2019 Fantasia Film Festival--The Schedule is Up!!!

2019 Looks to be a Fantastic Festival!!

Summer is here, and that means the Fantasia Film Festival is just around the corner (8 days from now, and a couple metro rides away, but whatever).  As usual, the festival is headlining way too many films that I desperately want to see, so I'll give you my must sees for this year.  The festival is always full of discoveries, and my abbreviated stay last year meant I missed out on some great films--I caught them later (and I'll be posting on some of my favorites), but nothing beats hearing the crowd go nuts in one of the two main screening venues.  Here we go!

Riley Keough is trapped in Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's The Lodge (2019)

In 2015, only my second year of attending the Fantasia Film Festival, I went to a film that was generating a lot of buzz on the festival circuit--Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's Goodnight Mommy (2014).  This stunning and deeply unsettling film blew my mind, and I not only reviewed the film then, but presented on it at a conference and exposed my students to its wonders.  So at the top of my list for films to see this year is their follow up film--The Lodge (2019).  Again, the film follows a stepmom dealing with a couple of kids who aren't thrilled with her, but this time they are snowed in some remote lodge while Dad is away, leaving all kinds of supernatural things to creep around.  Synopses and the trailer suggest that Grace (Keough) is the sole survivor of some suicide cult, so that info puts a spin on things.  I can almost guarantee that this heroine is haunted by some trauma from her past.

The Duchess (Milla Jovovich) keeps her wayward schoolgirls in line in Alice Waddington's Paradise Hills (2019)

I recently read a discussion of Ari Lester's Midsommar (2019) by Charles Bramesco in The Guardian regarding some critical drubbing of the film as "overlong" (at 140 minutes).  Bramesco claims that "Personally, when a horror film gets dinged on the grounds of being “overlong” or “full of bizarre tangents that go nowhere," I take notice and pay attention. The unwieldy, the inexplicable, the ambitious-to-a-fault – this is my cinematic happy place."  For me, a film that draws complaints regarding its gorgeous cinematography and production design "at the expense of narrative" sounds exactly like something I'm going to like.  So Alice Waddington's Paradise Hills (2019) seems ideal.  This dystopian film about a reform school for girls, on a mysterious island, run by The Duchess (Mila Jovovich) has been called "beautiful," "gorgeous," "stunning." As Adi Robertson explains in reviewing the film's Sundance screening, "The film both critiques and revels in an aggressively feminine high-tech aesthetic that’s tinged with eerie surrealism."  Sign me up.

Teens react to the disappearance of Carolyn Harper in Jennifer Reeder's Knives and Skin (2019)

You may be noticing a pattern here, and my frequent readers have already sussed out that the films about which I'm most excited are directed by women.  This predilection is not always wide-ranging, as I tend to avoid horror comedies even if they are women-directed, but award-winning short filmmaker Jennifer Reeder's feature Knives and Skin, touted as a "feminist teen noir," has me quite enthusiastic!  This brief clip not only showcases the stylish imagery, but gives us some Cyndi Lauper love as well.  Reeder will be in attendance as well, so YAY!  I also had to chuckle because one review (written by a man) claims that the film emphasizes "style over narrative."  Yep, I'm in.

Arielle Dombasle is the writer/director and star of the wondrous Alien Crystal Palace (2019)

Speaking of women-directed wonders, I'd see Arielle Dombasle's Alien Crystal Palace (2019) no matter who directed it.  One look at this gorgeous trailer, and I was overwhelmed by vibes from The Hunger, Wim Wenders, with a dash of Liquid Sky.  The film's screening is at midnight at Fantasia.  Honestly, I don't care what time it's showing, I have to see it! Oh, and it's a musical, which would usually send me scurrying away, but if the trailer is any indication of the kind of music on display, I think I'll be fine.

A Mother shoe masquerades as a man in order to raise her daughter in SHe,

One of the more outstanding facets of the Fantasia Film Festival is their animation offerings, and they program innovative animators from around the globe that often use very unique and painstaking techniques to tell their stories.  This year I have my eye on two films that look incredible.  The first, SHe by 28 year old Chinese animator Shengwei Zhou, masterfully employs stop-motion to create a sumptuous tale of a mother (embodied in a red high heel pump) passing as a man (in a leather boot) raising her daughter in a repressive patriarchal culture.  The director illustrates these social concerns with shoes!  Amazing.  The trailer is really opulent.

