Category: Film Features

FANTASIA16 REVIEW: テラフォーマーズ [Tera Fōmāzu] [Terra Formars] [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Johj!” It’s the tail end of the twenty-first century and Earth has nearly overstayed its welcome with dwindling resources and over-population. Scientists believe they can release the CO2 pockets underneath Mars’ surface and move the Red Planet from -50 degrees Celsius into a human-friendly temperature and atmosphere. So mankind sends rockets of moss and cockroaches to commence the process, a half-century passing before a team of colonists can finally journey forth. Everything should be ready for this hand-selected group under Ko Honda’s (Shun Oguri) supervision: go to Mars, kill the…

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LOCARNO16 REVIEW: Where Is Rocky II? [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“You can Hollywood anything” It was around the time Pierre Bismuth won his Oscar as an original story creator on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that he stumbled upon an unknown work by Edward Ruscha via a BBC documentary. This tape captured the artist as he created a fake rock dubbed “Rocky II,” a fiberglass/resin creation that ultimately replaced “Rocky I” once it was proven unsuitable for longevity in the desert (having been manufactured from wheat paste). It’s a fascinating discovery—a piece by a renowned figure that nobody’s seen…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: The Eyes of My Mother [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Why would I kill you? You’re my only friend.” This is isolation, suffering. It’s also normal. We on the outside see Nicolas Pesce‘s debut feature The Eyes of My Mother as the former, young Francisca (Olivia Bond) swimming in a pool of abject dread as death proves a natural evolution for all living things. For this girl, however, nothing depicted onscreen is wrong. Nothing is out-of-place. She’s the daughter of a former Portuguese surgeon, a mother (Diana Agostini) who was as much a guardian and teacher as she was a…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Shelley [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“But it’s not just about the money” Everything starts so innocently that you’d be hard-pressed to realize Ali Abbasi‘s Shelley is a horror film besides the score’s dread-inducing soundscape rising to a deafening level of static. Sure the setting’s weird with Louise (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Kasper (Peter Christoffersen) living in the Danish woods without electricity or running water far-removed from civilization, but the world’s fill of eccentrics. They’re actually quite nice, bringing in a new maid (Cosmina Stratan‘s Romanian single mother Elena) with open arms and warm smiles. It…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: I Am Not a Serial Killer [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Nightmares are nothing, man. Those pictures gave me a therapist.” Often lumped into the Young Adult category to the chagrin of author Dan Wells, I’m not sure I know many parents who would like to have their fourteen-year old child heading to theaters with friends for the cinematic adaptation of his debut I Am Not a Serial Killer. The first of what has now spiraled into a quintet of books surrounding John Wayne Cleaver; its story introduces the character as a clinically diagnosed sociopath attempting to survive adolescence within a…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Realive [2017]

Jared Mobarak

“He sacrificed a remarkable woman for an inadequate dream” It’s been humanity’s dream since the dawn of time to find the fountain of youth: immortality. To live forever is the ultimate success for humanity’s optimistic idealism. We witness the pain and suffering death creates, constantly trying to distance ourselves from it by forgetting how our lifespans’ brevity makes them special. It’s in death that we see who truly loves us and whom we hold closest. For someone like Marc Jarvis (Tom Hughes) death can even become a celebration. The sting…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Tank 432 [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Suck it in, remember your training, and get on with it” Director Ben Wheatley is showing his eye for talent by putting his name behind a guy who’s worked closely with him since 2011’s Kill List. A filmmaker in his own right, camera operator Nick Gillespie has stayed by Wheatley’s side on every subsequent project up to and including the forthcoming Free Fire. This time around it’s he who’s providing the claustrophobic thriller as writer and director of Tank 432 (formerly known as Belly of the Bulldog). It’s a doozy…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Let Me Make You a Martyr [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“You can’t fight fate” There’s a lot more to Corey Asraf and John Swab‘s debut feature Let Me Make You a Martyr than meets the eye. It looks like your run-of-the-mill revenge thriller with its prodigal son (Niko Nicotera‘s Drew Glass) returning home after an extended stay away to right the wrongs of the past. His adoptive father Larry (Mark Boone Junior) is a drug supplier, sex trade entrepreneur, and who knows what other heinous crimes that set up whatever unknown incident happened to fracture their relationship—something neither can come…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Man Underground [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“There’s not a lot of money in being a true patriot these days” Aliens are here. That’s the message Willem Koda (George Basil) would have us believe—the 360 viewers clicking on his YouTube channel’s posts. He’s an ex-geologist who rode a government contract until the unexplainable left him with nothing but emotional and psychological scarring, the type that broke him in pieces and irreversibly ended his career and marriage. Aliens were the culprits, the secretive work he engaged in deep beneath Nevada in underground tunnels an experience never to leave…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Little Sister [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“It took God six days to create the universe. You should be able to get your act together in five.” Saying Zach Clark‘s Little Sister being called a comedy does a disservice to the film seems like a slight on the genre. I know. But I don’t mean it that way. What this label does—even if it’s clarified with the word “dark”—is build an expectation that’s able to hurt the film’s true appeal. Clark and Melodie Sisk‘s script is definitely a drama first: a tough familial drama consisting of broken…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Never Tear Us Apart [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“I was attacked by a cougar once. Her name was Janice.” It plays out exactly how you know it will, but it’s no less funny as a result. Sid Zanforlin‘s (co-written by Chris Bavota) short film Never Tear Us Apart has everything you’d want from a horror with naïve wanderers, cannibalistic hicks, dismemberment, and a healthy dose of blood. But don’t discredit its humor either, a tone introduced directly after watching the screams of an unnamed victim (Mark Anthony Krupa) tied to chair bleeding. James (Matt Keyes) and Colin (Alex…

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