sex, and insanity. Might actually be my favorite of the whole program.
And then we got into the feature film part of the day, starting with LET HER OUT. 23 years ago, a woman was raped in the Gemini Hotel. When she became pregnant, she decided to end her life and her fetus's life, with a pair of scissors to the belly. She died, but her baby lived. Now that baby, Helen, is a bike courier in Toronto. One night she is struck by a car. She survives with just a broken arm. But then some strange things start happening. She has blackouts where she's been doing some strange things. Turns out, she has a growth in her head. Not a tumor, but her twin sister who was absorbed into her in the womb. And she's coming out, and planning to take over her life. And she's not a kind person. There's a lot to like about this very well made movie, but there were also a lot of little moments that just kind of insulted the audience's intelligence. Little clichés, like "we have to go back to where it all began" that just took me out of the movie. Don't get me wrong, it's like 90% great. Which means it's not consistently bad enough to enjoy as a bad movie. But it's also not consistently good enough for me to take seriously. But it's close enough for me to wan to see what director Cody Calahan does next.
And then to Korea for some animated re-animated in SEOUL STATION. I haven't seen TRAIN TO BUSAN (out in theaters now) but this is an animated companion piece to it. An old man, bleeding from the neck, wanders through the city and lies down in the train station. Lots of homeless there. Soon, a zombie outbreak. Meanwhile a teen runaway is living with her boyfriend, but is mad that he tried to sell her into prostitution. After all, she's done it before, she just doesn't want to do it again. As the zombie outbreak starts, she's trapped in the station, while her boyfriend is accosted by her father, who found her picture online. There's some sharp social commentary, which I'm sure if I were Korean I would get more out of. But even I can recognize the significance when the authorities can't tell the difference between zombies and homeless. It's an exciting, sometimes terrifying story. And that's the most important part. I might have mentioned before that I like story. This has a hell of a story, with action and great plot twists that kept me engaged the whole way through. It just never freakin' lets up.
And finally, we ended the night with TOKYO GRAND GUIGNOL, an anthology of weird, gory stuff going on in Tokyo. From a man who can travel back in time via murder, to a woman haunted by her mirror self, to shadows that hide, to an extremely loyal BDSM werewolf (featuring, I believe, the first werewolf transition scene that includes the dick.) Crazy, violent fun in the night in Tokyo. Gotta love it.
And that was the end of the night. And the end of a very long day. Thank goodness for the Daylight Savings Time transition. I really needed that extra hour.
Total Running Time: 679 minutes
My Total Minutes: 436,589
Saturday, November 5, 2016
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 9
Three films last Friday night.
First up was ANOTHER EVIL, an excellently done, clever combination of horror and comedy, in which neither one is sacrificed for the sake of the other. Dan and his family are in their vacation home, when some strange things happen. They bring in a paranormal expert, who concludes there are 2 ghosts in their house, but they're basically harmless. So that's cool. Except the father wants a second opinion. And this second, industrial grade exorcist, concludes that they are actually evil, and determined. So the (the exorcist and Dam) spend a week up there bonding, catching ghosts, getting drunk (puts him in more childlike state to sense ghosts) and basically having a good ol' guys' time up there. But Dan didn't tell his wife and son that he got a second exorcist and if he doesn't finish by the time they come visit for the weekend, things are gonna get awkward. Especially when the exorcist concludes it's not the house that's haunted, it's the family. Just a superb mix of dry comedy and genuinely frightening moments.
And then the found-footage anthology, THE DARK TAPES. A clever mix of styles exploring scientific demon hunting (with a Caltech physics shout-out!) the hunters becoming hunted, cam girls and horny guys, revenge, demons, and crazy time dilations. Of course, I'm partial to the one with the Caltech physicist (which is also the one that sort of frames everything,) but they're all excellently done, effective, scary, and funny. Even if the found-footage sub-genre is kind of played out, THE DARK TAPES shows there's still some life in it.
And finally, a few brave souls stuck around for the late-late screening of ATMO HORRORX. Even fewer made it to the ending. Just weirdness for the sake of weirdness, featuring a guy with a half-dozen long balloons sprouting out of his crotch and who makes people disappear by clapping them on the side of the head with shoes. One of my new fears is that some day director Pat Tremblay will actually make a worthwhile movie. Because then people will look back at this early work and decide it's genius. It's like watching David Cronenberg's early student films (even down to the Canadian-ness.) They're unwatchable messes, but because he later became David Cronenberg, people watch them and decide they're genius. I hope to hell the same doesn't happen here. But I want to end this on a kind note, so I'll just say...it's not STRUGGLED REAGANS.
Total Running Time: 296 minutes
My Total Minutes: 435,891
First up was ANOTHER EVIL, an excellently done, clever combination of horror and comedy, in which neither one is sacrificed for the sake of the other. Dan and his family are in their vacation home, when some strange things happen. They bring in a paranormal expert, who concludes there are 2 ghosts in their house, but they're basically harmless. So that's cool. Except the father wants a second opinion. And this second, industrial grade exorcist, concludes that they are actually evil, and determined. So the (the exorcist and Dam) spend a week up there bonding, catching ghosts, getting drunk (puts him in more childlike state to sense ghosts) and basically having a good ol' guys' time up there. But Dan didn't tell his wife and son that he got a second exorcist and if he doesn't finish by the time they come visit for the weekend, things are gonna get awkward. Especially when the exorcist concludes it's not the house that's haunted, it's the family. Just a superb mix of dry comedy and genuinely frightening moments.
And then the found-footage anthology, THE DARK TAPES. A clever mix of styles exploring scientific demon hunting (with a Caltech physics shout-out!) the hunters becoming hunted, cam girls and horny guys, revenge, demons, and crazy time dilations. Of course, I'm partial to the one with the Caltech physicist (which is also the one that sort of frames everything,) but they're all excellently done, effective, scary, and funny. Even if the found-footage sub-genre is kind of played out, THE DARK TAPES shows there's still some life in it.
And finally, a few brave souls stuck around for the late-late screening of ATMO HORRORX. Even fewer made it to the ending. Just weirdness for the sake of weirdness, featuring a guy with a half-dozen long balloons sprouting out of his crotch and who makes people disappear by clapping them on the side of the head with shoes. One of my new fears is that some day director Pat Tremblay will actually make a worthwhile movie. Because then people will look back at this early work and decide it's genius. It's like watching David Cronenberg's early student films (even down to the Canadian-ness.) They're unwatchable messes, but because he later became David Cronenberg, people watch them and decide they're genius. I hope to hell the same doesn't happen here. But I want to end this on a kind note, so I'll just say...it's not STRUGGLED REAGANS.
Total Running Time: 296 minutes
My Total Minutes: 435,891
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 8
Two shows on Thursday, starting with the shorts Neo-noir is the New Black (get it? It's a French/English pun.)
BAD HABITS: A librarian discovers a knife, and a book about killing bad habits. It gets a little too literal.
HEART ROCK AND DOLLARS: Love, betrayal, gangsters, and poison in gloomy Lebanon.
HOLE: A woman moves into a new apartment, and finds a hole in the wall where she can spy on her neighbor. That might not be a great idea.
THE SHADOW HOURS: Twin private eyes, with an odd condition. Only one of them can be awake at a time. So one takes the day shift, one takes the night shift. But when one falls in love and she wants a relationship that can last 24 hours a day, things get pretty tense.
SWING SHIFT: A film that would've been equally at home in the Lovecraft shorts program. A noir-ish dame is the night guardian against creatures from beyond. Very funny mix of genres.
THE WHISKEY TALKING: The highlight of the program. A recovering alcoholic is poisoned, and there's no antidote. But he can counteract the poison by being drunk. So a wasted man and his nearly-as-drunk sidekick go on an adventure to find his murderer. What kind of man is he? 100 proof.
THE WRITER: From Italy, a beautiful, stylish thriller of cursed writer.
And then for a bit of sci-fi with VIRTUAL REVOLUTION. It's 2047, and in this dystopian future most of the people spend almost all their time online. Can you imagine that? There's a small population of unconnected, and also a handful of hybrids--people who can actually log off once in a while and interact in the real world for just a bit before heading back into the virtual world. One of those hybrids is the hero, a private bounty hunter working for the virtual gaming corporations. Seems there's some terrorists--necromancers who are killing connected via a virus that fries their brain through the headset. The fake excitement of the virtual world is beautifully contrasted with the brutal punishment of the real world, and it's provocative how the movie delves into the blurring of the worlds. In an unsurprising twist, the terrorists are really (maybe?) a team of freedom fighters--but giving people freedom by forcing them out of what they've already chosen they want. What I found most intriguing is how it isn't black and white about virtual reality being bad and real reality being the right way to go. I don't know how old director Guy-Roger Duvert is, but I'm going to guess he would count as a "millennial." And I would consider this the first millennial sci-fi dystopian film about virtual reality, and how in choosing between real and virtual, virtual is a completely legitimate choice. After all, if experience is all just chemical reactions in our brains, who cares what triggers them?
Total Running Time: 179 minutes
My Total Minutes: 435,596
BAD HABITS: A librarian discovers a knife, and a book about killing bad habits. It gets a little too literal.
HEART ROCK AND DOLLARS: Love, betrayal, gangsters, and poison in gloomy Lebanon.
HOLE: A woman moves into a new apartment, and finds a hole in the wall where she can spy on her neighbor. That might not be a great idea.
THE SHADOW HOURS: Twin private eyes, with an odd condition. Only one of them can be awake at a time. So one takes the day shift, one takes the night shift. But when one falls in love and she wants a relationship that can last 24 hours a day, things get pretty tense.
SWING SHIFT: A film that would've been equally at home in the Lovecraft shorts program. A noir-ish dame is the night guardian against creatures from beyond. Very funny mix of genres.
THE WHISKEY TALKING: The highlight of the program. A recovering alcoholic is poisoned, and there's no antidote. But he can counteract the poison by being drunk. So a wasted man and his nearly-as-drunk sidekick go on an adventure to find his murderer. What kind of man is he? 100 proof.
THE WRITER: From Italy, a beautiful, stylish thriller of cursed writer.
And then for a bit of sci-fi with VIRTUAL REVOLUTION. It's 2047, and in this dystopian future most of the people spend almost all their time online. Can you imagine that? There's a small population of unconnected, and also a handful of hybrids--people who can actually log off once in a while and interact in the real world for just a bit before heading back into the virtual world. One of those hybrids is the hero, a private bounty hunter working for the virtual gaming corporations. Seems there's some terrorists--necromancers who are killing connected via a virus that fries their brain through the headset. The fake excitement of the virtual world is beautifully contrasted with the brutal punishment of the real world, and it's provocative how the movie delves into the blurring of the worlds. In an unsurprising twist, the terrorists are really (maybe?) a team of freedom fighters--but giving people freedom by forcing them out of what they've already chosen they want. What I found most intriguing is how it isn't black and white about virtual reality being bad and real reality being the right way to go. I don't know how old director Guy-Roger Duvert is, but I'm going to guess he would count as a "millennial." And I would consider this the first millennial sci-fi dystopian film about virtual reality, and how in choosing between real and virtual, virtual is a completely legitimate choice. After all, if experience is all just chemical reactions in our brains, who cares what triggers them?
