I, TONYA
Based on the unbelievable but true events, I, Tonya is a darkly comedic tale of American figure skater, Tonya Harding, and one of the most sensational scandals in sports history.
Though Harding was the first American woman to complete a triple axel in competition, her legacy was forever defined by her association with an infamous, ill-conceived, and even more poorly executed attack on fellow Olympic competitor Nancy Kerrigan. Featuring an iconic turn by Margot Robbie as the fiery Harding, a mustachioed Sebastian Stan as her impetuous ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, a tour-de-force performance from Allison Janney as her acid-tongued mother, LaVona Golden, and an original screenplay by Steven Rogers, Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya is an absurd, irreverent, and piercing portrayal of Harding’s life and career in all of its unchecked—and checkered—glory.
MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A
Drawn from a cache of personal video recordings from the past 22 years, director Steve Loveridge’s Sundance award winning Matangi / Maya / M.I.A is a startlingly personal profile of the critically acclaimed artist, chronicling her remarkable journey from refugee immigrant to pop star.
She began as Matangi. Daughter of the founder of Sri Lanka’s armed Tamil resistance, she hid from the government in the face of a vicious and bloody civil war. When her family fled to the UK, she became Maya, a precocious and creative immigrant teenager in London. Finally, the world met her as M.I.A. when she emerged on the global stage, having created a mashup, cut-and-paste identity that pulled from every corner of her journey along the way; a sonic sketchbook that blended Tamil politics, art school punk, hip-hop beats and the unwavering, ultra-confident voice of a burgeoning multicultural youth.
Never one to compromise on her vision, Maya kept her camera rolling throughout. Matangi / Maya / M.I.A provides unparalleled, intimate access to the artist in her battles with the music industry and mainstream media as her success and fame explodes, becoming one of the most recognizable, outspoken and provocative voices in music today.
THE INVITATION
In this taut psychological thriller by Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body), the tension is palpable when Will (Logan Marshall-Green, Prometheus) shows up to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard, Into the Woods) and new husband David (Michiel Huisman, “Game of Thrones”). The estranged divorcees’ tragic past haunts an equally eerie present; amid Eden’s suspicious behavior and her mysterious house guests, Will becomes convinced that his invitation was extended with a hidden agenda. Unfolding over one dark evening in the Hollywood Hills, The Invitation blurs layers of mounting paranoia, mystery, and horror until both Will—and the audience—are unsure what threats are real or imagined.
MEN & CHICKEN
Men & Chicken is a darkly hilarious slapstick comedy starring Mads Mikkelsen (“Hannibal,” ingeniously cast against type) about a pair of socially-challenged siblings who discover they are adopted half-brothers in their late father's videotaped will. Their journey in search of their true father takes them to the small, insular Danish island of Ork, where they stumble upon three additional half-brothers—each also sporting hereditary harelips and lunatic tendencies—living in a dilapidated mansion overrun by barn animals. Initially unwelcome by their newfound kin, the two visitors stubbornly wear them down until they’re reluctantly invited to stay. As the misfit bunch get to know each other, they unwittingly uncover a deep family secret that ultimately binds them together.
This inventively bizarre and outlandish comedy is directed by acclaimed, Oscar®-winning director Anders Thomas Jensen and also stars David Dencik (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.)
THE WORLD OF KANAKO
An uncompromising revenge thriller of operatic scope, The World of Kanako is a non-stop visual and emotional assault to the senses as it follows troubled ex-detective Akikazu (Kôji Yakusho, 13 Assassins, Babel) on the hunt for his missing teenage daughter, Kanako. What he discovers in his search is an unsettling and harrowing web of depravity — surrounding both Kanako and himself. As Akikazu stumbles along a shocking trail of drugs, sex and violence, he finds himself woefully unprepared for the revelations that affect all he holds dear.
Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima (Confessions, Japan’s submission for the Academy’s® Best Foreign Language Film in 2011), The World of Kanako is an astonishing tour de force of mystery, beauty and boundary-pushing violence. A wildly kinetic and startlingly venomous throwback to the best that Asian extreme cinema has to offer, The World of Kanako offers a trip right up to the edge of a man's private hell — and over it.
RAIDERS!: THE STORY OF THE GREATEST FAN FILM EVER MADE
After Steven Spielberg's classic Raiders of the Lost Ark was released 35 years ago, three 11-year-old boys from Mississippi set out on what would become a 7-year-long labor of love and tribute to their favorite film: a faithful, shot-for-shot adaptation of the action adventure film. They finished every scene...except one; the film's explosive airplane set piece.
Over two decades later, the trio reunited with the original cast members from their childhood in order to complete their masterpiece. Featuring interviews with John Rhys Davies, Eli Roth and more, Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made is just that: the story of this long-gestating project’s culmination, chronicling the friends' dedication to their artistic vision—mixed in with some movie magic—to create a personal, epic love letter to a true modern classic.
SALT AND FIRE (Fantastic Fest 2016 festival guide writeup)
Nearly 35 years after achieving cinematic immortality with the incredible tale of a man's obsessive quest through the Peruvian jungle in Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog returns to South America for Salt and Fire, a quieter—but no less epic—tale of unchecked corporate greed, inexplicable ecological terror and shuddering existential agony.
Just thirty hours ago, Professor Laura Sommerfeld (Veronica Ferres) and her scientist colleagues (Gael Garcial Bernal and Volker Michalowski) were en route to South America to survey the volcanic Diablo Blanco disaster zone on behalf of the United Nations.
Now, she has been detained, handcuffed, and secreted away to an unknown location under armed guard and the unblinking eye of a pillaging corporate imperialist (Michael Shannon) and a terrifyingly withdrawn, wheelchair-bound, machine gun-toting nihilist (noted cosmologist and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss in his acting debut).
Soon, Laura will find herself quite literally at the center of the ecological and political fallout of Diablo Blanco: abandoned and forced to survive with limited provisions in a mysterious and rapidly expanding man-made desert that could one day overrun the world.
Re-teaming with Shannon for the first time since 2009’s David Lynch-produced My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, Herzog continues to gleefully flaunt genre conventions, punctuating his thriller with lyrical monologues, absurd motivations, inexplicable divergences, and fleeting encounters with the poetic and the bizarre — right up to the point of excess. The two films represent challenging, almost frustrating, examples of auteurism come alive and at its most insidious, much like the desert at the heart of Diablo Blanco.
Truly Herzog's most wildly unpredictable film, Salt and Fire is a precision blast by a virtuoso madman at the height of his aspect, and an increasingly outrageous descent into a Hell that we have allowed to be created.