The 23rd edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival has released its full lineup last Thursday. I seriously considered giving you a rundown of my very, very busy agenda but thought better of it. Unavoidably, my own list of movies will change like it changes every year. Basically it’s everything on the menu, I guess I can only be on one movie at a time (so far, still working on that space-time displacement thing) and very often I will change to an unplanned movie on the fly.

I have watched one or two trailers from Fantasia’s playlist so far. I don’t want to go in over-informed and I’m prepared to take the hit if I end up seeing a movie not to my liking. I might still check a few additional ones when I’m on the fence. Here’s the playlist for your viewing pleasure:

I always have some ground rules that I break. To start, I will always try to choose the more independent film to the one that feels closer to mainstream. Usually that means skipping the opening film for the alternative. In this case that will mean skipping SADAKO for SWALLOW. Both films have a second showing, so technically I can still catch the other one later. But other films such as THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WKND only have one screening, which means it’s do or die. Unfortunately, that one I will have to skip.

Of course, I will always pick international over USA. Some things are a given. THE GANGSTER, THE COP AND THE DEVIL is a South Korean action film with Don Lee, so you can bet I am there. Asian films will usually have the priority in my list as well as those rare latin films that make it into the selection.

We have some familiar filmmakers to the blog this year. MY FATHER’S SHADOW is another offering by Gabriela Amaral Almeida from Brazil, who brought us FRIENDLY BEAST back in Fantasia 2017. Also coming back is Malik Bader with KILLERMAN, which stars Liam Hemsworth. I actually want to see it more for Nickola Skreli, who was Bader’s lead for CASH ONLY from Fantasia 2015, but I have the feeling this new offering is going to get a distributor very fast, if it hasn’t already. Chances are I will skip it.

Oh yeah, I forgot. I should probably sleep a few times. I’ll make a note of that.

That will do for now.