Total Running Time: 179 minutes
My Total Minutes: 435,596
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 7
Two more movies last Wednesday night, starting with Sophia Takal's ALWAYS SHINE. As a fan of Sophia Takal's work--mostly familiar with her acting work--I'm...let's say "keenly aware" of how often she is naked on screen. So the significance isn't lost on me when she opens the movie with an actress (Beth, played by Caitlin FitzGerald) auditioning for a part that requires extensive nudity, and they want to see that in the audition. But rather than showing it, Takal focuses on her face and her discomfort in the moment. Imagine that--a nude scene that shows female emotions instead of tits. This immediately lets the audience know this will be a movie told from a female perspective, not the male gaze. So I'll admit straight out that as a man some things will go right over my head. Anyway, Beth is an up-and-coming star of shitty, exploitative horror films she doesn't even want to be in. In the second scene, we see her best friend Anna (Mackenzie Davis) in what appears to be an audition for the role of "woman who is being cheated by her mechanic and is pissed about it." Until there's a wide shot and we realize she's actually at the mechanic. Anna is the more aggressive of the friends, but that hasn't helped her acting career. To reconnect, they take a trip to Big Sur for some best-friends girl time. But jealousies take hold, it seems Beth is so meek she hasn't even taken a chance at the steps she promised Anna she'd take to help her career (e.g., show her acting reel to a producer.) So there's an altercation, and then...things get strange. I don't want to spoil it more. But I will say there was much discussion amongst the festival regulars about what exactly happened there. Anyway, I enjoyed it.
Then the late show was on glorious 35 mm film, and started with the projectionist's stash of secret bonus shorts. This included a timely trailer for THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. And the highlight was a film called THE CREDITORS which a short online search reveals...nothing. It looked like it was from the 50s or 60s and was just a long, opening credit sequence. That's the whole joke. Stock footage and increasingly ludicrous credits. Like a previous generation's TOO MANY COOKS.
Anyway, that was the lead-in to the classic, PAN'S LABYRINTH. Still a fantastic movie. I remember seeing it back in 2007, and after all the trailers showing the amazing monsters, I was surprised how much of it was about fascist Spain, and how the fantasy elements were about escaping from that. But rewatching it now, I'm impressed at how well the two were integrated and the seamless transitions. Still a truly amazing movie.
Total Running Time: 203 minutes
My Total Minutes: 435,416
Then the late show was on glorious 35 mm film, and started with the projectionist's stash of secret bonus shorts. This included a timely trailer for THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. And the highlight was a film called THE CREDITORS which a short online search reveals...nothing. It looked like it was from the 50s or 60s and was just a long, opening credit sequence. That's the whole joke. Stock footage and increasingly ludicrous credits. Like a previous generation's TOO MANY COOKS.
Anyway, that was the lead-in to the classic, PAN'S LABYRINTH. Still a fantastic movie. I remember seeing it back in 2007, and after all the trailers showing the amazing monsters, I was surprised how much of it was about fascist Spain, and how the fantasy elements were about escaping from that. But rewatching it now, I'm impressed at how well the two were integrated and the seamless transitions. Still a truly amazing movie.
Total Running Time: 203 minutes
My Total Minutes: 435,416
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 6
I skipped day 5. The movies--KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE and HALLOWEEN 3: THE SEASON OF THE WITCH--I had seen several times before.
First up was an excellent, slow-burn drama THE UNSEEN. Bob is struggling. Struggling to keep his hours at the lumber mill. Struggling in his barely-existent relationship with his ex-wife and daughter. Struggling to keep it all together--literally. See, Bob is slowly turning invisible, piece by piece. It's a story of the difficulty of being there for people when you're not entirely there yourself. And when his ex-wife calls him about trouble with their daughter, he has to go. But he's also got to run some errand for a shady character who has got him in a bind. The story develops at its own deliberate pace, and is definitely more character driven than gimmick-driven. Especially when it turns out his condition might be hereditary. And excellent surprise of the festival.
Then the shorts program At the Movies of Madness. Lovecraftian overload!
Note: due to a technical glitch, only half of AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS played. Which was a shame, it was looking pretty good.
BEYOND THE REACH OF STARS: A man summons some mysterious beings. With funny results.
THE CALL OF CHARLIE: Don't you hate it when you set up a date between your two friends (one of whom is a tentacle-faced monster) and some other friends stop by unannounced and ruin everything? Very funny.
AN ELDRITCH PLACE: From Belgium. The horrors of being a night watchman.
HARBINGER: A POV nightmare through an old farmhouse that contains a portal to a dangerous world.
THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK: A clay-mation adaptation of Lovecraft's story of an explorer who discovers a "Trapezohedron" which summons a being from across time and space.
HPL INSURANCE: An insurance policy against indescribable terrors from other dimensions.
HYPNOS: A man, the planet he loves, and space monster who will destroy them. Visually amazing.
THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN: An animated story. As a young man, our narrator befriended a strange, reclusive violinist named Erich Zann. As an older man, he can't find Erich Zann, or the street they used to live on, or anyone who has ever heard of him.
THE OTHER GODS: Partially animated. A wizard finds a way to witness the dancing of the gods on top of their mountain. But beware, they don't dance for themselves, they dance for the other gods.
THE PACKAGE: A man receives a package containing the diary of his adventuring father. A mystery awaits, if he chooses to pursue it. Or he could just keep drinking by the fire.
POETRY AND THE GODS: The right poems will open the right portals and you can meet the gods.
STRANGE AEONS: Based on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." I confess, it was late at night, I was tired, and it was kind of a long-ish short (30 minutes) so I kind of dozed off. But the parts where I was awake were good.
ZERCH: A gay love story of devotion, sacrifice, and metamorphosis.
Total Running Time: 246
My Total Minutes: 435,213
First up was an excellent, slow-burn drama THE UNSEEN. Bob is struggling. Struggling to keep his hours at the lumber mill. Struggling in his barely-existent relationship with his ex-wife and daughter. Struggling to keep it all together--literally. See, Bob is slowly turning invisible, piece by piece. It's a story of the difficulty of being there for people when you're not entirely there yourself. And when his ex-wife calls him about trouble with their daughter, he has to go. But he's also got to run some errand for a shady character who has got him in a bind. The story develops at its own deliberate pace, and is definitely more character driven than gimmick-driven. Especially when it turns out his condition might be hereditary. And excellent surprise of the festival.
Then the shorts program At the Movies of Madness. Lovecraftian overload!
Note: due to a technical glitch, only half of AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS played. Which was a shame, it was looking pretty good.
BEYOND THE REACH OF STARS: A man summons some mysterious beings. With funny results.
THE CALL OF CHARLIE: Don't you hate it when you set up a date between your two friends (one of whom is a tentacle-faced monster) and some other friends stop by unannounced and ruin everything? Very funny.
AN ELDRITCH PLACE: From Belgium. The horrors of being a night watchman.
HARBINGER: A POV nightmare through an old farmhouse that contains a portal to a dangerous world.
THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK: A clay-mation adaptation of Lovecraft's story of an explorer who discovers a "Trapezohedron" which summons a being from across time and space.
HPL INSURANCE: An insurance policy against indescribable terrors from other dimensions.
HYPNOS: A man, the planet he loves, and space monster who will destroy them. Visually amazing.
THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN: An animated story. As a young man, our narrator befriended a strange, reclusive violinist named Erich Zann. As an older man, he can't find Erich Zann, or the street they used to live on, or anyone who has ever heard of him.
THE OTHER GODS: Partially animated. A wizard finds a way to witness the dancing of the gods on top of their mountain. But beware, they don't dance for themselves, they dance for the other gods.
THE PACKAGE: A man receives a package containing the diary of his adventuring father. A mystery awaits, if he chooses to pursue it. Or he could just keep drinking by the fire.
POETRY AND THE GODS: The right poems will open the right portals and you can meet the gods.
STRANGE AEONS: Based on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." I confess, it was late at night, I was tired, and it was kind of a long-ish short (30 minutes) so I kind of dozed off. But the parts where I was awake were good.
ZERCH: A gay love story of devotion, sacrifice, and metamorphosis.
Total Running Time: 246
My Total Minutes: 435,213
Friday, November 4, 2016
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 4
Last Sunday was a pretty short day, at least by weekend film fest standards. Only four shows.
First up was the shorts program Crime and Punishment
CYCLE: A desperate man gets a new chance with a mysterious bag in the airport which contains an important and morally questionable guide to his new life.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WILLIE BINGHAM: A short Australian masterpiece of creepiness and body horror. In the near future, criminal punishment is dealt out in a series of grisly amputations--as much as the victim's family can endure--and a series of "scared straight" school visits.
KONG'S: A bit of late night criminality in a low-class Santa Cruz convenient store.
NOMAD: Criminals, a runaway, and a lot of driving.
SNOW CONE: A father tries to teach his son how to live like him, just before he goes away to prison. It's not a very good lesson.
SUCH APPETITE: From Bulgaria, a man, a bicycle, a road, and a scam.
VALLE DE LAS CABRAS: From Mexico, a long and brutal story of immigration, smuggling, and ripping off the wrong guys.
Then another shorts program, It Came From the Grindhouse. Which for my money was the best shorts program so far.
THE BARBER'S CUT: A psycho barber and the collection of living body parts he keeps in his basement.
THE BIRTHDAY: A young couple, expecting a baby. But there's a violent surprise in store for one of them.
BLOODY HENRY: A bible salesman with a bloody side project.
DEMONOID (1971) (ENGLISH DUB): Some friends on an adventure in the Mexican jungle. But they awaken an ancient curse, and things go bad. Don't forget your 3-D glasses!
FAIR CHASE: White supremacists chase a victim around some farmland. Seems like fun? Actually, a pretty cool setup for what could be a much longer film.
MATALOS: Some sadists (and rapists) holding a woman captive. But she's got some strength and ingenuity to fight her way out.
NO TOUCHING: Speaking of chicks who know how to fight back, Zoe Bell and Heidi Moneymaker kick the ass of every monster in a haunted house. Even the real ones who aren't actors in makeup. Awesome.
PREPARE TO DIE!: A faux trailer for an excellent looking grindhouse slasher flick.