The Psychedelic Visuals stand out in Son of the White Mare (Marcell Jankovics, 1981)

I know as much about Hungarian animation as I do about Chinese animation (umm, nothing), but after watching a trailer for Marcell Jankovic's Son of the White Mare (1981), I am excited to watch this psychedelic trip.  Seems like the perfect film in which to indulge in Canada's legal psychedelics.

Mia Wasikowska plays Judy, an abused puppeteer, in Mirrah Foulkes Judy and Punch (2019)

Another women-directed project, Mirrah Foulkes' Judy and Punch (2019), has been described as a whimsical and skewed revenge-driven fairy tale; and honestly, Wasikowska's take on characters gives them an extra-special something.  Her role as Jackie in Nicolas Pesce's Piercing (2018) really stole the film from Christopher Abbott's bland murderer wannabee, and I haven't seen Damsel yet, but I've heard that she is magnificent in that as well.  The first time she caught my attention was back in 2008, when she had a major role in In Treatment.  Although I think Burton's Alice films (in which she stars) are just Burton sending his kids to private school (cashing in), she's always riveting, even in dreck.

One wonders what this creepy kid has been munching on in Abdelhamid Bouchnak's Dachra (2018)

This Tunisian horror film, Dachra, has been receiving waves of buzz since its debut in Venice, and the trailer's pacing made me very, very tense (a feeling I quite like).  This film is Bouchnak's first, and I'm excited to fall under its spell, especially so I can figure out what on earth I'm looking at in terms of Dachra's poster.

WTF??

Alba finds herself repeating the same day, less an hour, in Jon Mikel Caballero's The Incredible Shrinking Wknd (2019)

From my very first attendance of Fantasia in 2014, I've noticed that they have a wonderful habit of programming original and innovative "time travel" films.  From The House at the End of Time (2013) to Predestination (2014), Animals (2017), and A Day (2017), I simply love them!  I also teach a Confusion Cinema/Puzzle Films class, and I'm always adding films screened at Fantasia to my list--every single year. This Spanish thriller by Jon Mikel Cabballero, The Incredible Shrinking Wknd, comes across, from the clip, as more of a thriller than a comedy.  Will Ada be able to close the time loop before she runs out of hours in the day?  I must find out.

Is Jade as "crazy" as her boyfriend makes her out to be in Jade's Asylum (2019)

In May of 2018 I flew to Scotland to present at, and attend, a conference on representations of mental illness in cinema--unsurprisingly, there were very few, if any "positive" or thoughtful representations of madness, especially in horror cinema.  I am fascinated by these representations, especially if they are embodied in female protagonists deemed to be crazy--whether "crazy violent" or "crazy and seeing things, aka ghosts."  Alexandre Carrière's Jade's Asylum (2019) is exactly in my wheelhouse--Is Jade having a psychotic episode and delusional, or is the supernatural present?  The film's trailer does not provide any easy answers.  I just hope it doesn't end up demonizing Jade too much.

Super Cool Poster!

After trauma, Luke resurrects his imaginary friend, Daniel, in Daniel Isn't Real (Adam Egypt Mortimer, 2019)

A film that's also getting a tremendous amount of buzz since it's debut at SXSW is Adam Egypt Mortimer's Daniel Isn't Real, which from its title and synopsis, suggests that maybe, just maybe, he is (real.)  Comes as no surprise, dear readers, that a film about a guy is going to attract so much more attention since the link between women and madness is seen by society as normal.  Especially if we get uppity, have opinions, and claim power for ourselves.  Heavy sigh.

I've just touched upon what the 2019 Fantasia Film Festival has in store for us this year.  More to come!!

Fantasia 2018--First Wave of Title Announcements

By far my favorite poster of the past 5 years!!

