It's telling that Salma Hayek eating the heart of a water monster killed by John C. Reilly, which happens in the opening sequence of the fantasy anthology film Tale of Tales (pictured above), is somehow a seemingly ordinary moment from this year's Fantastic Fest, a film festival put on by the Alamo Drafthouse every year in Austin, Texas. That's a crazy scene to describe, but we're also talking about it within the context of a film festival that specializes in the wildest of the wild.
This year's Fantastic Fest had German thrillers that were shot in a single, two-and-a-half-hour take (Victoria). It had Mads Mikkelsen unafraid to get ugly and inhuman (Men & Chicken), and Colin Farrell trying to find love in 45 days before he gets turned into a crustacean (The Lobster). It had so many, well, fantastic movies that it's hard for us to pick just a few to highlight, but it's a task we'll gladly take on.
Some of these movies don't have release dates yet, some do, but either way you're going to want to keep track of each one of these Fantastic Fest 2015 titles.
A surprise Best Animated Feature Film contender
Anomalisa: If you’re the type of person who likes to place early bets on Oscar wins, you may not want to lock in Pixar’s Inside Out for Best Animated Feature just yet. The big obstacle in its way may end up being Anomalisa, a truly unique stop-motion animated film written and codirected by Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). It’s about a man who sees everyone in the world as the same person (they all literally have the same face), until one day he encounters a woman who is actually different and becomes enraptured by what she could mean to him. It’s a beautifully crafted, soulful movie that is bound to hit many, particularly those who feel alone even when they’re with other people, with profound emotional force.
Rock the rebel, metal the Devil
The Devil’s Candy: If you still think of Ethan Embry as the cute, shy guy from Can’t Hardly Wait or Empire Records, you may be surprised to realize he's the ripped dude in the picture above. In The Devil’s Candy (the latest movie from the director of the great Australian horror movie The Loved Ones), Embry plays a loving, heavy metal-obsessed dad who moves his family into a house in the middle of nowhere. But, while that setup no doubt sounds familiar, what follows isn’t a standard haunted-house premise. It’s a loud, highly energetic, highly entertaining spin on things where heavy metal may be the only way to fight off the devil.
A movie everyone will be talking about in early 2016
The Witch: A deeply religious family living in 1600s America is exiled to live on the edge of the woods. One day their young baby is kidnapped under strange circumstances. The parents think it was a wolf, the kids suspect it was the doings of a witch that lives in the woods, and the audience gets to watch as a deeply haunting and unforgettable story unfolds. We can guarantee that anyone who loves horror movies, or really anyone who simply loves well-acted, perfectly executed stories, will be talking about The Witch when it hits theaters on February 26, 2016.
Tom Hiddleston fans, prepare to get weird
High-Rise: Every now and then a relatively new actor has a very, very rabid fan base thrust onto them. It happened with Robert Pattinson because of Twilight, and now it’s happening to Tom Hiddleston because of The Avengers. And since actors don’t really like to get pigeonholed, they sometimes make a movie that is wildly different than what their fan base expects. That’s what happened with Pattinson when he starred in David Cronenberg’s weird and unsettling Cosmopolis, and now it’s Hiddleston’s turn with the equally weird and unsettling High-Rise. Strangely enough both movies are based on highly acclaimed counterculture novels, and in both cases some fans may turn up expecting another fun movie starring their heartthrob of choice and end up discovering a twisted, decadent, seriously R-rated experience.
Bringing back the "edge-of-your-seat" thriller
Green Room: The latest movie from the director of Blue Ruin is a straight up masterpiece of tension. It’s about a punk rock band that ends up playing a show at a neo-Nazi club, where they accidentally witness a murder. They try to call the police, but instead the club’s owner (Patrick Stewart) shows up to take care of the situation. His methods are messy and shocking and Green Room basically becomes a nonstop string of “No, no, no, no!” moments as these likable kids try to survive a hellish night. This, as with The Witch, is the kind of movie that is just so dang good it will absolutely deliver no matter how seemingly overhyped it gets.
Gamers get their own superheroes
Lazer Team: Earlier this summer Pixels gave us a world where old arcade players end up having to save the world from an invasion where the aliens take the form of old arcade video game enemies. Lazer Team is kind of like that, but for a much more modern generation. It’s from the minds of the immensely popular Red vs. Blue online series, and it’s about four losers who end up each being given one part of a suit that’s needed to save mankind from aliens. The humor is not for everyone and is definitely built for modern teenagers who spend more time talking on headsets than they do cell phones, but it's the kind of movie that'll play great for the audience it was made for.
John Hawkes is a perfect private investigator
Too Late: One of the main reasons to see Too Late is to see how writer-director Dennis Hauck pulls off a simple but tricky gimmick. Shot on actual 35 mm film (a rarity these days), this story of a private investigator (John Hawkes) and his relationship to a dead girl is told over five single-shot takes. Each take (or reel of film) is about 20 minutes long, and while they make up a complete story, they're not necessarily played in order in the movie. The result is a seductive, funny, highly stylized noir that understandably drew lots of comparisons to Quentin Tarantino at the fest.
