FANTASIA 27 - Week 1

Fantasia International Film Festival
27th Edition
Week 1

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, staff writer and podcast czar

My first exposure to The Fantasia International Film Festival was in 2020 where I saw a half dozen tremendous films that I would otherwise probably not have been exposed to (I’ve only encountered two of them on streaming services in the years since). This is the strength of all film festivals, but especially ones like Fantasia which gather movies, documentaries and shorts from around the world - essentially each year I excitedly open the festival preview emails whispering “Yes… expand my cinematic horizons, daddy.”

I try to take in as many films as I am given access to, not just for my own enjoyment, but yours reading this as well. While I won’t be going into deep detail on any of the films below, maybe one of them sounds like your kind of jam. Then the impetus is on you to seek it out, and I hope you like what you find.

Stay Online
Written by Anton Skrypets, Eva Strelnikova
Directed by Eva Strelnikova
Starring Elizaveta Zaitseva, Oleksandr Rudynskyy, Ekaterina Kisten

Stay Online wasn’t something that I was champing at the bit to see, but it pleasantly surprised me with its creativity and ability to keep its numerous simultaneous plot lines engaging. Stay Online is what’s being called a screenlife film - a film told entirely through a computer or smartphone screen via text windows, video messaging, and surfing the ‘net - set in the Ukraine during Russia’s invasion (which is still ongoing btw). Katya (Elizaveta Zaitseva) checks in with her brother Vitya (Oleksandr Rudynskyy) on the front line, her American friend Ryan (Anton Skrypets) a volunteer helping refugees get to safe zones, and keeps her & Vitya’s mother up to date on Vitya’s status, while also finding time to secure and ship a Spider-Man costume for a young boy whose parents may not have gotten safely out of a war zone. That’s in between sheltering in the bathroom when the air raid sirens go off.

Like I said: It’s a lot of threads, all mingling through Katya and her donated laptop, but Stay Online uses some very clever tricks to maintain the illusion that it’s all happening in real time. It keeps the tension dialed up, builds emotional connection to flawed, complicated characters, and attempts to communicate a fraction of the overwhelming dread that existing in a war zone feels like.

Lovely, Dark, and Deep
Written by Teresa Sutherland
Directed by Teresa Sutherland
Starring Georgina Campbell, Nick Blood, Wai Ching Ho

Lovely, Dark, and Deep focuses on one of my favorite spooky topics: the volume of unexplained disappearances that take place in our National Parks. The first feature from writer Teresa Sutherland (Midnight Mass, The Wind), Lovely, Dark, and Deep is loaded with strange happenings, eerie details, and the inherent alienness of nature experienced in solitude. Lennon (Georgina Campbell) is competent and dedicated to her job as a new park ranger, but has an ulterior motive: investigating the disappearance of her sister when they were children. She sets out for days at a time to chart the various areas of the park all alone, but there are dangerous things in the wilderness, and they know she’s looking for them.

This has some top tier scares in it and sets the spooky mood with surety and finesse. In a movie that tackles these kinds of themes, everything hinges on the payoff; is the explanation of events satisfying or does it feel like the filmmakers have skirted the responsibility of an answer? Lovely, Dark, and Deep, despite budgetary constraints, hits just the right forlorn, eerie, existentially chilling tone that I think audiences will respond to.

White Noise
Written by Christina Saliba, Tamara Scherbak
Directed by Tamara Scherbak
Starring Bahia Watson, Ryan Hollyman, Guifre Bantjes-Rafols

Short films have comparatively little time and resources with which to draw an audience in, but White Noise from director Tamara Scherbak does an admirable job. Taking a real life aural disorder - misophonia, an aversion to sounds - and a real life oddity - an anechoic chamber - and crafting a tidy little scenario that builds tension to an unsettling finale.

The performances are mostly brief, with the exception of leading lady Ava (Bahia Watson), and uniformly solid, but the real star of White Noise is the sound mixing and effects. Once Ava is left for her session in the sound-canceling room, the blanketing silence is slowly replaced by increasingly unsettling biological sounds: her heartbeat, the blood in her veins, her joints creaking, and on and on, becoming an oppressive cacophony. It’s deeply unnerving and, if you’ll pardon the pun, disquieting.

