FANTASIA 2012: CRAVE (2012)—Q&A With Director Charles de Lauzirika, producer Raleigh Stewart, production designer David L. Snyder and Actor Josh Lawson

Crave [IMDb / Facebook]—the sold-out SRO Fantasia world premiere of the long anticipated feature directorial debut from regular Ridley Scott collaborator Charles de Lauzirika—stylishly depicts Aiden, an alienated crime scene photographer (Josh Lawson), teetering on the verge of vigilantism. Described by Lauzirika as a mix between Walter Mitty and Travis Bickle, Aiden spends a lot of time in his own head entertaining violent and sexual fantasies that counter an otherwise disempowered existence. Sound familiar? When Aiden becomes attracted to Virginia (Emma Lung), the thin line between love and hate—let alone fantasy and reality—begins to unravel.

Of the one-week sampling of films that I had the pleasure of watching at this year's edition of Fantasia, Crave surfaced as an awakened giant. I predict a robust film festival run and an attractive distribution deal in the near future and it will be heartening to see Lauzirika's debut feature make great strides in festivals to come.

A remarkably fresh genre hybrid that resists and works against genre expectations, Crave is a slightly noirish love story with polished comic flourishes and an unnerving psychological descent. It will speak to the rage each of us feel, betrayed by so-called "civilization", and the fantasies we guiltily crave to act out.

Every single performance is spot-on, most notably lead actor Josh Lawson's sweet, sexy and ultimately disturbing portrayal of everyman Aiden, his love interest Emma Lung as a sweet and sour femme fatale, Edward Furlong as her seedy accomplice Ravi, and the ubiquitous Ron Perlman as police officer Pete in one of the most appropriately restrained roles of his career. Sound design and score add engaging texture and Raleigh Stewart's closing title credits are a whirligig collage that deserve a standing ovation all on their own.

Crave sets a bar so unique that it will stand alone and as one-of-a-kind for quite some time. I'm not alone in my assessment. Crave won the New Flesh Award for Best First Feature. As stated in Fantasia's press release: "This impressive debut captivated the jury with its remarkable production value. Its efficient storytelling and intelligent internal dialogue, generously embracing the author's personality, provided a riveting portrait of a road to madness." At his site, Alex Bowyer describes Crave as "a skillful blend of darkness and light, a movie of laughter and sorrow that defies classification and deserves great success." At Fangoria, Michael Gingold writes: "It's one of the best films to appear this year, and a wide audience should be allowed to find out why." At Entertainment Maven, Matt Hodgson terms it "both endearing and deliciously evil" and at Spectacular Optical Marybel Gervais deems Crave "an arrow straight to the heart." In his way-too-spoilerish review for Variety, John Anderson complains that Lauzirika's admittedly "accomplished debut feature is too funny and self-aware to be disturbing, but it's certainly memorable, and should find a distributor and a place in the hearts of genre fans." Anderson adds that "the film's playfulness causes the action to spike, but renders the tone more erratic."

Speaking of spoilers, the following Q&A transcript is probably not for the spoiler-wary. Consider yourself warned.

* * *

Mitch Davis—Fantasia's Co-Festival Director and Co-Director of International Programming—introduced Charles de Lauzirika as having produced "some of the best home video releases of some of our favorite films from the last 30 years, from the laserdisc period up through DVD and Blu-ray, including restorations for theatrical re-release. Almost every Ridley Scott box set—including the Alien box set that everyone loved a couple of years ago—is Charles' work. He restored Alien 3 (1992) to Fincher's original cut or as close and approximate as possible, which is pretty amazing; it's an epic labor of love. He did the Twin Peaks box set with David Lynch. He's worked with the Coen Brothers. He's worked with about everybody. He has a phenomenal career."

Lauzirika recalled that he'd been wanting to make a feature film since he was seven years old. "My Mom took me to the Hastings Theatre in Pasadena, California to see Jaws. That kind of changed my life, my world, and everything. It's been a long way. It's been a long, circuitous, labyrinthine route to where I am today."