Next up was the feature PANOPTICON. Alex is allergic to the sun, which sucks since he lives in a sunny beachside town. The few times he goes out in the day he's completely covered. And when he goes out at night, he likes dressing like a girl. But most of the time he stays home on his computer, spying on people's webcams with a program called Panopticon. He becomes infatuated with a local art gallery owner. He also meets a 14 year old victim of human trafficking. And this draws him out of his isolation as he tries to get to know the former and help the latter. Alas, in both cases, human connections are not his strong suit. It's shot in beautiful black and white, with a lot of fascinating ideas about isolation and violation, and most importantly it features an outstanding performance by the lead actor, Guilherme Scarabelot.
And then the late night show, a bit of local fun with THE CURFEW GANG. A young woman is walking home at night, when she's suddenly attacked, bitten, and wakes up kind of freaking out with new powers. She's not a vampire (they're weak-ass bitches) she's a nightmare. And she's the newest member of an all-girl gang of nightmares. They rule the night, they drink coffee and booze (because water will kill them.) They make fun of vampires (who sparkle and smell like rotten eggs.) But there are some vampire hunters in town, so everyone's in danger. Or maybe not, maybe they're too powerful to be killed. It's some silly, low-budget fun where it's not so much about the story or the danger, but about some kick-ass women hanging out and making fun of the new girl.
Total Running Time: 350 minutes
My Total Minutes: 434,967
First up was the shorts program Crime and Punishment
CYCLE: A desperate man gets a new chance with a mysterious bag in the airport which contains an important and morally questionable guide to his new life.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WILLIE BINGHAM: A short Australian masterpiece of creepiness and body horror. In the near future, criminal punishment is dealt out in a series of grisly amputations--as much as the victim's family can endure--and a series of "scared straight" school visits.
KONG'S: A bit of late night criminality in a low-class Santa Cruz convenient store.
NOMAD: Criminals, a runaway, and a lot of driving.
SNOW CONE: A father tries to teach his son how to live like him, just before he goes away to prison. It's not a very good lesson.
SUCH APPETITE: From Bulgaria, a man, a bicycle, a road, and a scam.
VALLE DE LAS CABRAS: From Mexico, a long and brutal story of immigration, smuggling, and ripping off the wrong guys.
Then another shorts program, It Came From the Grindhouse. Which for my money was the best shorts program so far.
THE BARBER'S CUT: A psycho barber and the collection of living body parts he keeps in his basement.
THE BIRTHDAY: A young couple, expecting a baby. But there's a violent surprise in store for one of them.
BLOODY HENRY: A bible salesman with a bloody side project.
DEMONOID (1971) (ENGLISH DUB): Some friends on an adventure in the Mexican jungle. But they awaken an ancient curse, and things go bad. Don't forget your 3-D glasses!
FAIR CHASE: White supremacists chase a victim around some farmland. Seems like fun? Actually, a pretty cool setup for what could be a much longer film.
MATALOS: Some sadists (and rapists) holding a woman captive. But she's got some strength and ingenuity to fight her way out.
NO TOUCHING: Speaking of chicks who know how to fight back, Zoe Bell and Heidi Moneymaker kick the ass of every monster in a haunted house. Even the real ones who aren't actors in makeup. Awesome.
PREPARE TO DIE!: A faux trailer for an excellent looking grindhouse slasher flick.
Next up was the feature PANOPTICON. Alex is allergic to the sun, which sucks since he lives in a sunny beachside town. The few times he goes out in the day he's completely covered. And when he goes out at night, he likes dressing like a girl. But most of the time he stays home on his computer, spying on people's webcams with a program called Panopticon. He becomes infatuated with a local art gallery owner. He also meets a 14 year old victim of human trafficking. And this draws him out of his isolation as he tries to get to know the former and help the latter. Alas, in both cases, human connections are not his strong suit. It's shot in beautiful black and white, with a lot of fascinating ideas about isolation and violation, and most importantly it features an outstanding performance by the lead actor, Guilherme Scarabelot.
And then the late night show, a bit of local fun with THE CURFEW GANG. A young woman is walking home at night, when she's suddenly attacked, bitten, and wakes up kind of freaking out with new powers. She's not a vampire (they're weak-ass bitches) she's a nightmare. And she's the newest member of an all-girl gang of nightmares. They rule the night, they drink coffee and booze (because water will kill them.) They make fun of vampires (who sparkle and smell like rotten eggs.) But there are some vampire hunters in town, so everyone's in danger. Or maybe not, maybe they're too powerful to be killed. It's some silly, low-budget fun where it's not so much about the story or the danger, but about some kick-ass women hanging out and making fun of the new girl.
Total Running Time: 350 minutes
My Total Minutes: 434,967
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 3
Saturday was a short day, and a shorts day at Holehead.
First up was Apps Against Humanity - shorts about technology
#MURDERSELFIE: A couple who are more into their smartphones than each other get a scary interruption, but eventually she'll get her Instagram trending.
C.T.R.L: An app that lets you control other people's action, turning a chance encounter into an amazingly awkward dance.
FRIEND REQUEST: Some people think we already talk too much via apps and not enough in real life. But this takes it a step further.
GPS: There's just a few simple rules to using this sinister GPS. Follow all of the directions precisely, and never go to the bathroom after eating tobacco sauce.
HIDDEN WINDOW: A stalker website where it looks like the videographer is stalking and killing his victims. And a young journalist investigating a series of murders that might be connected to the website. Excellently done.
MANDRONE: A master at chess, traps, and survival takes on an army of drone-controlled men.
THOUGHTLESS: From Berkeley, in the future not only will hate speech be policed, but the hateful thoughts that lead to hateful speech and hateful actions. They'll just be wound back and replaced with positive thoughts.
Next up was Work Is Hell. I tend to agree.
THE DOOR: A particularly observant janitor notices a non-descript door, just like all the other doors in the building, only it was never there before. Or maybe he's going crazy.
EXTINCTION: When social security is all about exactly how long your benefits will allow you to live, bureaucracy makes end-of-life decisions for you.
KNOCK!: A man working late...a knock on the door.
THE NIGHT SHIFT: An orphanage that's run with all the efficiency of an animal shelter. And not a no-kill shelter. The new hire finds out more about his duties.
OVERTIME: A guy is forced to work late. He's desperate to get home in time. But he just keeps getting delayed. That's bad for him...and everyone.
PORTAL TO HELL: In one of his final roles, Roddy Piper plays a crusty old building superintendent. He has to deal with unclogging toilets, replacing lightbulbs, fixing the power, dealing with the two old dudes in the basement who are summoning Cthulhu,...
THE RIDE: Based on a true story, a guy gets a ride to work from some random good Samaritan, who turns out to be really weird and maybe deadly.
THE SUIT: A superhero has had it with being a tool of American foreign policy, and is determined to quit. But he has to make sure his family is safe, first. Hey, you do the same job long enough, you get burnt out.
THE WORKING DEAD: Post-mortem revival brings a star employee back to work after just a few weeks off for death. He quickly becomes the braaaaaiiiinnns of the operation.
Then there was Love Is Strange. I tend to agree.
APOLO81: Due to a technical glitch, this didn't actually play. Sorry.
DEAR ANIMA: A man, his childhood love, his drawings of her, and one of them comes to life. Trippy.
ELLE: A woman, the nice man she takes home, and her unusual pet.
FATE: A wealthy man looking for love consults a psychic.
IN BAD FAITH: A woman gets a little bit of payback on her ex and his new girlfriend.
THE LOCK-IN: A bartender deals with incredibly rude customers. Until he can't deal with it anymore. And then he deals with it perfectly. And gets a lovely lass to help him out.
NEON: Never actually called an angel, but a man who brings people together is forbidden by a higher power from actually pursuing love for himself. But he has fallen in love, and he has a plan to save her.
And I missed the rest of the day because I went to Scotchtoberfest. But that's a different, drunker story.
Total Running Time: 282 minutes
My Total Minutes: 434,618
First up was Apps Against Humanity - shorts about technology
#MURDERSELFIE: A couple who are more into their smartphones than each other get a scary interruption, but eventually she'll get her Instagram trending.
C.T.R.L: An app that lets you control other people's action, turning a chance encounter into an amazingly awkward dance.
FRIEND REQUEST: Some people think we already talk too much via apps and not enough in real life. But this takes it a step further.
GPS: There's just a few simple rules to using this sinister GPS. Follow all of the directions precisely, and never go to the bathroom after eating tobacco sauce.
HIDDEN WINDOW: A stalker website where it looks like the videographer is stalking and killing his victims. And a young journalist investigating a series of murders that might be connected to the website. Excellently done.
MANDRONE: A master at chess, traps, and survival takes on an army of drone-controlled men.
THOUGHTLESS: From Berkeley, in the future not only will hate speech be policed, but the hateful thoughts that lead to hateful speech and hateful actions. They'll just be wound back and replaced with positive thoughts.
Next up was Work Is Hell. I tend to agree.
THE DOOR: A particularly observant janitor notices a non-descript door, just like all the other doors in the building, only it was never there before. Or maybe he's going crazy.
EXTINCTION: When social security is all about exactly how long your benefits will allow you to live, bureaucracy makes end-of-life decisions for you.
KNOCK!: A man working late...a knock on the door.
THE NIGHT SHIFT: An orphanage that's run with all the efficiency of an animal shelter. And not a no-kill shelter. The new hire finds out more about his duties.
OVERTIME: A guy is forced to work late. He's desperate to get home in time. But he just keeps getting delayed. That's bad for him...and everyone.
PORTAL TO HELL: In one of his final roles, Roddy Piper plays a crusty old building superintendent. He has to deal with unclogging toilets, replacing lightbulbs, fixing the power, dealing with the two old dudes in the basement who are summoning Cthulhu,...
THE RIDE: Based on a true story, a guy gets a ride to work from some random good Samaritan, who turns out to be really weird and maybe deadly.
THE SUIT: A superhero has had it with being a tool of American foreign policy, and is determined to quit. But he has to make sure his family is safe, first. Hey, you do the same job long enough, you get burnt out.
THE WORKING DEAD: Post-mortem revival brings a star employee back to work after just a few weeks off for death. He quickly becomes the braaaaaiiiinnns of the operation.
Then there was Love Is Strange. I tend to agree.
APOLO81: Due to a technical glitch, this didn't actually play. Sorry.
DEAR ANIMA: A man, his childhood love, his drawings of her, and one of them comes to life. Trippy.
ELLE: A woman, the nice man she takes home, and her unusual pet.
FATE: A wealthy man looking for love consults a psychic.
IN BAD FAITH: A woman gets a little bit of payback on her ex and his new girlfriend.
THE LOCK-IN: A bartender deals with incredibly rude customers. Until he can't deal with it anymore. And then he deals with it perfectly. And gets a lovely lass to help him out.
NEON: Never actually called an angel, but a man who brings people together is forbidden by a higher power from actually pursuing love for himself. But he has fallen in love, and he has a plan to save her.
