Extreme cinema-going

Fantastic Film Festival Australia, 23 April to 15 May.

Film festival mode is now complete having been to Lido to see another 30 movies since Hokum. I keep the film reviews and reflections to my Letterboxd account so I won't be repeating all that here. Instead, a few summed thoughts.

Going to see an entire film festival program* means letting someone else completely curate your experience. It's not the same as picking out five or 10 films that look appealing because doing that means missing out on all the other ones. When someone else is in charge of choosing, you open up far greater possibility of surprises. I highly recommend doing this.

This year's program was very strong on folk horror, particularly the trio of Rabbit Trap, The Holy Boy and Her Will Be Done. Whatever my favourite movie was, it was one of those three.

Another huge highlight was the absolute nonsense that is Radu Jude's Dracula, Twilight (which I had never seen before) and the gloriously awful vanity project The Astrologer.

It was also very cool to see several new local movies, particularly the DIY-trashy Wolf Cat Fever and the blood-soaked 80s-style Ozploitation horror Penny Lane is Dead.

Going to the Fantastic Film Festival does mean spending a lot of time in Hawthorn, something of a culture shock, but not as much of a culture shock I'm sure if the people of Hawthorn were spending all their evenings in Footscray. (Footscray is very bombed-out lately I am sad to say.)

My shock was especially acute because The Devil Wears Prada 2 came out while the festival was on, which brought a very large number of very posh people to the cinema. They all seemed to dress up for it, too. Don't they know they're about to get covered in popcorn? Amateurs.

*We did miss a couple of restored classics, but close enough.