My Movie Journal is Better Than Yours

FantasticFest 2013 (09.19.13 - 09.26.13, 30 movies)

Date Viewed	Movie	Director	Notes
09.19.13	Machete Kills	Robert Rodriguez	Another Fantastic Fest! I can't believe this is the 9th one... Seems not so long ago that I rolled up on South Lamar to watch Zathura and Hostel and Strings and the extended Sin City cut. I made several really good friends that year sitting in the non-existant lines and watching post-apocalyptic awesomeness like Miracle Mile and Last Wave. Cut forward to a brand new theater covered in promo materials, red carpets with press (some actual!) and the opening night film spilling into three theaters to fit everyone. Pretty crazy stuff. So this is my first visit to Lakeline. I feel like it's in no way an indicative experience but for the sake of record I'll summarize my feelings on it: tables are weird, not a lot of seats but decent auditorium size, smallish lobby, menu isn't as bad as I'd heard but they're definitely following trend now rather than sticking to their own stuff and everything's pretty crazy expensive, parking is confusing and somewhat nightmarish. Machete Kills: Didn't like it. They played a trailer for the third one as the beginning of the movie. Kind of like spoiling your own movie, not that there's anything anyone would care about spoilin. I envision the writer in a room divining his craft: writer: (writer writes a line) What do you think? writer's roomate: I don't feel like vomitting yet, better re-write. writer: (forms machete's line in third person) how about now? writer's roomate: (vomits) nailed it. Lots of fake heads and cheap visual effects and Rodriguez's pg-13 brand of sex appeal. I bet it was fun to make, which I guess is great for them. Rodriguez reminds me of a guy i knew in college. His enthusiasm far outreached his talent. On one hand I have to respect that he keeps making movies and involves local crew and all of that, but on the other hand I sure wish his movies were better.
09.19.13	Patrick	Mark Hartley	Next up is this remake of an old Aussie thriller which I haven't seen. Charles Dance plays a creepy doctor (awesome) and Rachel Griffiths plays a creepy nurse (awesome) and Sharni whatshernamefromYou'reNext plays a nurse who's skinny and pretty hot but not as hot as her slutty co-worker. I liked the director's previous documentary efforts so I kind of want to pad my blows in case through some cruel twist of fate he actually reads this. I really applaud that he made a movie and tried for something a bit out of the ordinary (a throwback Gothic Thriller), but it didn't really work for me. I didn't hate this (liked it more than Machete Kills) but it wasn't great either. To me, if you're setting your movie in a creepy hospital place with gothic architecture and stuff, you have to wallow in atmosphere. That means more than color correction and high camera angles. I wish they would've watched Robert Wise' The Haunting a few more times to study the deliberate pace of that film and realize you have to let everything breathe. 2 or 3 jump scares can be fun, 48 is overkill and desensitized the audience. So I think it was a good choice to go for that tone, but I wish it was executed with a bit more wisdom. Sorry, Mark! Make another one!
09.20.13	Escape from Tomorrow	Randy Moore	Holy shit I have a lot of notes to write. Let's get into it. Escape from Tomorrow is a sort-of thriller that got a lot of publicity at Sundance because it was largely shot at Disney World in Orlando. Because of that, the film makes use of a lot of the iconography and people at the park to make a statement about human nature (at least that's what I took from it although I may be wrong). The story follows a family through a day at the park and mostly focuses on the dad who ends up following around a couple of skinny french teenage girls and leching out. There's also strands of plot following the son's oedipal complex, this mysterious cat flu that's going around, and a bizarre third act that propels it into some sci-fi territory. This was really good. It's kind of amazing that the movie looks as good as it does considering it was all covert guerilla style, and the script and performances are good enough to make it a movie more than some anarchist experiment that I was afraid it might be. I still don't completely understand the ending (which I take as a good sign) so the overall theme is a bit muddled for me, but I got an overall impression that at least it was saying Something which is nice. Liked it a lot.
09.20.13	Detective Downs	Bard Breien	I signed up for this one out of morbid curiosity because ususally the fest has a handful of these that they pick specifically because they're better than you think they'd be. That holds true in this case as well. The story is a son of a police detective wants to be a private investigator but he has Down syndrome so nobody takes him seriously, until one day someone hires him for real. The movie manages to have its cake and eat it too in that it's funny and plays on the disability without coming off as exploitative or mean and it delivers a decent noir mystery and emotional character arcs to boot. Plus its shot well and all that technical whatnot. Really the only problem I had was their use of a Living La Vida Loca cover over the end credits. I hate having that song stuck in my head. Liked it a lot.