And I missed the rest of the day because I went to Scotchtoberfest. But that's a different, drunker story.
Total Running Time: 282 minutes
My Total Minutes: 434,618
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 2
We started with a lovely and challenging art documentary, which had some wondering what it's doing in a horror/fantasy/sci-fi festival. WEAPONS OF LIGHT is a look at artist Philip Lawson. He's a painter, a poet, a sculptor. He's a gentle, thoughtful man who teaches art and art therapy at a institute for the mentally and physically challenged in Marin. And his latest project--Weapons Of Light - The Art of Peace--takes an iconic and challenging image and repurposes it. The AK-47 is surely the most iconic weapon of the last century. And Philip has reformed that symbol by casting translucent, colorful resin into that shape. Director Leila Namvar captures his art, his heart, his process, and his friends. There's such a gentleness behind everything in this movie, that it makes the image of the AK-47 all that more striking. It's a lovely and challenging movie, about a lovely and challenging image. And as for it belonging in a horror/fantasy/sci-fi festival...well, I can be convinced it belongs.
Afterwards, there was a very engaging Q&A session, and I'm not just saying that because I was a last-minute recruit to run it. Mostly it was because Leila and Philip could speak quite eloquently about their work, and because the movie draws out such interesting reactions. Oh yeah, also because there were pouring free wine before the film.
Then the open cocktail bar started up, and we all go ready for a 90s Sing-A-Long: Halloween Special. I got really drunk, tried to sing along, and mostly decided that 90s music doesn't do shit for me. But other people seemed to be having fun. And so did I, once I got drunk enough.
And then the late night show, THE GIANT PAPIER MACHE BOULDER IS ACTUALLY REALLY HEAVY. A cleverly silly comedy from New Zealand. Three friends go to a sci-fi convention, even though only one is really into it. While there they go to a screening of a cheesy B-movie "Space Warriors In Space" and as the opening credits roll, they see their names as the stars. Next thing you know, they're sucked into the cheesy B-movie world. No explanation given, and none needed, really. A world where spaceships fly around on strings, silver-painted hair dryers are guns, and robots are made out of cardboard. It was clearly made by people who are fans of sci-fi, and had a lot of fun with it. And the end result is actually pretty fun, and not--as I was afraid--a joke that would wear out too quickly. At least, the parts where I was conscious were fun. Did I mention the cocktail bar for the 90s sing-a-long was free?
Total Running Time: 248 minutes
My Total Minutes: 434,335
Afterwards, there was a very engaging Q&A session, and I'm not just saying that because I was a last-minute recruit to run it. Mostly it was because Leila and Philip could speak quite eloquently about their work, and because the movie draws out such interesting reactions. Oh yeah, also because there were pouring free wine before the film.
Then the open cocktail bar started up, and we all go ready for a 90s Sing-A-Long: Halloween Special. I got really drunk, tried to sing along, and mostly decided that 90s music doesn't do shit for me. But other people seemed to be having fun. And so did I, once I got drunk enough.
And then the late night show, THE GIANT PAPIER MACHE BOULDER IS ACTUALLY REALLY HEAVY. A cleverly silly comedy from New Zealand. Three friends go to a sci-fi convention, even though only one is really into it. While there they go to a screening of a cheesy B-movie "Space Warriors In Space" and as the opening credits roll, they see their names as the stars. Next thing you know, they're sucked into the cheesy B-movie world. No explanation given, and none needed, really. A world where spaceships fly around on strings, silver-painted hair dryers are guns, and robots are made out of cardboard. It was clearly made by people who are fans of sci-fi, and had a lot of fun with it. And the end result is actually pretty fun, and not--as I was afraid--a joke that would wear out too quickly. At least, the parts where I was conscious were fun. Did I mention the cocktail bar for the 90s sing-a-long was free?
Total Running Time: 248 minutes
My Total Minutes: 434,335
Friday, October 28, 2016
Jason goes to Holehead--Opening Night
Despite it's inconsistent schedule (both in terms of time of the year and program offerings) I still consider Another Hole In the Head one of the High Holy Days of the film festival calendar. And the 2016 version started last night.
First up, were some Homegrown Horrors--locally made short films
BENEATH THE LAKE: A wordless, atmospheric piece about a woman who crawls out of a lake and through the woods to explore a house.
DEMONOLOGY: Creepy doors and shadowy monsters. All the good things.
E.Z.P.Z.: Inspired by a failed cobra bounty program in India, a story of zombie bounty program with unintended side effects. Like...zombie breeding.
ETERNAL COMA, 1994: The horrors of black metal music and D&D. So appropriate after the recent death of Jack Chick.
THE EXISTENTIAL ZOMBIE: What if a zombie still holds on to a little piece of his humanity...and his loneliness. All anxiety is existential awareness of undeadness.
IN HYDRIA: Don't open the creepy, goopy box. Just don't.
NOW'S A BAD TIME: Don't you hate it when your friend's untimely death messes up your chance for quick cash by selling your World of Warcraft account? A very funny little flick.
WARM INSIDES: Very effectively creepy body horror, as a woman thinks there's something sinister growing inside her.
And then the feature, THE MASTER CLEANSE, produced by and starring Johnny Galecki, playing Paul--a sadder, dumber version of his lovelorn loser character from The Big Bang Theory (I mean, the seasons when he's not with Penny.) He's lost his job, his fiancée left him, and he's so low he checks out some self-help class by a famous guru who invented the lemon cleanse and is now offering the Master Cleanse. He signs up for the retreat--despite having to sign a waiver that mentions the possibility it will kill him--mainly because of the cute girl who is also attending. And it starts out simple enough. They each have a course of foul-tasting drinks specially concocted just for them. That's the cleanse part. Then there's the "elimination." That's where all the nasty stuff inside you comes out. And...then grows into a squirmy little monster who copies your mannerisms. Then it gets kind of weird. Other "retreaters" have different ways of dealing with their monsters. It's kinda funny, not really scary, but well made and with a cast you wouldn't expect given what I assumed was a fairly limited budget for an independent feature by a first-time director (Bobby Miller, who has directed several shorts but this is his first feature.) Anjelica Huston and Oliver Platt both play important roles, and both are fantastic. And in the end it leaves you with a bit of an ambiguous note on the perils of trying to destroy your flaws, since after all they do make you who you are.
Total Running Time: 164 minutes
My Total Minutes: 434,087
First up, were some Homegrown Horrors--locally made short films
BENEATH THE LAKE: A wordless, atmospheric piece about a woman who crawls out of a lake and through the woods to explore a house.
DEMONOLOGY: Creepy doors and shadowy monsters. All the good things.
E.Z.P.Z.: Inspired by a failed cobra bounty program in India, a story of zombie bounty program with unintended side effects. Like...zombie breeding.
ETERNAL COMA, 1994: The horrors of black metal music and D&D. So appropriate after the recent death of Jack Chick.
THE EXISTENTIAL ZOMBIE: What if a zombie still holds on to a little piece of his humanity...and his loneliness. All anxiety is existential awareness of undeadness.
IN HYDRIA: Don't open the creepy, goopy box. Just don't.
NOW'S A BAD TIME: Don't you hate it when your friend's untimely death messes up your chance for quick cash by selling your World of Warcraft account? A very funny little flick.
WARM INSIDES: Very effectively creepy body horror, as a woman thinks there's something sinister growing inside her.
And then the feature, THE MASTER CLEANSE, produced by and starring Johnny Galecki, playing Paul--a sadder, dumber version of his lovelorn loser character from The Big Bang Theory (I mean, the seasons when he's not with Penny.) He's lost his job, his fiancée left him, and he's so low he checks out some self-help class by a famous guru who invented the lemon cleanse and is now offering the Master Cleanse. He signs up for the retreat--despite having to sign a waiver that mentions the possibility it will kill him--mainly because of the cute girl who is also attending. And it starts out simple enough. They each have a course of foul-tasting drinks specially concocted just for them. That's the cleanse part. Then there's the "elimination." That's where all the nasty stuff inside you comes out. And...then grows into a squirmy little monster who copies your mannerisms. Then it gets kind of weird. Other "retreaters" have different ways of dealing with their monsters. It's kinda funny, not really scary, but well made and with a cast you wouldn't expect given what I assumed was a fairly limited budget for an independent feature by a first-time director (Bobby Miller, who has directed several shorts but this is his first feature.) Anjelica Huston and Oliver Platt both play important roles, and both are fantastic. And in the end it leaves you with a bit of an ambiguous note on the perils of trying to destroy your flaws, since after all they do make you who you are.
Total Running Time: 164 minutes
My Total Minutes: 434,087
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Jason goes to Holehead--Closing Night
The final two movies of the festival were last Monday night. And it was a great send-off
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Secret Screening #1, a sequel to the secret screening from last year. Wherein our heroes are in trouble as the bad guys...strike back. And our main hero learns a lot of shit from a little green dwarf but not enough and then runs off to fight the bid baddie only to find out that long ago big baddie f-cked his momma. Also, the really cool guy becomes the really, really, really cool guy. Like cool as ice...or frozen carbonite.
RETURN OF THE JEDI Secret Screening #2, the sequel to Secret Screening #1, wherein main good guy is now a bad-ass instead of whiny farm boy. And super-cool guy warms up a bit. And there's a fight in the desert with a bunch of cool-ass monsters that people forget how cool they were because then it switches to a bunch of freakin' Care Bears running around a forest. And they play drums on the nameless bad guys' heads. And big baddie turns out to be a little bit of a good guy after all. Especially compared to bigger baddie who was controlling him all the time.
And that's the end of Holehead 2015.
Total Running Time: 258 minutes
My Total Minutes: 411,570
And that's the end of Holehead 2015.
Total Running Time: 258 minutes
My Total Minutes: 411,570
Monday, November 16, 2015
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 10
4 more films yesterday, Another Hole in the Head Film Festival is almost over for 2015. Just two "secret" screening left tonight. And if you've been to the festival throughout the week--or if you're just not a complete moron--you know what those are.
We started Sunday with the final shorts block, #9. I no particular order...
GENGHIS KHAN CONQUERS THE MOON: Well, he has conquered the rest of his known world, so when an astronomer shows him the moon, and the Sea of Tranquility, he questions what use is it to see something if you can't reach out and take it?
HATRED: Two brothers, a scarecrow, and a lot of pain, fear, and hatred.
THE MAN WHO LOVED FLOWERS: With a smile like that, he catches everyone's eye and brightens their day. And he's got the perfect bunch of flowers for a special lady. Based on a Stephen King short story.
PERSPHONE: A woman wakes up in a box. She works her way out, and finds she's underground. Fear of being buried alive, and more.
THE PRAYER: A variation on "Now I lay me down to sleep..." from a man moving on to another place.
