Fantasia ’20: The Paper Tigers

It is the one rock-solid law of kung fu movies: no matter where you are in life, you must avenge your sifu. The trio of boyhood friends who became Master Cheung’s three true disciples really ought to know that, but they have been estranged from each other and kung fu for a number of years. Nevertheless, they will come together and do what honor requires in director-screenwriter Bao Tran’s The Paper Tigers, which premiered at the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

In the gloriously analog 1980’s prologue, Danny (a.k.a. “Eight Hands”) was the toughest teen martial artist on the scene. His sworn brothers Hing and Jim were not too far behind him. Unfortunately, these days, they are slightly less youthful than they once were. For various reasons, each drifted away from Master Cheung and kung fu. Only Jim remained somewhat involved in the martial arts world, becoming a Brazilian jiu-jitsu-MMA trainer. Hing has certainly lost a step due to a workman’s comp accident, but Danny has probably slipped the most mentally. He was once a master at psyching out his opponents, but the divorced, workaholic father no longer has confidence in his kung fu.

Granted, that is a pretty familiar set-up, but some smart buddy chemistry and co-star Ken Quitugua’s action-direction makes it feel fresh. As the three disciples, Alain Uy, Ron Yuan, and Mykel Shannon Jenkins bicker, banter, and bust chops like old friends with long memories. There is definitely humor throughout Paper Tigers, but the action is played scrupulously straight and it compares favorably with any of its mirthless martial arts movie cousins.

Yet, what really makes the film special is Danny’s relationship with his son Ed (nicely developed by Uy and young Joziah Lagonoy). You can tell Tran seriously studied martial arts at one time, from the way he has the father character discussing with his son how and when to fight and when to walk away. After all, those with real training always try their best to avoid fighting in real life, even though they strive to be ready for it at all times.

Fantasia ’20: Undergods

Apparently, it is fun to obsess over post-apocalyptic dystopias, but you wouldn’t want to visit one. Yet, that just might happen to the unfortunates who somehow blunder through a random portal, or maybe not. Maybe, it is all part of the tales of a better past that two wasteland scavengers tell each other to pass the time in Chino Moya’s Undergods, which screens during the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

L and K sound very Kafkaesque, don’t they? Indeed, they are a bit like Vladimir and Estragon, but more predatory. When they come across a body (living or dead), they either sell it as slave labor or meat to be butchered. Essentially, they tell three stories that sort of but don’t quite tie into each other. The first is the least, involving an interloper who worms his way into a not so happy marriage.

The second part is by far the best, by every standard. Presumably, it is being told twice, by either L or K and an incidental bystander to the first tale. There is a darkly baroque quality to this yarn that is not unlike vintage Gilliam. We meet Hans Hals, in this case a former tycoon rather than the Dutch master. This Hals has come down significantly in the world, but when a mysterious “Foreigner” comes to him with the invention of lifetime, the would-be investor decides to steal it for himself. However, like most mad geniuses, the Foreigner is not to be trifled with. He also leads Hals towards a shocking conclusion to his storyline and the film’s only brilliant transition.

The third arc chronicles the drama that results from the sudden return of a husband and father who disappeared without a trace fifteen years ago. Yet, it is really very much like the first full storyline, suggesting how easily people who have lived together for years can abruptly turn against each other. Frankly, much of Undergods plays like the bitter old bachelor trying to justify his misanthropic lifestyle.

Fantasia ’20: The Grave of St. Oran (short)

St. Columba is considered one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, who was indeed canonized by the Church. Yet, even though Colmcille, a Celtic form of his name is found all over Ireland, Scotland, and Canada (especially Quebec, where many Scots settled), Neil Gaiman isn’t afraid to talk smack about him. The cult favorite fantasist narrates his poem “In Relig Odhrain” throughout Jim Batt’s animated short film adaptation, The Grave of St. Oran, which screened at the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

According to legend, St. Columba and St. Oran were attempting to build a chapel on wind-swept Iona Island, but the walls kept collapsing. The future saints had a vision telling St. Oran to sacrifice himself under the foundation, to keep the walls straight and strong, at no cost to his immortal soul. In Gaiman’s telling, Columba also gives him a little extra encouragement.