09.20.13	Grand Piano	Eugenio Mira	Elijah Wood plays a master pianist who gives a comeback performance and realized that there's a gun pointed at him demanding he not miss one note. It's a very Hitchcockian suspense story masterfully told. This might be my favorite of the fest this year. It's such a swiss clock of a movie made up of individually remarkable pieces that consolidate into a great viewing experience. Incidentally, I heard more people say it was DePalma-ian than Hitchcockian. Why? There's one split screen shot in the movie, is that it? Gah. My DePalma pecodillo aside, that one shot is obscenely great. It's a flashy technocrane deep focus shot that match cuts to matching static/zoom shots in split screen. Oh man... Gush gush gush. I'm shocked that was really Elijah playing and not some digital hand transplant. It's a great movie. loved it.
09.20.13	The Sacrement	Ti West	When Ti West came out and said "whatever perceptions you have in your head about what a Ti West movie is or what an Eli Roth movie is, put those on pause while you watch this" I had a hope that I might like this. AJ Bowen plays a VICE journalist who goes into a cult compound and they film what goes on there. Several years ago there was a stellar doc on Jonestown that played the video footage of the news crew get shot upon trying to leave in their helicoptor and the audio recording of the Kool-Aid being administered. Very chilling stuff. This movie is basically a re-enactment of that. It's a good re-enactment, and the performances (especially that of Gene Jones) are great and the tone hits and nobody cheapens the experience with jump scares or ironic music queues. It's pretty dark but so was the real thing. So... at this point I might have to rescind my Ti West ban and start seeing his movies again. I really like that he's growing as a filmmaker and hope he continues to do so. I liked this.
09.20.13	Witching and Bitching	Alex de la Iglesia	My first Alex de la Iglesia movie. Batshit crazy. Starts off as a crime comedy then goes unapologetically supernatural with all sorts of witch shit. The title, although weak, is very apt. I think every scene is either people complaining or witches doing stuff (and sometimes both). I have to say though, I dozed through the end when things got even more wacky and CG but I don't know if it hurt my enjoyment any. Like I'm not sure knowing what was going on was any better than hazing in and out of the craziness that I saw. It does probably mean that this won't stick in my mind but oh well, I liked it at the time.
09.21.13	Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons	Stephen Chow	God damn the notes keep coming. This is Stephen Chow's latest and the first of his that I've seen since Kung Fu Hustle (which at the time I thought "too much kung fu, not enough hustle" because I was an idiot who didn't know anything about movies). This one deals a bit more with fantasy or history (however China sees this stuff) by following a demon hunter trying to achieve enlightenment. It's mostly funny but there's fighting and the end goes to 10 when all the demon hunters have to take on the Monkey King and Space Buddha makes an appearance. Overall I liked the movie. I'd put it in the same drawer as that one that played a few years ago starring Chow Yun Fat in that it was light and fun and a spectacle but not something I will hold next to my heart forever.
09.21.13	Nightbreed	Clive Barker	This was a real disappointment for me. I loved Nightbreed as a kid so watching an extra 45 minutes of it should've been something amazing. A few things held me back though. This new cut was basically constructed using two VHS work prints and the DVD of the theatrical cut and there's been no image resoration at all so it constantly flips between finished-quality DVD scenes and fuzzy duped VHS scenes of varying quality. It looks like one workprint had copyright text in the top corner that they blacked out while the other had gone through a few more generations and had lost most of its audio and visual information. Furthermore, the new editor used a lot of alternate takes of scenes that ended up in the movie so it was kind of like watching a shittier version of the same movie with only small nuances to set it apart. Thirdly, a lot of the new matieral is kind of lame and was cut for a reason. They'd be fine as deleted scenes on a special edition but don't make the movie any better for me. And lastly, this promised "completely different movie" is not actually that different. There are no gigantic plot differences or huge tonal shifts or even added plot lines. It's just a flabbier more muddled version of Nightbreed. So oh well.
09.21.13	Man of Tai Chi	Keanu Reeves	Keanu Reeves' directorial effort is a solid liget Hong Kong action movie. Yuen Wo Ping did the fight scenes which are amazing and tell a story. I'm kind of blanking on what to say other than it was good, nothing was terrible, and it kicked some ass. I guess I should take this as a sign to take a break from note-writing. No! I must get through these! Forgetting what I thought about all these movies is the worst part of fantastic fest.