Mami Wata
Written by C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi
Directed by C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi
Starring Evelyne Ily Juhen, Uzoamaka Aniunoh, Emeka Amakeze

Shot in delectable black and white, Mami Wata tells a mythic story of heritage under attack from outside forces. Can the peaceful village of Iyi survive when its leadership, an intermediary between the village and a powerful water deity, falls under scrutiny through a perfect storm of mistrust, apathy, and jealousy?

Though the middle of this came across as a bit inert for me, I never lost interest due to the absolutely transfixing black and white cinematography (Lílis Soares) and direction (C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi).

Restore Point
Written by Tomislav Cecka, Zdenek Jecelin
Directed by Robert Hloz
Starring Andrea Mohylová, Matej Hádek, Milan Ondrík

Another film where the description left me expecting less, Restore Point has much more going on than just its ‘a future where a service exists allowing people to be brought back to life after an unnatural death’ setting. The world is nuanced and detailed, and the details matter: the fact that the RP must be backed up every 48 hours is a neat point that actually has significance.

But the overall story is what really shines here: a noir-adjacent thriller with cyberpunk undertones where a cop (Andrea Mohylová) must team up with a recently deceased scientist (Matej Hádek) to track a terrorist group trying to bring down the entire RP system on the eve of its privatization. The characters are flawed, desperate, and almost always just a step behind where they need to be, and that makes for a riveting watch.

Vincent Must Dies
Written by Mathieu Naert
Directed by Stéphan Castang
Starring Karim Leklou, Vimala Pons, François Chattot

Y’know how some things are said to be “shaped like a friend”? Well for some reason, many, many people one day seem to find that mild mannered office worker Vincent (Karim Leklou) is shaped like an enemy. Neither Vincent nor the movie seem that concerned with figuring out why, being more interested in Vincent’s just trying to figure out a way to be.

I saw a brief interview with the director (Stéphan Castang) where he said that he was interested in crossing genre lines with this film, including horror, comedy, and romance, and while I think it does blur those boundaries, it does them a little modestly for my taste. I did enjoy the film overall, but would have liked a little something extra from it.

Shin Kamen Rider
Written by Hideaki Anno, Shotaro Ishinomori
Directed by Hideaki Anno
Starring Sôsuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe, Tasuku Emoto

I’m only familiar with the Kamen Rider mythos through cultural osmosis, so I’m not sure how much of this tale about a motorcyclist resurrected through cybernetic and genetic augmentation to fight other augmented cyborgs (all themed around insects) is accurate. BUT what’s important is: I don’t care. It’s impossible to stop and question the logic of Shin Kamen Rider when the story is barreling ahead like a grasshopper-themed cyborg on a specially-made motorcycle; his red scarf flapping heroically in the breeze.

This film crams what feels like an entire trilogy’s worth of story into one 2 hour block and it’s only the slightest bit overwhelming. But the pure vibrant, gory, action-packed fun makes it worth the small amount of emotional exhaustion. The tremendous villain performance from Mirai Moriyama as Ichiro doesn’t hurt either.

Transylvanie
Written by Rodrigue Huart, David A. Cassan, Axel Wursten
Directed by Rodrigue Huart
Starring Katell Vervat, Lucien Le Ho, Emma Guatier

Part Let the Right One In, part George Romero’s Martin, this French short is a complete blast. Watching 10 year old Ewa (Katell Vervat) plan to make handsome, slightly-older neighbor boy Hugo (Lucien Le Ho) in her legion of undead followers, despite his relationship to local mean girl Gwen (Emma Gautier) completely hooked me right from the jump.

Is the subject material familiar? Sure, but it’s handled with a freshness that lends each of its slim assemblage of scenes an energy that makes them hard to ignore. The worldbuilding done at the fringes of this short is subtle, but deeply effective. I felt more affection and camaraderie for Ewa within 20 minutes than I did for characters I’d spend several times that amount in other offerings. There’s not much market for short films, nor is there one simple place to seek them out, but I’m looking forward to anything director/co-writer Rodrigue Huart does in the future.

The First Slam Dunk
Written by Takehiko Inoue
Directed by Takehiko Inoue
Starring Shugo Nakamura, Subaru Kimora, Maaya Sakamoto

I’m familiar with the Slam Dunk series in reputation only but I was genuinely excited to check this out. I’m not sure what I expected of an animated feature film based on a basketball manga from the early ‘90s, but I’ll say this: I wasn’t disappointed. Set entirely during one important game, the psychology of the teams was fascinating, clearly explained, and doled out in reasonable amounts, and the characters were fleshed out through a series of flashbacks that were genuinely touching.