SPRING GARDEN: From Boise comes this story of a man who has always wanted to kill someone, and his adventures with blackouts and nosebleeds. Very funny.
TAMPOON: The terror of women's health products. Beware that string...
WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU: A clever short story about bullied teenagers in a car crash, who discover that when they die, they come back to life. So what to do about their friend who is only paralyzed? From the director of the 2012 Holehead hit MON AMI.
And then on to the features, starting with the Christmas slasher flick, ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE. It starts right away with a mystery figure picking up a creepy Santa Mask and taking some hedge clippers to the obligatory hot girl in the shower and then to her boyfriend, going right after his manhood. Yup, before we even meet the heroine, we get a chopped-off dick, because it's that kind of movie. I guess Santa has decided everyone is naughty this year, and coal is not enough punishment. The heroine is Rachel Kimmel, back home (in Napa) visiting her grandmother for Christmas break. And she helps out Mrs. Garrett, the weird woman next door, with her decorations. So... many... creepy... decorations. There's some history between the families--Rachel's mom went missing years ago, and so did Mrs. Garrett's daughter. I won't get more into that because therein lies massive spoilers. I will say that it's a funny, colorful entry into the slasher genre that doesn't exactly break much new ground, but is a lot of fun.
One of the scream queens in ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE was Jessica Cameron who directed TRUTH OR DARE which showed at Holehead in 2013, and she directed the next feature of this year, her "fucked-up lesbian love story," MANIA. This is a strange film, very different from her previous and not at all what I was expecting. It starts off simple--an on-screen clinical definition of mania, then a pair of lovers--Mel and Brooke, although I detected no comic reference there. Brooke is on medication for her mental illness. During the day, Brooke loses her job and Mel is busy at hers, so tragedy occurs and Brooke ends up brutally murdering their friend who comes to check on her. Very brutally, like excessive head smashing. And I think it's going to be that kind of movie. The hit the road quickly, and when the first dream sequence rolls around, I realize that Cameron's trying something different. She's not going for a horror movie, she's going for an art film with horror elements. There's a repetition--or variations on a theme--going on, with Brooke missing her meds and sneaking off to fuck and kill men over and over again, and Mel increasingly desperate to fulfill her promise to take care of her and make everything okay. There's no police tracking them down or other typical genre elements. There are some weird encounters with freaky rednecks and a psycho killer woman. It kind of made me wonder if the police aren't following them because the outside world is even more fucked-up than they are. Judging by the reactions of my fellow regulars, I might have been the only person last night who really liked this movie, and I think that's because I stopped taking it literally pretty early on and looked at it as a metaphor for the repeated mistakes and unhealthy behaviors in a codependent relationship. After all, Brooke might have mania, but Mel is the one who is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If only there was a word for that.
And finally, the closing night film with the squishy, gooey body horror/female sexuality tale BITE. Casey is about to get married, but first she takes a trip down to Costa Rica with her girlfriends. There she gets bitten by an unknown insect. Just a tiny little bite, but back home it gets worse. It oozes, it turns red, and it gets bigger. That and the fact that she was already getting cold feet about the marriage--particularly about her domineering, conservative mother-in-law-to-be, and the whole unresolved question of having kids. He wants them, she doesn't. Which is too bad, because she's gonna have some whether she wants to or not. See that bite... well, it progresses from oozing, to making her throw up clear slime, to making her pop out little fishy eggs all over the place. It just gets more and more disgusting over the course of a week or so, and when those near her try to intervene, it's not just gross but deadly. In fact, she kind of starts developing gross super powers, like super-hearing, a voice that can break glass, and the ability to spit poison at people. With a different ending, this could be the best superhero origin story since TEETH (2007) but instead it's a goopy, gross, and endlessly fun way to cap off the festival.
Total Running Time: 341 minutes
My Total Minutes: 411,312
We started Sunday with the final shorts block, #9. I no particular order...
GENGHIS KHAN CONQUERS THE MOON: Well, he has conquered the rest of his known world, so when an astronomer shows him the moon, and the Sea of Tranquility, he questions what use is it to see something if you can't reach out and take it?
HATRED: Two brothers, a scarecrow, and a lot of pain, fear, and hatred.
THE MAN WHO LOVED FLOWERS: With a smile like that, he catches everyone's eye and brightens their day. And he's got the perfect bunch of flowers for a special lady. Based on a Stephen King short story.
PERSPHONE: A woman wakes up in a box. She works her way out, and finds she's underground. Fear of being buried alive, and more.
THE PRAYER: A variation on "Now I lay me down to sleep..." from a man moving on to another place.
SPRING GARDEN: From Boise comes this story of a man who has always wanted to kill someone, and his adventures with blackouts and nosebleeds. Very funny.
TAMPOON: The terror of women's health products. Beware that string...
WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU: A clever short story about bullied teenagers in a car crash, who discover that when they die, they come back to life. So what to do about their friend who is only paralyzed? From the director of the 2012 Holehead hit MON AMI.
And then on to the features, starting with the Christmas slasher flick, ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE. It starts right away with a mystery figure picking up a creepy Santa Mask and taking some hedge clippers to the obligatory hot girl in the shower and then to her boyfriend, going right after his manhood. Yup, before we even meet the heroine, we get a chopped-off dick, because it's that kind of movie. I guess Santa has decided everyone is naughty this year, and coal is not enough punishment. The heroine is Rachel Kimmel, back home (in Napa) visiting her grandmother for Christmas break. And she helps out Mrs. Garrett, the weird woman next door, with her decorations. So... many... creepy... decorations. There's some history between the families--Rachel's mom went missing years ago, and so did Mrs. Garrett's daughter. I won't get more into that because therein lies massive spoilers. I will say that it's a funny, colorful entry into the slasher genre that doesn't exactly break much new ground, but is a lot of fun.
One of the scream queens in ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE was Jessica Cameron who directed TRUTH OR DARE which showed at Holehead in 2013, and she directed the next feature of this year, her "fucked-up lesbian love story," MANIA. This is a strange film, very different from her previous and not at all what I was expecting. It starts off simple--an on-screen clinical definition of mania, then a pair of lovers--Mel and Brooke, although I detected no comic reference there. Brooke is on medication for her mental illness. During the day, Brooke loses her job and Mel is busy at hers, so tragedy occurs and Brooke ends up brutally murdering their friend who comes to check on her. Very brutally, like excessive head smashing. And I think it's going to be that kind of movie. The hit the road quickly, and when the first dream sequence rolls around, I realize that Cameron's trying something different. She's not going for a horror movie, she's going for an art film with horror elements. There's a repetition--or variations on a theme--going on, with Brooke missing her meds and sneaking off to fuck and kill men over and over again, and Mel increasingly desperate to fulfill her promise to take care of her and make everything okay. There's no police tracking them down or other typical genre elements. There are some weird encounters with freaky rednecks and a psycho killer woman. It kind of made me wonder if the police aren't following them because the outside world is even more fucked-up than they are. Judging by the reactions of my fellow regulars, I might have been the only person last night who really liked this movie, and I think that's because I stopped taking it literally pretty early on and looked at it as a metaphor for the repeated mistakes and unhealthy behaviors in a codependent relationship. After all, Brooke might have mania, but Mel is the one who is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If only there was a word for that.
And finally, the closing night film with the squishy, gooey body horror/female sexuality tale BITE. Casey is about to get married, but first she takes a trip down to Costa Rica with her girlfriends. There she gets bitten by an unknown insect. Just a tiny little bite, but back home it gets worse. It oozes, it turns red, and it gets bigger. That and the fact that she was already getting cold feet about the marriage--particularly about her domineering, conservative mother-in-law-to-be, and the whole unresolved question of having kids. He wants them, she doesn't. Which is too bad, because she's gonna have some whether she wants to or not. See that bite... well, it progresses from oozing, to making her throw up clear slime, to making her pop out little fishy eggs all over the place. It just gets more and more disgusting over the course of a week or so, and when those near her try to intervene, it's not just gross but deadly. In fact, she kind of starts developing gross super powers, like super-hearing, a voice that can break glass, and the ability to spit poison at people. With a different ending, this could be the best superhero origin story since TEETH (2007) but instead it's a goopy, gross, and endlessly fun way to cap off the festival.
Total Running Time: 341 minutes
My Total Minutes: 411,312
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 9
The second big Saturday in the festival, six programs starting at 11 am and ending after midnight. We start, as usual, with some shorts.
Shorts Block 7
BUNNY BIZNESS: A cute stop-motion goth kid adventure, as he arrives at a taxidermist's shop to pick up his birthday present. Problem is, it's not dead yet.
COOL WATER: Surrealism and creepy old man masks. It's about death. And it's too early on too little sleep to enjoy this.
HIGHWAY MAN: Dystopian near-future. A hero who is carrying a lot of guilt and regret. A woman being threatened gives him one last chance to be a hero.
I DARE YOU: After an outbreak (I don't think they ever use the word "zombie") rumors abound of government experiments on the victims. And young people play "dare" games where they run through infected zones and try to return with proof of contacted with the infected (and, of course, don't get bit along the way.) Fun, inventive film, which hopefully will become a feature in the near future.
LARRY GONE DEMON: Literally, the roommate from hell. Getting him to pay the rent is the least of their problems. Getting him to stop playing death metal and smearing his feces everywhere is a bit more pressing.
LAST BREATH: Three women in a car on a wintry road, discussing men and sexism in cinema. And then the car breaks down and they have to survive a creepy cult.
MAMOCHKA: A mother's pain in two Russian civil wars (1905 and 1922) told in computer animation that rests squarely in the uncanny valley. Unpleasant.
PARTY ANIMALS: Bear interrupts his hibernation to invite all the animals over to his mansion for dinner. There he proposes a game--whoever is the last one alive will inherit his mansion. So bunnies, deer, turtle, fox, wolf, etc. all start playing the game. Oh yeah, and they're all played by humans in crude animal masks.
PLAY SPACE: A little girl in a maze of tubes and ball pit meets and befriends some impish demons in this cute little cartoon.
THE WATCHER: A young photographer in the woods, looking for some peaceful, serene vistas to photograph. Instead he finds a madman trying to kill him. And it goes on and on forever. I took the opportunity to take a little nap.
WHISPER: A beach cabin, and a woman trying to kick the ghosts of addiction ends up raising some ghosts instead.
Then another shorts block, number 8
ADVANCED DOODLING: A cool bit of colorful fun with art, and the art-making process.
COOKOO: A short music video with a nutria's skull taking the part of a cuckoo's head.
CRAP YOU: A little boy gets a stuffed raven at a yard sale. When he turns it, it says "crap you." And then it won't stop saying it, no matter how much he tries to destroy it. It keeps...coming...back. Great ending, too.