Thanking the audience for coming out for his first feature, Lauzirika hoped they would really like it and admitted, "It's a very personal film. There is a lot of me in this, but after you've seen the film you might not want to talk to me. It fights against genre even though it's built with genre, so you might wonder during the first half of the movie, 'What kind of movie are we watching?', but then I promise you it settles in and then you'll be in for the ride for the rest of the second half."

After "the ride", Lauzirika returned to the stage to interact with his visibly elated audience. He was "numb" because it was the first time he'd shown the final version to an audience. In fact, it was the first time he had seen the film all the way through. He'd made changes as recently as the weekend before. Mitch Davis commented that the film looked much different than the screener Lauzirika had forwarded him three months ago. "Yeah, there was a mad rush at the end," Lauzirika explained, "to do some visual effects on things."

Lauzirika then invited the film's "hero" Raleigh Stewart to join him onstage. Stewart was Crave's associate producer but also digital effects supervisor and end titles designer and Lauzirika credited him with saving the film from continuity errors and issues with practical effects. All the more commendable because Stewart had never done digital effects before. Lauzirika then introduced Crave's production designer David L. Snyder, who was the art director for Blade Runner, and "last, but certainly not least" Josh Lawson whose lead performance made Crave live.

Crave, Lauzirika explained, came about as an intermediate project proposed by his producers before their initiating fundraising for a much bigger science fiction film that Lauzirika has been attached to direct for a couple of years now. He'll be co-writing and directing an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon." Robert Lawton was his next-door neighbor at the time and had an idea about a character—"Travis Bickle meets Walter Mitty"—that Lauzirika found interesting, so they developed the project from there. The first few drafts of the script were vigilante-heavy, like an '80s Cannon Film and, though he wouldn't have minded making a movie like that, Lauzirika was going through a rocky end of a relationship that had left him torn up. He decided to take that and use it to structure the relationship between Aiden and Virginia in Crave. Aiden's emotional mourning over the loss of Virginia was just one way Lauzirika vented through the script.

We live in a Facebook society where our lives are documented, Lauzirika proposed, every few minutes we're uploading our lives by way of images. We update our lives in front of potentially thousands of people. Aiden is documenting the end of people's lives. As a crime photojournalist he is trying to sell some pretty nasty photos of atrocities, which takes quite a toll on him. Coming through the lens in rather than out seemed a good way to explore Aiden's character.

The cast came together very fast for Crave. They were already in Detroit scouting for locations. David Snyder was already "on the ground" even before Lauzirika arrived. Flying by the seat of their pants to get this "low budget scrappy film" up and running, casting received short shrift in terms of timing, but, fortunately, Josh Lawson expressed interest in the script. Lauzirika phoned Lawson in Australia and what he most liked about their conversation was that Lawson got the script from a writing standpoint, not just its tone or how he was going to portray the character; but, on its own narrative terms. Lawson likewise filmed himself in a few scenes and—between the phone conversation and the taped scenes—Lauzirika knew he had his Aiden.

The same thing happened with Emma Lung. He went through a lot of people basically looking for someone who embodied Virginia. As independent filmmaking goes, he knew he wasn't going to get a multi-million dollar actress, but Lung was "absolutely terrific" in the role. "That's the thing," Lauzirika pointed out, "when you're dream casting you might say, 'Oh, I want to get X movie star' but then when you start to think about it, X movie star might not be the best person for the role. You might want to find someone who's actually right for the role, someone who's hungrier and more interesting and has different quirks. Emma had that."

Lawson noted that it was purely coincidental that both he and Emma Lung were Australian. They'd known each other for a long time back in Australia. Lauzirika commented that Lawson, to his credit, adopted an American accent during the full run of the shoot but Lawson reminded Lauzirika that he'd actually been directed "not to drop the American accent ever. Not at lunch breaks. Not at night. Not when we went out. Not on the weekends. Never." Which he never did. But then at the wrap party when he finally dropped the American accent, crew members responded: "What? Why's he talking like that? What is that ridiculous pirate accent?" And he was smiling, in contrast to his "heavy shirt" of a character.

