Fantastic Fest 2009–The Legend Is Alive (2009)/Buratino (2009)/Mandrill(2009)/The House Of The Devil (2009)
“Frolic, motherfucker!”
I gotta say that I’m loving having a reliable laptop that is relatively lightweight AND about half an hour or so between movies. I can write reviews right after I see the movies and not wait until the end of the night, staying up until 3am every night. YAY!!!
THE STARS DON’T TWINKLE IN OUTER SPACE (2009)
Directed by: Peter Thwaites
Written by: Hank Isaac
I had no clue what was going on in this short until the very end. Basically, a couple of kids are space explorers who seem to be in trouble, but all they do is hide and build sand castles. Then they’re at dinner and the boy is hiding under the table. They talk to each other in adult voices via telepathy or something. The boy runs before anyone sees him and the girl is taken into a ship to be taken…somewhere?
Then the scene changes and it’s all been an allegory and it all makes sense. And it become pretty effective. Not amazing, but it works once you figure out what the hell is going on.
Directed by: Luu Huynh
Written by: Luu Huynh
When I read about this movie, I kind of thought it would be a bit like Chocolate 2. I was all ready for that!
Instead, what I got was Forrest Gump if Forrest was a martial arts master.
Long (Dustin Nguyen from 21 Jump Street!) is a mentally disabled kid who believes that Bruce Lee was his father. His mom is a martial arts teacher and teaches him that fighting is wrong. It’s only to be used in self-defense and to protect others weaker than you.
When she dies, he decides that he needs to take her ashes to America so that she can be with his father. On what he thinks is a bus to America, he meets Trinh, a 17 year old girl who has fallen in love with a guy she met on the internet.
Of course, that ends badly and Long has to rescue her from a sex trafficking plot.
For about an hour I was wondering where the action was. And what little action there was was either sped up or slowed down, so this guy could have been me doing martial arts.
Eventually, though, we get to see him kick some ass and it’s pretty fucking brutal. Lots of blood and realism.
The movie was ok, but it seemed to be trying to be a few different movies at once. The acting was really good all around, but I didn’t really get the stylistic choices of the director, Huynh Luu Luu. The screen would slowly go black and white for no apparent reason. And were we supposed to believe that all of this happened over four days? I’m certainly not buying that.
The ending was completely ridiculous. It became a fantasy for just a minute. It was all in Long’s head, sure. But that doesn’t make it work. If we haven’t seen Long’s thoughts before, why is he suddenly flying?
Can’t say that this was one of my favorites.
Directed by: Aaron Mcloughlin
Written by: Aaron Mcloughlin
A kid goes to a pimp to lose his virginity. What he doesn’t realize is that no one frolics like the Lord. Little Lord Fauntleroy, that is.
A quietly funny short from Australia. Crazy, too. What more could you want?
BURATINO, SON OF PINOCCHIO (2009)
Directed by: Rasmus Merivoo
Written by: Rasmus Merivoo/Kristin Kalamees
Loosely based on book by: Aleksei Tolstoy
Estonia is apparently getting quite a film colony going. There were a couple of Estonian films here last year and now Rasmus Merivoo has brought his latest bit of insanity to us.
Buratino was born of a virgin birth. Now he’s 15 and going through puberty…and learning that he’s made of wood. Not only that, but the local rich guy is trying to get a hold of him so that he can breed his own batch of wooden soldiers. His daughter, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Buratino.
This is a crazy, crazy movie. The city is split between Badville (where Buratino is from) and Goodville (where rich dude is from) and the Badville folks are all punks and street trash. The Goodville folks are all dumber’n dirt, especially the cops. There’s a slightly Repo Man feel to the whole affair that almost makes it worth seeing.
Oh yeah. And it’s a musical.
The problem is that it’s probably too weird for its own good. It’s like a Troma film with what it thinks is more heart and less grue. I’m not really sure what they were going for. American audiences certainly won’t go for it because us freaks want more freak and people who like conventional films want less freak.
But this movie wasn’t made for American audiences. It was made for Estonians and maybe they really dig it.
Directed by: Ernesto Díaz Espinoza
Written by: Ernesto Díaz Espinoza
Two years ago, Marko Zaror and Ernesto Diaz Espinoza brought us Kiltro and Mirageman, two of the first Chilean martial arts films ever made…and they were freakin’ amazing.
