The hours begin to dwindle and breaking away for a little bit becomes a factor on day 3 of this brilliant schedule. It’s an easily manageable task since there’s a good amount of time between rounds of movies. Well, if you plan it that it out that way.
Documentary may initially seem like an odd choice first thing in the morning, but when it’s something like this, you clear your schedule. 78/52 is a fascinating film predominantly focused on the famous shower scene from Psycho. A great deal of the runtime centers on how Hitchcock’s masterpiece has influenced anything and everything. The regular series of talking head interviews litter the film, but have a bit of gravitas to them given. It’s all backed by a glorious string score that is sure to be an instant buy.
After missing it at SXSW (gloating, I know), I wanted to check out Gemini. Sadly it could have been missed this go around too. While not the worst thing at this Fest, it just felt a little underdone. A straight forward and kind of predictable film, it does features an interesting score. Noir is hard to do when you let your characters meander. That’s the case here as the lead makes decisions which make her seem more guilty than she is. A handful of meta moments pop-up but aren’t leaned into or fully explored.
If you’ve followed Fantastic Fest at all over the last 5 years or so, you may be familiar with Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil. The talent behind New Kids Nitro/New Kids Turblo are back with another film well under 90 minutes but jam packed with laughs. Ridiculous as anything you could imagine, with nary a car let about political correctness Ron Goossens: Low-Budget Stuntman is a gem. It also accomplishes something sort of remarkable. Through out the film there are cameos from famous Dutch directors. It doesn’t distract as much as you’d expect and actually can compel viewers to find out who they are. If you’re looking for a fast or funny film to pair with a beer, you don’t need to look further than this!
S. Craig Zahler made a HUGE impression with Bone Tomahawk, instantly making him a director of note. He returned this year to show a movie starring Vince Vaughn that’s as bone crunching as the title implies: Brawl in Cell Block 99. A slow burn if ever there was one, we follow Vaughn as a man with his back against the wall, as he tries to fix his marriage and provide for a family facing hard times. When things go south he finda himself in prison, in a more precarious situation than he could imagine. Some may be tuned off by how long it takes for things to get crazy, but it’s well.worth the wait. The 3rd act rips expectations apart, bring a smile and grimace to anyone not convinced to turn away. Zahler is just beginning his assault on the world. As his films grow in scope & budget, it will be hard to ignore him for much longer.
Closing out the night was the granddaddy of Fantastic Fest side events. It’s easy to try to fill every slot, every day with just movies, but it’s different when the Fantastic Fest Debates come round. In a small gym a few miles away from the South Lamar Alamo attendees witness verbal Barb’s and fisticuff to settle the strangest of topics. All combatants Have 2 rounds of verbal sparring, followed by 2 rounds of boxing. The highlight was the first round which had Udo Kier (yes that one) arguing that he was the best cinematic Vampire ever vs Evrim Ersoy, who argued on behalf of Christopher Lee. Other topics were “Do Women matter in the film community”, “Paul WS Anderson vs Paul Thomas Anderson”. It was weird, sweaty and above all FUN.
Crawling back home at 2am is a chore, but all the better when another day of films awaits.