The practice of foundation sacrifice was actually Celtic Pagan, rather than Christian, so the St. Oran myth is one of the few instances of the early Church coopting it, at least through stories passed down through the oral tradition. It is already pretty macabre, so it seems like overkill to tweak it, making St. Columba look creepier. Perhaps Gaiman would like to try “punching-up” the teachings of another great Abrahamic religion next—or maybe not.

Fantasia ’20: The Block Island Sound

Block Island is part of the state of Rhode Island, so you know it is probably economically depressed, but the recent waves mass fish deaths will make things even worse. That is the only reason Harry Lynch’s sister Audry, a state environmental field investigator has returned home, but when she does, she finds her father and brother acting all kinds of weird in Kevin & Matthew McManus’s The Block Island Sound, which had its world premiere at the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Old man Tom Lynch has not been himself for a while, but his son has covered for him, mostly due to fears he might be losing just about his only companion. Sadly, during Audry’s visit, crusty Tom sleepwalks onto his boat and keels over the side somewhere in Block Island Sound. The thing is old Lynch maybe wasn’t sleepwalking. Angry Harry suspects something more sinister might have been controlling his father and now it is tormenting him too.

Of course, Harry was always irritable and anti-social, so it takes a while for Audry to realize the severity of her brother’s condition. However, as Harry suffers from increasingly conspicuous headaches, blackouts, and apparent sleepwalking bouts, she becomes alarmed. She assumes it is neurological or conventionally environmental, but Harry and his conspiracy-mongering former classmate suspect paranormal causes. So will viewers, since this film screened at Fantasia.

Block Island has a strong sense of place, with a vibe that suggests a cross-between Sea Fever and a 1990s Ed Burns movie. The Lynches truly bicker like family and drink like sailors. Everything looks grungy, lived-in, and totally believable.

Fantasia ’20: A Mermaid in Paris

Sailors know. There is a reason the old salts fear mermaids and sirens, because they really are out to get men. Lula assumes Gaspard Snow will be her latest victim, but the retro-crooner is weirdly immune to her siren song. Yet, she starts to fear for the broken-hearted entertainer’s life as cares for the beached creature in Mathias Malzieu’s A Mermaid in Paris, which screened during the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Snow would have been happier in the past, so he tries his best to live there. He and his father operate a secret nightclub in the lower deck of a houseboat that was founded by his grandmother and her associates, the Surprisers. During the National Socialist occupation, the Surprisers were an underground resistance cell, who also raised the city’s spirits by leaving whimsical toys on the street for children. Snow tries to keep their spirit alive, but that kind of chanson-elan is not widely appreciated these days.

After a late-night set, he finds Lula washed up on the river bank, with a clearly injured tail fin. The hospital refuses to examine her without a national insurance card, so he takes her back to his bath tub instead. Lula is amazed he can function at all, because her song has left several bewitched men ailing in their wake. She is even more impressed when he is still hail and hearty the next day. According to Snow, his last love affair left him heartbroken and immune to love. Lula is sort of happy to hear that, because she is starting to feel something for him.

Mermaid in Paris sounds like a conventional fish-out-of-water rom-com (which Lula literally is), but Malzieu’s visual approach is endlessly inventive. After seeing this film, it is clear he is the perfect director to tackle a film version of The Drowsy Chaperone. Best known for the animated Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart, Malzieu occasionally incorporates animation into Mermaid, but he really shows a knack for letting visual set pieces unfold before our eyes.

Fantasia ’20: The Oak Room

A guy walks into a bar. In this case, a duck does not tell the bartender to put the newcomer’s drink on his bill, but the man has a darkly ironic tale of his own to tell. Naturally, when the punchline finally comes, it is a real killer in Cody Calahan’s The Oak Room, produced by prolific Canadian genre director Chad Archibald, which screens again tomorrow during the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

It has been years since Steve returned to his snowy hometown in the Canadian lake country, but Paul is still not happy to see him. Nevertheless, he indulges his late customer’s son, as Steve tells him a story of an unusual crime that happened in The Oak Room, a bar very much like Paul’s bar in a similar lake town nearby.

Of course, Paul will interrupt the tale with his own flashbacks and Steve’s perverse insistence in telling the story out of chronological sequence tries the barkeep’s patience, but it will eventually make sense from a cinematic perspective. Of course, to reveal much more than that would be telling.

