Monday, September 10, 2012

Munich Fantasy Film Fest 2012 - Conclusion

The MFFF2012 is over and it is time for a report.
I have watched 19 movies and all the reviews can be found under this link.
The overall quality of the movies I have seen is pretty good, if you believe in histograms and in our rating system:
The best I have seen is Eva. It is followed by the excellent Sightseers, God Bless America and The Hidden Face, and the very good Killer Joe, Compliance and Thale. Many movies are then in the category "good", and only a few worse than that.
A vote by the public was organized for the movies in the category "fresh blood", i.e. first or second movie by a director. The palmares is:
3. Eva

It is true that Beasts... is quite good for a first movie, although I preferred Eva to it. In my opinion Violet & Daisy doesn't belong here, while The Hidden Face and Compliance are missing.

Some films I had already seen in the Bruxelles Festival (BIFFF2012):
- The Awakening, that I liked although it is not too original
- Flying Sword of Dragon gate 3D, quickly forgotten

There are some more movies I wanted to watch but couldn't due to parallel screenings, but that I already ordered in Blu-ray:
- Starship troopers: Invasion
- Switch
- The Dinosaur project
- Detention
- Piranha 3DD

Some others I keep on my list to watch in the future:
- Resolution
- Game of werewolves
- Replicas
- Doomsday Book 

After switching many times between the 2 venues (CINEMA theater and CITY Kino), I realized that the CITY Kino is a much better place to watch movies, and for many reasons. The seats are more spaced and are more comfortable, the screen is larger, the room is wider so that the sound is better, and most impotant of all: the screen is higher and the seats are on an incline, so that you have more the feeling of being at the same level as the screen, and you are never disturbed by the heads of the spectator in front of you. This is the most annoying thing in the CINEMA theater.

It was said that this year compiled the most Premieres ever seen in this festival, while on the contrary I had the impression that many movies dated from the previous year (2011), and some were already out in DVD/Blu-ray, or will soon be. I thought that one of the goals of this festival was to find distributors for the movies who don't have one yet.

As a conclusion I would say that the MFFF2012 lacks a "Festival-spirit" like you can find in Bruxelles (BIFFF) or Udine (FEFF). There are no special events around the screenings, no jury... It is also quite expensive: 9 euros per movie, with a pass for the whole festival at the ridiculous price of 185 euros, so you have to watch 21 movies to make it worth (the max number you can watch is about 35, if you don't work during the day!). For comparison in Udine the pass costs 40 euros and you can watch 80 movies.
The German Fantasy Film Fest is more a display of the Science-Fiction, Horror and Thrillers that will hit the cinemas and DVD/Blu-ray shelves in the year to come. In this respect it is quite efficient, and I still enjoy going there to get a head start on the releases of the next year.

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