Another Fantasia visit wrapped for me and S!
I already talked about how nice it was to be back in Montreal; that continued to be awesome. I spent an hour or so after I got back going through and meticulously adding theater tags to my old Letterboxd Fantasia entries, so I can now say that I have spent around 128 hours sitting in Théâtre Hall (the main theater), 108 hours in De Sève (the secondary theater), and 8 hours in Cinéma du Musée (the spillover theater). All in all this is a significant portion of my movie-going life. I’ve spent more physical time in SIFF Uptown, but fewer viewings thanks to all the shorts.
Oh, what the hell, I went to all the trouble of making an SQLite database for my Letterboxd exports and so on, so here’s the chart of my top ten tags.
Right! Let’s get to the movies. I’m gonna tier them this year and if you want the full reviews you can go look at my Letterboxd.
The Best (4.5 or 5 stars)
Halfway through I was feeling like it wasn’t gonna be as good a year as I’d hoped; in the second stretch of the festival I was proven wrong. I should scatter chart my ratings vs. amount of time I’ve been at the festival each year because that might be the result of getting tired and more impressionable? Nah.
Expected to be great and lived up to expectations: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and Pontypool. I’d seen Pontypool before, I already loved it, but seeing a movie about language as a virus in 2026 hits harder. And Jane Schoenbrun nailed her third movie, bringing a sense of humor and joy which I loved. See it when it hits theaters even if slashers aren’t totally your thing.
Awfully Good (4 stars)
Again, one movie that I had high hopes for which totally panned out: The Samurai and the Prisoner. Most people, like me, know Kiyoshi Kurosawa for his J-horror but he’s got a lot of range. This was a great samurai movie, going deep on his usual fascination with social constraints and duty, and should get a wider release this year.
I was happily surprised by AnyMart, an incredibly depressing piece about the hell of working at a convenience stoer; No Rest for the Wicked, a queer period vampire romance set and filmed on the Faroe Islands; Nightborn, a nicely funny inverted folk horror movie set in Finland, and Mystery, which is impossible to explain but it’s by a woman director working in Mexico in 1980 and it’s the most metatextual movie I’ve seen in ages. Nightborn is coming to Shudder in August and I strongly recommend it. The others, who knows?
In the Zone (3.5 stars)
In no particular order: Drag is Lizzy Caplan’s best physical comedy role to date; Matapanki is a microbudget Chilean anti-fascist superhero movie; Godhead wasn’t as good as the director’s first movie but it’s a cool exploration of faith; Big Break is a wryly funny horror comedy from a Brooklyn comedy troupe who more or less play themselves; Los Vampires is a sort of outsider art feeling movie about the making of the other 1931 Dracula, which is a wild bit of film history; Beasts Clutching at Straws is a weirdly grim zany Japanese crime movie; and The Mob is another revival, this time from Quebec in 1975, about organized crime and the perils of thinking you can be bigger than you are. All worth while.
On the Right Day (2.5 or 3 stars)
After School was fun and well-acted, just not as grim as I wanted it to be, which is a personal taste issue. It’s about a teacher who’s about as hapless as his students think he is. Permanent Damage is an unassuming indie crime movie elevated to watchability by Stephan Dorff, who has scenery to chew. You Animal! was fascinating; it’s an animated parody of Filipino soap operas, which are heavily influenced by telenovellas. Horny and lighthearted and fun. Our Effed Up World and, for that matter, You Are The Film were both good but I wanted more from their directors; the first was less ambitious than I wanted from Alice Maio Mackay and the second was a great concept that didn’t sustain an entire movie. Which is a pity, because Makoto Ueda’s screenplays are so smart.
Lots of three star movies this year. Niko is a French director making an end of the world movie set in Seoul using Asia as a shorthand for cyberpunk, which has the issues you might expect from that summary but man I liked the vibe. Cherry and Virgin is really nifty experimental Japanese animation that would have landed better with me if I was an anime fan – I think real fans will love it. Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant hits full frontal male alien genitalia nudity less than ten minutes into the movie and escalates from there; New Zealand remains a pioneer in gross-out cinema. Trauma, or Monsters All brings all of Larry Fessenden’s monster movies together and sprinkles them with a wee bit of “can’t we just all get along?”
Kung Fu is two movies slammed into one with a bizarre plot pivot. It starts out as a kung fu comedy. I’m glad I saw it but I absolutely do not know what the director was getting at. The Last Temptation of Becky gives notice that the franchise probably isn’t gonna survive much longer although I’ll keep watching Lulu Wilson kill Nazis, sure. Attack on Paradise has its heart in the right place, but look, just watch The Raid and/or wait for the filmmakers and actors to get a teeny bit better. Finally, Dance Freak is a completely unrestrained blast of alt comedy, which was fine.
Alas (2 or fewer stars)
Eh, I feel bad beating these up again. Suffice it to say that I had four movies I didn’t enjoy much at all, one of which was fun to watch for all the right reasons until the ending undercuts every bit of earned emotion. Again, you can check out my reviews for more on Backstage Madness, Penny Lane is Dead, The Eyes, and Ferine.
In Closing
It’ll probably be a few years before we make it back to Fantasia. Can’t come too soon. I’ve always said it’s the best audience in cinema; this year I have proof, as my Apple Watch registered decibel levels above 90 dB more than once during a few film introductions. It’s so nice to be around so many people who love movies in many of the same ways I do.