A Mind-Opening Preview of Fantasia Film Festival 2024
Our preview of Fantasia Festival 2024 highlights ten films that stimulate viewers’ emotional, cultural, and social intellect.
Film
Godzilla the Union Buster
There’s a bitter irony in how Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, produced by a notorious union-busting production company, is celebrated for its message of collective strength.
Mexico’s Golden Age of Cinematic Melodrama: ‘Victims of Sin’
In Emilio Fernández’s Victims of Sin, a galaxy of important Mexican film and music artists collaborate on a tale of mambo music, martyred mothers, and melodrama.
Retro Monsters and Sexual Politics Dominate These Three Sci-Fi Movies
Sci-fi movies Unknown Terror, The Colossus of New York and Destination Inner Space inject monsters into personal melodrama for masculine redemption.
‘The Underground Railroad’ and Cinema’s Origins in White Supremacy
In adapting the alternative history The Underground Railroad, Barry Jenkins and his crew made cinema – a medium with origins in white supremacy – work for them.
‘Bad Shabbos’ Revels in Its Black Comedic Soul
A dead body adds to the lively mix of family dysfunction and the pressure of making a good impression in Dan Robbins’ affable black comedy, Bad Shabbos.
Two Southern-Fried Slices of Sordid ’60s Hicksploitation Films
Angry old men, sexy strumpets, moonshiners, corrupt sheriffs, and dumb farmhands populate them thar hills in these two low-budget ’60s hicksploitation films.
Familial Neurosis in ‘Never Open That Door’ Film-Noirs
The family is the source of neurosis, and any hint of an allegedly happy ending in these three film-noirs must happen over someone’s dead body.
Exiting the Comma: On Liminality and Redemption in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas
In Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Travis is adrift, caught in the comma between the liminal ‘Paris’ and the redemptive ‘Texas’, between lost futures and the impermeable present.
Department Q Film ‘Boundless’ Unravels
Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q crime thriller The Hanging Girl unravels in its 2024 film adaptation by Ole Christian Madsen, Boundless.
‘Nothing But a Man’ Is an Unflinching Drama of Marriage and Racism
Nothing But a Man is about battling discrimination on an uneven playing field but also about tenaciously preserving friendships and families.
Feminine Discontents in ‘Back from the Dead’ and ‘The Other One’
Catherine Turney, a top-drawer writer of classic films about strong women, adapts her supernatural novel The Other One for Back from the Dead.