Aesthetically, The Oak Room is very much in the tradition of 1990’s thrillers starring the likes of Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel that were promoted as something much more important than they really were, because of their indie status, but which we can better appreciate now for their lean and mean efficiency. Likewise, if you do not allow your expectations to snowball, you should be able to enjoy all the twists, turns, and reversals Calahan and company have in-store for the audience.

Fantasia ’20: Detention

During Taiwan’s “White Terror,” the KMT ruled over a one-party authoritarian regime. Despite formerly professing an anti-communist ideology, the KMT is now well-known as the Taiwanese political party most closely-aligned with Beijing and opposed to formal independence. You would think the Taiwanese would stop voting for the KMT—and they have. Pres. Tsai Ing-wen overwhelmingly defeated KMT candidate Han Kuo-yu, who was subsequently turned out of his mayoral office in a decisive recall election. Such election results would please the students in Wei Chong-ting, if they could live to see them. Tragically, it appears most of them are trapped in purgatory, as a result of the torture they endure in John Hsu’s Detention, which screened at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

The popular Mr. Chang and the very serious Miss Yin both supply books and guidance to Wei’s underground book club. Not surprisingly, a “model student” like Fang Ray-shin is not a member. Since her father is a high-ranking officer, she is about the only student who is not constantly under the microscope of Instructor Bai, the school’s military advisor. Yet, it is Chang whom Fang pines for.

Clearly, someone informed on the group, leading to disastrous consequences for them all, but Fang’s involvement is not exactly clear, even though she seems to share a similar fate as the others. She and Wei must figure it out together, when they suddenly awake in a surreal, nightmarish version of their school.

It is probably safe to say Detention is the best film based on a video game produced so far and most likely superior to any that might come in the future. Adapted from the horror adventure game of the same title, Detention is deeply steeped in Taiwanese history and also considerably informed by Buddhist teachings. Yet, the imagery is old school supernatural horror, all the way.

Fantasia ’20: Hunted

“The Handsome Guy” and his accomplice originally did not set out for another “Most Dangerous Game”-style people-hunting excursion. They aren’t that sporting. However, when their latest prospective victim escapes into the woods, they inevitably chase after her. It turns out the pagan spirits of nature will pick a side (and it won’t be the predators) in Vincent Paronnaud’s Hunted, which screened at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

The campfire-story prologue tells us this wooded setting is somewhat akin to that of In the Company of Wolves, but the forest has its own collective, Jungian, Gaia-goddess consciousness. That is about the only good news of the night for Eve (hmm, wonder why they chose that name? Maybe in honor of Eve Arden?). After a night drinking in a strange, vaguely Euro, English-speaking-with-an-accent town, Handsome and his accomplice stuffed her in their trunk, with the intention of doing terrible things to her. When a freak accident sets her free, she is off and running. The psychos would seem to have all the advantages, but the spirit of the forest will do what it can to level the playing field.

Even with the stylized preamble, the first two acts of Hunted still play like traditional neo-grindhouse victimization-and-revenge horror. However, things get interesting in the third act, when Paronnaud brings back the campers from the prologue. The action gets really messy and complicated, but in inventive ways.

Still, this is definitely quite far afield from Paronnaud’s classy collaborations with Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis and Chicken with Plums. Even Paronnaud’s super-cool zombie short Territory has greater cinematic scope. Yet, it should be readily stipulated, the payback pays-off in a big way.

Fantasia ’20: Class Action Park

Established in 1978, Action Park was really two parks divided by a highway: Water World and Motor World. You could say it was like Westworld and Futureworld, but more dangerous. Founder Eugene Mulvihill developed the attraction at a time when many thought Vernon, NJ could become the next Vegas. Instead, he turned it into Lord of the Flies. Action Park’s wild rides and wild times are sometimes fondly chronicled in Scott Porges & Chris Charles Scott III’s documentary, Class Action Park, which is currently streaming on HBO Max, closely following its international premiere at the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Affectionately called Uncle Gene by his under-trained teen employees, former Wall Street wheeler-dealer Mulvihill developed Action Park with capital raised by notorious penny stock pusher Robert Brennan. Trump almost came in on the deal too, but Mulvihill’s cowboy ways were too much for him.

