In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018) – Chattanooga Film Festival 2019

FIRST FLOOR: WOMEN’S FASHION, ACCESSORIES, TERROR

Writer-director Peter Strickland’s latest effort is his most demented vision to date, a bizarrely terrifying combination of Suspiria and Phantom Thread that is awash in blood (and other bodily fluids). Set in the world of 1970s fashion, In Fabric is a psychosexual phantasmagoria initiated by a murderous dress that is sold by an unusual department store and the hypnotic coven that runs it. Recently divorced bank clerk Sheila is the garment’s first victim, completely unaware that her purchase at Dentley & Soper’s will unleash the frock’s curse and set in motion an absurdly brutal chain of fashion related brutality.

With In Fabric, Peter Strickland blends Italian supernatural horror and Europudding erotica with corporate micromanagement and baroque customer service-speak, producing an incisive parody of consumer culture that still manages to feel legitimately unsettling and truly terrifying. In Fabric is a must sees for surreal fashion addicts and kinky horror fans alike!

Special Edition Comments:

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and Uncompressed Stereo PCM
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Feature-length audio commentary with writer/director Peter Strickland
• Fashion Victims, new interview with Strickland
• Deleted scenes with commentary by Strickland
• Dentley & Soper’s commercial
• Production design gallery
• “The Magic Spring,” A Hawk & A Hacksaw’s music video directed by Strickland
• “Never Enough,” The KVB’s music video directed by Strickland
• “Instrumental 7,” Flying Saucer Attack’s music video by Strickland
• Original theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring two artwork choices

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by horror film journalist Mark Kermode and excerpts from the Dentley & Soper store catalogue

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Monos (Alejandro Landes, 2019) – Chattanooga Film Festival 2019

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Monos.

On a far away South American mountaintop, a group of adolescent child soldiers guard a kidnapped American woman for the Organization, a bandit militia that demands complete obedience from the youngsters. When a borrowed milk cow is killed and a battle approaches their mountain refuge, the group is sent to guard their prisoner in the dense jungle below where resentments, paranoia, and power struggles turn into a nightmarish fight for authority and survival. Charged by Jasper Wolf’s crisp, concentrated cinematography and Mica Levi’s titantic score, Alejandro Landes creates a monumental and hallucinatory war film that evokes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and William Goldings Lord of the Flies.

Disc Features:

• 4K digital master, approved by cinematographer Jasper Wolf, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interviews with director Alejandro Landes, composer Mica Levi, actress Inés Efrón, and cast members
• Video diary shot during the film’s production
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Manuel Betancourt

My Chattanooga Top Ten!

The 2019 Chattanooga Film Festival is now done and dusted and its winners have been announced. Giovana Olmos won the Student Filmmaker Award for Sweet Tooth, Dylan Meyer took the prize for Best Short with Rock Bottom, Andi Morrow’s Pusher the Movie won for Tennessee Filmmaker, Bethany Brooke Anderson won Best Feature for Burning Kentucky, and the Audience Prize went to Billy Senese’s The Dead Center. Senese’s film, shot in Nashville, was the only award-winner that I saw and it was an enjoyable horror experience, featuring an ancient evil unexpectedly held in a hospital’s psychiatric ward and a frustrated doctor forced to face this unexpected threat. The filmmaker’s own experiences with mental illness obviously inform The Dead Center and the film finds legitimate scares in the friction between its institutional setting and its supernatural menace. Still, the movie fails to make the most of its concept by remaining too vague in its characters and its monster, missing opportunities to ratchet up its stakes and bring its audience even closer to The Dead Center‘s dark core. I would encourage horror fans to check out The Dead Center but MMC! had favourites of its own and the best of the best were found in the “CFFeatures” section.

Trailer Tuesday

In all my shout-out excitement this weekend, I neglected my main purpose: thanking everyone who voted in our year-end poll! Two films stood atop all others – Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. Naturally, you can expect to see one of those two films as the subject of MMC!‘s next imagined Criterion title. (No spoilers, but it’ll be Shoplifters!)

Now, on to some trailers!

The Criterion Channel is set to launch on April 8 and the Collection has cut together a rousing trailer promoting it. MMC! already has its charter membership, but there’s plenty here that pricks up our ears: The Safdies! Susan Pitt’s Asparagus! The Devils! Local Hero! The Holy Mountain! Hype! “Godzilla and Beyond!” The Channel’s initial line-up has been announced and there’s even more MMC! fan-bait there too: 11 films noir from Columbia, David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, John Woo’s Last Hurrah for Chivalry, Bi Gan’s Kaili Blues, a profile on Charles Burnett, seven films featuring Simone Signoret, AND Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone! (If the Collection ever released a hard media edition of Bugsy Malone, I swear my face will melt right off!)

More Films and Workshops at CFF 2019!

The Chattanooga Film Festival has released a second wave of announcements, shining a light on more great films and events at the Southern Sundance! Among the loads of intriguing titles, MMC! is looking forward to Studio Ponoc’s anthology film Modest Heroes, the blues-doc Memphis ’69, the Icelandic eco-comedy Woman at War, festival favourite Monos, and the mind-bending Canadian children’s show Cowboy Who? And with still more to come (particularly the CFF’s short programs), the 2019 Chattanooga Film Festival seems poised for another great year.  Respect!

Enjoy the CFF’s latest announcement:

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES SECOND HALF OF 2019 LINEUP

The wildly varied collection of films and events ensures there’s something for everyone.

Chattanooga, Tenn. (March 21, 2019) – Less than one month to go before the sixth annual Chattanooga Film Festival is underway, and the second half of the 2019 lineup of films, workshops and events is here.

FILMS:

HARPOON | Director Rob Grant

*Closing night film | Rob Grant in attendance along with producers Michael Peterson and Kurtis David Harder

It’s an honor to close out our sixth year with one of our favorite recent discoveries. Rob Grant’s HARPOON is a brilliantly executed dark comedy that circles around three best friends who become stranded on a yacht.

Synopsis: Rivalries, dark secrets, and sexual tension that emerge when three best friends find themselves stranded on a yacht in the middle of the ocean under suspicious circumstances. | Trailer

Return of the Chattanooga Film Festival!

Word has come down from Lookout Mountain and Make Mine Criterion! will be attending and covering the 2019 Chattanooga Film Festival, home to Moon Pies and great genre films! Earlier today, Dread Central dropped an exclusive announcement of the CFF’s first wave of titles and MMC! is happy to see amongst the scheduled films the wilderness thriller Body at Brighton Rock (Roxanne Benjamin, 2019), the Cannes rock drama Leto (Kirill Serebrennikov, 2018), the desert punk documentary Desolation Center (Stuart Swezey, 2018), and Peter Strickland’s cursed dress tribute to Euro-horror, In Fabric (2018). MMC! has already set up a Letterboxd list for the 2019 Chattanooga Film Festival program, so be sure to watch out for updates as further titles are announced and for hot-takes during the Festival’s run from April 11 to 14.

Read on to get caught up on the CFF’s announcements thus far!