Opal (2021) Fantasia 2022

Opal is a young princess who contains the magic that protects the kingdom, however the magic is waning and the kingdom is dying. It seems her father has been siphoning off the magic to fight the monsters that live underground. Additionally Opal is no longer happy and wants to flee.

I have to take the Fantasia programmers to task concerning this film, there should have been a trigger warning.  While OPAL is a good film, it is not for "young and old" and it is not for a many people because the film is metaphor for child sexual abuse. Yea, this is a fairy tale with an incredibly dark undercurrent. If you know the signs of abuse several of the conversations will set off your warning alarms.  The sequence when the king asks my daughter if he could have some more of her magic made my jaw drop open, I was not expecting that.  I had to rewatch the sequence to make sure I wasn't wrong.  I wasn't. And if you watch the film and have any doubts, you won't when you get to the final sequence which flips everything.

If you aren't interested in a abuse film, once you get past the the dark themes at the center, this is a solid fantasy film. Its  solid story of a young woman finding the strength to get fight the demons and find away into the light. Its a beautifully designed film with some great looking characters and wonderful sequences. I really liked it- even if the darkness disturbed the hell out of me.

Worth a look for those who think they can handle the darkness.

Battledream Chronicle (2015) Fantasia 2016

Written directed and animated by Alain Bidard, BATTLE DREAM CHRONICLE is a mixed bag. While most certainly a crowning achievement when you consider that Bidard did it all pretty much alone, he film is not going to have a universal audience, with the film probably best for videogame fans who don't mind watching other people play games.

Set in the online world of Farandjun, an online world into which the entire real world has more or less disappeared, thus giving them a kind of immortality, the status quo is under attack, literally, as the cyber being Ifret stages her final attack and takes control of the world.  Ifret then forces the leaders of the world to fight in Battledream to the last person with the winners getting control of the world.

Give the film points for being largely female centric with a wide variety of ethnicity (the heroine is a black woman) and give it more points for often being visually stunning.  However take a number of points away for being rather dull.

I'm sorry this film is the cinematic equivalent to watching a video game, Yes there are characters but they only get fleetingly development with the film giving most of the time to set piece of "game play".  What little character development is not very deep, mostly its just motion with everything designed to get to the next set piece. Worse any exposition seem to come in blocks to fill th pause between battles. By the half way point I was bored and started doodling in my note book waiting for something to happen.

I feel bad not raving about the film because here at last is an animated film that goes beyond what is expected from a film of any sort (I mean how many black women are kick ass action heroes?) and on top of that director Bidard did the film alone, a feat which should be celebrated. Sadly the film is just not very interesting unless you are a gamer so anything special gets washed away by the boredom.

One of the few disappointments at Fantasia.