Tag Archives: Game of Werewolves

Over Two Dozen SIFF 2012 Movies Reviewed

TSB at SIFF 2012

 While the rest of your intrepid SunBreak SIFFters were putting together a lively roundtable about SIFF 2012, yours truly was submerged deeply in the Festival vortex, making up for lost moviegoing time.

I’ve seen 25 movies so far (down a bit from this point last year), and though it’s in my nature to view creative endeavors from a glass-half-full optimistic standpoint, I do have to admit that my SIFF 2012 journey’s been a bit less consistent than last year’s, so far.

One ironic trend I’ve noted: The movies that worked the best have tended to be the less-pretentious formula/genre flicks that honed in on basic storytelling, while some of the bolder experiments in form and content yielded some of the most disappointing results. No, that’s not an exhortation to filmmakers to stop experimenting and pushing the envelope–It’s a resolute plea for them to get their damned ducks in a row before they do.

Enclosed please find rundowns of everything I’ve seen so far, replete with 1 to 5 ratings (I’m a sucker for that stuff). Several of the movies are still playing later tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday, so I’ve also provided links to siff.net for those titles.

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A Chat with The Director of Game of Werewolves

TSB at SIFF 2012

Fun things to do in Kirkland tonight, number one: Seeing the Spanish werewolf comedy at the Kirkland Performance Center.

Game of Werewolves makes its third and final SIFF appearance at 9:00 p.m., and it’s shaping up to be one of the liveliest, most fun festival surprises from this corner. It tells the story of Tomas (Gorka Otxoa), a struggling writer who visits his rural hometown of Arga after a twenty-year estrangement. He’s been invited back by the townspeople under the pretense of a celebration in his honor.

Juan Martinez Moreno, director of Game of Werewolves. (photo by Tony Kay)

But Tomas is the last of a cursed family’s bloodline, and his former neighbors are convinced that his death on the centenary of the village curse is the only way to eradicate the werewolf that’s been plaguing Arga lo, these many years.

It’s lazy to compare it to Shaun of the Dead, but like that horror-comedy classic, Game of Werewolves references classic horror tropes, hurtles its likable characters into a terrifying scenario, and watches them react in often-humorous ways. Fortunately, writer/director Juan Martinez Moreno’s definitely created (pardon the pun) his own animal.

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