Mulvihill definitely played it fast and loose when it came to safety regulations. To save money, he even fabricated a Cayman-based insurance company to supposedly underwrite the dodgy enterprise. Ironically, one of the bonuses of having a transparently bogus insurance company was it made trial lawyers decidedly unenthusiastic to pursue suits against him. Yet, Mulvihill genuinely seemed to want to provide adrenalized thrills for his visitors, so he routinely pushed the envelop when constructing rides, like the notorious waterslide, the Cannonball Loop.

Actually, all of the rides at Action Park were notorious. The film is filled with colorful survival stories from one attraction after another. Yet, for 1980s Jersey meatheads, unruliness of the park environment and the genuinely dangerous nature of the rides were all part of the appeal. Indeed, there seems to be an endless reservoir of anecdotes from former employees and guests that alternate in tone from disbelief they participated in such lunacy to pride they had the guts to stare death in the face.

Porges & Scott generally strike a nice balance between nostalgia for the craziness and respect for the very real tragedies that occurred there. Less persuasive are attempts to use Action Park as a club to bludgeon the enterprising spirit of the 1980s and Pres. Reagan’s modest attempts to deregulate the over-burdened economy, especially since the film clearly implies Mulvihill had local politicians running interference for him.

Fantasia ’20: The Weather is Lovely (short)

It turns out we can even blame millennials for bad weather. In this case, the irresponsible party is Claude, a rookie cloud-maker. When he drops his cloud-maker, it causes a potentially apocalyptic storm in Lien Chun-chien’s charming animated short film, The Weather is Lovely, which screened at the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Claude is a bit of a careless goof-off. The same cannot be said of Yin, the diligent young meteorologist conducting research in the observatory below him. When Claude’s device shorts out, it releases a thunderous cyclone. Although Claude tries to remain out of site, he will need her cooperation to avert catastrophe as the storm gains in size and severity. He will also have to cowboy up.

Visually, Weather is indeed a lovely sight that bears comparison to vintage Studio Ghibli studio films (particularly The Wind Rises, given some thematic similarities). There is a mildly steampunky vibe to the film’s tech, but Claude’s cloud conveyance also has an old school sci-fi aesthetic, in the tradition of The Rocketeer. It is also appealing to see two STEMmy young people working together and developing a romantic affinity (naturally enough).

Fantasia ’20: Monster Seafood War

Drawn butter won’t save the world, but maybe weaponized rice vinegar can. The trick will be cracking the crab kaiju’s thick shell. The world is in grave peril, but the giant mutant parts are shockingly tasty in Minoru Kawasaki’s Monster Seafood Wars, which screens as an on-demand selection of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Yuta Tanuma is having a bad day. Already fired from the cutting edge, super-growth formula project that he invented, the former scientist is now working at his father’s sushi restaurant. He was supposed to deliver a fresh crab, octopus, and squid as an offering to the neighborhood Buddhist temple, but he is waylaid along the way. The mysterious mugger does not merely steal his seafood. He also doses them with a completed variant of Tanuma’s own unfinished Setap-Z serum.

Fortunately, there was a witness to the crime, so instead of being a suspect, Tanuma is recruited by SMAT, the Seafood Monster Attack Team. They make U.N.C.L.E. sound pretty silly, don’t they? Rather awkwardly, Tanuma is now supposed to work collaboratively with his contemptuous high school crush Nana Hoshiyama, and his well-heeled rival, Hikoma. It is Hikoma who develops the rice vinegar cannons that tenderize Takolla, and Ikalla, the octopus and squid. Unfortunately, Kanilla the crab is a tougher nut to crack. However, it is SMAT’s chef who makes the game-changing discovery when he cooks up some kaiju pieces that came loose during a skirmish.

Basically, if the Ultraman franchise is too serious and sophisticated for your palate, this retro “Suitmation” rubber monster movie might be more your speed. It is definitely Kawaski’s thing. He is also the auteur responsible (if that is the right word) for The World Sinks Except Japan, so if you are looking for any semblance of realism, look elsewhere.

