cinemadaily | “Zombieland,” “Broncos,” “Robogeisha,” and More Invade Fantastic Fest

Austin 360 has an interview with the cast of “Zombieland.”

Watch the trailer 360 for “Zombieland” on YouTube.

Cinematical’s Peter Hall has a review of the festival’s opening night film, “Gentlement Broncos,” from “Napoleon Dynamite” director Jared Hess: “There is nothing inherently wrong with the plot, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with its three biggest cast members, yet the end product is the film equivalent of a 13-year old’s robotripping fever-dream about cyborg Battle Stags (deers with rocket launchers on their sides), creepy “Guardian Angels” (Mike White), terrible science-fantasy writers, pooping snakes, rock-hard balls of popcorn, mamma’s boy angst, and a character whose only contribution to the intended jokes on-hand is always looking like someone has shoved an invisible leaf blower into his mouth.”

“As he did in ‘Napoleon Dynamite,’ Jared keeps both his characters and his audience at arm’s length,” writes Josh Tyler at Cinema Blend. “There’s never any connection between his actors, never any feeling that he understands or sympathizes with these characters, so why should we?”

Sam Rockwell talks about “Gentlemen Broncos” with Austin 360.

Rob Hunter at Film School Rejects reviews one of this year’s two surprise screenings, “Robogeisha”: “Fans of director Noboru Iguchi’s previous films, especially ‘The Machine Girl,’ should find several things to enjoy here. Hot Japanese girls run around wearing outfits designed strictly to be fetishized. Bloody attacks and dismemberments. Metal objects going in and/or out of girls’ asses. Over the top violence that shows a complete disregard for human biology. Normally that in itself would be a problem, but with Yoshihiro Nishimura returning to provide the utterly ridiculous and deliriously entertaining special effects at a blistering pace you don’t have time to stop and complain about anything.”

“Simultaneously a parody of bad melodrama and an explosion of cult excess, ‘RoboGeisha’ takes a (very) basic sisters-competing-for-affection storyline and lifts it out of the standard domestic setting and replaces it with extreme body modification and a clan of geisha-assassins,” writes Todd Brown at Twitch Film. “The girls glare and stomp their feet at each other, then they go and replace their breasts with machine guns. Just when you think Iguchi and Nishimura must have run out of bizarre scenarios and weapons after producing so many of these films they come up with something truly bizarre.”

Cinematical has photos from nearly-nude happening that followed the screening.

Watch the trailer for “Robogeisha” on YouTube.

“‘Trick ‘r Treat’ is the holy grail of Halloween themed horror films,” writes Cinematical’s Peter Hall. “Not because of the notoriously long path writer-director Michael Dougherty’s film has had to take to finally get released… No, Dougherty’s film is such a treasure because it is Halloween. It just had the misfortune of being born a decade too late, of being born into a time when studios only care about remakes or sequels and certainly not about anthology films. Dougherty had, as far as a studio is concerned, the audacity to finely craft, gasp, an original, American horror film.”

‘I have no idea why this languished in development hell for so long, but somebody should lose their job over it,” gushes Brian Salisbury at Film School Rejects. “This film is phenomenal. It is perfectly written, well executed, it looks great, and it’s so much fun. I can see this being the kind of iconic, cult classic that people talk about for decades and throw in every year around this time to get into the spirit of Halloween.”

Watch the trailer for “Trick ‘r Treat” on YouTube.