09.21.13	Jodorowsky's Dune	Frank Pavich	A doc about the movie that never was. I wasn't really familiar with all the details of this unmade film so it was a pretty fun ride for me to watch this. Unlike The Man from La Mancha where I got the feeling that if Gilliam had succeeded in finishing the movie it probably would've been terrible, I cannot imagine how amazing Jodorowsky's Dune would've been. Salvador Dali and Orson Welles in a movie together!? Pink Floyd soundtrack!? Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger doing a space movie before Star Wars!? It's really inconceivable to run the "what if..." permutations on this. The movie itself is great and really well done. They got fantastic interviews with Jodorowsky (who I will want to call Hodor from now on) and did a great job of visualizing everything. One of the my faves from the festival.
09.21.13	Moebius	Kim Ki-duk	A movie without any dialog. True story: For the first ten or so minutes the sound was out of synch but because it all sounded like post sound and there was no dialogue to ground it, the entire audience had no clue that anything was wrong. I know I just though "wow this movie is fucking experimental". After they got the sound issue sorted, the movie began again in earnest. I have to say... for a movie with no dialogue to play at midnight is pretty ballsy. I didn't doze off once though and I also didn't see anyone leave. It could be described as a castration comedy, but there's also some pretty heavy drama going on. Lots of castration though. My favorite part was anything involving this researched technique about how, in lieu of a penis to rub, you could get off by rubbin a rough stone against your skin until it's completely raw. Several characters try it and that orgasm-pleasure-followed-by-incapacitating-pain was always funny to me. Later in the film this idea progressed to getting stabbed and working the knife handle kind of like a cock. Great twisted Fantastic Fest moment... I liked it.
09.22.13	Mirage Men	Roland Denning	This doc is about the disinformation campaign that the government instituted regarding UFO stuff going on in their air force bases. It's largely an examination of one guy named Richard Doty who worked in manipulating and disseminating a lot of the false information that UFO nuts have grabbed onto. Doty is an interesting interview, but most of this movie feels like something I'd see on the syfy network and the film doesn't even attempt to answer anything but rather convolute itself and give the impression that the truth is unobtainable. While the bare fact that various government agencies have active disinformation departments is interesting, by the end of the doc I was kind of questioning whether this whole movie is a waste of time or not. I guess that's how some people felt about Room 237 last year, but that had the film and Kubrick to anchor my interest whereas this is kind of just some kooky interviews in hotel rooms.
09.22.13	Mood Indigo	Michel Gondry	Michel Gondry's latest and I'm very glad I got a chance to see this. I really love Gondry and think he's one of the most original and creative people working today. Unfortunately, none of his movies have really 100% connected with me the way I feel they should. I'm forever waiting for that one perfect movie from him that I'll probably never get. In the meantime, I get movies like this. The first half hour or so of this movie is pure cinematic bliss. It's filled with surrealistic whimsy and fantastic absurdity and everything I love about Gondry. Everything from the piancocktail to the Biglemoi dance is superb and lovely and makes me uncontrollably smile. Audrey Tatou is the perfect Gondry actress, The lead and Gad Emelah are perfect Gondry leading men, I love seeing Paris through Gondry's eyes. Everything's just perfect perfect perfect. Then things get sad. And I don't mean like someone stubs their toe. I mean like things get so sad that the movie winds up in black and white with the iris hiding the corners of the frame, like the film itself is so depressed it can barely capture light anymore. It is such a huge depressio bummer of a second half with no silver lining that it really hurts my enjoyment of the movie. Why is every Gondry movie so sad!? Anyway, that's Mood Indigo. Overall I liked it, but man...
09.22.13	The Green Inferno	Eli Roth	The first secret screening is Eli Roth's new movie about college students who get into trouble. This time, rather than the woods or eastern European torture houses, it's the jungle of Peru where Eli can make his own cannibal movie just like his friend Ruggero Deodato. So... i have mixed feelings on this. Some of the gore and stuff in the native camp was good I thought. However, a lot of it's kind of not good at all, like he script and performances and structure of the movie and ending and a handful of nonsensical scenes sprinkled throughout. And this is going to come off making me sound terrible but the film so clearly sets up this threat of female circumcision in like the first scene of the movie to where I was like "well at least I'll get to see some female genital mutilation." The threat of that very specific act carries through the entire movie but - SPOILER ALERT - it never happens. What kind of Eli Roth movie is it where the ticking timebomb doesn't go off? I don't get it, why he'd pull back on that and show us fake limbs getting hacked off instead. I feel like it's a dire mistake that kills the movie because everything else has been done better 35 years ago. he also does this thing where he lists the standout cannibal titles and their information in the end credits. Part of me likes that because it's probably useful to some people and his intention was to give those interested a way to explore the genre but another part of me hates it like how pretentious is he to be the savior of all cannibal movies and give the world a lecture of film history. So I dunno. Overall I didn't really like it but I also didn't fall asleep or walk out or anything so it wasn't like... completely terrible. I liked it more than Machete Kills.