The film’s focal character is small fry Ryota Miyagi (Shugo Nakamura) who has struggled his whole life to escape from the shadow of his deceased basketball star older brother, but the standout character for me was red-haired troublemaker Hanamichi Sakuragi (Subaru Kimora) who - fun fact - it turns out is actually kind of the protagonist of the series as a whole! It’s worth noting that the animation is stunning and makes every gameplay minute riveting.

The Fantastic Golem Affairs
Written by Juan González, Nando Martínez
Directed by Juan González, Nando Martínez
Starring Brays Efe, Bruna Cusí, Javier Botet

Easily the most unique film I’ve seen thus far at Fantasia, The Fantastic Golem Affairs (El fantástico caso del Golem) exists in a world entirely its own. When Juan (Brays Efe)’s best friend David (David Menéndez) slips and falls from the apartment building’s roof during a game of movie title charades, instead of becoming a big messy pile of meat and bone, he shatters. Turns out David was a golem, artificial humanoids designed to be friends and lovers for socially deficient humans, whether the humans know it or not.

That’s only scratching the surface of the bizarre and creative, silly and horny, and through and through colorful world that Juan González and Nando Martínez have created, and I won’t spoil more than I’ve already mentioned but needless to say: it’s a lot of fun. The ending isn’t quite as bombastic or scintillating as the set-up and world as a whole, but it’s far from a let-down, and still entirely worth your time.

Fantasia International Film Festival runs until August 9th in Montreal, Quebec. Tickets are available HERE. 

Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 - Preview

Fantasia International Film Festival
27th Edition
July 20th - August 9th, 2023

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, staff writer and podcast czar

Returning for its 27th Edition, this July 20th - August 9th, the Fantasia International Film Festival is Montreal, Québec, Canada’s cavalcade of unique yet universally exciting films, most of which would otherwise go unnoticed by your average audience. Fantasia grew out of a love for Asian genre cinema into a renowned festival dedicated to “creating bridges between the cutting edge and the mainstream”. Focusing on genre films from around the globe, usually of the lower budget, lower profile variety; in short, the kinds of films that don’t get wide release marketing pushes unless they’ve won accolades from somewhere like Fantasia. Over the years the festival has been a beloved destination for fans and filmmakers alike, warranting glowing praise from, among others, the world’s foremost ambassador of genre film - Guillermo del Toro, who referred to Fantasia as “a shrine”. Personally, I have been lucky enough to have numerous mind-expanding, breathtaking, eye-popping film experiences within Fantasia’s program.

This year’s lineup is as borderline overwhelming as ever, and it feels like they’re announcing more movies every day! Below I’ve assembled a selection of the films that have grabbed my attention with both fists for one reason or another and will be at the top of my To Watch list once the festival kicks off. I’ve divided them into some loosely defined “categories” to help me keep track of them, and to help showcase the width and breadth of Fantasia’s 2023 offerings, with my main pick set apart.

_______________________________________ Horror ________________________________________

When I think “genre” I think “horror” and this year’s Fantasia has almost too much horror on offer. For instance: A queer filmmaker finds herself as the only one who can detect the parasites taking over a small town in T Blockers from eighteen year-old filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay (her third feature!). The new film Perpetrator from Jennifer Reeder (who you may know from Knives and Skin) sounds bewitching: on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, a troubled teen girl experiences a magical metamorphosis due to a familial enchantment which will aid her in searching for the person responsible for a series of disappearances at her school. Then there’s In My Mother’s Skin from director Kenneth Dagatan: the first film co-produced by the funding boards of three countries (the Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan), it follows a young woman whose attempts to protect her dying mother are undermined by her misplaced trust in an evil fairy.

Then there’s the Sundance hit Talk to Me which has been the, no pun intended, talk of the town. Following a group of Australian teens dealing with the fallout from a seance involving an embalmed hand, Talk to Me is being described as one of the scariest films in recent years. It also has a creepy kangaroo jump scare in the trailer, which immediately hooked me!