DOG BOWL: A woman who doesn't quite fit in with humans. In fact, she's more simpatico with her dog, drinking from a dog bowl and stealing an wearing a service dog's vest. And then she learns the surprising truth (either that or she's just fuckin' nuts.)
GNOME & MR. DONUT: A cute, funny cartoon of a gnome roofing his pastry house, when one of his building supplies stands up and rebels.
LOVE AND ZOMBIES: A woman has turned down her boyfriend's marriage proposal, so they need to talk about their relationship. It doesn't matter that they're trapped in a bar surrounded by zombies, this is important.
MR. HARVISH: A choose your own adventure movie, where three times there's a decision point and the audience had to vote red or blue on where Mr. Harvish goes next. So in theory there are 8 different movies in there, but you only get to see one. And no, there's nowhere online you can choose different paths... Anyway, it's an interesting idea and the film itself--at least in the version last night it was a story of a disturbed man cracking up after killing his wife--was pretty good. But honestly stopping the film 3 times, bringing up the house lights, and voting kind of ground everything to a halt. Also, this idea has been done before, and with a larger budget. Although my understanding is that movie really, really sucked.
SMALL GARDEN: A weird, surreal, psychedelic bit of animation, as only the Japanese could do.
SON: A little boy uses his sick day to go exploring while his mom is out. And what he finds in the secret room will change everything.
TRICK OR TREAT: Three little kids on Halloween. The witch gives out pennies. The gorilla gives out a good amount of candy. But that spooky, abandoned house, stay away from it. It's lights aren't even on. Oh, wait, the light just turned on...
VILLAIN: A comic book come to life, from the villain's point of view. The heroes are the sadistic ones from a villain's point of view. The only difference is power and government backing.
WILL I SCATTER AWAY?: Surreal danger, as a man is chasing himself. Shot over San Francisco and nearby, in beautiful black and white, and featuring an oddly dissonant soundtrack where the Foley almost works but doesn't really (like you hear footsteps on a hard surface when he's walking through a field and nothing when he's walking on concrete. Sort of the uncanny valley equivalent of sound.)
And then we moved on to the features, starting with SLUMLORD, one of guest programmer Michael Guillen's picks from Fantasia. This was his answer to AirBnB, and it's a pretty grisly one. The McManus brothers, whose FUNERAL KINGS opened Indiefest back in 2013, produced this feature (directed by Victor Zarcoff) about a super-sleazy evil landlord. We start with a little text about surveillance cameras and how many people are under surveillance in their own homes without them knowing about it. Then we see creepy landlord Gerald (Neville Archambault) buying a fiber optic camera from a salesman who makes a creepy joke about hiding it in the toilet, if you're into it. Gerald doesn't react. When a young couple, expecting a baby soon, tours the place, she mentions how it smells like dirty diapers whenever the landlord is there. And from that moment on I could smell it whenever he was on screen, because he just fucking looks the part so well. Of course he's watching them--in the pool, in the shower, everywhere. And it doesn't help that the young husband is having an affair and Gerald has all the goods on him. Things escalate from creepy to extra creepy to terrifying to deadly. It's a movie that will make you want to take a shower afterwards--but check for cameras first.
And then Michael Guillen's next pick from Fantasia is a truly terrifying (because it's terrifying true-to-life) story of religious fundamentalism. SHE WHO MUST BURN is probably the final film from the octogenarian godfather of Canadian independent film, Larry Kent (who was at Indiefest in 2012 for his film EXLEY as well as a retrospective screening of his 1967 film, HIGH.) And it might be his best (his films are hard to find, and I think we need to organize a retrospective of his work in San Francisco.) It's a Canadian critique on American religious fundamentalism and Planned Parenthood controversies (although I don't think the organization is ever mentioned, it's impossible not to make the connection.) Angela is a counselor at a women's health clinic, and wife of a deputy sheriff. In the opening scene, a man in the waiting room waits for a doctor to come out and then promptly and calmly shoots him (while quoting that bible quote made famous in PULP FICTION...you know the one about the tyrannies of evil men and knowing my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.) Angela keeps up her counseling for women's health, despite daily harassment and threats at her home--and the fact that there's no longer a clinic within less than a day's journey. And when she arranges for a woman to get a breast cancer screening--and to take her young daughter and spend the night--the church makes the wrong assumption, because obviously the only thing women's clinics do is kill unborn babies. The harassment ramps up, her husband tries to fight back, but the sheriff is weak and blind to how far the religious fanatics are willing to go. There's a storm brewing, both literally and figuratively, and the climax is already revealed in the title. What struck me about this movie is how fully developed all the characters were. Even the villainous religious fanatics, I was struck with how much peace and serenity they showed (well, except for Caleb, who was always being criticized for not doing enough.) The thing is, the world is rarely if ever a peaceful or serene place, and so in general something (e.g., faith) that brings peace and serenity to your life is a good thing. But if it brings serenity while you're committing atrocities, that's truly terrifying. It's easy to dismiss fanatics when they're frothing at the mouth and calling for death to the non-believers. It's much more frightening when they're at peace, and calmly and quietly carrying out "God's will." This has been the standout of the festival so far (with just one more day to go.)
And next up was the silent film event, Never Silent! Vol. 2: THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. I had missed vol. 1 with Nosferatu last year so I didn't know what to expect. I'm always a little wary of "updated" soundtracks to silent classics. Too often (and I'm looking at SFIFF here) they become more about the musician than the film--little more than a concert with a film in the background. So I'm very pleased to report that Its Own Infinite Flower actually played an accompaniment to the film, letting the film come first and doing a John Carpenter inspired minimalist techno score that accentuated the atmosphere of the film. Caligari is of course a classic, a story of a carnival performer who shows off his "Somnambulist" Cesare, who is implicated in a string of grisly murders, apparently controlled by Dr. Caligari. I remember when I first saw it thinking it was great (especially the bizarre, crooked angles of the sets) but being completely unimpressed by the final reveal that it was all the mad dreams of a mental patient. So I was pleased to learn shortly after watching it the first time that in fact the final scenes were added at the orders of the government censors, and never originally part of the story. So watch it, enjoy it, and ignore the final framing device.
And finally, the late, late show screening of DEAD BODY. What was supposed to be a small post-high school get together in a cabin in the woods quickly turns into a larger party, with nine altogether. The host is kind of peeved, but things move along. And then for a bit of fun one of them suggests they play a game of Dead Body. They each draw slips of paper from the hat. One of them is the "murderer" and when he or she pinches someone they become the victim and play dead. Then someone yells out "Dead Body"--either someone who finds the body or the murderer himself can call it out to try and throw people off track. They reconvene, talk it out, and everyone decides who the murderer is. If you guess wrong, you're also "dead." So they try a few times, people aren't really getting the hang of it, and then someone gets the hang of it too well, as someone is actually killing them off. Is it the weird kid? The jock outsider that nobody knows? The girl with a past record of pulling a knife on someone? Could be anyone...but none of them really make sense. I did guess the motive pretty early on, but it was still a lot of goofy fun watching it all play out, and the ending is definitely satisfying. A good way to end an exhausting day at the movies.
Total Running Time: 552 minutes
My Total Minutes: 410,971
Shorts Block 7
BUNNY BIZNESS: A cute stop-motion goth kid adventure, as he arrives at a taxidermist's shop to pick up his birthday present. Problem is, it's not dead yet.
COOL WATER: Surrealism and creepy old man masks. It's about death. And it's too early on too little sleep to enjoy this.
HIGHWAY MAN: Dystopian near-future. A hero who is carrying a lot of guilt and regret. A woman being threatened gives him one last chance to be a hero.
I DARE YOU: After an outbreak (I don't think they ever use the word "zombie") rumors abound of government experiments on the victims. And young people play "dare" games where they run through infected zones and try to return with proof of contacted with the infected (and, of course, don't get bit along the way.) Fun, inventive film, which hopefully will become a feature in the near future.
LARRY GONE DEMON: Literally, the roommate from hell. Getting him to pay the rent is the least of their problems. Getting him to stop playing death metal and smearing his feces everywhere is a bit more pressing.
LAST BREATH: Three women in a car on a wintry road, discussing men and sexism in cinema. And then the car breaks down and they have to survive a creepy cult.
MAMOCHKA: A mother's pain in two Russian civil wars (1905 and 1922) told in computer animation that rests squarely in the uncanny valley. Unpleasant.
PARTY ANIMALS: Bear interrupts his hibernation to invite all the animals over to his mansion for dinner. There he proposes a game--whoever is the last one alive will inherit his mansion. So bunnies, deer, turtle, fox, wolf, etc. all start playing the game. Oh yeah, and they're all played by humans in crude animal masks.
PLAY SPACE: A little girl in a maze of tubes and ball pit meets and befriends some impish demons in this cute little cartoon.
THE WATCHER: A young photographer in the woods, looking for some peaceful, serene vistas to photograph. Instead he finds a madman trying to kill him. And it goes on and on forever. I took the opportunity to take a little nap.
WHISPER: A beach cabin, and a woman trying to kick the ghosts of addiction ends up raising some ghosts instead.
Then another shorts block, number 8
ADVANCED DOODLING: A cool bit of colorful fun with art, and the art-making process.
COOKOO: A short music video with a nutria's skull taking the part of a cuckoo's head.
CRAP YOU: A little boy gets a stuffed raven at a yard sale. When he turns it, it says "crap you." And then it won't stop saying it, no matter how much he tries to destroy it. It keeps...coming...back. Great ending, too.
DOG BOWL: A woman who doesn't quite fit in with humans. In fact, she's more simpatico with her dog, drinking from a dog bowl and stealing an wearing a service dog's vest. And then she learns the surprising truth (either that or she's just fuckin' nuts.)
GNOME & MR. DONUT: A cute, funny cartoon of a gnome roofing his pastry house, when one of his building supplies stands up and rebels.
LOVE AND ZOMBIES: A woman has turned down her boyfriend's marriage proposal, so they need to talk about their relationship. It doesn't matter that they're trapped in a bar surrounded by zombies, this is important.
MR. HARVISH: A choose your own adventure movie, where three times there's a decision point and the audience had to vote red or blue on where Mr. Harvish goes next. So in theory there are 8 different movies in there, but you only get to see one. And no, there's nowhere online you can choose different paths... Anyway, it's an interesting idea and the film itself--at least in the version last night it was a story of a disturbed man cracking up after killing his wife--was pretty good. But honestly stopping the film 3 times, bringing up the house lights, and voting kind of ground everything to a halt. Also, this idea has been done before, and with a larger budget. Although my understanding is that movie really, really sucked.
SMALL GARDEN: A weird, surreal, psychedelic bit of animation, as only the Japanese could do.
SON: A little boy uses his sick day to go exploring while his mom is out. And what he finds in the secret room will change everything.