Shooting had already begun before "Eddie" Furlong joined the cast late in the game. Furlong had a rocky history and Lauzirika considered he might be tough to work with, but Furlong turned out to be the sweetest, most professional, and perfectly cast actor, easy to work with, and willing to go through hell, dragged through the dirt covered in blood and sweat. "It was Weekend At Bernie's for him through most of the movie," Lauzirika quipped.

Lauzirika always saw the role of Pete, Aiden's police officer friend, as a good vehicle for a name actor to have as an "and so-and-so" credit. He went through six or seven names and settled on Ron Perlman as the best of the list, let alone perfect for the role. The character Pete was based on a real person, a friend of Robert Lawton's. All four characters, in fact, were loosely inspired by real people in different ways, some virtually 10%, others more, but all the characters had real people to draw upon.

Asked about the film's palette, Lauzirika admitted that the color in the DCP was more de-saturated than he would like and that we'll probably see much more color if the film ever makes it to DVD or Blu-ray. The film's cinematographer Will Eubank—who was at last year's edition of Fantasia with the international premiere of LOVE—has "an amazing sense of lenses." Lauzirika, Eubank and Snyder came up with the visual palette of the film and went for something noirish and moody but used what Lauzirika calls "the fifth character: Detroit".

"Detroit was an amazing backdrop for this story," Lauzirika stated, "it was this beautiful decay. Some people see it as this post-Apocalyptic zombie world but I actually see it as a diamond in the rough. It's a city that could use some love. And I think it could come back if they ever decided to support it economically." The film industry tried but Detroit reduced the incentive down to a point where no one seems interested in going there anymore. They'll go to New Orleans, Louisiana or to Canada "as usual." At any rate, with regard to Detroit as the setting for the film, despite its state of decrepitude, such scenes as those in the loft were shot in a building designed by Albert Kahn, one of the great industrial architects of his time. Kahn designed all the Ford Family structures. At the time, his structures looked like something out of science fiction. Glass walls just weren't done then and replacement glass for the windows had to be brought in from Germany because the U.S. wasn't manufacturing glass for industrial structures.

The building where the play in the film takes place was once Detroit's aquarium; the first aquarium built in the U.S. Though it once housed much sea life, it's now a near-ruin, empty and dry. This might not have been the most obvious choice for this location but the aquarium's proscenium worked perfectly for a theatrical production. Further, an actual playhouse might not have looked as interesting as the aquarium's green tile with the orange lighting coming in from the side. They were always looking for something unusual that would throw expectations off just a bit and whose space it was fun to re-service. They had the advantage of finding several dilapidated buildings because Detroit is in such a sad state and there were plenty to choose from; but, at the end of the day, they chose structures near each other so that they wouldn't have to move the company around unnecessarily.

One of Crave's signature elements is the intensity of its fantasy kills and Lauzirika confessed to editing out a good half hour's worth, including a scene where the audience meets Aiden's landlord who eventually gets his brains blown out. There were additional sex scenes he removed. "Really good sex too!" Lawson jokingly inserted, "I was ... terrific!"

I was taken by Lauzirika's introductory comment that Crave worked against genre and asked him to speak to how his resistance helped shape Crave into such a unique genre hybrid? "It's interesting," Lauzirika responded, "there's sort of the me that was in the moment when we were shooting it and trying to formulate what you just said, and then there is the me now that looks back and can see more clearly. In the moment we were approaching every day as if it were a different film because every day would be a self-contained scene: one day might be a humorous scene and the next day might be a dark scene. That was trying for us to keep our compass in terms of the tone of the film. Overall, I saw the film as a noir, but a playful noir that jumped through other genres, so therefore I didn't feel it was following any particular genre. It was becoming its own thing. I've said this a couple of other times when people have asked me—'Well, what genre is Fight Club? What genre is Taxi Driver?'—they're their own thing, and Crave became its own thing, even though those are amazing classics. Crave, in its own small way, was just trying to find its own tone, its own signature, and its own style. At the time, we were just feeling it out. To be perfectly honest, I didn't have this etched in stone before we started shooting it. We were playing with it as we were shooting.