As I've been running around the planet, giving papers and being all sorts of academic, the year has flew by, and before I knew it, the first announcement of the 2018 Fantasia Film Festival's line-up has happened!  While one only makes final decisions once the schedule is up, I love the anticipation that builds as the event draws closer.  Of course I perused the first announcement with painstaking care to get excited about what's brewing this year.  Here are some tasty items:

Horror anthologies can be hit (all women-directed XX) or miss (the first VHS), and most fall somewhere in between (see my review of Tales of Halloween, for instance).  Still, they can be full of hidden gems, so I'm looking forward to two big new horror anthologies screening at Fantasia this summer.  First off, Nightmare Cinema will be screening on the festival's opening night, in part as a tribute to Joe Dante, who will be receiving a lifetime achievement award at the festival.  Five filmmakers will be presenting their visions of horror for the project: Alejandro Brugues (Juan of the Dead), Joe Dante (Gremlins), Mick Garris (Hocus Pocus), Ryuhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train), and David Slade (30 Days of Night).  Tony Timpone is hosting, and he's great at these events--many of the directors are likely to be there.  A little bit of a mixed bag, but the conceit is that Mickey Rourke plays "the projectionist," and is the link to the five films.  Check out this picture!

Is Mickey Rourke hanging out with...Dracula??

Honestly, I'm even more excited about The Field Guide to Evil which headlines some of my favorite filmmakers for this anthology.  This upcoming horror anthology is directed by Ashim Ahluwalia, Yannis Veslemes, Can Evrenol, Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz, Katrin Gebbe Calvin Reeder, Agnieszka Smoczynska, and Peter Strickland.  So the directors of Housewife, Goodnight Mommy, The Lure, and The Duke of Burgundy are being represented here.  Check out an image from Peter Strickland's contribution:

A folktale influence in The Cobbler's Lot, Peter Strickland's contribution to A Field Guide to Evil

This image is so gorgeous, and unsurprisingly unsettling and poetic coming from a filmmaker with such skill.  The film screened at SXSW, the lucky bums.  I wouldn't miss it.

The 2014 Fantasia Film Festival was rife with time travel films/puzzle films, and I love them.  I've used quite a few films that I saw at Fantasia for my puzzle films class--The One I Love, Predestination, Infinite Man, The House at the End of Time.  I'm really hard to please when it comes to comedies, but New Zealand's Mega Time Squad sounds suitably nuts, and might be fun to insert in all that puzzle film darkness.

Two-bit criminals stumble on a time travel device in Mega Time Squad

As a "haunted house" film fan, I try to see as many of these films as possible, and this one happens to hail from Canada (a country in which I wish I lived).

Love the tag line!

The Camera Lucida section of the Fantasia Film Festival is dedicated to experimental, boundary-pushing and auteur-driven works of genre cinema, and I want to see all four of its announced titles.  These films are often like nothing you've ever seen before.  David Robert Mitchell's Under the Silver Lake has gotten some mixed reviews when it's screened elsewhere, but it looks quirky and unsettling, and I'm willing to give it a shot.  The director of It Follows has definitely got vision.

Riley Keough channeling Marilyn in Under the Silver Lake

 

The Fantasia staff tantalizingly describes Luz: 
"LUZ recalls the best of ’70s arthouse and Euro-horror (Zulawski, Fulci, and even Fassbinder come to mind), without ever giving way to pastiche or citation. Instead, LUZ is a mise-en-scène tour-de-force; an experimental subversion of the familiar possession narrative by way of avant-garde theatre – even shot in scope on gorgeous 16mm!"--You had me at Zulawski.

His eyes are a dead giveaway in Tilman Singer's Luz

 

I'm a latecomer to Josephine Decker's films--I wasn't really clued into her work when Fantasia screened both Butter on the Latch and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely in 2014 (cut me some slack, it was my first year attending).  Both films are available for screening on SHUDDER, Btw.  As someone very committed to screening work by female directors, I'm very excited to see her newest film Madeline's Madeline, which sounds suitably smart, dark, and complex.

Josephine Decker's latest film, Madeline's Madeline

And finally, but by no means, last for a reason, the fantastic director of Hausu (1977), Nobuhiko Obayashi, after having recovered from stage four lung cancer (?!) will be screening his latest film, Hanagatami.  I'm so glad he's recovered and making films, for his zany filmmaking is utterly unique.

I'm a fan of Andy Mitton's 2016 film We Go On--it's smart and nuanced with some great surprises--so sign me up for his latest solo venture, a film entitled The Witch in the Window, about another haunted house.

