FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Giving Birth to a Butterfly [2021]

It’s the awe that I want. We meet Diana Dent (Annie Parisse) readying matching wedding gowns soon revealed as not her own. She’s mending them to sell online—a necessity considering her bull-headed and controlling husband Daryl (Paul Sparks) is hell-bent on putting their life savings towards a dream of creating his own restaurant. That means no money for Drew (Owen Campbell) or Danielle’s (Rachel Resheff) college. No money to stop working extra hours at the pharmacy. No money for anything besides his selfish need to break free of a constrained…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunch Break [2021]

What did they teach you about revenge? A mother’s love can move mountains. It must in the case of Paul Dood (Tom Meeten) since he doesn’t really have anything else propelling him forward. Did he aspire to be a superstar? No. He merely asked his mum (June Watson‘s Julie) if she thought he had what it took while watching an episode of “Britain’s Got Talent”. She of course said, “Yes.” She said he was “better than anyone else on that show.” Love is blind, though, and unwittingly creates lies since…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Droste no hate de bokura [Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes] [2021]

I don’t know why. The logistics behind Droste no hate de bokura [Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes] are mind-boggling to fathom since time-travel stories are often confusing enough to keep straight when they aren’t filmed as a one-shot. The Europe Kikaku theatrical troupe embracing that extra challenge is thus wild. Group director Makoto Ueda admits he wouldn’t have written the script that way if he didn’t already trust his actors and know they could handle the experiment. Not that having them at his disposal necessarily made his and director Junta…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Muerto con Gloria [Ghosting Gloria] [2021]

Don’t be afraid of your senses, they are a wonderful gift. Sex is everywhere Gloria (Stefania Tortorella) turns. She can’t sleep because the people in the apartment above her are at it every single night like clockwork. A photographer takes antique images of couples outside the bookstore where she works—love captured with every smile. And her co-worker and best friend Sandra (Nenan Pelenur) has a new boyfriend each day to the point where Gloria never knows which beau she’s talking about. Gloria is tired, listless, and without any hope of…

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FANTASIA21 REVIEW: 哭悲 [The Sadness] [2021]

I thought you were crazy like the other ones. The trigger warnings that accompany 哭悲 [The Sadness] at the Fantasia International Film Festival are no joke. The acts of violence that writer/director Rob Jabbaz has his characters inflict upon each other are as depraved as can be and seemingly devoid of remorse. It often feels like an Aphex Twin music video with enraged men and women stopping to turn and grin with blackened eyes before pouncing on their latest targets with relish. It therefore means something when we first see…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: 返校 [Fanxiao] [Detention] [2019]

I don’t remember anything. As a subversive poem (according to the Chinese Nationalist Party that ruled Taiwan under martial law during the period known as the White Terror from 1947 until 1987) read by Miss Yin (Cecilia Choi) to the members of her and Mr. Chang’s (Meng-Po Fu) underground high school book club relates: a tree’s roots never ask to be repaid by the fruit that blooms as a result of their effort. It’s a succinctly beautiful metaphor for the education system and its liberal teachers doing all they can…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Come True [2021]

I can’t tell you that. The darkened screen is almost pitch black before we can begin to discern shapes in the distance. First it’s wooden stakes in the ground at what looks to be a trailhead of sorts. Next it’s a mountain in the distance. Finally we come to a door that swings open as though we’ve been placed inside a videogame merging the puzzle mechanics of Myst with the brooding aesthetic of Hellraiser only to continue moving forward towards a bald figure with back turned—unmoving and foreboding with a…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Feels Good Man [2020]

The violence becomes the meme. Every artist’s worst nightmare is watching his/her work become appropriated for a cause antithetical to its origins. It happens all the time. Just this week the Republican National Convention played Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” despite being told they didn’t have the permission of the late songwriter’s estate. Whereas the latter now has legal grounds and copyright law on its side to discuss filing suit in response to the infraction, things get murky when fair use rears its head and even murkier after falling further into the…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: The Paper Tigers [2021]

Kung Fu without honor is just fighting. Like the warring Japanese dojos depicted throughout the Karate Kid franchise, a growing disconnect exists between those who wish to learn a fighting style as a means of physical and emotional growth and those who simply seek the ability to punish their adversaries without mercy. It’s respect and honor versus strength and superiority—something even the most devout and sacred of Chinese Kung Fu masters like Sifu Cheung (Roger Yuan) can’t always instill in their pupils. No matter how much they strive to trust…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Chihuo Quan Wang [Chasing Dream] [2019]

Don’t drown yourself in mistakes from the past. We live in an era where celebrity has become more about fame than talent as those wishing for adulation do what they can to mimic the greats that came before them without ever worrying about proving whether they possess an ounce of originality. You want to impress the judges on “American Idol”? Show them you can be Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna all at once. You want to be the talk of the fighting world by unleashing your strength in the Ultimate…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Fugitive Dreams [2020]

Go sleep, John. Every single one of us knows the terror of the unknown. Maybe it’s as universal as our collective uncertainty about the future or as specific as your inability to guess whether an abusive family member is going to fall asleep before taking off their belt. Some wonder if the randomness of the world will strike them down without warning or if a broken system of prejudice will collect them for no other reason than the color of their skin. We battle mental illness, post traumatic stress, bigotry,…

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