Fantastic Fest 2019: 5 Picks From The 2nd Wave Of Programming (Noah)
I don’t need to tell anyone that a) Fantastic Fest 2019 is coming and b) my excitement level is well past the red. But hey guess what, I am QUITE excited because Fantastic Fest 2019 is just so, so close.
Even more so, a week or so back (I was traveling in the great Southwest of America) they released their 2nd Wave of Programming and hot shit on a shingle it is fantastic. Thus the name of the fest. Get it?
Well, as we do around these parts, here’s what I’m particularly stoked about, right this very moment.
0. Knives Out, d. Rian Johnson
This one doesn’t get an actual place on the list because like Taika Waititi’s JoJo Rabbit, it is the product of one of the great minds of modern cinema and I will push children out of the way to see this. But more so, this is the closing night film and I am leaving before closing night and so I am going to spend the two hours in which I would’ve been watching this film, shaking my hand at the spot in the sky where I’m pretty sure Jesus lives.
1. Butt Boy, d. Tyler Cornack
Full disclosure: I originally put this on the list because the title BUTT BOY makes me giggle. Because, butt. After viewing a trailer for BUTT BOY (giggle) I believe I can recommend a film about a man who becomes addicted to putting things in his butt (giggle). Things, if the trailer is not lying, such as: board game pieces, dogs and humans. Also, for a film about eating things with your butt (giggle) it looks smartly shot. A smartly shot butt film. What a time to be alive.
2. The Lodge, d. Veronika Franz & Severin Flaia
I was never subjected to Franz and Flaia’s first feature (alliteration, whoa) Mommy Dearest, but the images of face-bandaged children in a stark modernist home stick with me to this day. Their newest, The Lodge, features Riley Keough (so good in last year’s FF flick Hold The Dark) as a less than trust-worthy step-mom who takes her new step-kids to a scary lodge for a weekend of bonding. To be frank, after watching the trailer I’m not sure that anyone is to be trusted. Also, kids are frightening.
3. Parasite, d. Bong Joon-Ho
You saw Snowpiercer right? Or The Host? Or Memories of Murder? Or Mother? Or, uh, well, did you see any of those? Okay, good. You probably know this, but all those films are directed by the same dude and that same dude has a new movie at Fantastic Fest called Parasite and it’s pretty much certain that I will see this film because, well shit bro, look at that resume. Do they even call it a resume anymore? Maybe not. Then try this, shit bro look at that CV. Yeah, that sounds better. Anyways, I thought it was going to be Joon-Ho’s zombie masterpiece, but it looks like a film about one family slowly taking over another family’s home. Regardless, I’m there.
4. Nobadi, d. Karl Markovics
I think I saw two films at Fantastic Fest that somehow featured dogs in varying states of being alive. I’d like to continue that trend and Nobadi, a film about an old man and an Afghani day worker burying a dog, seems to check all the correct boxes. Also, it seems like this is not just a film about burying a dog (which makes sense, burying a dog is both a short task and an uninteresting if emotionally volatile one) but also class tensions and unexpected “twists.” Just the way I like my dead dog movies.
5. Patrick, d. Tim Mielants
The trailer for Patrick was in a language I couldn’t understand but this is what I think it’s about. A nudist loses his hammer on the same day his father dies. The concurrent death of his father and the loss of his hammer makes him sad, sad enough that he has unhappy sex and storms around possibly trying to find out who killed his father or possibly just being sad. Sad nudists and unhappy sex are really in my wheelhouse right now.
–
There’s a 3rd Wave coming and I will tell you the films of this 3rd Wave that I am excited about.
Until then.