Fantasia ’20: Sheep Without a Shepherd

Li Weijie is sort of like Remington Steele, except he uses his encyclopedic knowledge of movies to obscure a crime rather than solve it. Nobody would begrudge him, since his daughter was the real victim. Unfortunately, the roofying creep she accidentally sent to his eternal judgment happened to be the son of the police chief. The two concerned parents face-off against each other in Sam Quah’s Thai-set, Chinese-produced Sheep Without a Shepherd, which screens as an on-demand selection of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Li stretches his income as a freelance IT guy as best as he can, because his daughters are the apple of his eye. Pingping is a teenager with great potential, but she was easy prey for the scummy Suchat at their youth leadership camp. When he shows up to blackmail her for more, things escalate into violence. Returning home just in time to take charge of the aftermath, Li knows better than to trust the cops. Instead, he uses his love of movies as a guide to construct a false alibi for his family.

Having a fistful of receipts for the day in question, Li takes his family back to retrace his steps, but they go out of their way to talk-up potential witnesses. He expects by the time the cops interview them, everything will blend together in their heads and they will inadvertently confirm Li’s timeline. The problem is Police Chief Laaorn is no dummy, just an excessively indulgent mother.

Sheep is technically a remake of a Malayam movie, but the film that most directly influences Li Weijie’s plan is Jung Geon-sub’s Montage. It isn’t bad, but Sheep is better—at least if you disregard the ridiculously moralizing epilogue, presumably tacked on to satisfy the Chinese censors. (He also takes some inspiration from Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution, which is still better than either film.)

Fantasia ’20: At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul

If his funereal top hat and cape were not enough to make you suspect Ze do Caixao, a.k.a. “Coffin Joe,” was capable of some serious villainy, his devilish beard and long creepy finger nails should have been a dead giveaway. He was the sinister anti-hero of Brazil’s first horror movie, who became an international horror icon. In tribute to Jose Mojica Marins, the man who created and portrayed Coffin Joe, three of his most notorious favorites are screening as on-demand selections of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival, including the original, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul.

Coffin Joe is the undertaker of a small post-war Brazilian town, who always makes sure he has a steady stream of business. He does not look particularly imposing, but he terrorizes his neighbors through the sheer sinister force of his will. (In subsequent films, we also learn he is uncannily hard to kill.) He is legally married, but he is openly scornful of his barren wife (and the passive-aggressive hostility is mutual). Obsessed with the idea of reproducing his “superior” bloodline, Coffin Joe covets Terezinha, the fiancée of Antonio, who happens to be the only villager that considers him a friend (like that matters to Ze).

When Antonio invites old Joe to visit a Roma fortune-teller, the villainous undertaker plans to murder him afterward. Of course, the old crone (very much in the tradition of Maleva in the old Universal monster movies) can see Coffin Joe’s intentions and foretells his eventual doom. Naturally, this just makes Ze scoff in her face. However, Coffin Joe will not be laughing so hard when things start to take a supernatural turn during the third act, which will indeed culminate at midnight.

Frankly, it blows the mind to think a film this twisted was let loose upon the world in 1964, the year of saccharine songs like “Chapel of Love” and “People [Who Need People].” It isn’t the just the brutality of CJ’s murders, but also the militant vehemence of his philosophical nihilism. He definitely thinks he is a superman (in the Nietzschean sense), so he has no qualms about acting accordingly. Yet, the film itself is ultra-atmospheric, rendered by cinematographer Giorgio Attili in a super-spooky black-and-white. In terms of look, it is a lot like dreamy vintage Val Lewton, but thematically, Midnight can hang with the New French Extremity.

Fantasia ’20: You Wouldn’t Understand (short)

It is like the science fiction take on the old Grey Poupon commercials. How so, you might ask? Well, its complicated. It turns out there is a lot of space-time-continuum stuff involved in Trish Harnetiaux’s short film, You Wouldn’t Understand, which screened as part of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Some short films are tricky to review because they entirely hinge around an ironic O. Henry revelation. Others are difficult to write about extensively, simply due to their brevity. Both factors apply to Harnetiaux’s film, co-written with co-star and co-producer Jacob A. Ware. A man is enjoying a fabulously well-appointed picnic, when suddenly another fellow pops up from the surrounding field. Do you happen to have any “horsey sauce” he asks, presumably meaning horseradish. From there it gets strange.

