By Jane Almirall and Shannon Hood
Day three of the festival we got some screenings in, a few interviews, and lots of shorts.
I Saw The Devil Directed by Ji-woon Kim. Starring Byung-hun Lee (The Good the Bad, the Weird) and Min-sik Choi (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance.)
Shannon: I seriously contemplated not attending this screening, because it was so early, and because it was subtitled, and it was 2 and 1/2 hours long.
I am so glad I decided to attend. This Korean revenge movie blew me away, and is my favorite movie of the festival thus far.
I Saw The Devil is a beautiful, brutal, and horrifying revenge tale. It has the most chilling sociopathic villain I have seen in any movie since Hannibal Lector. The 2 and 1/2 hour running time flies by. Full review forthcoming.
Interview: Simon Rumley (director; Red, White, and Blue.) Simon is from London, but directed his film entirely in the Austin area, and even hosted a pub crawl to the various venues that he used in the movie. He talked about the taboos he broke in the movie, the jarring musical score, and how influential pal Tim League helped him with the movie. Full interview forthcoming.
We Are What We Are Directed by Jorge Michel Grau. Starring Adrián Aguirre, Miriam Balderas, Francisco Barreiro, and Carmen Beato. Summary: When the patriarch of the family passes away, the teenage children must take responsibility for the family chores: the preparation of the rituals…
This was a bit of a mixed bag, about a mexican family of cannibals who must make do after the patriarch of the family passes away unexpectedly.
What’s surprising is that cannibals are usually depicted as redneck backwards ass families. This is, by all appearances, a normal family.
They eat humans for “the ritual,” but the movie never really explains what the ritual is. I wish we would have found out more about their motivations for the cannibalism. I’m kind of in the middle on this one.
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