FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Freies Land [Free Country] [2020]

My dream killed them. From post-Francoist State Spain to post-reunified Germany, director Christian Alvart moves Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos‘ Goya Award-winning thriller Marshland to a newly democratized remote village outside of Berlin via Freies Land [Free Country]. Considering detectives Patrick Stein (Trystan Pütter) and Markus Bach (Felix Kramer) are thrust together despite building their careers in the West and East respectively, Alvart and co-writer Siegfried Kamml have ample room with which to retool things through a prism of their own nation’s potential for dark political secrets and guilt-ridden pasts.…

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FANTASIA17 REVIEW: S.U.M.1 [2017]

“We will fight for our future. Your future.” It’s been decades since a new world order changed Earth forever, an alien invasion by creatures known as the Nonesuch forcing humanity underground. The old guard who survived remembers the war that drove them subterranean, memories of life on the surface and the beasts that present-day generations hope to never encounter. If any of them do want to risk their lives for a glimpse of the sun they’ve only heard about through stories, though, they can enlist in the military and become…

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REVIEW: Pandorum [2009]

“Where are the stars?” I’ve got to give it to director Christian Alvart and writer Travis Milloy for delivering the goods with their horror/thriller Pandorum. Admittedly, I’d go see anything with Ben Foster in the cast, but there was also something in the trailer that piqued my interest despite the very easy chance of the film ending up a failure. The aesthetic is dark and slimy, the atmosphere is claustrophobic, and there are creatures of some sort hiding beneath the industrial tubes and blast-proof glass panes. While hopes were high,…

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