Past seven days

I think I've said previously, there is a film festival catering to almost any interest. Here in Chicago we have the usual fests focusing on a certain foreign region, such as the European Union, Israel, or South Asia, but also topics like food, bikes, comedy shorts, or the LGBT community.

This week I am catching a few screenings at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival.  The line-ups are mostly short films that are collected into various age ranges, with those for younger audiences screened earlier in the day.  I'm pretty impressed with some of the short documentaries in some of the programs for older kids and teens.

Edgy Animation shorts
Ender's Game
5 Broken Cameras
Family Pass shorts
Fresh Faces, New Places shorts
Higher Ground shorts
Inside Llewyn Davis
Intercom
The Matrix
Off the Grid shorts
Two Way Street shorts

Horror-ble! My Soul to Take

It seems horror movies have a niche to fit every kind of terror. Nightmares, devil dolls, monsters--you name it, someone has made a movie about it.

My Soul to Take is a bit less niche than most. It was billed as horror icon Wes Craven's first 3-D movie. Its general plot involves several people who are killed one by one, leaving you to question who the killer is.

Sixteen years ago a schizophrenic killer (Raul Esparza) was threatening the small town where the film takes place. On the night when his child is born, he goes on one final spree and is involved in a car crash. But no body was found. On that same night, several other babies are born, and 16 years later it is rumored one of them, including the man’s son, has inherited his soul and begins terrorizing the town again.

The film’s action throughout implies that one of the kids has been possessed by the supposed dead man, so leaves many red herrings around as to 1) if the man really died to begin with, and 2) which kid is possessed and is a new killer. Each of the seven kids born on that earlier night, including the son, are in turn suspected but killed until there are just two at the end with a showdown. Along for the ride is the son’s half-sister, and she factors in on some of the action.

Horror-ble!: The Hands of Orlac

This is a silent 1924 horror film directed by Robert Wiene.  Orlac (Conrad Veidt), a famous pianist, is maimed in a tragic train accident. At the same time, the convicted murderer Vasseur is to be executed. When Orlac's hands cannot be saved, despite the pleading of his anguished wife (Alexandra Sorina), the doctor replaces them with Vasseur's hands, unbeknownst at first to everyone.

When Orlac finds out the source of his hands, he is of course plagued by this and even afraid to touch his wife now with those murderous hands. Some new crimes are committed where Vassuer's fingerprints are found, but that seems impossible because Orlac now owns those hands. But Orlac sleepwalks, and since the hands have a mind of their own, he is fearful that he is the culprit.

Meanwhile there is a mysterious man plotting against Orlac. He blackmails Orlac for money in order to keep quiet about the hands and Orlac's suspected commission of the new crimes. His identity is revealed, then revealed again, and we question just how much Orlac was guided by the hands.

Past seven days

The last of my film fest schedule as well as a few other first runs and DVDs.  It was a pretty busy seven days!

CIFF After Dark Panel
Black Rock
The Burning Sunlight
CIFF Cineyouth
I Will Be Murdered
Like Father, Like Son
CIFF Meet the Critics Panel
Mothers
Murder: Take One
Of Good Report
The Priest's Children
Shorts Program: Cel Division
Shorts Program: Midnight Mayhem
Shorts Program: Our Lovers' Story
Silent Films: Louder Than Words
Soul
A Thousand Times Goodnight
Voyage
Wolfschildren
Workers

Past seven days

The film festival is in full swing for me but I still managed to squeeze in more than a few extras.

Big Bad Wolves
Borgman
CIFF Documentary Panel
Domestic
An Evening with Barry Gifford
Golden Chicken
Golden Chicken 2
Gravity
Illiterate
Just a Sigh
Lad: A Yorkshire Story
Life Feels Good
CIFF Out-look Panel
Pioneer
Pulling Strings
Rush
Salt (documentary)
Tanta Agua

Horror-ble!: [REC]

Is a remake usually better than the original? The Spanish language film [REC] was remade as Quarantine for the U.S. market.

[REC] continues in the recent horror trend of found video footage (started by The Blair Witch Project I think). In this scenario, the story begins innocuously when a soft-news tv reporter follows some firefighters overnight. The reporter, Angela, hopes to get some exciting footage although the firemen tell her most days it is just waiting around. A call does come in though, a report of an elderly woman who locked herself in her apartment, and Angela and her cameraman Pablo excitedly ride along.

