-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Hunted’ covers some well-worn revenge ground | Awesome Friday!
The rape-revenge story is a well-worn film story. The bad man seems nice. The bad man gets the woman alone. The bad man reveals himself as bad man. Violence ensues. Hunted attempts to take a supernatural twist on this story, following our victim deep into a forest that will eventually become her ally. Or so the pitch goes. The problem is that the film doesn’t really follow through on the pitch. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-hunted-covers-some-well-worn-revenge-ground/
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘A Mermaid in Paris’ is a fun, heartfelt fantasy | Awesome Friday!
A Mermaid in Paris is, shockingly, from this last group. A man, Gaspar (Nicolas Duvauchelle), finds the wounded mermaid Lula (Marilyn Lima) on the banks of the Seine one night and proceeds to nurse her back to health. In the process, they fall in love. It’s not exactly a new setup, but when you filter this story through the mind and aesthetic of Mathias Malzieu, you end up with something that looks like a cross between the classic 80s film Splash and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 classic Amélie. Let me be clear: this is absolutely not a complaint. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-a-mermaid-in-paris-is-a-fun-heartfelt-fantasy/
-
Interview: Quinn Armstrong on his film “Survival Skills” | Awesome Friday!
Survival Skills is a film I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I first watched it. A biting satire of police training, it frames a cold hard look at the way police are trained to interact with the people they’re sworn to protect. I watched and reviewed the film yesterday and today had the opportunity to sit down with writer and director Quinn Armstrong via Zoom to talk about police training videos, the timeliness of this satire, and what he hopes to expose with his film. Full Interview at Awesome Friday: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-interview-quinn-armstrong-on-his-film-survival-skills/
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘PVT Chat’ can’t decide whether it’s honest or sleazy | Awesome Friday!
The film crosses back and forth over the lines, from some moments that ring incredibly true and honest to others that are effectively softcore porn. Each actor gives 100% to the material; Vack and Fox bare all for the camera. The level of trust in the filmmaker must have been quite high for them to do so, given the level of nudity and sexuality they are portraying, but the film never achieves the level of insight I think it aspires to. In the end, the film doesn’t decide to come down on one side or the other, trying to be…
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Free Country’ is a stark, engaging mystery | Awesome Friday!
Each lead actor is great, but Felix Kramer, as Markus, steals the show. He’s a brute, but he might be a bad man for good reasons. Does that work? I will let you decide for yourself, but it’s fascinating watching him portray that struggle and whether Markus will let his past define him. Alvart has created a taut mystery with characters easy to become invested in and does double duty as the cinematographer, photographing the stark German winter with grand, gorgeous aerial shots and a colour scheme as cold and disquieting as the story itself. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-free-country-is-a-stark-engaging-mystery/
-
Don’t Go to the Movies Right Now | Awesome Friday!
I love the movie-going experience. Sure, people can be jerks sometimes (*cough* turn your phone off *cough*), a man was even arrested for assaulting another moviegoer at my screening of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (seriously, that happened). But there’s nothing quite like seeing an exciting blockbuster film with a large crowd when that crowd is into it. It’s electrifying, and I miss it. On the other hand, there is a worldwide pandemic happening right now. Two hundred thousand people a day are catching COVID-19 worldwide, and anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 people are dying from it. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/dont-go-to-the-movies-right-now/
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Survival Skills’ is way more than just a weird VHS nostalgia trip | Awesome Friday!
It would be easy to write Survival Skills off as a cheap nostalgia bid or a wacky experiment, and it would have been easy just to be that. Still, writer and director Quinn Armstrong’s script takes the story to some uncomfortably dark places and pits Jim’s desire to help against our society and all the ways it fails the people it tries to protect. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-survival-skills-is-way-more-than-just-a-weird-vhs-nostalgia-trip/
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘A Witness Out of the Blue’ is a solid action thriller | Awesome Friday!
Opening with a gang of thieves storming a jewellery store only to be cornered by the police as they finish filling their bags, some quick thinking leads to the thieves escape but arrange in their wake. Then, three months later, a gang member is murdered, and the only witness to the crime is a parrot. Is that a hell of a setup? Yes! Does it live up to that setup? Mostly! Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-a-witness-out-of-the-blue-is-a-solid-action-thriller/
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Climate of the Hunter’ is dark, weird, stylistic throwback | Awesome Friday!