______________________________________ Animation ______________________________________

For as long as I’ve been aware, Fantasia has featured a treasure trove of all kinds of animation. Without even discussing the short films (always a haven for unusual animated projects), this year’s festival is no different. The steampunk detective adventure Kurayukaba is set around a train traveling the dreamlike tunnels beneath a metropolis. Animated in a traditional anime style with 3D elements like the train, this looks extremely intriguing and mysterious. The Chinese feature Deep Sea looks staggering and whimsical, achieved in part by using “a cutting-edge digital particle-animation technique” that emulates an ink-wash painting style to tell the tale of a young girl seeking answers from within by traversing an oceanic dream world. Then there’s the box office record breaking sports anime The First Slam Dunk, the first addition to the super popular Slam Dunk franchise in 33 years! It’s about basketball, in case you didn’t realize.

The film that most caught my attention however, is Mother Land. A stop-motion modern fable from South Korea set in the Siberian tundra, it follows a young girl traveling into the unknown wilderness in search of an old spirit who may be able to heal her mother. Though the animation is not unlike the work of Laika studios, it doesn’t seem nearly as whimsical, coming across as more solemn and mystical. It’s giving me almost a Studio Ghibli tone. Most intriguing of all, it’s South Korea’ first stop-motion animated feature in 45 years! I’m very excited to see what inspired writer/director Park Jae-beom to break the streak.

______________________________________ Romance ______________________________________

As a hopeless romantic and genre fan, I’m always on the lookout for cool, genre-bending love stories. The Becomers seems like just the thing: starring a pair of body-swapping aliens who’re just trying to find their place on our planet. What’s not to love? Then there’s My Animal, a queer horror drama (co-starring Amandla Stenberg from Bodies Bodies Bodies) that “flips the script of Ginger Snaps”; very intriguing. Another that caught my eye was With Love and a Major Organ, a high-concept sci-fi commentary on dating in the age of apps, which has a truly batnanas plot description. Any movie where the female lead rips her heart out AND THAT’S when things start to get rough? You have my attention.

The love story I’m most looking forward to is Killing Romance. Another truly unique description, this “madcap musical comedy” follows a once-popular actress and her student neighbor (who also talks to animals) as they decide to eliminate her controlling husband so she can mount a career comeback. Even if she and the neighbor don’t fall in love during their misadventures, there’s nothing like seeing an awful relationship come to a hopefully hilarious end to make you appreciate your own loved one(s).

______________________________________ Popcorn _______________________________________

Some movies try to convey a message, while some endeavor only to entertain. Some even manage to do both. Empire V follows a student invited to join an elite group that turn out to be vampires. The trailer is filled with enthralling visuals (and a breathy pop cover of Muse’s Knights of Cydonia), features fascinating world building, and has apparently been banned in its native Russia due to the presence of anti-war Russian rapper Oxxxymiron in a co-starring role. Wild stuff. Meanwhile Hideaki Anno’s Shin Kamen Rider, following the creation of the titular grasshopper-themed superhero, has all of the visual punch with none of the oppressive politics. Then there’s The Sacrifice Game, director Jenn Wexler’s sophomore feature about two students at an all-girls school in the 1970s defending themselves against cultists when left alone during the holidays. I wasn’t able to find a trailer for this one, but if it’s anything like her 2018 feature film debut The Ranger, it’s sure to be entertaining. Whether or not these deliver on deeper meaning, they certainly seem like a blast simply to watch.

The same could be said for my top choice. Making its North American premier, Vincent Must Die follows the seemingly unremarkable title character who finds himself under assault from almost everyone he encounters for seemingly no reason. Described as a mix of genres, including horror, comedy, romance, fantasy and thriller, the premise alone seems like enough to keep my eyes glued to the screen for two hours.

____________________________________ Favorite Actors ____________________________________

Compiled from films from around the world, the Fantasia lineup is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to their casts. Even so, It’s always a pleasant surprise to see a favorite familiar face in the cast list. Perennial genre fan (and fan favorite) Nicolas Cage co-stars as The Passenger alongside Joel Kinnaman as The Driver in Yuval Adler’s carjacking thriller Sympathy For the Devil. The flick looks intense, so buckle up. On the other end of the spectrum is Aporia, a time-bending bit of speculative sci-fi starring living legend Judy Greer as a woman who lost her husband in a drunk-driving accident and teams with the husband’s physicist best friend to experiment with a new technology the two had been developing, which may be able to fix things for them all. Finally there’s Nick Stahl, a talented actor who kept almost breaking into the mainstream through the late ‘90s and early 2000s and has been making a strong comeback in the last few years. His performance in Fantasia thriller What You Wish For is being described as “a career best” playing a chef with a gambling problem who adopts the identity of a wealthy friend. Love that for him.

