Each year, covering Fantasia Film Festival reminds me of how dull America’s writing has become. Rewrite exemplifies this idea, not just because it’s penned by one of Japan’s best sci-fi screenwriters. The film blends an earnest high school drama with a complex time travel story. It’s especially appealing because its source material is inspired by the brilliant anime, The Girl Who
Read MoreFantasia Fest 2025 kicked off over the weekend, and we are here with our first of many reviews. The first is a subversive dark comedy from Grosse Point Blank screenwriter Steve Pink about a group of friends reconnecting with their successful (and unstable) friend who has inherited wealth as a sci-fi novelist. Terrestrial mostly reveals the movie’s conflict inside a mansion.
Read MoreThe time has come for another Fantasia International Film Festival. The Canadian-based festival, which focuses on fantastical genre works, has been the home of numerous great titles over the years. For example, last year saw the premieres of high-profile offerings such as the Neon film Cuckoo and Chris Stuckmann’s debut feature film Shelby Oaks. Fantasia Fest has also welcomed up-and-comers such
Read MoreFantasia Fest brought an unusual horror movie that touches on childhood trauma. The Beast Within brings back the old-school flavor of Hammer monster movies, where everything has a Gothic sensibility and an evocative story. The Beast Within deals with the confusion of growing up in a toxic environment. More specifically, how the brain attempts to cope with said environments; being young,
Read MoreNo hyperbole. You read this correctly. Yugo Sakamoto has pulled off one of the greatest action movies my eyes have ever witnessed in Baby Assassins: Nice Days, which had its Canadian premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival. The sequel to Baby Assassins 2, which vastly improved upon the 2022 microbudget first installment that had two amazing action sequences and not
Read MoreCompeting for the Cheval Noir Award at the Fantasia International Film Festival, Ricky Ko’s Out of the Shadow has all the right ingredients for a fun time at the movies: a coming-of-age tale for a teenaged protagonist who learns to trust herself through fighting, intricately staged and choreographed Karate battles, and religious symbolism that will guide the journey each protagonist will
Read MoreWith the Fantasia International Festival well underway, there are plenty of movies to still enjoy and appreciate in the Hall and J.A. de Sève auditoriums at Concordia University. A movie that sounded interesting on paper to me was Hiroshi Shoji’s Tatsumi, a mob drama that centers on its titular character (Yuya Endo) seeking revenge on the people who murdered his ex-girlfriend,
Read MoreBefore Shinji Araki’s Penalty Loop played in front of a sold-out crowd at the Fantasia International Film Festival, audiences were treated to the classic advertisement for Nongshim noodles not once but twice. At first, I didn’t grasp why this happened (although the real ones know the ad played an endless number of times in front of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy last year).
Read MoreThe first thing that usually jolts the first-time Fantasia International Film Festival visitors are the elusive meows that are heard in front of every screening after the head technician says, “Et maintenant…que le film commence!” (“And now… may the film begin!”). As he dims the lights of the Hall Auditorium, the audience begins to meow and sometimes make even weirder cat
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