I love attending film festivals.
Being able to completely lose myself in the act of film consumption for a week - absorbing four to five movies a day - is a luxury I have mostly weened myself off of. I used to watch a LOT of movies every day but, in recent years, I have tried to do a better job setting boundaries between my film consumption and my other hobbies - such as hiking, reading, writing, and - the hobby I neglect the most - sleep. As a rule, I limit myself to one movie a day unless I’m working a double feature or marathon at the Alamo. During a film festival, though, all bets are off - I watch as many movies as I possibly can. I think my personal record is one year at SXSW when I watched 45 films during a single week.
The last film festival I attended before COVID turned the world upside down was Sundance back in January 2020. Once the pandemic hit, a lot of film festivals went virtual. While I dabbled a bit in attending virtual fests, I found it difficult to achieve the same level of dedication to the festival while at home. All my obligations - both work and professional - were harder to shrug off when I was watching films in my apartment, versus a new city. I also found myself having a more difficult time concentrating on the films I was watching - frequently pausing to look at my cell phone while watching a film.
I’m glad Fantastic Fest was the first festival I was able to attend since the theater industry shut down last year. Fantastic Fest has always been my favorite festival - the programming, the ease of attending (all the screenings happen in the same theater), the atmosphere, and the attendees - it’s the perfect storm of Good Movie Watching™. I have treated Fantastic Fest as my annual creative battery recharge since I first started attending the festival in 2010.
This year’s Fantastic Fest may be a little different - no badges, fewer screenings, COVID safety protocols that make everything seem a little less crowded and a little more subdued - but in a lot of ways the festival has been a great way to dip my toes back into the festival lifestyle. I am watching less than 20 films this year but that’s probably a good thing because I don’t know if my butt can still handle the days of cramming 45 films into a single week.
I don’t know if I will be able to attend as many festivals going forward as I once did but I will always make a point to attend Fantastic Fest if at all possible.
Here’s what I’ve seen so far:
TITANE (2021)
I don’t want to say too much about what this film is about as it packs a ton of great surprises. Suffice to say, Julia Ducournau manages to out Cronenberg David Cronenberg when it comes to sexy car body horror, and then, without warning, the movie undergoes its own transformation, becoming something profound and strange and impossible to look away from. I’m in love.
THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE (2021)
Major SCREAM vibes in this teen slasher about a killer who pours salt in their victims’ wounds by stabbing with secrets as well as knives. Besides being genuinely funny, the film explores a meaty cultural question of victimhood.
A BANQUET (2021)
Eating disorder or cosmic horror? This unsettling film follows a single mom, her two daughters who must cope when one of the girls suddenly stops eating, claiming her body is transforming into something greater. Tremendous performances, gnarly imagery.
AGNES (2021)
Mickey Reece’s art-house exorcism film is 100 % my kind of jam. A possessed nun draws a web of lost and searching souls. The dialogue in the film is so rich and luxurious I want to use it as shampoo. Also, the film looks absolutely gorgeous. So dang good.
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021)
Edgar Wright knocks it out of the park with this super stylish horror about a young psychic who finds herself drawn into a cold case murder mystery. I’m not looking forward to the “Is it Giallo?” debate, but I am looking forward to audiences going nuts for this spooky-as-shit cinematic blast Halloween weekend.
FREAKS OUT (2021)
The only X-Men reboot we need for a while. A quartet of freaks in WWII-era Italy find themselves conscripted into a Nazi circus run by a six-fingered pianist who can see into the future. Part Jean-Pierre Jeunet, part Álex de la Iglesia, all wonderful.
LAMB (2021)
Holy shit. This baaaaadass movie is one of the best things I’ve seen in years. Alternatively heartwarming, cringe-inducing, funny, tragic. The puppeteering is a flickering magic trick but the human performances are out-of-this-world. I can’t believe this movie is getting w wide release. God bless cinema.
THE BLACK PHONE (2021)
I know for a fact that Ethan Hawke is a super nice guy but he is beyond believable as a creepy-as-shit child murderer in this Joe Hill adaption about a boy trapped in a basement with the ghosts of dead children. Great, iconic performance.
THE TRIP (2021)
Norwegian violence jamboree about a bickering couple whose trip out to a cabin in the woods goes south very quickly. Filled with THE NIGHT COMES FOR US levels of violence, with a pitch-black sense of humor a mile long. Fun, gory, goopy blast.
IKÉ BOYS (2021)
Two Oklahoma teens obsessed with Japanese culture team up with a Japanese foreign exchange student obsessed with Native American culture to stop a Lovecraftian Y2K apocalypse. Oh, and there are DIY kaiju and mechas. Cute.
V/H/S/94 (2021)
The best installment of the series so far, this found footage anthology features fun scares, gnarly monsters, and great premises for each short. Each short could easily sustain its own feature but the stories work perfectly at the length they are.
THE BETA TEST (2021)
If Jim Cummings makes a movie and he doesn’t play a cop, is it even a Jim Cummings movie? Hollywood inside baseball and social commentary about people’s relationship with the internet collide in this angry, funny adultery satire.
DYNASTY (1977)
1977 3D martial arts film. If I tried to describe some of the craziness I witnessed in this film, you’d think I was making it up. The 3D is fantastic. Look for a digital 3D conversion coming to Blu-ray soon.