So far the score for Fantastic Fest is one okay day, one good day. I’m talking about the films themselves, not the Festival itself. With the opening of the Highball, this years feet is rocking it as the most fun yet, though I admit to a bit of lamentation for the days of standing in long lines of filmlovers and meeting new people. But now I can actually get into the screenings I want, so that trumps the nostalgia factor.

Here’s something my close friends know about me, but others don’t: I fall asleep in movies. I know I’m a filmmaker myself, but I have a problem that if my mind isn’t actively engaged and stimulated, on come the sleepitimes. In the reviews below, I’ll be rating things in how many sleeepies I had and the how many stars from 1 to 10.

If something gets one sleepy that’s not the kiss of death. Just something to note.

First Squad – Mix Russian historical fiction with Anime mixed with some Nazi’s and live action, documentary style interviews to add verisimilitude. The story circles around a young orphan girl with psychic powers who is the last living member of her paranormal warfare squad (interesting sister piece to The Men Who Stare at Goats I saw on Friday). The film is handled like traditional anime, with crazy hair and characters, demons and ghosts, but tries to keep tethered to the real world. I don’t think the mixing of the two was effective and their goal of keeping the battles realistic and accurate essentially melded together to make a snooze fest. Most everyone that saw it with me said it made them sleepy. I personally fell asleep 4 times, which is pretty damn bad. Ultimately, if you love anime for the sake of anime, you can may enjoy the film, but it definitely wasn’t for me.

5 out of 10 Stars / 4 Sleepies

Gentleman Broncos – Take Wes Anderson and John Waters, mix them together in a blender and filter through uber strict Mormon ethics, and you’ve got the filmmaking style of Jared Hess. Gentleman Broncos is an absolute mess of a film. Never that funny, never that heartfelt, and never, ever believable. Napoleon Dynamite worked because Hess and the cast were able to do the rarest of things in filmmaking: creating genuine, original, quirky characters that you buy. Wes Anderson is the master of this. Royal Tennenbaums does it perfectly. Waters is on the other end of the spectrum – he makes movies so compellingly entertaining that you’re willing to go along for the ride and love each minute. Hess doesn’t do this. Gentleman Broncos has stupid, goofy, surfacely quirky characters with poor motivation in a world that is wholly boring and I consequential.

All this being said, Jermaine Clement’s Chevalier and Sam Rockwell’s Bronco/Brutus sequences are enjoyable, but not worth the price of admission. Wait till a friend buys it on bluray and catch it then. Or on cable. This movie is already so sanitized thatit could probably run on any network and the FCC wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
4 out of 10 stars / 0 Sleepies

Paranormal Activity – Not since the Blair Witch Project has a film been this scary and cringe-worthy. Not because of copius amounts of gore or crazy squirm-enducing torture porn, but for the same reasons Blair Witch worked: the fear of what you can’t see and the inability to get away from your location specific horrors. Handled with one cMera the entire time, in the style of someone goofing around with shooting footageof their own family, Paranormal Activity affords you the ability to truly put yourself in the shoes of the main characters and exist in the world. There are only three actors in the film: the female lead who has been followed by a spirit since the age of 8, and he live-in boyfriend who buys an HD camera to document the noises and odd things that happen to her.

And document it he does. The camera is handheld through most of the film, except in nighttime bedroom time lapse shots on sticks. This creates a perfect device to build dread, because everytime we cut to this shot, you know bad things are about to happen. This is a great film that deserves a full release and not to be remade (as is rumored) with bigger name stars. It works because of the situation and the unknown actors, like a Blair Witch before it, and audiences will respond equally positively. And no one will ever look at powder the same way again!

8 out of 10 Stars / 0 Sleepies