Festival Archives -

THEY WILL KILL YOU MOVIE REVIEW Russian writer/director Kirill Sokolov (Why Don’t You Just Die!) is continuing on with his actiony weirdness wearing its influences on its sleeve with They Will Kill You. Zazie Beetz plays Asia Reeves, a woman who ten years ago was on the run with her little sister trying to protect […]

MIKE & NICK & NICK & ALICE MOVIE REVIEW Writer director BenDavid Grabinski steps into the spotlight with the soft sci-fi crime caper Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. Not to be confused with the 1969 rom-dram Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Grabinski’s film takes place over the course of one tumultuous […]

BUDDY MOVIE REVIEW “It’s Buddy” is an older children’s tv show centered around a lovable orange unicorn who lives in a clubhouse with lots of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse style anthropomorphic friends (the mailbox, the couch, a child’s backpack, etc). A group of human children sing with and learn lessons from Buddy. Only, sometimes one of them […]

KILL ME MOVIE REVIEW Jimmy (Charlie Day) wakes up in his bathtub, filled with his own blood from his slashed wrists. He manages to call a 911 dispatcher named Margot (Allison Williams) who sends in paramedics to save his life. His family (Aya Cash and Jessica Harper) gather around him in his hospital room; this […]

BEAST RACE MOVIE REVIEW The director of the legendary City of God returns for his first Portuguese language film since that one, teaming up with two other directors for Beast Race. Set in a post-climate disaster Rio de Janeiro, the city has come under the control of the very rich who host a violent race […]

I LOVE BOOSTERS MOVIE REVIEW Writer/Director Boots Riley made his bizarre debut in 2018 with the enormously popular Sorry to Bother You. There’s been much anticipation for his second film I Love Boosters and for fans of his socialist surrealism there’s plenty to like here. Keke Palmer plays Corvette, the leader of a group of […]

NORMAL MOVIE REVIEW A decade ago if you told me that Bob Odenkirk was going to have a rebirth as a brutal action movies star, I would have assumed you were talking about a Mr. Show sketch that I must have forgotten about. But here we are, first with the Nobody series, and now he […]

HOKUM MOVIE REVIEW While Irish director Damian McCarthy is a big name in the serious horror fan community, especially after two fantastic films Caveat (2020) and Oddity (2024), his latest film Hokum that premiered at SXSW might just be the one to break him wide. Adam Scott plays Ohm, a successful author on a trip […]

OVER YOUR DEAD BODY MOVIE REVIEW If you never got to see the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip, you missed out on a crazy, bloody, constantly surprising good time of an action, horror, comedy film. While you can still find it on Netflix, now we’ve got the American remake Over Your Dead Body. And you […]

POWER BALLAD MOVIE REVIEW If you don’t recognize the name of the director of Power Ballad, John Carney, you should. He fills a niche in film that you didn’t know you needed: smart, funny, and endearing films about people for whom music plays an important part of their lives. Go see Once, Sing Street, and […]

PRETTY LETHAL MOVIE REVIEW A troupe of ballerinas who are having trouble working together effectively somehow still get invited to a prestigious competition in Hungary. When their bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere, they find a giant hotel to give them shelter. The place is run by a former ballerina, Devora (Uma Thurman) […]

READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME MOVIE REVIEW This sequel to the successful 2019 horror comedy begins exactly where the first one ended: Grace (Samara Weaving) having a smoke after having completely smoked her new in-laws. But a power vacuum has been created by the elimination of this rich clan, and other wealthy clans […]

INFESTATION: FANTASTIC FEST 2025 – MARTIN AND GUINEVERE THOMAS WEIGH IN In what is becoming a Fantastic Fest tradition at Oneofus.net, we invite our good friend Martin Thomas in to discuss some of the films he got to see and loved but Wright and Chris didn’t get to. Only this time, in a first for […]

GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE MOVIE REVIEW Despite the ‘official’ premiere of the first Gore Verbinski film in eight years being at Beyond Fest on 9/28, the ACTUAL world premiere was at the final secret screening of Fantastic Fest on 9/25. His new film Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a dystopian sci-fi […]

BUGONIA MOVIE REVIEW Based on a 2003 South Korean film called Save The Green Planet!, the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos unsurprisingly stars his new muse Emma Stone but it is her co-star Jesse Plemons who steals the show. Bugonia was a secret screening this year and we were here for it (in both a […]

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER MOVIE REVIEW At Fantastic Fest every year they have a series of ‘secret screenings’. These can vary from tiny films you’ve never heard of to premieres of giant films. Way back when, the fest got on the map when they did the premiere of There Will Be Blood at a secret […]

WHEN WE WERE LIVE MOVIE REVIEW In his documentary about Public Access Television in Austin, Texas in the 80s and 90s, director John Spottswood Moore had a LOT of material to sift through. Austin’s station was by far one of the most prolific in the country (second only to NYC, I believe). Let me tell […]

SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE MOVIE REVIEW Actor Jorma Tommila returns to his character in Sisu (no, his name is not Sisu) in a bigger, bloodier, more insane affair, as you would expect to a sequel to Sisu. Road to Revenge has him returning to the part of Finland that he used to live with his […]

THE FORBIDDEN CITY MOVIE REVIEW Genre-fusing sometimes is an awkward affair, ending up with a film that doesn’t know what it is. But sometimes it creates something that feels very new. Sometimes it ends up being epic. Fortunately this is the case for The Forbidden City. The story follows Mei, a girl who along with […]

BEAST OF WAR MOVIE REVIEW When a ship of Australian soldiers goes down in the middle of the ocean on their way to fight in WWII, only a handful survive. They find themselves in a calm, windless sea on a makeshift raft. There’s no water, food, several are seriously injured, and there’s one big and […]

IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU MOVIE REVIEW Linda (Rose Byrne) is so very, very tired. She has a young daughter with severe enough of an eating disorder that she needs to be fed by a stomach tube or she will die. Her husband is away for work so she has to do everything […]

OBSESSION MOVIE REVIEW We’ve all been in a position where we cared so very deeply for someone and wished they felt the same for us but felt hopeless to make it happen. Bear (Michael Johnston) probably isn’t hopeless with his feelings for Nikki (Inde Navarrette) being reciprocated but he’ll never know. Because he used a […]

PRIMATE MOVIE REVIEW Lucy is coming home from college to stay with her family in their implausibly awesome home on a cliff in Hawaii. Her two friends Kate and Hannah are coming as well but Hannah is in for a big surprise: there’s another member of the family they didn’t tell her about: a chimpanzee […]

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT MOVIE REVIEW We could understand if trashy slashers from the 80s (no matter how fun they might be to some of us) were not your thing, that you might avoid a modern remake of one of the most infamous of them, Silent Night, Deadly Night. However, you would be doing yourself […]

THE CURSE MOVIE REVIEW Bringing back a 90’s J-horror vibe, director/writer Kenichi Ugana (Visitors) dives into technology curses with their new film, The Curse. Riko and her roommate have a friend back in Taiwan who has posted an odd and creepy picture on their social media. Even weirder, the text is uncharacteristically dark as are […]

SHELBY OAKS MOVIE REVIEW A popular online video series of paranormal haunt investigators turns into a huge mystery when after going to investigate an abandoned town, Shelby Oaks, all four members of the cast go missing. The case drags on for years and years until only the sister of one of them still is determined […]

IKATAN DARAH MOVIE REVIEW This Indonesian action film from legend Iko Uwais’s new production banner follows Mega, a talented athlete and fighter whose career is sidelined from an injury. Her brother is a serious but unsuccessful gambler and after gambling the deed to their house away, goes to the gangster he owes money to in […]

INFESTATION: FANTASTIC FEST 2025 – COYOTES Justin Long and Kate Bosworth both are a married couple and play one in this horror film set in the Hollywood Hills. When coyotes suddenly start showing up in their neighborhood and attacking/killing the neighbors, the family must band together, with the additional aid of a ‘lady of the […]

ANOTHER WORLD MOVIE REVIEW Maciej Kur is back and he is once again covering the Annecy Animation Festival in France! Spidermike joins him to take a look at some of the wild new animated films from around the world coming out soon. Ready for something whimsical yet very dark? Gudo is a child-like spirit guiding […]

ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED MOVIE REVIEW Maciej Kur is back and he is once again covering the Annecy Animation Festival in France! Spidermike joins him to take a look at some of the wild new animated films from around the world coming out soon. Based on the award winning novel by Ahmadou Kourouma, this story […]

LITTLE AMELIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN Maciej Kur is back and he is once again covering the Annecy Animation Festival in France! Spidermike joins him to take a look at some of the wild new animated films from around the world coming out soon. Finally, a French movie from this very French festival of […]

INTO THE MORTAL WORLD MOVIE REVIEW Maciej Kur is back and he is once again covering the Annecy Animation Festival in France! Spidermike joins him to take a look at some of the wild new animated films from around the world coming out soon. China has been in the CGI game for some time adapting […]

OLIVIA AND THE INVISIBLE EARTHQUAKE MOVIE REVIEW The sad puppet movie of the year from Spain, takes us into lives of 12 year old Oliva and her younger brother Tim. After their mom, an actress past her prime, can’t get a new role, the family is evicted from their building and has to get used […]

A MAGNIFICENT LIFE MOVIE REVIEW Maciej Kur is back and he is once again covering the Annecy Animation Festival in France! Spidermike joins him to take a look at some of the wild new animated films from around the world coming out soon. From Sylvain Chomet, the brilliant mind behind The Triplets of Belleville, The […]

