After storming the box office in its native Japan, “Yo-Kai Watch: The Movie” comes to America in a very limited run for hardcore fans of multimedia series. If you haven’t had enough of the TV series, the video games, and the toy line, fans will get to watch the big screen adventure of hero Nate, and his friends, the Yo-Kai. For those unaware, Yo-Kai are spirits in Japan that can be good or evil. Nate has a magical Yo-Kai watch that allows him to summon, catch, and catalogue the various Yo-Kai. And they’re a massive variety that stem from nature, the city, and literally anywhere else.
Tag Archives: Foreign
Demon (2015)
Piotr moves to Poland to marry his long-distance girlfriend Zaneta whose immediate family is less than thrilled with the situation but still supportive. As the wedding day approaches, Piotr finds bones in the yard of his marital home. Things take an odd turn and a restless spirit, or dybbuk, possesses the groom. Co-written by Pawel Maslona and director Marcin Wrona, Demon is a slow burn drama with horror elements. The title leads one to believe it would be more straight up horror film but the reality is that it’s a drama about a wedding or marriage that may have been a bad idea to start with and as the film advances and the spirit manifests itself it becomes a battle between people’s feelings and beliefs and people searching for the truth.
Level Up (2016)
A group of masked thugs grab Matt and tell him to do as they say or he’ll never see his girlfriend Anna again. As they give him orders by text message, Matt is pushed to see how far he’s ready to go to save the woman he loves. Based on an original idea by Andrew Orr, written by Adam Randall and Gary Young, and directed by Randall, the film is like a type of scavenger hunt/chase through London through which the lead learns about his tormentors and about himself. The bad guys created here are never really explained. The chase the film creates is interesting and how the lead deals with everything thrown at him is in a realistic manner while keeping the attention of the viewer.
Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016 Comedy Shorts Block: Part 2
Stained (UK) (2016)
Everything that could go wrong at tea time. A man is encountering minor annoyances in an otherwise fine afternoon. As he goes to the loo, once he’s done, he discovers that he is completely out of toilet paper. As he hobbles to the corner shop to buy some, he is haunted by his poo, taunting him, threatening him with a stain. Written by Mark A.C. Brown and directed by Phil Haine, Stained takes a basic life event, running out of t.p. and turns it on its head. The film is funny and it’s due in big part to the leads played by Michael Shephard and Chris Spyrides who keep a straight face throughout. Thefilm takes this situation and pushes it to its absurd limit and it works beautifully well.
Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016 Comedy Shorts Block: Part 1
The Phantom Hour (USA) (2016)
A group of people is called to a mysterious castle for various reasons and odd happenings abound. Written and directed by Brian Patrick Butler, this short pokes fun at vampire tropes with a classic dinner invitation set-up and a touch of modernity. Butler’s character of Bryce shows his sense of timing and his humor, being a perfectly awkward and funny assistant or Renfield to Nikolai. The actor playing this vampire, Luke Anthony Pensabene, is nicely impressive while not entirely scary which works in this setting. The film is really funny and goes for it, holding no punches, its old school, classic horror look ads to its fun with its credits in front of the film and nice cardboard décor in some parts. It’s campy, it’s funny, it’s a bit ridiculous, and mainly it’s a lovely horror comedy short, a difficult sub-genre to work in.
Honeymoon (Luna de Miel) (2015)
Jorge kidnaps Isabel and keeps her in his basement hoping that some conditioning and Stendhal Syndrome will make her his. Through torture and punishment, he tries to break her. The brutal story brought to the screen here is written by Marco Tarditi Ortega and directed by Diego Cohen. Together they create a kidnapping story where the victim is brutalized, violated, and tortured in many varied ways. The film brings an imaginative array of ways to make someone suffer and bleed. The way it is shot is relentless, keeping the camera directly on what is happening to victim Isabel at the hands of her captor Jorge who is a medical doctor, giving him better knowledge on how to make her suffer without killing her.
Best Fake Friends (2016)
After moving to the Portland area for her husband’s work, Joy finds herself looking for new friends in the local mom crowd. Having found her way to a big party, she meets a few of the “cool” moms who will first support her and then test her limits. Written by Sarah Hehman and Christi Sperry and directed by Paul Kampf build an adult version of the teenage-clique film which works. The characters they build feel like grown-up versions of people most of us encountered in high school: the good girls that are slightly bookworm-y, the rich girls from silver-spoon backgrounds, the cool and dangerous girls, etc.