After Love (2017)

A couple divorcing after 15 years together is navigating life and its changes while still living together and trying to find a way to make things work as best they can.

Written by Fanny Burdino, Joachim Lafosse, and Mazarine Pingeot, with collaboration by Thomas van Zuyken, After Love is directed by Joachim Lafosse who navigates through this divorce story with an unflinching look at how a couple that is no longer functioning as such try and make things work through their separation, divorce, and division of assets.  The film created here is an honest look into the lives of two people who are a bit lost and definitely trying to have a better life.  The way this is developed makes it into a realistic look into a divided family unit, a franc view of what it’s like to divorce with two kids in the situation, what it’s like to divorce with assets, and what it’s like to not want to give up on your principles while doing this.

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The Endless (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

Two brothers return to the alien cult they once fled to see the people still there.  Once at the cult’s camp, they discover that odd happenings are afoot and the cult may not be as crazy as it seems.

Written by Justin Benson who co-directed with Aaron Moorhead, The Endless is a slow slow burn of a film that takes its time to set-up the weirdness going on and creates a sort of mindfuck as it goes along.  The film takes a few known ideas such as cults and time warps and plays with them until they connect and make sense.  The co-directors having worked together on other features, they clearly know how to work together and this shows in how the film is directed, being a way that looks seamless between the two of them and what they each directed, something that is not always well done, but is great here.

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Prey (Prooi) (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

As a lion wreaks havoc on the city of Amsterdam, a zoo veterinarian gets involved in its chase along with her boyfriend and ex.

Written and directed by Dick Maas, Prey is a horror comedy film with its comedy very dark and its horror a bit light.  The film takes the wild animal on the loose premise and moves it to the city of Amsterdam where the idea of a killer lion on the loose is particularly ludicrous.  The way the film develops this and adds hunters, both experienced and not so much, who once paired with the local police becomes a bit of a mess in terms of lion-chasing but a fun watch in terms of horror-comedy.  The film shows an ability to pit characters against each other in a way that is entertaining while they all face the lion threat.  The comedy is often situational and takes advantage of the characters’ flaws in a way that works well here.  The direction is rather on point for the comedy and fairly good on the horror.  However, as a horror film, it has just about no scare factor.

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The Night Watchmen (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

After a clown is killed by a virus in Romania, his corpses is brought back to the United States.  Not long after, an office building is under attack by vampires and humanity’s only hope is a ragtag crew of inept night watchmen.

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Blade of the Immortal (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

A talented samurai is cursed by a witch to live forever following a battle for the ages.  Haunted by the past, he accepts to assist a young girl with her quest for revenge.  As he goes through with his mission, he discovers a few things about the world and himself.

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Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown (2017)

Gregory Monro’s documentary offers a scattershot overview of Jerry Lewis’ life and career, with a heavy emphasis on the funnyman’s peaks while carefully avoiding the controversies and failures that he generated. Lewis was the son of entertainers who put their careers before his childhood needs, and an emotional low point occurred when his parents managed to miss his bar mitzvah because they had stage engagements. The film notes that Lewis’ meteoric success in the late 1940s when he was barely out of his twenties created friction with his father Danny Lewis, a singer who never achieved stardom.

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Starless Dreams (2016)

This entry in Mehrdad Oskouei’s trilogy on Iranian youth in their nation’s justice system – following It’s Always Late for Freedom (2007) and The Last Days of Winter (2011) – focuses on teenage girls at a rehabilitation and correction center. This facility looks nothing like the stereotypical Iranian prison: the girls enjoy pizza parties, play Truth or Dare and engage in playful snowball fights. Indeed, at times the facility feels like a happy sorority rather than a hijab-clad version of Orange is the New Black.

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