Blood, anxiety, and gems from the past: 6 films from Fantastic Fest 2023
by Tori Potenza, Staff Writer
Six film reviews from Fantastic Fest 2023.
by Tori Potenza, Staff Writer
Six film reviews from Fantastic Fest 2023.
by Tori Potenza, Staff Writer
My most anticipated movies out of this year’s Fantastic Fest.
by Victoria Potenza, Staff Writer
My first Fantastic Fest has come to an end. It went by fast but it was a packed week with too many interesting films to name.
by Victoria Potenza, Staff Writer
Fantastic Fest is “the largest genre film festival in the US, specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. The festival is dedicated to championing challenging and thought-provoking cinema, celebrating new voices and new stories from around the world and supporting new filmmakers.
by Jaime Davis, The Fixer
A new documentary from filmmaker Chris Atkins, Who Killed the KLF?, currently showing at Fantastic Fest, attempts to clear some of the mystery shrouding the band’s masterminds,
Directed by John Stewart
Starring Gregory Scott, Cummins William, Hubbard Knight, Barri Murphy and Ross Hagen
Running time: 1 hour and 29 minutes
by Nikk Nelson
“Just stop at body...” -Inside Joke, Kyle Whitley
I love trash cinema. In my teenage years, I set an alarm every Sunday to make sure I was up by noon to catch Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the Sci-Fi Channel. It was church. One time, a friend was combing through my stacks in the basement and was surprised to find a dense collection of Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme. It seemed to run contrary to what they assumed was my taste. I should have a sea of Criterion Collection and little to nothing else. But they were wrong.
Read MoreWritten and directed by Maria Bissell
Starring Vanessa Marano, Leah Lewis, Chris Mulkey, Gabrielle Carteris and Abbie Cobb
Running time: 1 hour and 25 minutes
by Nikk Nelson
“It’s like Fargo meets Home Alone,” is how writer/director Maria Bissell described her feature debut in the chat preceding the screening of How to Deter a Robber (2020). I’m not sure who wrote up the synopsis for the festival, but they described the two main characters as ‘amateur detectives who investigate the wrong cabin’. They honestly must have mixed up another film’s synopsis because it wasn’t the story at all.
Read MoreWritten and directed by Justin Powell and David Charbonier
Starring Lonnie Chavis, Ezra Dewey and Kristin Bauer van Straten
Running time: 1 hour and 28 minutes
by Nikk Nelson
Kids in horror has always been important to me. Perhaps it sounds like a strange principle but, not fishing for sympathy, there were several aspects of my childhood that were very horrific. I always found solace in horror, particularly if I could see myself represented in the film. So, movies like The Shining (1980), The Witches (1990), Child’s Play (1988) and The Lost Boys (1987) were all very important to me as a kid. It gave me a way to reconcile what was happening around me—a way to be healthy in an unhealthy environment.
Read MoreWritten and Directed by Jim Cummings
Starring Jim Cummings, Riki Lindhome and Robert Forster
Running Time: 1 hour and 23 minutes
MPAA rating: R due to Violence, Bloody Images, Some Drug Use, Language
by Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport and Nikk Nelson, The Cinema Freak of Nature
“There is no such thing as werewolves. They’re imaginary.”
Old Sport -
This is a bold statement, but I’m just gonna throw it out there and not worry about the consequences: Jim Cummings is our generation’s Orson Welles. This guy doesn’t mess around. Jim has moxie. He makes things happen. He writes. He directs. He stars. He doesn’t edit his films. This is good. This is YES. His most recent endeavor, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is, frankly, one of the most wonderful werewolf flicks I ever did see. With movies such as Happy Death Day, Crawl and Ma, the horror genre has, in my opinion, been making a return to its zany cheesy creepy phase that was experienced in many of my beloved eighties slashers and I am totally here for it.
Read MoreWritten by Jill Gevargizian, Eric Havens and Eric Stolze
Directed by Jill Gevargizian
Starring Brea Grant, Najarra Townsend and Sarah McGuire
Running time 1 hour and 45 minutes
by Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport
“I guess we all want what we don’t have.”
Do hairstylists dream of murder?
Read Moreby Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport and Nikk Nelson
The pandemic is NO on a lot of fronts, but there has been one silver lining and that is film friendships. Prior to the pandemic, I knew of this character Nikk Nelson. He had been contributing to this fine movie publication of ours since close to the inception, but I never truly bonded with him. Life got in the way. Then, well, life kinda stopped and spaghetti entered the picture. Endless pasta bowls and flicks became a Saturday routine with Nikk. Fast forward to now, and he has been invited to live in our basement among the movies and spiders as our cinematic crypt keeper of sorts.
Read MoreWritten and directed by Christopher Winterbauer
Starring Theo Taplitz, Azure Brandi, Tommy Dewey, and Rosemarie DeWitt
by Jaime Davis, The Fixer
Was high school a good time for you? Were you like, the most popular? Did you have a ton of friends? Did you have something to do every Saturday night? A boyfriend or girlfriend or partner to do something with every Saturday night? Did you ever feel pressure to be like everyone else? To do things that others did? Keep up and be on their level? I guarantee that even if you were über popular in high school or didn’t feel the need to be a lemming, you still struggled in some way, didn’t have everything figured out. For Wyrm, high school is proving difficult for him - he’s gangly and awkward and a bit on the quieter side. In ordinary life this would be manageable in some way, but in the unique satirical world of Wyrm the movie, it’s much worse.
Read MoreDirected by Craig Brewer
Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski
Starring Eddie Murphy, Tituss Burgess, Craig Robinson, Mike Epps, Keegan-Michael Key, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Wesley Snipes
MPAA rating: R, for cussing, light sexing, and fake Kung Fu fighting
Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes
by Jaime Davis, The Fixer
Do you have a dream? A kind of incessant gnawing inside you to do something great or big or important or fun? To put a talent to use, or better your circumstances, explore a passion deep down? Have you had your dream repeatedly diminished, stomped on, crushed? What did you do - give up, keep going, redirect?
Read MoreWritten and directed by Johannes Nyholm
Starring Peter Belli, Leif Edlund and Ylva Gallon
Running time: 1 hour and 26 minutes
by Roderick Towers
Horror is a genre that is often open to interpretation. Some entries are easy to spot while others camouflage themselves under the banner of drama, mystery, or thriller. For me, movies like Requiem for a Dream, We Need to Talk About Kevin and Blue Velvet are, without a doubt, horror movies. Blue Velvet, in particular, I would call a nightmare movie. Everything from the color palette, to the soundtrack combine to provoke a feeling of dread in the audience. Something is not quite right and we know it, like the feeling from a nightmare that doesn’t quite fade upon waking. Make no mistake, Koko-Di Koko-Da is a horror film but more than that, it is a nightmare come to life.
Read More