Andy Mitton's creepy The Witch in the Window--shades of The Sentinel?

Not to "toot my own horn" whatever that means, but I know quite a bit about erotic thrillers.  I haven't really been writing about these films for a while (Noe and Von Trier didn't do it for me), but I cannot help but be intrigued by Cam, which the Fantasia staff describes as "a surrealistic thriller set in the world of webcam erotica in which an ambitious young camgirl (“The Handmaid Tale”’s Madeline Brewer) discovers that she’s inexplicably been replaced on her site with an exact replica of herself – a replica that knows personal things only she could know, and is considerably less guarded about privacy. The control that she has over her life, and the people in it, begins to break away."  It's also written by a former sex worker, so it will have a ring of authenticity.  And it looks gorgeous.  They say it "borders on Lynchian."  Sold.

Isa Mazzei and Danny Goldhaber’s Cam sounds like an erotic thriller puzzle film

One of my favorite films screened at Fantasia in recent years is Su-jin Lee's Han Gong-Ju (2013), so when the Fantasia staff waxes poetically about Last Child (2017), I take notice.  Writer/director Shin Dong-seok’s masterpiece recently secured the coveted White Mulberry Award for Best Debut Film at the Udine Far East Film Festival, so I'm looking forward to being moved by strong Korean filmmaking.

A moving image from Shin Dong-seok's Last Child (2017)

 

Rounding up the list of titles in which I'm interested, I'm also looking at Justin P. Lange's The Dark, Parallel, shot by my cinematographic crush, Karim Hussain, The Ranger, which has also gotten some mixed reviews, but it's directed by producer Jenn Wexler, so why not.  Satan's Slaves is an Indonesian Haunted House film tempting for the title alone, and Skate Kitchen, also women-directed, about a NYC female skateboarding crew are on the list.  Here's a few last images to tempt you:

An undead teenage girl befriends a blind boy in Justin P. Lange's The Dark

Jenn Wexler's The Ranger has got a cool, punk vibe

Not quite what I expected for the film's title, Satan's Slaves

Fantasia 2017--A Day--Sun-ho Cho (2017)

Jun Young desperately tries to save his daughter Eun-jung from a deadly fate in Sun-ho Cho's A Day (2017)

I tend to find sentimental films rather disappointing, especially when they are couched in a daring, viscerally visual action thriller.  Therefore, while Sun-ho Cho's time loop thriller A Day certainly has plenty of crowd pleasing, eye candy charms, and a narrative structure that playfully unfolds, its "heart" is rather schmaltzy.

First, though, let me extol some of the film's pleasures.  As I have mentioned, I recently taught a class on "puzzle films," so time loop or "forked path" narratives, where characters relive narrative events repeatedly, with different variations, carry great appeal.  As per usual, the characters in such films must eventually "get it right" in order to escape the seemingly endless pattern of repetitions.  Phil Connors in Groundhog Day must let go of his selfish narcissism in order to progress; Lola, in Run, Lola, Run has to make less violent and morally bankrupt choices; and Colter Stevens in Source Code needs to discover the terrorist and stop a bomber from blowing up Chicago.  All of these "forked path"/time loop narratives tell moral tales, so Cho's A Day fulfills those kinds of expectations.

A Day has three characters who are stuck in an interconnected time loop

Initially, the film focuses on Dr. Jun Young Kim, who is returning home from a U.N. trip and reconnecting with his neglected daughter, Eun-jung, for her birthday.  What quickly becomes clear is that Jun Young is unable to prevent her death from a fatal traffic accident, which seems to occur no matter how many variations he tries.  He soon discovers that this time loop is shared by another character, Min-chul, an E.M.T. whose wife dies in this traffic accident as well.  Once these two connect, their mission is to save their damsels in distress from their imminent deaths.  Another character is caught up in the mix, but explaining his role would give too much away.

Eun-jung's death is one of the film's greatest visual pleasures

Sun-ho Cho knows how to craft a well-paced plot, and for his first feature, the film's narrative complexity, and the its resulting tension, are impressive accomplishments.  Yet, I found myself both thrilled and a little dismayed by the great pleasure I took from watching the film's incredible car crashes--the camera veering, wheels squealing, and bodies flying into the air in glorious slow motion.  There's something a little sick at work when some of the film's most exhilarating scenes are of a girl's repeated murder.  Still, one of the film's variations was so incredibly dynamic that it elicited a unanimous roar of approval from the Fantasia crowd.  The best way to see this film, by far, is in the SGWU hall packed to the rafters with enthusiastic fans!