"There were a lot of happy accidents during the shoot. If someone had storyboarded this out to the nth degree and knew exactly where every shot was going to be, they might have tried to fight even harder against happy accidents. In one case, on Ron Perlman's last day of shooting, I was leaving the hotel to go to set just as Ron was coming into the hotel. I thought, 'Why are you just now coming into the hotel?' He comes up to me and is like, 'So Charlie, here's how it's going to go down. Pete is down with the Rastifarians.' I'm like, 'What? What are you even talking about?' As Ron is saying this, I look up and notice he has this gash in his head, with stitches. It turned out he had fallen and hit his head on a countertop. He'd gotten stitches overnight and then come in. That's when he said, 'Pete is in with the Rastifarians and I want you to get me one of those black, red and green beanies. That's what Pete's going to wear to cover that up.' Some other filmmaker might have said, 'Well, we're going to digitally clean it out, we'll get rid of the wound, and clean all that in post' but, at that point, I was like, 'This film wants to be what it wants to be. Pete is now with the Rastifarians....' That's how that came to be.

"The whole film was filled with little things like that. I don't know why, but it felt right. Only if there was something grievously wrong and we were going to ruin a scene or an emotional moment, would we go against it; but, for the most part, I'd adopt these little things along the way. Again, that goes back to my experience in the documentary world where we would try to capture what we actually had in front of us."

I then asked Lauzirika if he could talk about the film's score and sound design, specifically how he collaged Adrien's self-reflection with overlapping voices. Lauzirika said they worked with several different ideas, including having Lawson in ADR voicing not only his stuff but other people's voices. "For instance, in the scene when Eddie Furlong (Ravi) is in the back seat kind of undead talking, it's the production sound of Eddie, Eddie in the ADR room, and Josh: all three of them doing the lines together but slightly out of synch with each other, overlapping. Josh basically did all the dialogue for all the other actors that appear in his fantasies and it accounts for a subtle little texture." By looping his voice with the other actors, it created an almost subconscious voice. Lawson recalled that—with the scene where Aiden bludgeons the couple at the AA meeting—she's screaming and he remembers ADRing her screams in case they wanted to later use them.

The music was done by Justin Caine Burnett who came in at the last moment. Lauzirika had another composer Christopher Drake attached to the project for months. Drake was a good friend of his. They had collaborated on some good music but then Drake had to bow out because he got a better job. Lauzirika was in London on set documenting Prometheus, just before they started shooting, when Ridley Scott pulled him over and asked how the score was going for Crave? Lauzirika replied they were just about to do the score, would be mixing soon and would then be done. Scott said, "Well, if you need any help with the music, let me know. I know some great guys." That same day Drake called Lauzirika in London and said, "I can't stay with the movie anymore. I have to leave." The next day Lauzirika had to go to Scott with his tail between his legs, saying, "You know when you offered to help? I could probably use some help right now." So Scott hooked him up with several composers who stepped in to offer guidance and advice. All of them were busy with their own projects so Lauzirika ended up interacting with their protegés. The one he got along with the best was Justin Caine Burnett who came in during the last few weeks and knocked out an amazing score.

As to what extras we might expect from the DVD/Blu-ray release of Crave, Lauzirika said that to be perfectly honest—because he has produced extras for the DVD/Blu-rays of other films—he doesn't feel like going full bore on the extras right off the bat. "That's not because I want to milk it later," Lauzirika explained, "I just want to let the film breathe a bit, let it find its audience, let it be itself before I deconstruct every single thing about it. I do these other projects and I love them and cherish every moment of working on them; but, now that it's my film, I don't know if I want to go that deep on it. But we did document every single day, everything's documented, we have tons of footage, tons of deleted scenes, all these extras if we need them. I just don't yet feel the need to come out with a six-hour documentary on the making of Crave."

Asked if when the time came he would take care of that himself, Lauzirika stressed no, he would rather have someone else take it over to provide a different perspective. He's too close to the material.  "One day on set I lost my temper and I threw my hat at the video, I was so pissed off. My assistant was off to the side shooting me with her camera. I looked over and asked, 'Did you get that?' She's like, 'I got it.' I said, 'Good. Because I've done that to other guys and I'm glad I'm getting that treatment now. I'm going through my own rite of passage.' If it needs to be on there, I think some other documentarian should decide whether it goes on there or not."