09.22.13	Maruyama the Middle Schooler	Kankuro Kudo	This is a movie about a 14 year old kid trying to suck is own dick. This, like Detective Downs, was on my schedule out of sheer curiosity that someone would make a movie about this. And, like Detective Downs, it wound up be wonderfully endearing and charming and enjoyable. Not only is Maruyama obsessed with licking his own dick, he's also got an overactive imagination that invents superhero personas for his parents and the people who live in his apartment complex. These fantasy sequences are sweet and funny and his burgeoning romance with a neighbor combined with the mystery of a serial killer make the whole movie just a lovely little package. This is what I imagine The Lady in the Water was trying to be. I am comparing it a bit to A Boy and his Samurai from several years ago at the festival. It's just a great fun movie that I liked very much.
09.23.13	Tales of the Organ Trade	Ric Esther Bienstock	A HBO documentary about the organ transplant black market, most significantly dealing with kidneys. I'd never call this movie objective since it presents a clearly biased point of view in that poor people from third world countries are willing to sell their organs and rich people from first world countries don't have enough healthy kidneys to go around so what's the problem why are these doctors being prosecuted for saving lives... but the doc is still harrowing and eye-opening and presents its case well enough to be taken seriously. Plus I'm not really sure a doc HAS to be objective. Why go to the trouble to make a movie about something just to get criticized for not representing the side you don't agree with? It's not like non-fiction movies took some Journalistic oath or anything. Anyway, I'm sure there is exploitation and organized crime to some of this (that regulation would help (parable to the drug trade? blaaah too political)) that the movie doesn't get into, but it's intense enough as it is. My takeaway from watching this is DON'T GET KIDNEY FAILURE.
09.23.13	The Unknown Known	Errol Morris	Errol Morris' new doc interviewing Donald Rumsfeld. I would say that Morris' recent predilection toward politics is maybe wearing thin but my experience with Tabloid (which could be seen as a return to form for him) felt kind of shallow compared to interviewing high-profile public officials like McNamara and Rumsfeld so... who knows. I think it is pretty clear that he didn't exactly crack Rumsfeld like he did McNamara in Fog of War so instead the movie had to become more about Rumsfeld's perception of himself (similar to Oliver Stone's interviews with Fidel Castro). I still found this to be an engaging and captivating film and some of Rumsfeld's answers, arranged to most clearly show his... shifting viewpoints really hit home. "We don't assassinate people" / "That wasn't an assassination attempt, it was an act of war." Mostly I just wonder what it's like to be Morris' subject. To sit there for hours, staring into his interrotron , looking into his slightly-crossed eyes, all those long silences between questions to let me keep talking if I feel like it. It's got to be a unique, and I'd guess unsettling, experience. Makes great movies though.
09.23.13	Child of God	James Franco	The second secret screening is James Franco's new film. Tim league said not to tweet or social media about this movie until it screens at New York next Sunday but I figure at this point I don't have any readers left so this is safe. If anyone does read this and it's before 10/06/2013 at 11:30 EST, please do not spread this around. I'd hate to get the Alamo in trouble. Thanks. Also, I'll change the title at that time so it makes sense. or I'll forget and look at this years later and say "I don't remember watching This is the End at Fantastic Fest. Huh!" So... apparently people hated this at Toronto, but Tim said he loved it and thought it would do a lot better here. I agree that this is a Fantastic Fest type of movie. It's based on a Cormac McCarthy book and deals with a crazy guy in the woods of Tennessee in the 40s or 50s who lives off the land and talks to himself and wipes shit from his ass with sticks and eventually falls in love. Things progress from there. I don't want to spoil anything, but I'd be remiss not to note that for all of Eli's comments about how he wants to introduce the cannibal genre to mainstream American audiences, James Franco's got you beat, buddy! I don't think this will ever play in a Tinseltown but god help us if it ever does. And Franco doesn't list out movies like Nekromantik in the end credits either. I thought I'd hate this movie and I didn't. I liked it more than didn't like it. It's pretty damn slow, but the parts that are interesting are pretty damn interesting and that's enough for me. Definitely liked it more than Green Inferno, not to even mention Machete Kills.