Fantasia ’20: The Woman in the Photographs

Kai wears white suits like Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island. As a photo re-touch specialist, he helps his clients project a fantasy version of themselves, despite the contempt he holds for them. Kyoko wears red shoes like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She would rather live in the fantasy she projects to her online followers, but the scar on her chest is a constant reminder of reality. They are either perfectly matched and totally ill-suited to each other. It is hard for them to tell throughout Takeshi Kushida’s The Woman in the Photographs, which screens as an on-demand selection of the 2020 Fantasia International FilmFestival.

The digital revolution was not kind to neighborhood photo studios, but Kai still ekes out a living. His primary clients are Saijo, the neighboring mortician, who often needs a respectable ceremonial pictures photoshopped from more causal photos, and unmarried women in need of touched-up photos for their match-making services. He meets Kyoko by chance when an ambitious selfie attempt goes awry. Kai helps her get the shot and then erases her scars.

Kai has never been comfortable around women, partly because his mother died in childbirth, so he is more annoyed than excited when Kyoko crashes in his small flat attached to the shop. However, when Saijo suggests letting her stay, at least until she is back on her feet, Kai passively agrees. As they spend time together, Kyoko starts to rebuild her followers, with the help of his skills, but he also encourages her darker, more self-destructive instincts, though their strange gamesmanship.

In fact, Kyoko vividly proves narcissism and self-loathing are not mutually exclusive. She and Kai offer up extensive grist psychological analysis, both separately and together as an undefinable couple. This is a film that will make viewers deeply uncomfortable, but there are also moments that will brings tears to your eyes.

Fantasia ’20: Crazy Samurai Musashi

Miyamoto Musashi was an epic figure. He was the subject of Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy (staring Toshiro Mifune) and it took Tomu Uchida six films to do justice to his story. However, Musashi liked to keep things simple. His classic strategy treatise The Book of Five Rings usually runs under 200 pages, in translation. The latest cinematic treatment Musashi is both simple and epic. The illustrious swordsman will slice through 588 opponents during one long, continuous take in director-fight choreographer Yuji Shimomura’s Crazy Samurai Musashi, which screens as an on-demand selection of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Previously, Musashi killed the patriarch of the Yoshioka clan, so they challenged him to a duel that is really an ambush. In addition to the clan’s loyal members and retainers, 300 mercenaries lay in wait for him. Clearly, the Yoshioka’s plan will not work out as they hope, but on the bright side, Musashi will save them a fortune in mercenaries’ wages.

Thusly begins a non-stop, uncut battle between Musashi and hundreds of opponents. There is not a heck of a lot of dialogue, but the screenplay is still credited to the one and only Sion Sono. You could almost call overkill, but in a way, the rhythmic waves of attacks become almost soothing, like the relaxion videos of the ocean tide. However, as Musashi and lead actor Tak Sakaguchi start to logically tire, Crazy Samurai becomes a legitimate performance piece. The sight of Musashi defiantly chopping down the numerically superior forces as he staggers about is truly arresting.

Fortunately for Musashi, the Yoshioka have an unfortunate habit of charging with their swords held over their heads, leaving their mid-sections conveniently exposed. It is not a winning move. Likewise, their refusal to attack from behind (perhaps a reflection of the Samurai’s Bushido code) certainly works in Musashi’s favor. Of course, practicality demands Shimomura pitch Musashi plenty of fat fastballs over the plate, so he can make it through this marathon melee.

Fantasia ’20: Fly Me to the Saitama

Saitama is a lot like New Jersey, but not quite as depressing. It is close to Tokyo, but it is definitely not part of Tokyo. Sadly, many Saitama residents developed an inferiority complex after years of Tokyo looking down on them, but a Saitama resistance will rise in Hideki Takeuchi’s adaptation of Mineo Maya’s satirical fantasy manga, Fly Me to the Saitama, which screens as an on-demand selection of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

As the son of Tokyo’s grossly corrupt governor, Momomi Hakuhodo strictly enforces the social hierarchy as the student body leader of his elite prep school. It would appear that transfer student Rei Asami has the perfect “Urban Index,” as a Tokyo native, who recently lived in the United States. However, he is actually a Saitama plant. Initially, Hakuhodo considers the mysterious Asami a threat to his authority, but he soon falls head-over-heels for the Saitama rebel. Hakuhodo will even turn his back on his father and his Tokyo birthrate, joining Asami in the Saitama underground, after he is exposed.