All the "heroes" are men, the victims, women

On the whole, A Day is a really fun, adrenaline-fueled thriller.  Unfortunately, it's also an example of "patriarchy 101" where invalid daughters and pregnant wives are the only role that women play here, and the men are the only ones with any agency.  What could have been a rather sharp, dark revenge thriller is molded into a feel good film about love's ability to bring us together and conquer adversity.  Meh.  While I'm all for a world with a lot less hate in it, A Day's overall sappiness and gratingly  mushy heart just left me blandly cold.

Fantasia 2017--Animals--Greg Zglinski

Marital strife creates psychotic confusions in Greg Zglinski's Animals/Tiere (2017)

Fantasia rocked my world yesterday with its first of two screenings of Greg Zglinski's Animals (2017), a powerful and disturbing German film that ups the WTF quotient in terms of narrative twists and turns, all through a female character's troubled narration.  I haven't felt this thrilled and pumped about a German film since Fantasia's screening of Goodnight Mommy in 2015.  While I was disappointed that the director wasn't there to talk about his film, it was probably for the best, because I could just imagine some of the questions posed during the Q & A.  What exactly happened during the car accident?  How does Anna's novel relate to the film's events?  What is going on in the locked room in both apartments (a locked room--paging Freud)?  What's up with the suicidal animals (it starts with a goldfish)?  In my estimation, each and every one of these questions only triggers new ones, producing such a myriad of cinematic pleasures, I'm grinning wildly while I write this review.

Anna's combination of paranoia and ennui anchors the film

Ostensibly, the film follows Anna (Birgit Minichmayr), a children's book author embarking on her first grown up novel while vacationing for 6 months with her husband, Nick (Philipp Hochmair), a chef and serial flirt who she believes is undoubtedly cheating on her.  They rent their apartment out to a rather untrustworthy house-sitter named Mischa (Mona Petri) who breaks every rule they give her, and looks strikingly like the woman who lives on the third floor, Andrea (Mona Petri as well), and the woman at the ice cream shop in Vevey (Mona Petri yet again!)  In fact, the doppelgangers here fly fast and furious, and space and time lose all their boundaries.

Chef Nick decides to butcher the sheep he hit with a car (nice that they shaved it first)

Things go decidedly pear-shaped when Anna and Nick, en route to their house in Switzerland, hit a sheep, landing Anna in the hospital with another head injury (she had bashed her head tripping over a skateboard prior to their journey).  All this head trauma makes Anna not only rather unreliable, but forces her to question what is real and what is not at every turn.  Both Anna and Nick have very weird dreams about being killed by the other, and one cannot tell where dream begins and reality ends, or who is actually dreaming, and who is awake, and when.  This type of confusion leads to some pretty darkly humorous moments, with a creepy-looking talking black cat tying the different worlds together. Such FUN!

Mischa wants to find out what's behind the door

Head injuries abound, as Mischa seems to have her own series of mishaps, falling and injuring herself numerous times.  She encounters Andrea's ex, who insists that she is Andrea (hello, same actress), and there's a suicide that happens, or doesn't, and it's not certain when exactly.  Zglinski deliberately dresses Anna and Mischa in similar clothes, in mirrored spaces, experiencing similarly injuries--all to tie the two characters, and both their confusion and curiosity, tightly together.  Then, there's Andrea, who lives on the third floor, or not, and is Anna's alter ego, or not.  The crazy gets upped to eleven when Anna reads her novel (on which she cannot remember working) and it contains characters named Anna, Nick, and Mischa.  What???

Is Nick more than a catalyst for Anna's fantasies/nightmares?

Unsurprisingly, I zeroed in on Anna's rich and confused interior life, and how both her apartment in Germany (traversed primarily by Mischa) and her house in Switzerland, possess mysterious doors behind which lies...???  The film's mysteries keep one constantly guessing.  That's why I'm not sure how to read Nick's character.  Is he just the cheating catalyst for Anna's paranoia, or has he slipped into this film's alternate dimension/timeloop/marital hellhole along with Anna, after the accident?  Or is he really just a fictional character in Anna's twisted novel?  I have very few answers in this first time viewing, and hope beyond hopes that the film gets a strong distributor so that I can watch it again, numerous times, very, very soon.  A masterpiece, but I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from Fantasia.

