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Fantasia 2015: Award Winners Announced

The award winners for this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal have been announced, with Sion Sono‘s Tag winning the Cheval Noir Award for Best Film. Tag also picked up the award for best actress for Reina Triendl along with a special mention

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SUBURBAN GOTHIC Review

Suburban Gothic is the sophomore feature for writer-director Richard Bates Jr., and although the tone is decidedly different than his first film, Excision, the unique visual style is much the same. Favoring comedic antics and funny dialogue over gore, this is a lighter horror film, but still manages to be a fun and entertaining ride and yet another solid entry into Bates’ filmography.

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DEAD SNOW 2: RED VS. DEAD Review

When crafting a horror sequel, everything generally needs to be bolder, louder and more excessive. Tommy Wirkola, director of Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead, must have taken this to heart because this is a sequel that eclipses the original in almost every regard. Playing out much more like a gory action/comedy, rather than a horror/comedy like the original, Wirkola cranks everything up to 11, and delivers one of the craziest, nauseating and most brazen zombie films I’ve ever seen.

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Fantasia Fest 2014: THE DESERT Review

Holed up in their elaborately fortified residence, Ana (Victoria Almeida), Axel (Lautaro Delgado) and Jonathan (William Prociuk) have everything they need to survive the zombie apocalypse occurring outside their doorstep. The house is equipped with a security system of sorts, a sequence of microphones strung alongside the exterior piping outside audio into the interior through strategically placed megaphones, signaling potential dangers as they arise. They have firearms, ammunition, food, a steady water supply, board games, video games and, even, tattooing equipment; they only thing these three have to deal with essentially is themselves, which proves to be rather difficult.

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Fantasia Fest 2014: DEVIL’S MILE Review

At first glance, Joseph O'Brien’s feature directorial debut, Devil’s Mile, appears to be a simple throwback, road-trip, exploitation film, but it quickly evolves into something much more interesting. While at its core it does have a ’70s exploitation vibe, it also blends elements of Japanese horror, crime thriller and even some more paradoxical elements I can’t discuss without risking spoilers. It’s a messy film and doesn’t make much sense, but it’s still a fun ride.

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Fantasia Fest 2014: GOAL OF THE DEAD Review

Over the last few years, the zombie genre has kept a foothold on the horror market, with filmmakers constantly trying to add a new twist on the concept of the undead plague. With Goal of the Dead, we see zombies hit the pitch with a soccer-themed tale of survival after a stadium full of fans gets infected with a deadly virus, turning everyone into ravenous ghouls.

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Fantasia Fest 2014: GUN WOMAN Review

With a title like Gun Woman, there’s a certain expectation one has even before knowing anything about the film. In the case of Kurando Mitsutake’s latest grindhouse throwback, it delivers on its title and them some. This is a nasty little film that should only be viewed by the most ardent exploitation fans who know that, in this genre, sometimes bad is actually good.

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Fantasia Fest 2014: HWAYI: A MONSTER BOY Review

It's been a decade since South Korean writer/director Jang Joon-hwan's debut feature, Save the Green Planet!, an amalgamation of almost every genre swirling around a mentally unstable central character affected by his traumatized past; while, Hwayi: A Monster Boy plays out like a typical action film, the central character's storyline possesses a number of similarities with that of Save the Green Planet! as Hwayi (Yeo Jin-gu) struggles to cope with his own trauma-filled past while slowly uncovering the sinister secrets behind his upbringing.

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Fantasia Fest 2014: COLD EYES Review

Some of the most intriguing and exciting films over the last decade have come out of South Korea, so I was looking forward to seeing and reviewing one of the country’s latest exports – Cold Eyes (Gam-si-ja-deul). Although the film does not equal more famous and lauded films, such as Mother, Oldboy, and I Saw the Devil, it holds its own over a two-hour run and is a solid effort from directors Ui-seok Jo and Byung-seo Kim and a large cast of cops and robbers.

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Fantasia Fest 2014: THE HOOLIGAN FACTORY Review

The football hooligan film genre is one that’s had many entries in the UK moview scene over the last several years. Films like Football Factory, Green Street Hooligans, The Firm, Cass and others have been giving us a glimpse into the reckless lives of football hooligans, the violent gangs of soccer fans known for clashing in the streets of England. Many of these movies share the same themes, tone and even actors, and director Nick Nevern seems well aware of this when looking to deconstruct this now-tired genre in The Hooligan Factory. In this spoof, Nevern, who also stars, aims to make the ultimate hooligan movie so there won’t be any need to make a Green Street 4.

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Fantasia Fest 2014: SUBURBAN GOTHIC Trailer

Here’s the first trailer for the upcoming horror/comedy Suburban Gothic, starring Matthew Gray Gubler, Kat Dennings, Ray Wise, Jeffrey Combs, John Waters, and Jack Plotnick.  The film is directed by  Richard Bates Jr., who previously directed the horror film Excision, which I was

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Podcast: Episode 125 – THE ZERO THEOREM, SEVENTH CODE

This week on the show, Adam and Kevin celebrate Montreal's Fantasia Fest by reviewing two films screening there this year- Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Seventh Code.  Adam also gives his thoughts on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which happens to be the best summer movie thus far.