Then there’s David Dastmalchian who is one of the most interesting character actors of the last few years (and it’s a crowded field). In Late Night with the Devil, he plays late night television host and recent widower Jack Delroy during a disastrous live broadcast in 1977 that unleashes evil into the homes of his viewers. Stephen King has said that the flick is “absolutely brilliant” which is enough for me to move it directly to the top of my list.

_________________________________ Last Drive-In Alums __________________________________

Some of the films at this year’s Fantasia come from filmmakers who’ve had movies featured on Shudder's The Last Drive-In, hosted by Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl. These include genre mainstay and dare I say legend Larry Fessenden, whose lycanthropy horror thriller Blackout finally allows him to reimagine familiar werewolf movie tropes in much the same way as he’s approached vampires in Habit (1995) and Frankenstein’s monster in Depraved (2019). The familial collective the Adams family - mother/father/daughter team Toby Poser, John Adams and Zelda Adams - follow up their breakout feature Hellbender (2021) with the depression era film Where the Devil Roams which follows a family of sideshow performers searching for eternal life. Both films have piqued my interest, due in part to Joe Bob Briggs’ interviewing the filmmakers during their respective episodes. Hearing the filmmakers talk about making their films, and seeing them get to be themselves really endeared them all to me, much the way that a good fanzine interview would.

Though he wasn’t interviewed by Joe Bob, director Joe Lynch’s ultraviolent workplace revenge actioner Mayhem (2017) was similarly featured on an episode of The Last Drive-In. His Fantasia entry Suitable Flesh is being described as a “loving tribute to the late Stuart Gordon”. Gordon is a favorite filmmaker of mine, and Lynch is treading in familiar Gordon territory by adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s story The Thing on the Doorstep into a film starring Heather Graham as a psychiatrist who becomes infatuated with a young patient of hers (Judah Lewis) who exhibits otherworldly symptoms. Nobody realized Lovecraft’s stories and characters in quite as post-psychedelic a fashion as Stuart Gordon and I’m legitimately very excited to see Joe Lynch’s approach. Suitable Flesh also stars Bruce Davison, Jonathan Schaech, and Gordon collaborator and legend Barbara Crampton.

___________________________________ Special Projects ____________________________________

Fantasia frequently plays host to unique projects like film restorations, special screenings and idiosyncratic events. This year is no different with a book launch for the genre anthology Haunted Reels, featuring readings from authors in attendance like Jay Baruchel, C. Robert Cargill, and Benson & Moorhead, plus others! There’s also a Canadian Trailblazer Award presentation for filmmaker Larry Kent, which includes 4K restorations of three of his most seminal films: The Bitter Ash (1963), Sweet Substitute (1964), and When Tomorrow Dies (1965). I was unaware of Larry Kent, even by reputation, but in researching him in relation to this award, I’m now very keyed up to check out his work. 

In a similar vein, this year’s Fantasia will host the world premier of The Primevals, from special effects whiz David Allen. When a sasquatch-like creature is encountered and killed, and its skeleton eventually brought back to civilization, a team of explorers set out to find a living specimen and end up in a lost valley that time forgot where there are even more creatures than they expected! Allen’s credits include special and visual effects work on everything from Q the Winged Serpent (1982), to Willow (1988), to Ghostbusters II (1989), to The Arrival (1996) and, importantly, the large chunk of the Full Moon Films universe, including the Puppet Master series, Subspecies series, and more. Basically every film you’ve ever seen where the quality of the stop-motion effects had vastly outpaced the film that contained them. Conceived in the ‘70s and begun in the ‘90s, The Primevals was to be David Allen’s magnum opus for Full Moon. Sadly, production stopped when Allen passed away in 1999. But now it will finally be realized, using the original assets and finished with guidance from Allen’s own storyboards. I’m sincerely so excited that this film will finally be seen!

Vive les films !

Tickets for the 27th Fantasia International Film Festival can be purchased HERE.

FILW Trios Championship recap (March 2023)

Flickering Image League Wrestling
Trios Tag Team Championship Match

Crimes of Passion pay-per-view recap

By Hunter Bush & Bryan Bierman

It was a result few wanted, but it’s the one we got.

