Fantastic Fest 2017: reviews and interviews from Austin’s culty genre film festival – The Verge

Radius starts with an unbeatable science fantasy premise, then gets weird

2019-08-19T12:20:45-04:00

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review was first posted out of Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It is being republished to coincide with the film's release on Amazon Prime Video.

One of the serious advantages to smaller, indie speculative-fiction movies is that you generally don't know what you're getting up front. In today's anticipation culture, websites often drool over every possible detail and reveal about the bigger nerd-friendly properties. It's easy to walk into a big movie feeling like you already know all the major beats, because they' …

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Anna and the Apocalypse is everything the words ‘Scottish Christmas zombie musical’ imply

2018-11-28T11:43:41-05:00

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review originally ran after the film's premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It has been updated for the theatrical release.

There are two kinds of people in the world: people who hear the words "Scottish Christmas zombie musical comedy" and start scouring the internet for showtimes, and people who hear those words, roll their eyes, and mutter about the ridiculous extremes of mash-up culture. The latter group will want to skip Anna and the Apocalypse, which is exactly as advertised: a low-budget, high-energ …

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The director of Netflix’s zombie film Les Affames says people are scarier than zombies

2018-04-08T10:00:02-04:00

The French-language movie Les Affames ("The Ravenous") isn't out to reinvent the zombie movie. Canadian writer-director Robin Aubert is a fan of the genre, and he knows the tropes: the growing hordes of shambling monsters, the thrown-together crew of mismatched survivors, the sudden attacks that winnow them down one by one, the understanding that even a single bite can doom an otherwise healthy person. Aubert embraces all the usual business. And he clearly expects viewers know how these stories go too, because he skips the usual buildup and drops them right into the middle of the action. Les Affames, an indie movie now streaming on Netflix, …

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Mary and the Witch’s Flower is everything fans want from Studio Ghibli

2018-01-14T09:37:50-05:00

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review was originally published in September, during Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It is being republished to coincide with the film's wide theatrical release on January 18th, 2018.

In 2014, a ripple of panic went through animation fandom as the media reported that Studio Ghibli, the beloved Japanese production company behind movies like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Kiki's Delivery Service, was shutting down. With the latest retirement of co-founder Hayao Miyazaki (who has retired, then returned to fe …

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Radius’ directors explain the problem with making a corpse out of potatoes

2017-12-03T13:00:02-05:00

Canadian directors Caroline Labrèche and Steeve Léonard started their filmmaking career together in 2008 with Lost Cause, a tiny comedy they wrote and starred in themselves. The rough edges are clear, but the concept is fascinating: a man's ghost comes from the future to haunt him by guiding him to better choices. (And at one point, by telekinetically turning a sock into a puppet to interact with him.) Labrèche and Léonard's latest film, Radius, also has some visible rough edges, but it's equally high-concept and compelling: the film stars Diego Klattenhoff as Liam, a man who wakes up from a car crash with complete amnesia and a mysterious p …

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Netflix’s 1922 is a reminder of what Stephen King does best

2017-10-21T10:00:01-04:00

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review originally appeared in conjunction with 1922's premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It is being reposted to coincide with the film's Netflix release.

2017 has been a banner year for Stephen King adaptations, but the batting average hasn't been so hot. It is easily the best of the bunch: in spite of its "more, and then much more" aesthetic, it hit big with audiences, and is now reportedly the highest-grossing horror film of all time. And Netflix's Gerald's Game does a startlingly impressive job of dr …

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How Brawl in Cell Block 99’s director ‘made it happen on the set’

2017-10-07T13:54:49-04:00

Writer-director S. Craig Zahler seems to think it's pretty funny that people don't know how to categorize his new film, Brawl in Cell Block 99. "All these reviews say, 'It's hard to classify it between the grindhouse and the arthouse,'" he chuckles. And he's right, it is. But that isn't a problem. For people who love to see some sophistication in their cinematic mayhem, it's a major thrill.

The film recently had its American premiere at Austin's Fantastic Fest, alongside other hyper-violent, cult-oriented splatter films like Revenge and Blade of the Immortal. In some ways, Cell Block 99 is a classic exploitation film, about a drug dealer na …

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Russia’s space blockbuster Salyut-7 is a fascinating look at cinematic heroism

2017-09-29T10:37:48-04:00

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.

In its opening moments, the Russian space thriller Salyut-7 feels like an alternate-universe version of Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity. Two cosmonauts on a spacewalk in 1983 joke with a compatriot inside the Salyut 7 space station, theorizing about when the USSR government will want to experiment with sex in space, and how much time they'll need to (or get to) spend in Earthside training simulators for the project. Then a minor welding accident punctures one cosmonaut's …

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Netflix’s Gerald’s Game turns one of Stephen King’s worst books into one of his best movies

2017-09-26T10:18:33-04:00

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.

Some Stephen King adaptations are easier than others. 1922 writer-director Zak Hilditch had it comparatively easy: his film has to contend with a period setting and a horde of rats, but it's a small, straightforward character piece, carried more by actors than effects. The makers of Spike's The Mist series had it harder, between the challenge of living up to an existing popular film adaptation, and the expense of creating a citywide supernatural mist full of mons …

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