To reiterate, this movie is deeply weird. It’s also shallow. Climate of the Hunter features several monologues from Wesley, stories of his travel, and his devotion to his wife, but nothing of any real substance is discussed in all his talk. Oh, sure, it sounds like there is, but it only sounds like it. The one interesting hook, whether Wesley is a vampire or just an ageing lothario with a weird sleep schedule and a particularly severe allergy, takes most of the film to resolve, but once it did, I had a hard time caring. For me, it could have gone…
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Bleed With Me’ is a slow, but sure, burn set in the Canadian wilderness | Awesome Friday!
The remote setting of the story exacerbates all of this; the tiny family cabin set deep in the woods, further isolated by the winter’s snow, traps Rowan in an environment that is altogether warm and welcoming as well as unfamiliar and foreboding. Moses does an admirable job of letting the tension in the situation ratchet up slowly, and the location lends a lot to the character’s inner stories. As the story progresses and the lines between reality and Rowan’s paranoia begin to blur, you’ll be left squirming in your seat as you try to anticipate the twists and turns the…
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘The Columnist’ is a revenge story we’ve all fantasized about | Awesome Friday!
Katja Herbers (probably best known for her recurring role on HBO’s Westworld) is fantastic as Femke, particularly in the scenes where she confronts the trolls she has managed to track down and asks them to their faces about the things they say online. Herbers navigates the changes in Femke’s demeanour as she moves from timid but upset to confident and furious. There is casual malice underlying everything she says in the scenes mentioned above, and a palpable sense of relief she exudes whilst doing what she does makes the scenes a delight to watch. Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-the-columnist-is-a-revenge-story-weve-all-fantasized-about/
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Perdida’ is a satisfying thriller
Perdida will likely draw comparisons to Hitchcock, Fincher, and Bong Joon-ho, which are rightly deserved. The story will keep you on your toes; the framing and architecture are gorgeous, and the cast is magnetic. What more could you ask for? Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/08/fantasia-review-perdida-is-a-satisfying-thriller/
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Crazy Samurai Musashi’ is a technical marvel, but exhausting | Awesome Friday!
Spielberg and Cuarón use them frequently. Martin Scorsese probably produced the most famous long-take scenes in Goodfellas, and Park Chan-wook produced one of Oldboy’s most famous action long takes. One of the more ambitious examples is the historical epic Russian Ark, which runs 96 minutes and is entirely one take. The envelope is constantly being pushed in filmmaking, and Crazy Samurai Musashi aims to push it a little further. The film tells the story of a Samurai, Musashi, as he faces off against 588 opponents in a single 77-minute take. And that’s pretty much the entire movie, for better or worse. Technically, it is one of…
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Special Actors’ is a Wacky Good Time | Awesome Friday!
Imagine being an aspiring actor and suffering an anxiety affliction so severe that you collapse every time you are nervous or confronted. This is the plight of Kazuto (Kazuto Osawa) in Special Actors, the new film by Shinichiro Ueda. Of course, that’s not the movie’s plot, and honestly, I am loathed to tell you much about the story. It involves a talent agency specialising in hiring actors out to real-life events, a family-owned inn, and a cult. That’s pretty much all I can tell you without taking an express train to spoiler country, but to say this movie gets a little wacky…
-
Fantasia 2020: ‘Feels Good, Man’ asks if Pepe the Frog will ever be good again | Awesome Friday!
The sad truth is that when you upload something to the internet, you effectively lose control of that thing. This is not a fact I agree with or like; we here at Awesome Friday have had articles plagiarized. The question is not whether or not we can stop it from happening but whether we should give up and let it. Feels Good Man is an engaging watch and takes the time to interrogate this question. I’m not sure it has an answer, but Furie, a soft-spoken artist, is unwilling to let his creation go without a fight. And that’s all we…
I am a Rotten Tomatoes-approved, freelance film & television critic and podcast host from Vancouver, Canada! I am a co-founder of the Cascadia Film & Television Critics Association and a voting member of the International Film Society Critics, Pandora International Critics, and the Online Film & Television Association.
I maintain bylines at Exclaim!, Awesome Friday!, That Shelf, ForReel, Movies We Texted About, KeithLovesMovies, and I can be heard regularly on the Contra Zoom Podcast and The LAMBCast.