Monsters Inc. have captured the FILW Trios Tag Titles from the grasping hands of The Three Amigos last night at the Crimes of Passion pay-per-view event in Mahoning, PA, after a hard-fought and bloody match. After largely being kept out of action on the ring apron, Nacho headed up a tenacious offense that rallied the crowd and his stable mates, but was ultimately outgunned by their hard-hitting opponents and pinned. Many in attendance voiced their displeasure and a rain of half-empty soda and nacho cheese cups fell upon the celebrating trio.

The FILW Trios Tag Championship belts had been held for 267 days by the Mega Mountain faction composed of Thunderlips, Rip Thomas, and Sean Armstrong. After claiming them at the Judgement Night ppv (Augusta, GA) in June 2022, the trio cut a bloody swath through the competition, frequently ending matches with their trademark three-man powerbomb, High Noon at Mega Mountain. Unfortunately, injuries suffered at the Tuff Turf ppv (Boston, MA) in the beginning of this year required the titles to be vacated. An eight team iron man elimination tournament was held at last month’s Rumble in the Bronx ppv (New York, NY), setting the card for last night’s match.

Monsters Inc. formed in 2022 when former singles wrestler Bonesaw McGraw joined the imposing but rarely dominant tag team of the Revolting Blob and Captain Insano, then known as Better Off Dead. Taking the name Monsters Inc., the injection of new blood revitalized and refocused the former BOD, and the trio actually challenged for the Trios belts but were soundly beaten by Mega Mountain. This led them down a dark path and every victory they have accrued since has been marred by underhanded tactics and copious cheating.

The Three Amigos had each individually been languishing on the singles circuit before forming as a surprise entry into the elimination bracket at Rumble in the Bronx. Randy the Ram was a near-superstar in the 1980s but a string of injuries and a spotty attendance record had robbed him of his glory in the intervening years. Jimmy King was much more recently a champion but hadn’t held a title since the 2000s. The lucha libre wrestler Nacho, a comparative newcomer, has quickly become a fan favorite but still hadn’t managed to make much headway as a singles competitor. Somehow, at Rumble in the Bronx, their multigenerational mix of styles and talents allowed them to persevere throughout the night and emerge as the favored team to take the titles.

Randy the Ram and Bonesaw opened last night’s match, drawing on their brief history in the mid-’90s at another promotion, the highlight being Randy delivering his signature Ram Jam diving headbutt from the top rope that sent Bonesaw into the opposite corner. Jimmy King and the Revolting Blob engaged in a decent if unremarkable stretch of technical wrestling before King failed to connect with his Crown maneuver (a double axe handle strike). Tagging in, Capt. Insano showed no mercy, opening up a can whoop-ass on King with his giant fists, leaving King bloodied and gassed in the center of the ring.

Bonesaw baited Randy to the top of the ramp and the Blob kept Nacho busy, pulling him down off of the ring apron and sitting on his head at the moment that King was able to rally enough to attempt the tag. Eventually the tag was made and the crowd popped to their feet. The David vs Goliath visual of Nacho squaring off against Insano, the smallest and largest of the six men respectively, is quite a sight. Nacho held his own, wearing Insano down and allowing King to catch his breath before the two men tagged and traded opponents, with Nacho diving majestically down on the Blob, still on the outside, and a bloodied, screaming King delivering the Crown to Insano.

The cheers from the crowd were deafening, but short-lived as Insano used his massive form to block the view of the referee while Bonesaw and Blob double teamed Nacho before dragging him and a badly battered Randy back into the ring and delivering their version of Mega Mountain’s triple powerbomb finisher. King ate the pin and the new Trios Champions were presented with their belts.

With Wrestlevania looming in the near future (June 6th, 6 PM at Philadelphia PA’s 2300 Arena; tickets still available), it’s interesting to see where things stand with the titles. Monsters Inc. ending the match with Mega Mountain’s finisher is an obvious taunt, and could lead to the former champions returning to reclaim their titles as underdogs. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything happens with the Three Amigos. They’re obvious fan favorites but it’s unclear if they’ll even remain a team. I guess we’ll see at the Wild at Heart ppv in April (Missoula, MT; tickets still available).

_____________________________________________

This piece was written for MovieJawn, a fabulous site where you can find tons of other excellent movie-centric writings, a shop where you can subscribe to the quarterly physical zine, or listen to me on the  Hate Watch/Great Watch  podcast! Support the MovieJawn Patreon here!

_____________________________________________