FANTASIA 2012—THE FIRST WAVE

The 16th annual Fantasia International Film Festival (Fantasia) is gearing up to take Montreal by storm with three weeks of inspiration and thrills beginning July 19, 2012 and continuing through August 7, 2012. Their full 2012 lineup of programming and special events won't be revealed until later this month, but—in anticipation of same—Fantasia announced several selected highlights mid-June to whet appetites.

11/25 The Day Mishima Chose His Own Fate / 11/25 Jiketsu No Hi, Mishima Yukio to Wakamonotachi (Japan) Dir.: Kōji Wakamatsu—Yukio Mishima's masterwork isn't his literature, but the political commitment he pursued even unto death. By retracing the journey of the revolutionary writer, Japanese cinema's enfant terrible Kōji Wakamatsu delivers a violent, rabid critique of militancy. A timely, necessary film. Official Selection: Cannes 2012 [PDF press kit]. IMDb. Wikipedia. North American Premiere.

At Japan Times, Mark Schilling complains: "Kōji Wakamatsu's documentary-like film illuminates the motives behind this quixotic coup attempt, including Mishima's tempestuous relationship with the four young disciples who accompanied him that fateful day, but as a drama it is on the wordy, wooden level of a cable-channel historical reenactment." At Screen, Jonathan Romney describes the film as "glacially analytical" and predicts, "The film's chilly execution and cumbersomely fact-laden narrative will make it a tough export, although it can be expected to thrive at festivals with a bent for rigorous austerity." At Variety, Maggie Lee concurs: "Devoid of drama and shorn of superfluous technical flourishes, the pic uses characters as mouthpieces for political ideology in a manner as indigestible as raw potatoes. Hard going as cinema, yet admirable as an unbiased analysis of misplaced idealism at a particular moment in history, the pic is a worthy study topic but likely commercial suicide for distribs." Mincing no words in his bottom line, The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy concludes: "This thinly realized film makes the Japanese author and militant nationalist look like nothing but a political nutjob."  At Fandor's Keyframe, Anna Tatarska interviews Wakamatsu.

As Luck Would Have It / La chispa de la vida (Spain) Dir: Álex de la Iglesia—Spain's madman auteur reworks Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole for today's world as an absurdist comedy. Stars José Mota and Salma Hayek. Official Selection: Berlin 2012, Tribeca 2012. IMDb. Canadian Premiere.

At Variety, Jonathan Holland writes: "A would-be Death of a Salesman for our times, given that it studies a man prepared to swap his dignity for his family's future, As Luck Would Have It reps an entertaining but unsubtle satire on the moral confusions of a marketing / media-driven world. Though it slickly offers up drama, black comedy and enjoyable perfs in due measure, the pic never develops much bite, though it does bare its fangs. Arguably helmer Álex de la Iglesia's most accessible item to date...." At indieWire, Gabe Toro describes the film as "mordantly funny and sharp as a razor" and proclaims it as "one of the treasures of the Tribeca Film Festival."

Blood-C: The Last Dark (Japan) Dir: Naoyoshi Shiotani—In a futuristic Tokyo where youth struggles for its freedom, Aya must face off against the man who has a stranglehold on the city and nightmarish creatures that are spreading terror. Twelve years after Blood: The Last Vampire, here is the big comeback to the big screen of this influential Japanese animation franchise. Official site [Japanese]. IMDb. International Premiere.

Beast (Denmark) Dir: Christoffer Boe—Nicolas Bro, Marijana Jankovic and Nikolaj Lie Kaas star in this disturbing and poetic nightmare drama that treats Love as both a force of nature and a chemical imbalance. Official Selection SXSW 2012. IMDb. Canadian Premiere.

At Variety, Alissa Simon praises the sharp dialogue and strong performances in this "perversely fascinating psychodrama." At Twitch, Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg characterizes Beast as "A visceral, dark and disturbing portrait of a man whose love drives him to chaos."

Crave (USA) Dir: Charles de Lauzirika—The long anticipated feature directorial debut from regular Ridley Scott collaborator de Lauzirika stylishly depicts an alienated crime scene photographer (Josh Lawson) teetering on the verge of vigilantism. Also stars Ron Perlman and Edward Furlong. IMDb. Facebook. World Premiere.

