Day: July 30, 2025

Buffet Infinity was watched as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Monday, July 28th as part of the festival, and it was the World Premiere of this film!

What if you went to a buffet that had…everything? Every food you can imagine, and every food you cannot imagine. Endless refills, for affordable prices? A fantasy for sure, and, that is still true in this movie. But let us set up the scene.

Somewhere in the US, there is a town, that is set in the 80s or 90s, a little vague on purpose I imagine. And in this town, we watch TV and are channel surfers through the local channels. And we apparently watch a lot of advertisements. Because that is what this movie is. Local ads, and news reports, and occasionally something else a little bit weird.

We will learn about insurance agents, lawyers, pawn shops, and the local restaurants, like a really good sandwich shop, and a new buffet. They want you to come out and visit them. But, somehow, people end up going missing. Large groups of missing adults, and kids. Where are they going? Why is the restaurant getting bigger? Is any store actually manned by real people, or is everything a lie? What is the BUDGET of these local eateries and businesses to make so many commercials?

A mystery and a strange one, for sure…

Missing Person? Probably not important!

Buffet Infinity is what we call one of them there experimental movies. You go in with an open mind, and you are going to get a very different movie experience than you are used to. And it is a movie that surprisingly, would benefit from multiple watches I imagine. To watch as things get more bizarre, to pick up more clues along the way.

As I saw it as a screener, I also had the benefit to watch it in breaks. I might have lost info, but I definitely saved myself a headache at one moment, which I believe was a personal sick issue, but the type of film that it was, constantly shifting its commercials/news/frantic nature, it didn’t help. I love it when movies try something, and this is the type of thing that would take a person a lot of planning to do. I guess local TV ads are relatively easy to make, that is how local businesses can get it done. But to plan on where your ads go, and how they evolve, and to make the thing longer than 30 minutes? That requires a lot of creativity.

This film was less scary, and more bizarre and amusing. It has the vibe completely correct for this type of movie, and likely a budget to match. I can say with all certainty that I am still not fully sure what happened by the end, but the ride was worth it for me.

Good Game was watched as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival 2025! It had its showing on Sunday, July 27th as part of the festival, and it was the World Premiere of this film!

Esports, it is so big right now. And Good Game is not the first movie to exist about esports in a “underdog sports story” and it certainly won’t be the last, but it is definitely the one to talk about right now.

To set the stage, we are in Hong Kong, and we have our group of ragtag people ready to make a team. We have someone aptly named Solo, whom was just kicked off of his esports team for trying to do too much on his own. We have Tai, who owns a failing internet cafe, because kids only play games on their phones now, and he employs his daughter Fay, who cannot hold a normal job at all. And we have Octo, a former movie star, now also faded to obscurity, who just likes to play games with his wife because she is losing her mind, literally, and the games help keep her functioning and thinking.

So of course, these four are going to make a team, to compete in a upcoming tournament for a lot of cash that they can just enter and it is perfect timing! But, their main problem is, they aren’t very collectively skilled, especially against groups who play together all the time. And they all have issues that will, of course, get in their way of achievement.

Starring Yanny Wing-yan Chan, Man-Chung Lam, Will Or, and Meng Lo.

Don’t worry about the fifth person here. They are not on the team!

Okay, so, like I mentioned, a ragtag group of people coming together to do sports and succeed is not a new concept. Nor is it a new concept for Esports. So going into this movie, I was a little bit waiting for it to really wow me with somethin new. And unfortunately, it did the absolute opposite, and I kind of hate it.

First note, and every E-sports movie does this. They are not playing a real game that people know about of course, it is a made up one for the movie. It is FINE. But when we have to watch the “game” for so much of the movie, it becomes awkward. Regular sports don’t have this issue. Even movies about made up sports don’t have this issue because they can still play them. But I am left watching a generic shooting game, with rules that fit for the movie, and just have to trust their word. In an attempt to make it more exciting, the Player Characters that they controlled were played by real people too, to give it an action feel to it, but when we don’t even know the real rules of the game (because its made up and just sort of winging things), it never really grabs the excitement that can exist for real properties.

Now secondly, movies need tension for people to care. And sometimes that tension is obvious, like this movie. Ailing wife, mother disapproving of the gaming, anger issues. And they will all happen, and none of them really…seem to matter. Who cares if a mom is upset, when you are an adult, and literally doing it with your other parent? If your wife is sick, and she approved of the game playing, she will still be fine with it even if she is unconscious. (That does sound more shallow than I want it to be, but…it is a movie).

More importantly, there is one pivotal scene that really just got under my skin. The rules of the match where to protect a single player for the game time, if they do, then they win, and if they lose, they lose. An attacking and a defending team. For the movie to have the group have a FALLING OUT, because the player who needed to survive to win, did whatever he could to survive, makes absolutely no sense. It is a video game they are playing, for money they all need! I can’t imagine a scenario with real people where using teammates as shield would piss them off in this scenario. No one is getting actually hurt, and they all have the same goal.

It is just…It is a movie that is trying to use real sports drama in esports, for age groups and morals that don’t exist in gaming community. The movie stated out standard and cliche, but it became a bad film and I struggled to get through the last half hour, knowing it not only offered me nothing new, but absolutely bad plot points.