This timeless story of rebellion must be true, because Saitama’s most popular radio station broadcasts the story during the wrap-around framing scenes. Regardless, it is indeed a Yaoi boy’s love story, even though Hakuhodo is played by popular actress Fumi Nikaido. In the past, that might have earned the film bonus points for gender-bending, but these days, it could bring down the ire of the “own voices” censors on Saitama.

Of course, everyone should just take things in the playful spirit they were intended. Yuichi Tokunaga’s adapted screenplay quite cleverly sends up geographic snobbery. Many of the references might be lost on Americans, but if you equate Saitama with Jersey, Tokyo with New York City, and Chiba with Long Island, you will generally get the gist of it.

Fantasia ’20: Free Country

Patrick Stein, from West Germany, is a fiercely honest cop who will investigate the politically protected, no matter the consequences. East German Markus Bach has made a career arresting those who legally guilty of violating unjust laws. Thanks to reunification, they must work together solve a brutal double murder in Christian Alvart’s Free Country, which screens as an on-demand selection of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Back in the West, Stein opened up a corruption case against the brother of his superior, so now he is on assignment in this former-GDR backwater. He has been partnered-up with the beefy Bach, who still takes a more physical approach to police work. However, both cops are rather put-off by the town’s callous disinterest in the fate of the missing (and presumed dead) Kraft sisters. The local brass wants them close the case quickly, but they are perversely dogged, especially when they get anonymous threats. With a pregnant wife back in the FRG, Stein has more to lose, but his intuition and initiative starts to grudgingly impress the guilt-wracked Bach. As they follow-up leads, they start to suspect the Kraft sisters were actually the victim of a serial killer.

Technically, Free Country is a remake of the Spanish film Marshland, but Alvart and co-screenwriter Siegfried Kamml cleverly adapt the post-Franco thriller to reunified Germany.  The mystery and procedural stuff of both films are perfectly respectable but they are still probably on the level of what you might find in many of the grittier European crime shows on MHz. Yet, what really sets Free Country apart is the reunification angle. Alvart takes us to a very particular time and place, when former East Germans were coming to terms with the crimes of the Communist regime. Bach is just at the right level to slide through to the new unified order, while still carrying baggage from his past.

The grungy setting is also quite distinctive. Invariably, the investigation draws Stein and Bach to rusty, abandoned industrial behemoths that probably never made sense economically and were maybe only built in the first place to supply a boastful line in a long-forgotten Erich Honecker speech.

Fantasia ’20: The Old Man Movie

Milk, it does a body good—except when it causes one of those freak Soviet-era milking disasters. The titular Estonian dairy farmer remains so spooked by his rival’s misfortune, he milks the heck out of his poor bossy. Fed up with it all, she runs off, not caring that her udder will eventually explode, drowning the valley in milk. To avoid catastrophe, his city-slicker grandchildren help him search in Oskar Lehemaa & Mikk Magi’s utterly deranged stop-motion animated feature, The Old Man Movie, which screens as an on-demand selection of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Do not look to Old Man Movie for accurate lessons in agricultural science or really any kind of real-world applications. Having lived in cities all my life, I’m still pretty sure cows do not explode like atomic bombs if they go a day without milking, but fine, let’s just run with it anyway. Regardless, that is what happened to the villainous “Old Milker,” during the black-and-white newsreel prologue, when his cow just decided to stop giving milk. Of course, he deeply resented it when another diary farmer replaced him as the town’s milk supplier.

That would be the Old Man, Priidik, Aino, and Mart’s grandfather, who is less than thrilled to have his grandchildren for the summer. The teenagers, Priidik and Aino are not too happy about it either, but Mart, the young science geek is delighted. It is the sensitive Priidik who causes all the trouble by literally leaving the barn door open. Reluctantly, Grandpa takes the teens with him to search for his cow, leaving Mart behind, to create more chaos with his mad genius tinkering. Meanwhile, Old Milker is also hunting for Grandpa’s cow, determined to behead her, before she explodes.