Citadel (Ireland-Scotland) Dir: Ciarán Foy—A man suffering from extreme agoraphobia confronts murderous packs of feral, hooded children in this powerful and frightening film that took home the Midnighter Audience Award at this year's SXSW. IMDb. Canadian Premiere.

At Variety, Joe Leydon states that Citadel "will be especially nerve-wracking for any parent who's ever doubted whether he or she could overcome immobilizing fear and spring into action to defend an endangered offspring. Foy exploits that cruel doubt with ruthless efficiency in this impressive debut feature." At FEARnet, Scott Weinberg writes: "Citadel employs simple and effective horror tropes in service of a film that has something a little bit angry to say about crime in low-income neighborhoods, but says it in a frank and starkly entertaining fashion." Quiet Earth claims that "Citadel is one of those films that works not because it has a groundbreaking setup or movie monster (it doesn't), but rather because it fully explores its main character's conflict...."

Doomsday Book (South Korea) Dir: Yim Pil-sung and Kim Ji-woon—Yim Pil-sung (Hansel & Gretel) and Kim Ji-woon (A Tale Of Two Sisters) join forces in this anthology film featuring three stories tackling in very different ways as many apocalyptic scenarios. Be prepared to deal with a zombie invasion, a delicate moral dilemma raised by a robot who's the reincarnation of Buddha, and a most unusual object that's about to destroy the planet! Official website [Korean]. Wikipedia. Canadian Premiere.

Graceland (Philippines / USA) Dir: Ron Morales—A working class chauffeur is dropped into the darkest side of the Philippine underworld when his daughter is kidnapped by ruthless mobsters in this shocking crime drama that won major acclaim at the Tribeca Film Festival. Official website. IMDb. Facebook. Canadian Premiere.

 At Complex Pop Culture, Matt Barone describes Morales' Graceland as a "vigorously breathless thriller" that "quickly presents his case, raises the stakes to gargantuan heights, and roars through a plethora of shocks, dangerously concealed secrets, and thick intensity so to-the-point that you'd think he's got a bus to catch." In a separate entry, Barrone commends Morales for turning "a lean storyline into a muscular and aggressive showstopper." At Sound On Sight, Mark Young qualifies that Graceland's "brisk" running length of 83 minutes is all that's "needed to change a film's delivery from 'wallowing' to 'riveting.' " Tasha Robinson interviews Morales at Tribeca for A.V. Club. Gene Shalit likewise speaks with Morales and lead actor Arnold Reyes.

Errors of the Human Body (Germany-USA) Dir: Eron Sheean—Written and directed by Sheean, who penned last year's The Divide, Errors of the Human Body is an unsettling, stylistically bold look at the personal and ethical horrors of modern genetic engineering, oscillating quite ambiguously between pure science and terrifying science fiction. Stars Michael Eklund. IMDb. World Premiere.

Funeral Kings (USA) Dirs: Kevin McManus & Matthew McManus—They're rebellious, irreverent and vulgar. They're ... 14-year-old! Even though they're altar servants, Andy and Charlie are hardly choirboys. When they meet David, a little mama's boy, they'll do anything to force their life philosophy on him. From then on, they'll really get into trouble. With this debut film that was a sensation at SXSW, the McManus Brothers impose themselves a new comic duo to keep a close eye on. Official Selection: SXSW 2012. Official website. IMDb. Facebook. International Premiere.

At Twitch, Scott Weinberg describes Funeral Kings as "a very funny, generally fast-paced, and resoundingly foul-mouthed little comedy. It's got some edge and a little hint of darkness, but it's mostly a rather humane tale about how boys are often forced to become 'mature' at one of the most egocentric stage of their lives." At Hitfix, Drew McWeeny writes that Funeral Kings "is confident and controlled and, with an unabashed vulgarity underscoring everything, about as pure a piece of movie memory as I can name."

