REVIEW: My Father’s Dragon [2022]

I’m feeling really cautious! When the only home Elmer Elevator (Jacob Tremblay) ever knew becomes deserted and the grocery his mother (Golshifteh Farahani‘s Dela) owned is foreclosed, the duo is forced to move to the big city of Nevergreen amidst its hustle, bustle, industrial pollution, and mistrustful inhabitants. Gone are the days of knowing your neighbors and finding them the perfect item hiding in one of the shop’s corners. Now it’s scrounging every penny in the hopes of paying rent to Mrs. McClaren (Rita Moreno) so as not to be…

Read More

REVIEW: Wendell & Wild [2022]

Let the revisionism begin. Sometimes tragedy begets opportunity. Case and point: Henry Selick‘s The Shadow King being unceremoniously scrapped by Pixar. It was supposed to be his follow-up to Coraline and the buzz was strong before things went south. So, while Selick took a step back creatively in the aftermath, he found “Key and Peele” debuting on Comedy Central. The director would ultimately finish its five-season run and declare Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele the “boldest, bravest, and funniest” comedy duo of his lifetime, vowing to reach out and broach…

Read More

REVIEW: 岬のマヨイガ [Misaki no Mayoiga] [The House of the Lost on the Cape] [2021]

In times of yore … The Tōhoku earthquake has left Yui’s (Mana Ashida) small town all but destroyed. Since every house seems to have a lone survivor to lament their loss and wonder what to do next, it’s no wonder that an ancient evil spirit escaped from its prison beneath the water to try and feed on their grief, force them to leave, and take control so it can grow and expand exponentially until all humanity is destroyed. Yui and young Hiyori (Sari Awano) are two such souls wandering the…

Read More

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: Inu-ô [Inu-oh] [2022]

Here we are. Director Masaaki Yuasa and screenwriter Akiko Nogi‘s adaptation of Hideo Furukawa‘s novel The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-oh Chapters finishes with a couple screens of text describing its titular Noh performer’s final years of success despite his name being all but forgotten in comparison to the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu’s personal favorite. It’s why these three have brought the story of Inu-ô [Inu-oh] to life to ensure his name, and that of his friend Tomona from Dan-no-ura, a blind biwa-playing priest, won’t disappear again. What better way…

Read More

FANTASIA22 REVIEW: 搜神傳 [Su Huan-Jen] [Demigod: The Legend Begins] [2022]

Many things could happen in a minute. The Huang family and Pili International Multimedia are back on the big screen, two decades since their feature debut Legend of the Sacred Stone, and, if the end credits of Chris Huang‘s Demigod: The Legend Begins are to be believed, they have many more chapters in-store for their hero Su Hua-Jen. Utilizing the Taiwanese technique of budaixi (operatic glove puppetry), expert cinematography to hide the puppeteers, and impressive computer augmentation for special effects, this tale of leadership strife in the Wu Lin mountains’…

Read More

REVIEW: カウボーイビバップ 天国の扉 [Kaubōi Bibappu: Tengoku no Tobira] [Cowboy Bebop: The Movie] [2001]

I try not to think. It was supposed to be a quick bounty hit on the way home from the horse track for Faye Valentine (Wendee Lee). When she got her ship in position to apprehend the mark (Dave Wittenberg‘s Lee Sampson), however, someone else exited the vehicle instead (Daran Norris‘ Vincent Volaju). Not only that, but this mysterious man also went all action movie by calmly walking away as said truck exploded behind him. The chaos causes Faye to high tail it out of there knowing the return on…

Read More

REVIEW: Turning Red [2022]

Don’t hold back. For anyone. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) has always been the perfect child. She respects her parents (Sandra Oh‘s Ming and Orion Lee‘s Jin), helps work the family temple (a tourist destination in Toronto, Ontario), and makes sure to keep her grades impeccable (while also enjoying a litany of extra-curriculars to pad out that inevitable college resumé). And this is how she wants it. Or, at least, it’s how she’s wanted it. She looks up to her mother and is cognizant of the strain that’s kept her grandmother…

Read More

REVIEW: The Windshield Wiper [2021]

‘Cause soon enough we’ll die. The first thing I thought while watching Alberto Mielgo‘s short film The Windshield Wiper was that it must be utilizing rotoscoping. Every character populating his multiple vignettes about relationships—all sparked by a chain-smoking gentleman in a bar positing the question, “What is love?”—looks and feels real within his/her environments in a way that seems hard to fathom as not having been traced above live-action footage. As soon as you delve into the end credits, however, you see that it’s all been 3D-rendered by animators. The…

Read More

REVIEW: Robin Robin [2021]

Not bad for a couple of flightless fools, eh? Familiarity means nothing as long as there’s enough heart. This is especially true with animated films such as Daniel Ojari and Michael Please‘s Aardman-produced short Robin Robin. We have seen the scenario many times: a lost egg finds its way to the home of a pack of mice on a scary rainy day, forcing Dad (Adeel Akhtar) to bring it inside and ultimately raise Robin (Bronte Carmichael) as his own. Like with most of these oddball situations, that which makes her…

Read More

REVIEW: БоксБалет [BoxBallet] [2021]

While a coup attempt against Russian President Boris Yeltsin unfolds at the parliament in 1993, a beautiful ballerina named Olga and a beaten-down boxer named Evgeny cross paths on the subway. The encounter lasts but a second with the former not even registering that it had before exiting the train car. If not for his television changing to static after news reports of the violence on the streets (147 people were killed with 437 others left wounded), that might have been the end of it. Instead, Evgeny leaves his apartment…

Read More

REVIEW: Bestia [Beast] [2021]

Her name was Íngrid Olderöck, otherwise known as “The Woman with the Dogs.” A Carabineros de Chile officer turned National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agent under Augusto Pinochet, she received the nickname due to having trained a German Shepherd to sexually abuse and rape political prisoners of the regime in a middle-class neighborhood home coined the “Sexy Bandage.” She would later desert and fall victim to an assassination attempt led by the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) despite always assuming the hit was orchestrated by the Carabineros itself. She’d survive,…

Read More