TRICK OR TREAT: Three little kids on Halloween. The witch gives out pennies. The gorilla gives out a good amount of candy. But that spooky, abandoned house, stay away from it. It's lights aren't even on. Oh, wait, the light just turned on...
VILLAIN: A comic book come to life, from the villain's point of view. The heroes are the sadistic ones from a villain's point of view. The only difference is power and government backing.
WILL I SCATTER AWAY?: Surreal danger, as a man is chasing himself. Shot over San Francisco and nearby, in beautiful black and white, and featuring an oddly dissonant soundtrack where the Foley almost works but doesn't really (like you hear footsteps on a hard surface when he's walking through a field and nothing when he's walking on concrete. Sort of the uncanny valley equivalent of sound.)
And then we moved on to the features, starting with SLUMLORD, one of guest programmer Michael Guillen's picks from Fantasia. This was his answer to AirBnB, and it's a pretty grisly one. The McManus brothers, whose FUNERAL KINGS opened Indiefest back in 2013, produced this feature (directed by Victor Zarcoff) about a super-sleazy evil landlord. We start with a little text about surveillance cameras and how many people are under surveillance in their own homes without them knowing about it. Then we see creepy landlord Gerald (Neville Archambault) buying a fiber optic camera from a salesman who makes a creepy joke about hiding it in the toilet, if you're into it. Gerald doesn't react. When a young couple, expecting a baby soon, tours the place, she mentions how it smells like dirty diapers whenever the landlord is there. And from that moment on I could smell it whenever he was on screen, because he just fucking looks the part so well. Of course he's watching them--in the pool, in the shower, everywhere. And it doesn't help that the young husband is having an affair and Gerald has all the goods on him. Things escalate from creepy to extra creepy to terrifying to deadly. It's a movie that will make you want to take a shower afterwards--but check for cameras first.
And then Michael Guillen's next pick from Fantasia is a truly terrifying (because it's terrifying true-to-life) story of religious fundamentalism. SHE WHO MUST BURN is probably the final film from the octogenarian godfather of Canadian independent film, Larry Kent (who was at Indiefest in 2012 for his film EXLEY as well as a retrospective screening of his 1967 film, HIGH.) And it might be his best (his films are hard to find, and I think we need to organize a retrospective of his work in San Francisco.) It's a Canadian critique on American religious fundamentalism and Planned Parenthood controversies (although I don't think the organization is ever mentioned, it's impossible not to make the connection.) Angela is a counselor at a women's health clinic, and wife of a deputy sheriff. In the opening scene, a man in the waiting room waits for a doctor to come out and then promptly and calmly shoots him (while quoting that bible quote made famous in PULP FICTION...you know the one about the tyrannies of evil men and knowing my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.) Angela keeps up her counseling for women's health, despite daily harassment and threats at her home--and the fact that there's no longer a clinic within less than a day's journey. And when she arranges for a woman to get a breast cancer screening--and to take her young daughter and spend the night--the church makes the wrong assumption, because obviously the only thing women's clinics do is kill unborn babies. The harassment ramps up, her husband tries to fight back, but the sheriff is weak and blind to how far the religious fanatics are willing to go. There's a storm brewing, both literally and figuratively, and the climax is already revealed in the title. What struck me about this movie is how fully developed all the characters were. Even the villainous religious fanatics, I was struck with how much peace and serenity they showed (well, except for Caleb, who was always being criticized for not doing enough.) The thing is, the world is rarely if ever a peaceful or serene place, and so in general something (e.g., faith) that brings peace and serenity to your life is a good thing. But if it brings serenity while you're committing atrocities, that's truly terrifying. It's easy to dismiss fanatics when they're frothing at the mouth and calling for death to the non-believers. It's much more frightening when they're at peace, and calmly and quietly carrying out "God's will." This has been the standout of the festival so far (with just one more day to go.)
And next up was the silent film event, Never Silent! Vol. 2: THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. I had missed vol. 1 with Nosferatu last year so I didn't know what to expect. I'm always a little wary of "updated" soundtracks to silent classics. Too often (and I'm looking at SFIFF here) they become more about the musician than the film--little more than a concert with a film in the background. So I'm very pleased to report that Its Own Infinite Flower actually played an accompaniment to the film, letting the film come first and doing a John Carpenter inspired minimalist techno score that accentuated the atmosphere of the film. Caligari is of course a classic, a story of a carnival performer who shows off his "Somnambulist" Cesare, who is implicated in a string of grisly murders, apparently controlled by Dr. Caligari. I remember when I first saw it thinking it was great (especially the bizarre, crooked angles of the sets) but being completely unimpressed by the final reveal that it was all the mad dreams of a mental patient. So I was pleased to learn shortly after watching it the first time that in fact the final scenes were added at the orders of the government censors, and never originally part of the story. So watch it, enjoy it, and ignore the final framing device.
And finally, the late, late show screening of DEAD BODY. What was supposed to be a small post-high school get together in a cabin in the woods quickly turns into a larger party, with nine altogether. The host is kind of peeved, but things move along. And then for a bit of fun one of them suggests they play a game of Dead Body. They each draw slips of paper from the hat. One of them is the "murderer" and when he or she pinches someone they become the victim and play dead. Then someone yells out "Dead Body"--either someone who finds the body or the murderer himself can call it out to try and throw people off track. They reconvene, talk it out, and everyone decides who the murderer is. If you guess wrong, you're also "dead." So they try a few times, people aren't really getting the hang of it, and then someone gets the hang of it too well, as someone is actually killing them off. Is it the weird kid? The jock outsider that nobody knows? The girl with a past record of pulling a knife on someone? Could be anyone...but none of them really make sense. I did guess the motive pretty early on, but it was still a lot of goofy fun watching it all play out, and the ending is definitely satisfying. A good way to end an exhausting day at the movies.
Total Running Time: 552 minutes
My Total Minutes: 410,971
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 8
The big final weekend started last night with three films, once again let's jump right in.
SUSPENSION jumped right in with a scene of a dominatrix getting ready to torture a psychotic murderer with the old iron-poker-up-the-ass trick. But he escapes and turns the tables and...it turns out it's just the active, artistic imagination of a schoolgirl. One whose father did snap and kill 8 people years ago, and one who is regarded by almost all her classmates as a freak. Director Jeffrey Scott Lando, whose SAVAGE ISLAND played at Holehead way back in...2004 at the first Holehead (if you don't count the final all-horror weekend of 2003 Indiefest, which some of us count as the first--or zeroth--Holehead) is back and updating classic horror genres to modern times again. Back in 2004 he was playing with redneck horror. Now he's playing with slasher horror in the mold of HALLOWEEN or FRIDAY THE 13TH (oh hey, look at the date!) Anyway, after taking some excessive abuse from bullies, Emily (Ellen MacNevin, rocking the lead role. As an aside, strong female lead performances have been a feature of Holehead this year) goes home to babysit her brother while the rest of the kids go to a party to drink, do drugs, and have underage sex. But Emily just stays at home with her little brother--her creepy, almost non-verbal brother--who wants her to draw more of her bloody horror story featuring her escaped psycho father torturing and killing all those who have wronged her. And the movie switches back and forth from her babysitting to the story-within-the-story, until...they converge. And then things get gloriously out-of-control bloody violent. I loved this movie!
Oh, and I happened to be wearing my orange psycho ward jumpsuit and a hockey mask in honor of the date and the late-night movie, but it turned out to be even more appropriate for SUSPENSION, so that was an awesome little bonus. And for the people behind me (which is everyone, since I sit in the front row) I turned the mask around (mostly because it gets too hot and too hard to see through it) so they got to see the back of my head staring at them through the movie. I know they appreciated that. It's one of those rare moments that I wish I were someone else, just so I can experience the awesomeness of being around me. (No, I'm not too much of a narcissist, why do you ask?)
Next up was SACRED BLOOD, by the maverick Coppola, Christopher--whose THE CURSE OF BLOODHEAD also played at Holehead 2004. And he was also in attendance, so it was kind of a reunion of original Holehead filmmakers. Chris said he made this movie as a love letter to San Francisco, and is the first of 16 independent features he plans to make here. And that's pretty exciting. But before San Francisco, the movie starts out in...crap, I forget what Eastern European country...I wanna say Bulgaria, but maybe Georgia? (I just checked, it's Georgia.) Anyway Natia (Anna Biani) is a circus performer--a sharpshooter who lights candles perched on her sister's head. Their circus is struggling, but of all things a dog act perks things up...until it all goes wrong and she gets bit. So, with a bad case of vampirism she shows up in San Francisco knowing nobody but possessing some awesome fighting skills. She needs money, and she needs help wiring it back to her sister in Georgia. But the powers that be in San Francisco don't make it very easy for her. Lilly (Bai Ling) is a sexy vampire of Chinatown who gives her some tips. Kato Kaelin (yes) shows up as a pimp and is taken out pretty quickly. And Rob Nilsson is the God-fanger (Christopher just had to have some fun with his uncle Francis' most famous film series) who runs the city. They're not really there to help, they're their to use her. Luke is actually there to help. (Bailey Coppola, Christopher's son. And I will try to avoid pointing out that he looks like a young version of his uncle Nicolas Cage, because apparently he hates that. But I will say he did a great job in the film and welcome a new generation of Coppolas to the family business.) A struggling artist who is immediately infatuated and just wants to draw her. And so an eventual showdown is set. Allegorical San Francisco politics is all over this film, which makes me wonder how well this will play outside the Bay Area (but then, that was true of a lot of his films) but for those with even a passing familiarity will recognize a San Francisco that's ruled by (literal) bloodsuckers but still features some good people who will help make it your home.
A visibly drunk, wine-sloshing Christopher Coppola did a Q&A that was as over-the-top as his personality. And it went a little long, but nobody other than the regular pass-holders who were sticking around to see the11:00 11:15 film seemed to care.
And finally, the late, late show, FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (ignore the fact that this was number 4 out of...10...11 if you count JASON VS. FREDDY.) It starts with Jason's body being taken to the morgue. Where the doctor and nurse getting busy seems to wake him up again and start another slashing spree. Enter the teens (including Crispin Glover and his epic dancing) who are there to drink, go skinny dipping, and fuck. So of course that brings Jason, and the body count rises. And right across the street there's a family with a very young Corey Feldman as a monster-special-effects obsessed little boy. And ultimately he has to be the one to take out Jason. And I really don't care if that's a spoiler, because this movie is over 30 years old, and they all follow a formula. But I will say this about the ending. It's set up so that Corey Feldman's character Tommy Jarvis might snap and continue Jason's legacy. Sadly, that's not the case, because that would've been awesome. Instead, the grown-up version of his character faces off against Jason in a few more movies, becoming Jason's prime nemesis. Which is cool, too, I guess. I mention this mainly because so many fans last night asked about it.