The Human Race (USA) Dir: Paul Hough—From the director of The Backyard comes this stunning action / sci-fi / horror film that challenges conventions and takes enormous risks (among them the casting of a charismatic one-legged lead, a deaf performer who execute his scenes via subtitled sign language, etc). An astoundingly impressive achievement. Official site. IMDb. World Premiere.

Isn't Anyone Alive? (Japan) Dir: Gakuryū Ishii—Filmmaker Gakuryū Ishii, who notably directed Electric Dragon 80.000 V under the name Sogo Ishii, returns with this completely off the wall adaptation of an absurdist play about students at a university campus who mysteriously die one after the other. The apocalypse has rarely been this strange and funny. Canadian Premiere.

La Memoria del Muerto / Memory of the Dead (Argentina) Dir: Javier Diment—This bedazzling giallo-inspired supernatural horror film boasts a strong visual design and a ferociously Grand Guignol sensibility. Prepare for Latin American demonic fury. IMDb. Facebook. World Premiere.

A Night of Nightmares (USA) Dir: Buddy Giovinazzo—One year after winning an award at Fantasia for his entry in The Theatre Bizarre, Combat Shock director Giovinazzo is returning to Montreal with this hair-raising and unique occult chiller that stars Marc Senter and Elissa Dowling. World Premiere.

Poongsan (South Korea) Dir: Juhn Jai-hong—In this dark, intense thriller written by Kim Ki-duk (Bad Guy), a mysterious man who regularly crosses the border between the two Koreas to smuggle goods or people finds himself being hunted down by both sides, which will have their hands full with him. IMDb. Wikipedia. North American Premiere.

At Variety, Jay Weissberg says Poongsan "plays like an enjoyable Cold War-themed TV pilot featuring a mute protag of uncertain political persuasion whose physical endurance puts him in the near-superhero category." At The Hollywood Reporter, Maggie Lee declares that "Poongsan injects new life into Korean North-South espionage thrillers with its edgy portrayal of a mysterious man who crosses the DMZ to provide a unique kind of courier service. From its heart-wrenching opening shot to its breathtaking end, the film is unfaltering in its momentum and often unbearable in its intensity, delivering shocks to the system as it runs the extraordinary gamut of love, longing, jealousy, hate, desperation, intrigue, cruelty and madness."

Resolution (USA) Dirs: Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead—A captivating waking nightmare of a film, Resolution tore out of nowhere when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April and made almost every critic's best-of-fest lists. Be prepared for something truly original, scary and special. IMDb. Canadian Premiere.

At Twitch, Peter Gutierrez interviews the directors and writes: "Resolution uses its smarts and DIY feel to create something that works on its own terms, achieving moods and moments that would be impossible to duplicate with a much bigger budget." indieWire also interviews Benson and Moorhead, as does You Won Cannes, Andrew Lucre at Vimeo, and Matt Barone at Complex Pop Culture.

Roller Town (Canada) Dir: Andrew Bush—A riotously funny, high-energy send-up of that ever-so-brief but immortal trend of disco celebration films that boogie-blasted cinemas in the early '80s, Roller Town is the warped brainchild of comedy collective Picnicface, brilliant sketch comedians hailed by many as the SCTV of our day. Official Selection: Slamdance 2012. Official site. IMDb. Facebook. Quebec Premiere.

V/H/S (USA) Dirs: David Bruckner, Glenn McQuaid, Radio Silence, Joe Swanberg, Ti West, Adam Wingard—The latest in an ongoing wave of both sledgehammer-strong anthology horror features and subjectively-shot found-footage chillers, V/H/S ranks among the best of the pack in both camps. Official Selection: Sundance 2012. Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia. Facebook. Quebec Premiere.

At The Hollywood Reporter, Justin Lowe states: "Refreshingly, V/H/S promises no more than it delivers, always a plus with genre fare." At Variety, Dennis Harvey notes that this "passel of rising indie horror helmers and writers, plus a couple of talents new to the genre, put several spins on found-footage fright in V/H/S. Omnibus feature brings energy and diverse story ideas to the subgenre kickstarted by The Blair Witch Project and kept commercially viable these days by Paranormal Activity sequels, but the segments vary in quality and the whole overstays its welcome at nearly two hours."