CHAO MOVIE REVIEW Maciej Kur is back and he is once again covering the Annecy Animation Festival in France! Spidermike joins him to take a look at some of the wild new animated films from around the world coming out soon. From the innocent and unsuspecting country of Japan comes Yasuhiro AOKI’s first full-length feature […]

THE CREEP TAPES SERIES REVIEW After two successful and highly thought of found footage movies, Mark Duplass as Josef with Patrick Brice back in the director’s chair return to tell more stories of the strangest serial killer in The Creep Tapes. Going from films to a six-episode Shudder tv series may seem like an ‘uh-oh’ […]

ESCAPE FROM THE 21ST CENTURY MOVIE REVIEW Three High School best friends, after an encounter with some toxic waste, get a super-inconvenient superpower. Whenever they sneeze, their bodies in 1999 fall unconscious and their minds go into their own bodies twenty years in the future. This also apparently wipes out the personalities that exist in […]

DADDY’S HEAD MOVIE REVIEW A young boy named Isaac whose father has just died, and who not long before had to deal with the death of his mother, is withdrawn and upset. Laura (Julia Brown) had recently married Isaac’s father and now as the sole caregiver without much of a connection with the boy even […]

BETTER MAN MOVIE REVIEW Oh My God, It Was Earth All Along, You Finally Made a Monkey Out of Me. It was a missed opportunity not to have iconic singer Robbie Williams belt out a version of the Troy McClure song in the biopic about his life Better Man. Why? Because the part of Robbie […]

THE APPRENTICE MOVIE REVIEW Get ready for the movie that gives you the story of why we live in such an insane world. The story of Donald Trump and how he got to be…well…like he is. Sebastian Stan takes on Trump with a measured performance as we see him at first as a young man. […]

HOUSE OF SPOILS MOVIE REVIEW Ariana DeBose plays Chef, who has just gotten her big shot thanks to an enthusiastic investor (Arian Moayed) to run her own restaurant. It’s going to be very high-end, set in a crumbling mansion way out in the countryside. Expectations are high and she is ready to deliver, despite being […]

TRIZOMBIE MOVIE REVIEW In another ‘probably only at Fantastic Fest’ movie, one of the few zombie entries this year was the Belgian film Trizombie. In most ways this is a traditional zombie story with a group of survivors who must make a trek across zombie infested areas in order to reach their goal. The difference […]

DON’T MESS WITH GRANDMA MOVIE REVIEW There are a lot of home invasion films out there these days, some of ’em pretty scary and intense. That is NOT the vibe that Don’t Mess With Grandma (formerly Sunset Superstar) is going for. Michael Jai White plays Jasper, a gentle giant and a big Dio fan who […]

DEAD TALENTS SOCIETY MOVIE REVIEW It’s odd to describe a film with as much gore and supernatural scary stuff in it as Dead Talents Society as ‘delightful’ and even ‘heartwarming’, but here we are. It’s the sort of thing that can happen at Fantastic Fest. This Taiwanese film takes place on Earth, but from the […]

THE WILD ROBOT MOVIE REVIEW Dreamworks Animation is here with another big prestige project, The Wild Robot. With Chris Sanders at the helm, who directed Lilo & Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon, and The Croods, you can be reasonably sure it’s going to be a good one. And lo, it delivers. The story takes […]

HEAVIER TRIP MOVIE REVIEW One of the low-key hits of 2018 among folks who actually go to see bizarro foreign films at movie fests was Heavy Trip. The story followed the four members of the metal band Impaled Rektum and their insane misadventures. Basically, Wayne’s World in Europe but with a more surreal and very […]

SATURDAY NIGHT MOVIE REVIEW The story of Saturday Night Live’s beginnings is one of a show hindered by chaotic creatives, unconvinced executives, drugs, sex, and one very beleaguered but determined showrunner. Director Jason Reitman brings us the story of the 90 minutes before SNL went live for the first time and how close it came […]

ANORA MOVIE REVIEW Writer/director Sean Baker hits Fantastic Fest with the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes this year, Anora. Ani (Mikey Madison) is a stripper whose life in New York City is filled with parties, sex, and fun. Because she can speak Russian, her boss connects her with a young Russian son of an oligarch […]

TERRIFIER 3 MOVIE REVIEW One of the best things about Fantastic Fest is how there’s something very nichey for every taste. And if your taste runs to unbelievably explicit gore and goofy clown killers, then you already know all about director/writer Damien Leone’s Terrifier series. The third entry dips into the beloved subgenre of Xmas […]

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN MOVIE REVIEW John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush play two men in a nursing home who go to war with each other. That’s certainly enough of a selling point alone for the Fantastic Fest film, The Rule of Jenny Pen. But the film we saw wasn’t exactly what we expected. Rush […]