The House at the End of Time--Alejandro Hidalgo (2013)

Dulce (Ruddy Rodriguez) struggles to survive her home in The House at the End of Time (2013)

Alejandro Hidalgo's The House at the End of Time, touted as on of the first Venezuelan horror films, masquerades as a Haunted House film.  The film opens with the above image as Dulce (Ruddy Rodriguez) tries to save her son, Leo, and her husband, Juan Jose, from what appears to be a mysterious force possessing her home.  The most vivid image in this opening is of Leo seemingly sucked into a doorway in the house's dank basement.  Fast forward to 30 years later, and Dulce, now an old woman, has returned to her home, albeit now under house arrest after serving time in prison for murdering her family.  She is undeniably a woman haunted--by her past, and the events that continue to confuse her.  This film's narrative mysteries and oppressive atmosphere nod to a couple of my favorite Spanish language horror films: Alejandro Amenabar's The Others (2001) and J.A. Bayona's The Orphanage (2007).  Still, there is more to this film than one might expect.

This cliched image of a woman, in her nightgown, on a staircase, with a knife, belies the film's true power

Unfolding primarily through flashbacks, The House at the End of Time uses many of the haunted house tropes with which we are familiar.  Strange noises repeatedly occur, from footsteps, to the frantic turning of doorknobs, to fevered pounding on the doors.  The layout of the house is utterly disorienting, with hallways leading to nowhere, bedrooms far away from each other, and a basement that stretches in all sorts of mysterious directions.  The secrets of the house are symbolized by the numerous locked doors always in danger of being breached (which also produces numerous scenes of Dulce fumbling with keys).

We share Leopoldo's terror

Much of the film focuses on Dulce's family--her two sons, Leopoldo (Rosmel Bustamante) and Rodrigo (Hector Mercado), and Juan Jose (Gonzalo Cubero), the kids' father and Dulce's no-good, alcoholic husband.  The chief conflicts occur as Leo and Rodrigo fight for the affections of a neighborhood girl, and Juan Jose learns that he is actually not Leo's biological father (something the audience learns relatively early in the flashbacks).  These revelations spur jealousy and even violent rage amongst the male characters, and unsurprisingly, Dulce's sacrificing, protective mother is the one who suffers for it.  The tensions in the film are pushed by showing children in frequent peril.

Dulce is determined to uncover what really happened to her family 30 year ago

Something is wrong with the house, and The House at the End of Time dabbles in the spiritual in order to explain things--but even those scenes are a bit of a ruse that adds to the film's layered confusion.  In one of the film's most creepy-fun scenes, a younger Dulce visits with a fortune teller/psychic in order to get in touch with the spirit world and figure out what's going on.  The spiritualist, Victoria, seems straight out of Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (1965).  

Later, Dulce is visited by a Priest (Guillermo Garcia) who both believes in her innocence and was a childhood friend of her sons.  Since she cannot move freely, tied to her home, he agrees to do the detective work for her, looking through numerous documents in order to determine the house's sordid history--one filled with violence, mysterious events, vanishing family members, and all manner of "hauntings."  In delving into the house's past, the priest concludes that something seems to happen to it every 30 years.  And its almost another 30 years passed....

The horrors are back for Dulce some 30 years later

While much of what I've described so far might seem derivative of quite a few other haunted house films, one thing truly sets this film apart from the rest:  Time Travel.  I know.  This theme has been a near constant at this Fantasia Fantasia Film Festival, and I'm really trying to puzzle out why it's so in vogue at the moment.  Is it because technology has created some kind of gap between our experience of history and its representation so that the world seems infinitely manipulable?  Are these films trying to grapple with the notion that one never seems to learn from the past, so that fate and time paradoxes are intertwined and inevitable?  One thing that is consistent over all the films that I've seen exploring these ideas--someone always, always gets hurt. Casualties of time manipulated.  Yet in this film, there's also a degree of hope that lingers.