This year, they brought Mandrill, the story of a hitman who is out for revenge for the death of his parents. But, at heart, he’s still the same little boy who looked to his uncle for advice about women and worshiped at the alter of John Colt, the James Bond-ish superhero of a series of movies.
When Mandrill finally gets the job of killing the man who killed his family, he does something that he never expected: he fell in love with the man’s daughter.
Marko and Ernesto just keep getting better and better. I love these guys. Marko, of course, does all his own stunts and is a fucking amazing martial artist. He’s so fast that, in the last two films, you could hardly see what he was doing. This time they got a better camera and were able to slow some of the stuff down so we could see it.
They haven’t left the humor at home, either. The clips from the Colt films are hilarious and Marko has a lot of great bits where he shows his insecurities…and the fact that he has no shame when it comes to getting laughs.
For such a fast shoot (8-10 weeks, I think is what they said), it looks great. It looks and feels like a 70s hitman film from the crazy angles to the jarring color schemes. And the music is pretty great, too. I don’t know if it was Chilean music from the 70s, but it sure sounded like it.
Before the film, they showed a preview for Marko’s next one, Defender. It’s an American remake of Mirageman in 3D. It looks like it’s going to be great, but my friends and I all hope that they keep the sense of humor that the original had.
I’m all for anything these guys do. Alone or together, they’re a force of nature that everyone should watch for.
Directed by: Dennis Cabella/Marcello Ercole/Fabio Prati
Written by: Dennis Cabella/Marcello Ercole/Fabio Prati/Giorgio Viaro
In a future that’s worse than The Matrix, a man is just trying to live his life the only way he knows how: through pre-programmed thoughts and experiences while he lives in a small, empty room with his head tied to some kind of feeding tube. Unfortunately for him, credit still rules. And, if you can’t use your credit card…well, they have WAYS of making you use your credit card.
One of the better shorts I’ve seen at the festival, directors Dennis Cabella, Marcello Ercole and Fabio Prati created a world that looks far more desperate than we can imagine…but we could end up there.
Directed by: Ti West
Written by: Ti West
Writer/director Ti West has steered me wrong in the past. After unleashing the logically challenged Roost on an unsuspecting public, he moved on to a sequel to Cabin Fever that has yet to see the light of day due to people high up “not getting it,” as Ti said tonight after the screening of his new film.
I figured that I would give him another chance, though. Why not? I didn’t get in to see Dr. Parnassus, the third secret screening (SONUVABITCH!!!!!), so I might as well check out a movie about a cursed house? Or something like that?
The House Of The Devil is actually about a college student named Sam (Jocelin Donahue) who needs money. She takes a babysitting job at a creepy old house just outside of town. The couple who own it (horror vets Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) are just as creepy. And, to make matters worse, they don’t need her to take care of their kid. They need her to take care of Mary’s ancient mother. Oh, she won’t really have to do anything but listen for the old lady in case anything happens. Other than that, just stay here and make yourself at home. Here’s $400.
Well, with a title like The House Of The Devil, you know what happens next. It gets creepier, darker and the total eclipse plays into things more than Sam could ever expect.
What Ti has done here isn’t necessarily make a great film. But what he has done is made a really cool 80s horror film. From the look of the film to the music choices (two words: Thomas Fuckin’ Dolby!!! And it WASN’T “She Blinded Me With Science”. It was “One Of Our Submarines”!) to the lighting, everything was 80s. Ti said that he was just making a period piece and that’s how it looked right. If he had made it look like a movie made yesterday, it would have sucked.
And, unfortunately, he’s probably right. We probably would have watched it and thought, “Dammit. Really? Another one?” Instead, we all had a great time reliving a time when horror movies meant something besides dollars. (Ok, they ALWAYS meant that…but they meant more than that to the audience.) The movie moved slowly, but it did so (like all great horror films of the past) to build tension. And Ti knows that it’s not the shocks that stay with you when the movie’s over; it’s the slow creeps and crazy noises. It’s what you DON’T see.
It’s a little hard for me to say, “Go see this film.” If you’re a big fan of 80s horror, definitely go see this film. A lot of people were fooled into thinking that it actually WAS made in the 80s and they had just missed it in their video store perusals. It captures the time, and filmmaking style of the time, perfectly.