09.23.13	Why Don't You Play in Hell?	Shion Sono	The only Sono movie I've seen is Love Exposure which Jarrette more or less dragged me to and I ended up begrudgingly liking it which has since softened into very fond memories. Now he presents a movie that's just as crazy to describe... totally different... but really amazing and crazy and hilarious. I really liked this movie a ton. It's about a group of kids who want to be filmmakers, and a Yakuza daughter... and some events that tie them all together to wind up with battling Yakuza agreeing to film their fight for a movie. It's the craziest bloodiest movie about making a movie that I've ever seen. And the ending is great. I took it to mean "Never mind about any rules or reality, just have fun and go with it!" FUCK BOMBERS!!! Really great great amazing movie. I guess I need to see more Sono movies.
09.24.13	Confession of Murder	Jeong Byeong-gil	Another Korean revenge movie that's good. It kind of sucks but the fact that there are so many Korean revenge movies in the last few years and that all of them have been pretty decent means that this having some good action scenes and a nice twisty turny plot and fine performances doesn't really set it apart. I don't know if this will stick in my mind over something like I Saw the Devil, but it's certainly good and worth watching.
09.24.13	Cheap Thrills	E.L. Katz	A couple of old highschool friends are engaged by a rich couple in a series of escalating bets and dares that wind up suitably dark. Pat Healy, Ethan Embry (who's pretty scary now), and Dave Koechner carry the movie. Well them and a strong script. It's fun and funny and gruesome and makes you feel kind of dirty just like any dark comedy should. Really a lot of nasty fun and good bad times. I liked this one a lot.
09.24.13	Gravity	Alfonso Cuaron	Goddamn amazing film. Here we are watching a week's worth of festival films then this behemoth comes and reminds me what an actual GREAT film is like. It absolutely floored me. It's playing in a different league. Jesus Christ. I don't even know what to write. Every frame is beautiful, it's a great inventive use of 3D (especially the POV shots), it's claustrophobic on a grand scale, the tension never lets up, I caught myself holding my breath and flinching at the screen, gush gush gush, holy shit, where's the tylenol? Favorite movie of the fest for me. I know it's not fair but whatever. The heart wants what it wants.
09.25.13	The Congress	Ari Folman	Pretty heady sci-fi starring Robin Wright as herself in a world where actors are signing their likeness away to a digital scan of themselves that studios can use to make whatever movie they want. THEN it gets weird. Like I said this was pretty heady. There's a hefty animated sequence in the middle that made me think this is what Roger Rabbit would've been directed by Tarkovsky rather than Bob Zemeckis. I liked it but probably wouldn't watch it again. There's some good ideas in here though about what the future may hold.
09.25.13	We Gotta Get Out of this Place	Simon Hawkins, Zeke Hawkins	This movie wins my award for shortest running time. I'm not sure what the actual running time was but it seemed the shortest to me. A handful of texas teens get in trouble with their crazy employer and stuff happens. It's a taut little noirish thing with good performances (especially from Mark Pellegrino (perhaps best known as Jackie Treehorn's thug in Big Lebowski who shoves The Dude's head in a toilet then looks at his bowling ball) and a few cameos from John Gries and William Devane) that does what it's here to do then gets the hell out. Not a lot of fat on this one, which I respect. Nice little film.
09.25.13	A Field in England	Ben Wheatley	Ben Wheatley's latest about some british soldiers in like the 1400s or whatever. There's a bit of magic and hallucinations but mostly it's dirty guys walking around in a field. It was ok.
09.25.13	Metallica: Through the Never	Nimrod Antal	My last movie of the night was this concert film which most non-Metallica fans hoped had a lot of narrative in it. It didn't. it was basically a music video's worth of story in between performances. I mean it's a bit more than that... but mostly it's concert footage and what little narrative present is pretty hilarious. Let's see. Well I sat next to a big Metallica fan so that helped, and they had it loud as shit to where you could feel the bass rumble the floor so that helped. And the movie wasn't terrible. I got the sense that Metallica fans liked it. One dude started headbanging and freaking out when they played his favorite song. It was hilarious to see him sitting next to a completely still Nacho... I feel like I would've rather had another Metallica documentary but this wasn't terrible. I mean if it was a band I liked I would've loved it. The Q&A was great though. Kirk Hammett talked horror movies, Robert Trujilo made some jokes, and Tim was a great moderator. The last question of the night was classic: Q: What's Lars doing tonight? A (Kirk): Probably as much as he can, man.
