Fantasia ’12: Attack of the Brainsucker (short)

It is tough having a sci-fi fan for a kid.  They are always going on about alien invasions and the like.  One little girl’s parents lose patience with her crazy Mars talk in Sid Zanforlin’s short film, Attack of the Brainsucker (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Fantasia Festival.

Samantha Delormier enjoys giving herself paranoid nightmares, like the one that opens the film.  After all, that is exactly what monsters from space are good for.  Her parents do not share her enthusiasm.  Frankly, they are getting rather tired of her oddball expressions of fandom.  In truth, their discontent stems from a dirty family secret.  It was Samantha’s older brother Robbie who first introduced his sister to the world of cult sci-fi.  The senior Delormier sibling no longer lives with the family.  He has been put away someplace out of sight.  However, he has come back this dark and stormy night to look after his beloved sister.  Or has he?

Brainsucker’s dirty little secret is that it is a really a social issue film masquerading as a retro genre pastiche.  It might be a particular downer for Fantasia patrons, considering how likely they are to identify with little Samantha.  At least it looks great.  Production designer Katka Hubacek’s team must have called in favors with all their geek-collector friends, filling every nook and cranny of Samantha’s bedroom with vintage 1960’s-era memorabilia.

Young Keyanne Fielding’s performance as Samantha is also quite impressive, but the film is rather dark and even somewhat heavy-handed.  That will make it a bit of a tough lead-in for Jon Wright’s enjoyably easy-going monster movie Grabbers this Saturday (8/4).  It also screens as part of the Déclarations short film programming block on the same night.

Fantasia ’12: Black’s Game

Iceland enforced the prohibition of alcohol from 1915 until 1935, maintaining the ban on strong spirits until 1989.  Can such a country have an appetite for cocaine?  Sure, especially if it is 100% pure Peruvian.  As the millennium approaches, a young degenerate witnesses the Icelandic drug trade’s changing of the guard and “misplaces” a shipment of said goods in Óskar Thór Axelsson’s Black’s Game (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Fantasia Festival.

Ironically, “Stebbi Psycho” is considerably less volatile than his colleagues.  Nonetheless, he is the one with an assault charge hanging over his head.  Just after his release on bail Stebbi crosses paths with old childhood chum Tótí.  Lucky or not, it will be a fateful encounter.  Soon thereafter, Stebbi joins Tótí’s narco-gang, getting their high-price defense attorney on his case, as part of the bargain.  Things get a bit violent when Tótí decides to take down the old school Studio 54-ish rival outfit.  However, when the seriously deranged Brúnó takes over their operations, the blood and mayhem really ramp up a notch.

Game proves what our mothers always used to tell us: sleepless four-day coke benders are not conducive to good business decisions.  Indeed, Stebbi makes some awfully bad choices, but he is not alone.  To be fair, it is not just the drugs clouding his judgment.  He is also distracted by Dagný, his blonde cokehead party-girl colleague in the drug-trafficking network (that happens to be modeled after Herbal-Life).

As is often the case in such films, our out-of-his-league protagonist is the least interesting character in Game.  In contrast, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhanesson is charismatically ferocious as Tótí (looking somewhat like a young, pumped-up Tor Johnson, who can act), but he is not the real villain here.  That would be the appropriately Mephistophelean Damon Younger oozing slimy evil as the serpentine Brúnó.  While Maria B. Bjarnardottir is an intriguing screen presence as Dagný, Axelsson makes it intentionally hard to draw a bead on her character, obviously dropping hints about her motivations, but leaving them all naggingly unresolved.

While Game casts human nature in rather brutish and pessimistic terms, it should not dissuade anyone from visiting Iceland.  In fact, the surrounding landscape is quite striking (in a Nordic kind of way) and the nightlife looks like its jumping.  Axelsson certainly capitalizes on both.  While it periodically tries too hard to shock, Game’s energy and attitude are impressive.  Recommended for those who enjoy pitch black, sharp-edged crime bacchanals, Black’s Game screens Wednesday (8/1) as part of this year’s Fantasia in Montreal.

Fantasia ’12: Easton’s Article

It is 1997.  The internet bubble has yet to burst and dial-up is still commonplace.  Easton Denning is an internet expert who has seen the future.  Unfortunately, he is not a part of it.  Time will bend as the computer wonk challenges fate head on in Tim Connery’s high concept, low-gloss science fiction drama Easton’s Article (trailer here), which screens at the 2012 Fantasia Festival.

After high school, Easton left Iowa and never looked back, until now.  He had his reasons, which will be revealed as he deals with his current crisis.  One night, his internet spiders retrieved a massive data dump.  Most of it was just corrupted files and the like, but there was one document that spooked Denning: his future obituary.