I'm not going to explain how time travel works in The House at the End of Time.  The title of the film is its own spoiler, but that little shift in narrative knowledge really changes the tempo and the perspective of the film.  This revelation gives the film quite a few "wow" moments, and takes what might seem like a somewhat typical horror film into a whole new dimension (pun intended).  The film is also surprisingly affecting in an emotionally poignant and moving manner.  While the film has relatively few characters, their nuanced performances, especially in scenes that highlight either pathos or humor, elevate the film in unique ways.  Some of the film's more religious overtones I found a bit heavy-handed, but as a whole, I was impressed by its unique mix of elements and themes.  Definitely worth seeing.

Predestination--The Spierig Brothers (2014)

Ethan Hawke is pretty intense as the grizzled protagonist in Predestination (2014)

The Spierig brothers make tremendously fun and wickedly smart films--ones that appeal to smart viewers who like to think when they go to the movies (and perhaps keep thinking afterward).  I'll never forget going to see Undead (2003) on a whim, even though it received a blisteringly terrible review from Entertainment Weekly's Owen Glieberman (who just didn't get it).  It's a zombie film with a female hero, an alien film, and just plain awesome (and hilarious).  In fact, it's one of the only horror comedies I've ever really liked.  Many years later, they made Daybreakers (2009), also starring Ethan Hawke.  The film created a detailed world where vampires were part of the fabric of society, outnumbering humans and struggling to feed when there is little to no human blood to be found.  These filmmakers are really strong at world-building and creating a visually rich tapestry of images, and Predestination continues there pretty stunning track record (three for three)!  The film is based on a Robert A. Heinlein story "All You Zombies" from 1958.

Trying to stop the Fizzle bomber

The film opens with an explosion that disfigures the main character, who wakes up in the hospital after reconstructive surgery and his voice has altered.  Hmmmm.  Turns out he (Hawke) is a time-traveler who works for a covert government agency that stops horrific crimes before they happen.  He's been tracking the "Fizzle bomber," who allegedly will blow up 10 city blocks in 1975.  So he goes back to the 70s on his final mission to try to stop the guy.  His deep cover is as a bartender at a dive bar in New York City.

One night at work he meets a unique, but rather grumpy person, who comes into the bar and wagers that he has the best, most compelling story to tell (for a full bottle of booze).  This stranger (Sarah Snook) proceeds to tell a twisting, tragic story that plays with gender--turns out that he is a former "she," born a hermaphrodite, who struggled with his gender identity, fell in love with a mystery man who knocked her up, mothered a child who was subsequently stolen from her, and now writes True Confession stories, and walks through this world, as a man (with the requisite sex organs).  Some of the film's strongest moments come from the detailed construction of this sci-fi world during these 60s flashbacks, where women are trained to service men in outer space as a part of the "Space Corps."

women training for their trip into space as "space corps"

Hawke's character, upon hearing his tale of woe, tells him that he can deliver the man who caused all of these rather tragic events, and takes him back to meet his earlier self (as a woman), in 1963.  Things get messier from there, because Hawke's character is actually actively recruiting the storyteller to become a time travel agent for this secret government agency, run by an enigmatic Noah Taylor.

There's more to "space corps" than meets the eye

I'll stop here because any additional description of the film will give too much away.  Suffice to say that one of the most annoying things about a time-travel film is the time paradox, and how that paradox is explained. From The Terminator series, to Looper, to Lost, to the awesome Sci-fi show Continuum, the time paradox tends to really muck things up, and skew any sensible logic to the film.  Now imagine if one raised the paradox to the NTH degree, and you have the clever, and rather sick, Predestination.  These filmmakers are committed to mind fu**ing the audience with this one.

Okay, so I hated Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010), and I figure that opinion might make me decidedly unpopular.  That film just seemed like it was trying too hard to be smart, and made some viewers feel clever when the film wasn't remotely clever at all.  While Predestination is smarter than Nolan's pop mind fu**, I figured out part of the big twist within the film's first 10 minutes, and the rest of it not long after.  That discovery does not really hurt the film, though.  It's still a tremendously fun ride, that kept me thinking, albeit a little queasy, during the closing credits and beyond.  I would definitely check it out, and the rest of the Spierig Brothers work, while you're at it.