Bite (2015) [Fantasia Film Festival]

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Emilie Black

FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

Casey and her two besties go on a bachelorette trip before she is supposed to get hitched to Jared in a short while. This trip is meant to be a last hoorah for Casey before she settles into the married life Jared and his mother have in mind for her. While on her trip, all seems fun but not all is at it seem. During an excursion, Casey gets bitten by an insect but it doesn’t affect her outside of the original bite and its lightly disagreeable side effects. That is until after she returns home and the bit starts to look infected and is painful. As her cold feet toward her marriage grow, so does the infection which eventually brings about changes in her body and her way of life. Soon Casey is cocooning in her apartment filled with translucent eggs and her urges to protect and feed her hive take over.

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Cherry Tree (2015) [Fantasia Film Festival]

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Emilie Black

FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

Faith has an as-close-to-normal life as her circumstances allow. Her father in in remission from leukemia and there is not mother to speak of. She goes to a good school with her best friend, gets bullied, has a crush on the cute new boy, … Nothing to see here, just life as almost usual for most 15 to 16 year olds. That is until her father’s leukemia comes back and threatens to throw her world upside down. Luckily, her new field hockey coach, Sissy, can help save her father in exchange for Faith’s help in having a child. Faith agrees to carry a child for Sissy for her father’s healing to take place. Little does she know, Sissy has very dark plans for both.

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Orion (2015) [Fantasia Film Festival]

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Emilie Black

FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

Orion starts with a prophecy to which the film comes back a few times, a prophecy about a virgin mother giving birth to a child who will become a tree and about a traveler who will change the course of things. The movie starts with the traveler seemingly going from place to place aimlessly and the virgin mother giving birth only for the magician to plan her baby to her dismay. She wants to leave but has little hope for survival, until the traveler comes upon their door in need of shelter and food and the magician decides to take him in for the night, and then commences the long process of saving her and himself from the magician who, according to rumors, cannot be killed. All of this happens in a desolate wasteland after what looks to have been an apocalypse.

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Tales of Halloween (2015) [Fantasia Film Festival]

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Emilie Black

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FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

10 tales, 11 filmmakers, tons of mayhem and fun, Tales of Halloween is set one Halloween night in a suburb where all kinds of scary, funny, spooky things go down. In this anthology, the near-perfection radio host talking us from story to story, played by Adrienne Barbeau in a part so close to her role in The Fog, one could think it was the very same character which is most likely very intentional. The 10 short stories contained here vary widely from urban legend come to life to revenge story to alien invasion to neighborhood battles and everything in between. The Decalogue of stories all connect at one point or another through characters passing into other stories or by location choices.

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Blade Squad (1998)

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Felix Vasquez

1998 was a big year for FOX television. Despite handing audiences turkey after turkey (Nick Fury Agents of Shield, anyone?), you have to appreciate their relentless pursuit to deliver genre fare. “Blade Squad” is one of the many failed attempts to build a show out of a TV movie that works as a glorified pilot. As a kid I spent a lot of time in front of the television, and I caught “Blade Squad” one dull Friday night. Suffice it to say despite its interesting concept, “Blade Squad” is a missed opportunity and really dull execution. It’s also a really unique artifact of a decade obsessed with futuristic punk and neon colored dystopias.

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Turbo Kid (2015)

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Felix Vasquez

It’s “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” meets “Mad Max” with what is one of the most entertaining and fantastic indie films of the year. The trio of François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell channels the magic of nostalgia to create a world that’s both perilous but compelling. “Turbo Kid” is painted as a love letter to all things eighties and nineties, but thankfully never loses itself in the winks and nods. It implements pop culture to create a well rounded world and they succeed beautifully. Through and through it’s a soulful and very exciting coming of age tale set in the post apocalypse.

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014)

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Felix Vasquez

It’s a good thing that “The Hunger Games” has so much interesting story and undertones about the power of the media and propaganda behind it. It skirts dangerously close to a movie that’s nothing but set up to the second half of the final film. It’s padded and filled with a lot of discussion that seemingly goes nowhere, but through its flaws, I appreciated where it brought the story of Katniss Everdeen. It doesn’t hurt that Jennifer Lawrence single handedly keeps the movie from diving in to the deep end with her powerful turn as the reluctant heroine. As I mentioned, “The Hunger Games” dealt with various stages of Katniss’s life as a celebrity. She built a revolution in the first movie, had to maintain her celebrity status in the second movie, and here she’s now a pawn for a rebellion.

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