Along with his death notice, the scanned file includes hand written notes instructing him to be at certain places at certain times.  He will know why when he gets there.  Obediently, Denning returns home, duly encountering the father and girlfriend of his close high school friend, who died under murky circumstances their senior year.  Somehow, karma appears to be using the internet to do its thing.

Frankly, the time travel elements in Article are basically hocus pocus, likening a digital information deluge to a flood of water, effectively spilling over into the past.  However, the characterizations and the overriding vibe of tragically unfinished business are strong enough to overwhelm logical pedantry.  Perhaps the closest comparison film would be John Weiner & Danny Kuchuck’s clever Cryptic, which deserved more attention when it played the festival circuit.

Indeed, Article represents the road not taken often enough in the science fiction genre, telling an intimate yet speculative story, with little or no special effects required.  Connery’s completely linear script fits together the pieces without any distracting seams, while fully immersing viewers in his characters’ lives and Midwestern environment.

Looking like everyday regular people, the small ensemble is smart and engaging throughout Article.  Given the anti-social protagonist’s myriad flaws, Chad Meyer has a somewhat tough road to hoe, but he portrays Easton as a haunted, fully dimensional human figure.  Likewise, Kristina Johnson brings substance and sensitivity to Hayley Reed, Easton’s potential love interest.  A more sharply drawn role than typically expected in low budget genre fare, Reed is a refreshingly active participant here and not simply stuck on the sidelines wringing her hands.

Easton’s Article might just be the definitive Iowan science fiction film.  Moody and thoughtful, it is definitely for the high end of science fiction fandom’s bell curve, but by the same token it is also quite accessible to non-genre audiences.  Recommended accordingly, Easton’s Article screens this coming Wednesday (8/1) at this year’s Fantasia Festival up north.

Fantasia ’12: Reign of Assassins

It is the stuff dreams are made.  However, in Ming-era China, it is not a little black bird, but an ancient monk’s corpse—two halves of it to be precise.  While her Dark Stone assassin guild will kill or die for the fateful body, one former femme fatale would prefer to go straight in Su Chao-pin’s Reign of Assassins, “co-directed” with the John Woo (trailer here), which screens at this year’s Fantasia Festival (after packing the house at last year’s NYAFF).

According to legend (and Reign’s cool animated prologue), when the Bodhidharma came to China, he perfected the practice of martial arts.  So profound was his kung fu enlightenment, it became ingrained in his very body.  That is why his divided cadaver was plundered from the tomb.  Wheel King, the shadowy leader of the Dark Stone, is determined to find and unite the monk’s remains.  Yes, he wants that martial arts mojo, but he has other secret motivations as well.  However, Drizzle, one of his top lieutenants, has gone rogue at an inopportune time.

Changing her features, Drizzle becomes the beautiful but mild mannered Zeng Jing, a street vendor with a huge stash of silver under her floor.  Naturally, she turns the heads of all the men in town, but only the foot courier Jiang Ah-sheng is worth a second look.  It turns out he is worth marrying.  Unfortunately, when bandits strike close to home looking for the Bodhi body, her façade starts to slip.  Suddenly, Zeng former colleagues come knocking.

Reign has a massive karmic twist that might be guessable, but still packs an archetypal punch.  It also has Kelly Lin as the before Drizzle, Michelle Yeoh as the after Zeng (talk about twice lucky), and Barbie Hsu as the hot psycho Dark Stone recruit, Turquoise Leaf.  Indeed, Reign is blessed with a great action heroine in Yeoh, who is still impressive in the fight scenes, as well as several memorably colorful villains, most definitely including Hsu.  Once again, Wang Xueqi does his thing, making Wheel King one heavy older cat.  Yet, Reign also has some nice quiet moments shared by Yeoh’s Zeng and Jung Woo-sung as the apparently genial Jiang.

While Reign does not exactly break any new action choreography ground, there are some highly cinematic sequences featuring Drizzle/Zeng’s “water-shedding-sword” technique.  It might not display very many Woo-isms, but it has a well crafted period look.  It is also fun and oddly comforting seeing Yeoh bring it once again.

After blowing the lid off the house last year at NYAFF, Reign finally makes it up to Montreal.  It will be worth the wait for wuxia and Yeoh fans (though presumably there is a lot of crossover between the two).  Recommended for those who appreciate elegant, character-driven martial arts cinema, Reign of Assassins screens tomorrow (7/25) and next Friday (8/3) during the 2012 Fantasia Festival, north of the border.