Coming soon: Fantasia 2018! Our first movie picks!

And here… We. Go.

We’re spoiled. We didn’t just pick up a random movie festival and start writing about it, we’ve consistently pick the very top genre movie festival of them all right here in our home town. I know that sounds biased and it probably is, but try to prove me wrong. The Fantasia International Film Festival is now on its 22nd incarnation.

I’ve got an unwritten set of rules for Fantasia to protect me from losing my mind. Almost always, I break one or all at some point. Don’t pick the most popular movie. Go for the strange and unusual. Don’t pick more than one or two movies per night. Leave some breathing room. Don’t forget to sleep. Take days off. Yeah, impossible rules to keep once the festival starts.

I always have some sort of a theme in mind. There was that year that I focused on anime. There was that year that I picked all time travel movies. This year, I am trying to go for less action, more brainy types. I have to put some candy in there, but hopefully I can balance the bitter with the sweet.

Fantasia 2018 will open with DANS LA BRUME. The opening film is always a bit of a loaded dice. It might be too much of a crowd pleaser or might be preventing me from watching a well deserved film that gets overlooked. Still, the premise of the usual apocalyptic-disaster scenario and the fact that it’s not the usual US setting make this one quite tempting. Yes, it breaks my rule since this one will be the popular one.

Also finding a way into my schedule are: CAM, the surrealistic thriller set in the world of online erotica; LUZ, a retro euro-horror; MADELINE’S MADELINE, described as an edge-of-your-seat psychodrama; ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE, a zombie musical (yeah, you heard that right); PARALLEL, a clever sci-fi film about multiverses; TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID, a dark fairytale set in the world of the drug cartels; TREMBLE ALL YOU WANT, a subversive romantic comedy from Japan; SEARCHING, a thriller of a man following the online digital footprint of his missing daughter; that’s just to name a few.

Tickets are on sale at the Fantasia Box Office at 1455 Maisonneuve W or online at admission.com on Saturday, July 7 starting at 1pm.

That will do for now.