When they arrive at the small apartment building, most of the inhabitants are gathered in the foyer with a couple policemen. Things are a bit confusing but they go up to the woman’s apartment, she is a bit incoherent and they approach her carefully, but suddenly she goes berserk and fiercely bites one of the men. As everyone tries to make sense of what has just happened, they discover that the building is in lockdown, with policemen on the outside telling them to stay indoors, that some sort of contagion is loose in the building.

As the film continues, it comes out that a sick dog may have been Patient Zero, spreading a rabies-like virus that is causing the havoc inside the building. Meanwhile, Angela naturally has Pablo continue filming the story, giving on camera commentary when she can. It turns into mayhem and she and Pablo become less of journalists and more of victims like the others, as they accuse each other, hide secrets, and try to get as much info as possible from the people outside. We see, through their camera, as a health technician is sent in to tend to the injured victims, but that he really has something to hide. One by one, they are picked off, and as they get infected, they become killers.

Chicago International Film Festival 2013 is here!

Past seven days

The film festival starts later this week, but that doesn't mean I have slowed down on watching other movies!

A.C.O.D.
Captain Phillips
The Door in the Floor
A Hijacking
The Hunt
Mostly Martha
Romeo & Juliet (2013)
Star Trek Into Darkness
Unstoppable

Horror-ble!: Ravenous

During the Mexican American war, Lt. Boyd (Guy Pearce) admits that through his cowardice—playing dead—he managed to infiltrate and take a Mexican battalion. In public, his C.O. (John Spencer) awards him a medal, but in private he banishes him to a motley outpost in California. Promoted to Captain, Boyd joins Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones), the gung-ho soldier Reich (Neal McDonough), the “over-medicated”—i.e., stoned—Cleaves (David Arquette), the loopy Toffler (Jeremy Davies), the alcoholic camp doctor Major Knox (Stephen Spinella) and a brother and sister Indian pair.

Boyd has a secret that becomes more of a problem once a disheveled and malnourished frozen soldier, Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) stumbles into their camp. He says his wagon train got lost and their guide, Colonel Ives, soon forced them into cannibalism to survive, with last victims being Colqhoun and a civilian woman. Seeing that he himself was soon going to die, Colqhoun escaped and struggled to survive until he arrived here. Hart, realizing the woman might still be alive, bands everyone together except Knox, who has been drunken and unconscious, to rescue her in a cave Colqhoun leads them to.

Boyd tries to convince others that Colqhoun has taken his cannibalism to extremes, equating him to the native American myth of the Weendigo, a creature, sometimes human, that through cannibalism extracts the strength of others, but needing to feed more and more.

Horror-ble!: Martin

As a lead-up to Halloween, the next few weeks will include some posts on horror films! Hope you enjoy and find one to your liking.

The action in George Romero's "Martin" begins on a night train to New York, as a young man, Martin (John Amplas), drugs a woman then slashes her with a razor, faking a suicide. It is not entirely apparent if he actually has sex with her or if he drinks her blood. He is met in Pittsburgh by a dapper older gentleman who takes him to a house, where he accuses Martin of being a vampire. But all the man's religious and vampire talismans are wasted as Martin grabs the garlic and cross, reminding the old man he is a cousin of his. The old man continues in his assertions that the family married into vampires and Martin is one of them.

There are flashbacks in black and white to an incident where a young man who looks like Martin is being exorcised by a priest and onlookers. Like in the present, this young man is unaffected by the cleansing.

Martin continues to live in the house with the old relative and his friendly granddaughter, helping out in the corner store they own by delivering groceries to housewives. While in the house Martin is an average guy and the granddaughter is pretty sympathetic to him--she has heard these family stories for ages too and thinks her grandfather is crazy for thinking Martin is "Nosferatu."

A creepy encounter with a woman doesn't go as Martin expects and he has to improvise.  Suddenly there is a voiceover conversation, and it appears that Martin has called in to a late night radio show to discuss his vampirism. The host doesn't seem fazed by Martin and wants to meet him. Martin calls in several times to talk and although it is somewhat of a release for him, he is always scared of revealing too much.  He starts an affair with a lonely housewife, but still needs to satisfy his bloodlust.  Later the grandfather blames Martin for the death of a woman and does something just as horrible as what he accuses Martin of doing.

Past seven days

I still haven't made my schedule yet for the film festival films I am going to attend, but that only means I am busy watching even more films!  I also watched a few episodes of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, in the vein of Agatha Christie but a lesser and more violent Australian series.

The Business of Fancydancing
Calavera Highway
City & State (short films)
The Company Men
Good Ol' Freda
Prisoners
Sound of My Voice
Things to Come
We Are What We Are (2013)