Let’s kick off this “Trailer Tuesday” with my favourite film of the year so far – Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy (2018). For me, this is Cage Rage by Tor Books and I completely love it. Mandy is so clearly defined in its aesthetic bravura, so hilariously aware of its fantastic absurdity. Cosmatos’ direction is stunning, managing to swing between hilarity, tragedy, awe, and back again within the same scene. (Plus, it’s always great to see the dildo from Se7en still working.)
Bill Watterson
SFFF Day 3 – Actually, They’re All Labyrinths
There’s a running joke in Bill Watterson’s Dave Made a Maze (2017), a film about a man who builds a massive cardboard maze (bigger inside than out) and then gets trapped within it. As Dave’s friend Gordon (Adam Busch) repeatedly points out, the maze is full of traps, making it, in fact, a labyrinth. Day 3 of the Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival offered a disparate collection of films – a comedy recounting a slacker’s epic quest in a DIY fortress; a trippy, coming-of-age, prom night parable; a genre-mixing, science fiction blockbuster; and a dreamy descent into a housewife’s trauma and a cult’s terrifying prophecy. Each offers its own twists and turns, finding new dangers as they progress through corrugated caverns, genre conventions, and layered realities. In fact, they’re all labyrinths in their own ways.
Trailer Tuesday
The Criterion Collection’s announcements for January 2018 sees the return of G. W. Pabst to the Collection, the long-expected arrival of John Hughes with a less-expected title, a Ken Loach Palme d’Or winner, and the return of the Eclipse series! From a trailer perspective, it is the release of Janus Films’ Night of the Living Dead 4K restoration trailer that has likely made the greatest waves. George Romero’s classic 1968 film has probably never looked better, even when it was first released.
Make Mine Criterion! 