09.26.13	Blue Ruin	Jeremy Saulnier	A hobo learns that the dude who killed his parents is getting out of jail and things go from there. I feel like most of the tone and pacing of this movie is due to the lead actor who gives a great performance as a shy hesitant man indelibly crippled by the loss of his parents. Of course the writer-director probably had something to do with it as well but this lead actor is not someone you'd immediately think perfect for a revenge movie and that's most of why I liked it. I also really liked the methodical approach the director takes in showing what's happening through silent details that create a larger picture. I got the sense that he doesn't take his audience for idiots which is always nice and sadly refreshing. A great little revenge thriller with a unique tone shot in Virginia. I liked this one a lot.
09.26.13	Goldberg & Eisenberg	Oren Carmi	This was a whole in my schedule where I'd seen everything else. In hindsight I should've watched Timecrimes again. Oh well. This one's about a guy who... doesn't say hello back to another guy or something so the other guy torments the shit out of him and things escalate. I guess it's notable for being Israeli. I didn't like this much. Sounds lame but I never felt the motivation for the crazy guy and the straight guy was too weird to be sympathetic. I also didn't like the weird steps in plot progression and... I don't know I just wasn't a fan.
09.26.13	The Zero Theorem	Terry Gilliam	And here it is... the last movie of the fest. And I'm writing these notes ON THE DAY! I think this may be a first for me... I will wake up tomorrow with none of this hanging over me! Yay! So this takes place in a near future where ad saturation, consumerism, idiocratic dumbatization, and NSA surveillance have all run rampant. It's a very interesting world that yells GILLIAM in every corner of the frame. Christoph Waltz plays a weird bald guy who probably has Asberger's who works for some huge Big Brother type figure played by Matt Damon. The movie deals with all sorts of topical themes that... funny enough we had a video intro where Gilliam kind of rambled on funny tangents but as I watched the movie I suspected those tangents weren't so random after all. If that was intentional then... that's a pretty crazy intro! Also, Gilliam's taste in beautiful actresses is exquisite. Jesus Christ is Melanie Thierry hot in this just like Lily Cole was hot in Parnassus. Whew. Let's see what else. In thought it was OK. Certainly better than Parnassus and Tideland and probably Brothers Grimm. Still, it was missing a certain something for me to really connect with it. But you know... fuck me. I'm so glad we're in a world where Gilliam still gets to make movies that he wants to make, movies that are challenging and say something and ask questions. This week has really bolstered my faith in creative storytelling through cinema. Either I'm getting damn good at avoiding the bad movies or this year's programming was pretty damn good. After I got out I watched a guy get lit on fire then jump from the roof of the Alamo into a inflated cushion, then I saw the explosion of a car blowing up, a glimpse of a guy on fire, and a tiny bit of a car jumping off a ramp into the burning carcass of the previous car. Yeah stunts! I did my best at the party. I guess because of the stunt thing (or maybe other reasons) the party was held in the parking lot outside the theater. They had pork and potato salad as well as corn dogs and a bucking bulldog thing set up along with a big slide and a mini version of the death-defying leap where you fall into a bouncy castle type thing. They also had a dunking booth where I saw Tim League get dropped and - most curiously - an impromptu game of slapfighting or whatever it may be called. People just started gathering around in a circle Fight Club style and slapping each other silly. It was pretty odd. It was also muggy which made me sweaty and uncomfortable, but I did get to hang out with all my movie friends one more time which made me want to see them more often. Maybe this year I will!? Once again I need to remind myself that this week is tons of fun and not a burden and to look forward to it next year rather than stress over it like I seem to do every year. If I get a VIP that is. Dear lord please let me get a VIP. Anyway, recap time: I think I saw 30 movies, least favorites were: 1. Machete Kills 2. Goldberg & Eisenberg 3. The Green Inferno 4. Patrick 5. Mirage Men And those were really the only five I didn't like, which is great. Top five were: 1. Gravity 2. Grand Piano 3. Jodorowsky's Dune 4. Why Don't You Go Play in Hell 5. Maruyama The Middle Schooler And now I guess I return to real life! Bummer...