Total Running Time: 278 minutes
My Total Minutes: 410,419
SUSPENSION jumped right in with a scene of a dominatrix getting ready to torture a psychotic murderer with the old iron-poker-up-the-ass trick. But he escapes and turns the tables and...it turns out it's just the active, artistic imagination of a schoolgirl. One whose father did snap and kill 8 people years ago, and one who is regarded by almost all her classmates as a freak. Director Jeffrey Scott Lando, whose SAVAGE ISLAND played at Holehead way back in...2004 at the first Holehead (if you don't count the final all-horror weekend of 2003 Indiefest, which some of us count as the first--or zeroth--Holehead) is back and updating classic horror genres to modern times again. Back in 2004 he was playing with redneck horror. Now he's playing with slasher horror in the mold of HALLOWEEN or FRIDAY THE 13TH (oh hey, look at the date!) Anyway, after taking some excessive abuse from bullies, Emily (Ellen MacNevin, rocking the lead role. As an aside, strong female lead performances have been a feature of Holehead this year) goes home to babysit her brother while the rest of the kids go to a party to drink, do drugs, and have underage sex. But Emily just stays at home with her little brother--her creepy, almost non-verbal brother--who wants her to draw more of her bloody horror story featuring her escaped psycho father torturing and killing all those who have wronged her. And the movie switches back and forth from her babysitting to the story-within-the-story, until...they converge. And then things get gloriously out-of-control bloody violent. I loved this movie!
Oh, and I happened to be wearing my orange psycho ward jumpsuit and a hockey mask in honor of the date and the late-night movie, but it turned out to be even more appropriate for SUSPENSION, so that was an awesome little bonus. And for the people behind me (which is everyone, since I sit in the front row) I turned the mask around (mostly because it gets too hot and too hard to see through it) so they got to see the back of my head staring at them through the movie. I know they appreciated that. It's one of those rare moments that I wish I were someone else, just so I can experience the awesomeness of being around me. (No, I'm not too much of a narcissist, why do you ask?)
Next up was SACRED BLOOD, by the maverick Coppola, Christopher--whose THE CURSE OF BLOODHEAD also played at Holehead 2004. And he was also in attendance, so it was kind of a reunion of original Holehead filmmakers. Chris said he made this movie as a love letter to San Francisco, and is the first of 16 independent features he plans to make here. And that's pretty exciting. But before San Francisco, the movie starts out in...crap, I forget what Eastern European country...I wanna say Bulgaria, but maybe Georgia? (I just checked, it's Georgia.) Anyway Natia (Anna Biani) is a circus performer--a sharpshooter who lights candles perched on her sister's head. Their circus is struggling, but of all things a dog act perks things up...until it all goes wrong and she gets bit. So, with a bad case of vampirism she shows up in San Francisco knowing nobody but possessing some awesome fighting skills. She needs money, and she needs help wiring it back to her sister in Georgia. But the powers that be in San Francisco don't make it very easy for her. Lilly (Bai Ling) is a sexy vampire of Chinatown who gives her some tips. Kato Kaelin (yes) shows up as a pimp and is taken out pretty quickly. And Rob Nilsson is the God-fanger (Christopher just had to have some fun with his uncle Francis' most famous film series) who runs the city. They're not really there to help, they're their to use her. Luke is actually there to help. (Bailey Coppola, Christopher's son. And I will try to avoid pointing out that he looks like a young version of his uncle Nicolas Cage, because apparently he hates that. But I will say he did a great job in the film and welcome a new generation of Coppolas to the family business.) A struggling artist who is immediately infatuated and just wants to draw her. And so an eventual showdown is set. Allegorical San Francisco politics is all over this film, which makes me wonder how well this will play outside the Bay Area (but then, that was true of a lot of his films) but for those with even a passing familiarity will recognize a San Francisco that's ruled by (literal) bloodsuckers but still features some good people who will help make it your home.
A visibly drunk, wine-sloshing Christopher Coppola did a Q&A that was as over-the-top as his personality. And it went a little long, but nobody other than the regular pass-holders who were sticking around to see the
And finally, the late, late show, FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (ignore the fact that this was number 4 out of...10...11 if you count JASON VS. FREDDY.) It starts with Jason's body being taken to the morgue. Where the doctor and nurse getting busy seems to wake him up again and start another slashing spree. Enter the teens (including Crispin Glover and his epic dancing) who are there to drink, go skinny dipping, and fuck. So of course that brings Jason, and the body count rises. And right across the street there's a family with a very young Corey Feldman as a monster-special-effects obsessed little boy. And ultimately he has to be the one to take out Jason. And I really don't care if that's a spoiler, because this movie is over 30 years old, and they all follow a formula. But I will say this about the ending. It's set up so that Corey Feldman's character Tommy Jarvis might snap and continue Jason's legacy. Sadly, that's not the case, because that would've been awesome. Instead, the grown-up version of his character faces off against Jason in a few more movies, becoming Jason's prime nemesis. Which is cool, too, I guess. I mention this mainly because so many fans last night asked about it.
Total Running Time: 278 minutes
My Total Minutes: 410,419
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 7
Two movies on Thursday, let's just jump straight in.
Speaking of jumping straight in, that's what ALL I NEED did, opening with an underwear clad young woman, bound in a room, she has no idea where or why. She looks around and sees other women, still unconscious, all bound, all in their underwear. This is not as sexy as it sounds. In fact this movie deserves quite a lot of credit for portraying the stereotypical costume of the damsel in horror film distress as being about vulnerability instead of pandering to the audience. Anyway, another woman is awake and tries to help her. But every once in a while--you never know when--a creepy, silent man in coveralls, gloves, and a hood walks in, drags a girl away, and butchers her (offscreen; while there's plenty of blood in the film it's judicious in it's use.) So the film is about her escape. And it's about building tension perfectly. Much of the fear comes from waiting and dreading what will happen next, not the jump-out-and-scare-you frights (although it's good at that, too.) Caitlin Stasey is excellent in the lead. In fact, she's so good that when they needed to do re-shoots she was hired away to a TV series and they had to write in a subplot and change the ending. And the subplot works excellently, too. Just when the tension in the room reaches a pitch, we switch to a story of a man with money troubles, and the mysterious organization that offers him work as a delivery man--but that's just a test of his loyalty to see if he's up for something bigger. And that's a whole different kind of tension. Instead of her visceral fear, his is more of a puzzlement. I could even bring in some gender politics and point out that women fear losing their lives while men fear losing power. But maybe that's going a little to far. What I do know is this was a great movie, and one that brings fresh new energy and ideas to the damsel-in-distress horror sub-genre.
And continuing with the damsel-in-distress sub-genre, we had a special sneak preview screening of GIRL IN WOODS, and all I can say is I was terribly disappointed. It starts off looking great, it's got production values well above most Holehead selections. It's got great acting, starring Juliet Reeves as a woman who is still traumatized by watching her father kill himself when she was a little girl. She and her boyfriend are on a vacation in a cabin, when he proposes and goes from boyfriend to fiancé. And then, on a walk in the woods, just as they're heading back, her fiancé kills himself--a shot to the head, just like her father. And she's alone, traumatized again, not knowing how to get back to civilization (despite the fact that they only walked a few hours away from the cabin.) And that's where it loses me. She has no survival skills, not even basic common sense, but she survives anyway all while losing her grip on her sanity (many conversations with other versions of herself ensue.) Not only does she survive, her phone survives for 11 days, until she notices there's a map on it and then the battery dies. That was the crowning glory that broke my suspension of disbelief. This movie asks me to make too many jumps away from common sense, and I just couldn't do it. Sorry.
Now with that said, there is an interpretation (strengthened by the ending, which featured a "twist" that was telegraphed from near the start) that makes it all make sense, but it requires that 100% of the movie be false. And I'm just not up for going back and imagining what really happened while she was crazy the whole time. And explaining what works and what doesn't with that interpretation wouldtake more effort than I care to give reveal too many spoilers. Yeah, I'm gonna go with the spoiler excuse.
Total Running Time: 172 minutes
My Total Minutes: 410,141
Speaking of jumping straight in, that's what ALL I NEED did, opening with an underwear clad young woman, bound in a room, she has no idea where or why. She looks around and sees other women, still unconscious, all bound, all in their underwear. This is not as sexy as it sounds. In fact this movie deserves quite a lot of credit for portraying the stereotypical costume of the damsel in horror film distress as being about vulnerability instead of pandering to the audience. Anyway, another woman is awake and tries to help her. But every once in a while--you never know when--a creepy, silent man in coveralls, gloves, and a hood walks in, drags a girl away, and butchers her (offscreen; while there's plenty of blood in the film it's judicious in it's use.) So the film is about her escape. And it's about building tension perfectly. Much of the fear comes from waiting and dreading what will happen next, not the jump-out-and-scare-you frights (although it's good at that, too.) Caitlin Stasey is excellent in the lead. In fact, she's so good that when they needed to do re-shoots she was hired away to a TV series and they had to write in a subplot and change the ending. And the subplot works excellently, too. Just when the tension in the room reaches a pitch, we switch to a story of a man with money troubles, and the mysterious organization that offers him work as a delivery man--but that's just a test of his loyalty to see if he's up for something bigger. And that's a whole different kind of tension. Instead of her visceral fear, his is more of a puzzlement. I could even bring in some gender politics and point out that women fear losing their lives while men fear losing power. But maybe that's going a little to far. What I do know is this was a great movie, and one that brings fresh new energy and ideas to the damsel-in-distress horror sub-genre.
And continuing with the damsel-in-distress sub-genre, we had a special sneak preview screening of GIRL IN WOODS, and all I can say is I was terribly disappointed. It starts off looking great, it's got production values well above most Holehead selections. It's got great acting, starring Juliet Reeves as a woman who is still traumatized by watching her father kill himself when she was a little girl. She and her boyfriend are on a vacation in a cabin, when he proposes and goes from boyfriend to fiancé. And then, on a walk in the woods, just as they're heading back, her fiancé kills himself--a shot to the head, just like her father. And she's alone, traumatized again, not knowing how to get back to civilization (despite the fact that they only walked a few hours away from the cabin.) And that's where it loses me. She has no survival skills, not even basic common sense, but she survives anyway all while losing her grip on her sanity (many conversations with other versions of herself ensue.) Not only does she survive, her phone survives for 11 days, until she notices there's a map on it and then the battery dies. That was the crowning glory that broke my suspension of disbelief. This movie asks me to make too many jumps away from common sense, and I just couldn't do it. Sorry.
Now with that said, there is an interpretation (strengthened by the ending, which featured a "twist" that was telegraphed from near the start) that makes it all make sense, but it requires that 100% of the movie be false. And I'm just not up for going back and imagining what really happened while she was crazy the whole time. And explaining what works and what doesn't with that interpretation would
Total Running Time: 172 minutes
My Total Minutes: 410,141
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