Dead Man Tells His Own Tale (El Muerto Cuenta su Historia) (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

A man who can best be described as a misogynist cheating liar finds himself undead and bound to do the biddings a coven trying to raise their goddess to take over the world.

Written by Nicolás Britos and Fabián Forte with the latter directing as well, Dead Man Tells His Own Tale sets up its lead to be despicable and dislikable, doing so very successfully and keeping that up almost throughout the entirety of the film.  Then it attempts to make the public care for him and his undead plight, something that works a lot less given that he’s still an unlikable being and still is trying to do what he always has and wanted to without much care about how it affects the people around him.  The way they build him makes it very hard to care for him.  Most of the characters built are hard to care for as most are written in a way and into situations where they do things that make them less than likable.  This creates an atmosphere of negativity that evolves towards the ending here which makes sense, but does not make this viewer want to care.

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Small Gauge Trauma 2017 [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

Small Gauge Trauma is a programming block of shorts at the Fantasia Festival that sort of functions as a two hour anthology movie without a wraparound story. The shorts can be in any genre and are chosen by rough theme. In the 2017 edition’s case the theme was “Family” and while I know that this doesn’t sound overtly ominous, trust me when I say that it should.

Before I even start the review(s) I’m going to issue a mild to medium spoiler warning. Short films are, well… you know… short. So I have to talk about something and because the various runtimes are often under ten minutes I may mention stuff that happens towards the end. I promise I won’t ruin any twists and I will try not to describe every aspect of the plot and story, but I have to work with what I got.

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You Only Live Once (Sólo se vive una vez) (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

After witnessing a crime, a con man goes on the run and hides as an orthodox Jew, bringing his problems to an unsuspecting community.

Based on a story by Sergio Esquenazi, written by Esquenazi and Axel Kuschevatzky, and directed by Federico Cueva, You Only Live Once is one of those completely insane action comedy films that should not work but does.  The film is filled with a series of crazy ideas and turns into a partial comedy of error while also being a good thriller-ish comedy.  The story takes odd turn after odd turn until the very last frame to say the least.  Oddly enough, the entire insanity works, which shows good writing and talented directing.  Of course, a few jokes or attempts at jokes do fall flat and a few are offensive, but the film has so much going on that it’s easy to be entertained by it.

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Napping Princess (Hirune-hime: Shiranai watashi no monogatari) (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

Kokone escapes everyday life by dreaming about Ancien, a princess in a land ruled by a car-obsessed king.  In her real life, things take an odd turn when her father is arrested at the start of her last summer before graduation and just a few days before the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.  This leads Kokone to use skills she didn’t know she had and come into her own.

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Wu Kong (2017) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2017]

Based on the legend of the Monkey King, Wu Kong is a retelling of Sun Wu-kong’s story where he is born and sent back to his mountain where he is raised and trained by a monk to then go create some mayhem and cause some changes in the realm of Heaven. 

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