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Taiwan) Dir: Wei Te-Sheng—The most expensive Taiwanese action epic ever made, Warriors is the extraordinary untold story of the indigenous tribe, the Seediq and their fight for survival. Executive produced by John Woo. Presented roadshow style for the first time in Canada, uncut four-hour version with intermission! Official site. IMDb. Wikipedia.

At Variety, Justin Chang describes the film as a "wildly ambitious rumble-in-the-jungle battle epic arrives bearing so heavy a burden of industry expectations, one wishes the results were less kitschy and more coherent", but "still, the filmmaking has a raw physicality and crazy conviction it's hard not to admire." Chang also writes "there's an impressive degree of variation and anthropological detail in the weaponry and fighting techniques." At The Hollywood Reporter, Deborah Young finds the film "stunning to look at, authentic to a fault and a little tedious to follow", and praised the action set pieces as "spectacular, almost non-stop sequence of grisly hand-to-hand combat scenes." Young nonetheless cautions that "no matter how ingeniously it is varied, the non-stop fighting becomes oppressive in the long run" and the film's best scenes are in its "quieter moments."

Within his preview piece of the New York Asian Film Festival for The Village Voice, Michael Atkinson considers Warriors: "Wei Te-sheng's two-part Seediq Bale (2011) clocks in at more than 4.5 hours, but it moves like a runaway herd through the story of 'the Wushe Incident,' the bloody 1930 uprising of Taiwanese tribes against the occupying Japanese forces. It's a fresh slice of crazy history to us (I didn't know that Taiwan had so many loincloth-wearing headhunter clans deep into the 20th century), and Wei moves methodically, from the 1895 invasion and subsequent years of uneasy coexistence, to the eventual explosion of jungle combat (axes hack, heads roll, blood rivers flow) and the subsequent retaliation by Japan. The robust Seediq tribespeople all look like hunky members of Powers Boothe's extended family, and the film is daffy about the Seediq 'rainbow bridge' mythology, but the unrelenting battles are shot and cut with breathless intensity." [Hyperlinks omitted.]

Wrong (USA) Dir: Quentin Dupieux—If you were among those who caught the international premiere of Dupieux's previous oddity Rubber at Fantasia in 2010, you've got an inkling of the spectacular brand of absurdist imagination you're in store for here. As officially synopsized: "Dolph Springer wakes up one morning to realize he has lost the love of his life, his dog, Paul. During his quest to get Paul (and his life) back, Dolph radically changes the lives of others. In his journey to find Paul, Dolph may lose something even more vital—his mind." Official Selection: Sundance 2012. Official site. Canadian Premiere.

Anticipating Wrong at Sundance (where the film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize), Eric Kohn noted at indieWire: "French director Quentin Dupieux—also known as the DJ artist Mr. Oizo—last caught the attention of the film world with the highest high concept to hit theaters last year with the outrageously meta 'killer tire movie' known as Rubber. Love it or hate it, Rubber was an utterly unique exploration of cinematic narrative, a riotous takedown of Hollywood formula and unapologetically amused with itself from start to finish. Now Dupieux has made a movie seemingly eager to state its edginess in title alone: Wrong, which stars William Fictner and Steve Little, apparently involves one man's quixotic journey to find his missing dog. Early buzz suggests that Dupieux really brought the crazy this time out, and the official synopsis makes it sound that the story really tracks the dissolution of its protagonist's sanity." Kohn then followed suit with his review.

"From the start," Dennis Harvey writes at Variety, "Dupieux seems more delighted with the pic's forced quirkiness than most audiences will be." At The Hollywood Reporter, John Defore notes that lead actor Jack Plotnick's "unkempt persistence" and "a wry score by Tahiti Boy and Mr. Oizo (Oizo being the nom de musique of Dupieux himself) give the film just enough narrative momentum to carry it through short stretches in which cryptic plotlessness threatens to sink it."

Wrong's press kit (PDF) offers insightful interviews with both Director Quentin Dupieux and Producer Gregory Bernard. Further interviews with Dupieux are available at The Hollywood Reporter (which also offers a sneak peek of the film), Anthem, and The Film Stage. An alternate interview with Bernard is available at Screen International.