For the first time, I’m writing from the comfort of my newly remodeled “mancave” or, as my wife likes to lovingly refer to it, the “nerdcave”. For a space that used to be an attached garage/dungeon, I have to say that the end result is pretty cozy. I guess there really are no living quarters that a substantial amount of time, money, and framed movie prints can’t fix. Now, if only I could find a way to fit and/or afford a mini-fridge, classic stand-up arcade games (i.e. The Simpsons, and X-Men), theater-style seating, and a projection screen that comes down from the ceiling via hand-clap command, I may finally be able to fulfill my dream of never leaving home again.

All praises of my new space aside, this week’s incarnation of the Top 5 brings a look back at our Fantastic Fest 2012 coverage, Looper interviews with writer/director Rian Johnson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt, The Avengers Blu-ray interviews with members of the pic’s visual effects team, The Perks of Being a Wallflower interviews with Emma Watson, writer/director Stephen Chbosky and more, and Hotel Transylvania interviews with Andy Samberg and Selena Gomez just to name a few. As you might expect, a brief recap and link to each is holding down the fort after the jump.

I went to more film festivals this year than I ever had before.  I went to Sundance in January, SXSW in March, and TIFF and Fantastic Fest this month.  It’s exhausting, but it’s fun.  I see it as a nice break from the grind of delivering news stories.  It’s not that news is bad, or that it doesn’t have value, but it’s nice seeing the final product of the smaller films we’ve reported on since we probably only heard of them from a casting story as opposed to an onslaught of trailers and posters.  Obviously, there are film festivals where there are marquee titles making their last big push before opening in wide release (Sundance is the only festival where the biggest films—those filled with recognizable actors—might not even have distributors let alone a release date).  But it’s always a nice variety, and each festival has its own flavor.

After the jump hit the jump for my impressions of each festival.

Fantastic Fest has announced this year’s awards winners.  Vanishing Waves was the big non-horror, non-comedy winner by picking up four awards including Best Feature, Best Director (Kristina Buozyte), Best Screenplay (Bruno Samper, Buozyte), and Best Actress (Jurga Jutaite).  On the horror side, Here Comes the Devil pulled a sweep by winning Best Picture, Best Director (Adrián García Bogliano), Best Screenplay (Bogliano), Best Actor (Francisco Barreiro), and Best Actress (Laura Caro).  It’s worth noting that special mentions in the horror category went to Hajime Ohata (Best Screenplay) and Katherine Isabel (Best Actress).  Finally, the Audience Award went to I Declare War (a film I found quite charming), the well-directed and funny Flicker won the “New Wave” Spotlight competition, The American Scream won Best Documentary, and New Kids Nitro won Best Comedy.

Hit the jump for a full list of winners, and click here for all of our Fantastic Fest 2012 coverage.

Patrik Eklund‘s Flicker may not add up to a rewarding conclusion, but it certainly adds up to a colorful, adorable movie where Eklund’s strong direction manages to keep a strong hold over five different storylines each with its own emotional vibe.  The film moves between guilt, absurdity, pity, back around to absurdity, fear, frustration, and then meets up with our old friend absurdity.  Flicker never comes off as a surreal experience, nor does it seem to have much of a point, but it shows off a delightfully off-kilter world held together by sweet characters and steady, confident direction.

Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson‘s I Declare War is riddled with glaring, grating flaws.  The performances from the young actors are inconsistent.  The cinematography and effects look cheap.  Character arcs and plotlines lose their energy and focus.  And yet I Declare War is incredibly charming.  It’s fun watching kids be kids in a game adults have become too self-conscious to play.  It has the vibe of a big, backyard movie that kids would make with their friends if they had a little more money and time.  The picture also makes the worthwhile argument that coming-of-age means betrayal and jealousy, and that the kids games are about to vanish.

Evil children make shitty antagonists.  It’s a lazy dichotomy to say, “Look!  The faces of the innocent and pure are doing horrible acts of violence!  HOW CAN THIS BE?”  But they shouldn’t be threatening to any adult.  You can’t be scared of anything you can dropkick.  Come Out and Play (a remake of the 1976 Spanish horror film Who Can Kill a Child?) tries to up the fear by having the children be a tiny, angry mob rather than a solo threat, but the film’s true potential lies in trying to provide a set of conditions where we can condone, and perhaps even enjoy, killing bad seeds.  Sadly, writer/director/shameless-self-promoter Makinov never wants to put in the hard work to meet this challenge.  Instead, he spins his wheels, makes half-hearted attempts at various subtexts, and is left with a wasted opportunity to do anything beyond The Birds but with kids.

Peter Strickland‘s Berberian Sound Studio feels desperate to convince the audience that something is happening.  Events appear secondary to one man’s descendant into madness despite not having a compelling reason to descend into madness.  It’s a movie where the greatest conflict involves travel reimbursement.  Fans of giallo cinema might find a fun correlation between the plot and the setting, but for outsiders, it’s a film where the striking direction attempts to give voice a feeble character and story by screaming.

Last night, I managed to squeeze in a double feature of Dredd 3D and The Master. While I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of not having a 2D showing available to choose from, I have to admit that director Pete Travis‘ film provided me with my first 3D screening since 2010′s Piranha 3D that actually felt worth the extra dimension and additional ticket price. As for The Master, it’s probably unfair to judge something so heavy after a single viewing. That said, my initial reaction is that I can’t remember watching a film where its individual parts so far exceed the sum the first time around. From top to bottom the pic’s technicality is superb. And yet, I don’t see myself in any hurry to revisit Paul Thomas Anderson‘s latest world.

Moving forward to the reason we’re all here, in this week’s episode of the Top 5, The Hobbit celebrates Tolkien Week in a big way with a new trailer and images, we get our first looks at a new suit from director Jose Padilha‘s Robocop reboot, Steve sits down to talk End of Watch with Jake Gyllenhaal, Anna Kendrick, and more, Kick-Ass 2 set images continue to roll out while Aaron Johnson talks about the film at TIFF, and Fantastic Fest 2012 kicks off. Continue reading for a brief recap and link to each.

Creativity is a compulsion. A true actor acts not because of fame and fortune.  They act because they have no other choice.  There is no other life but to be the life of someone else; an act of insanity, nested inside a compulsion.  We accept the art of acting because we accept the context: people can behave as strangely as they want provided it’s for the benefit of someone watching.  So take away the viewer, and what does a true actor do?  He or she keeps on acting, their creativity rolls on, and Leos Carax‘s Holy Motors lets us join the wild, hilarious, fascinating, and bizarre ride.

Conspiracies are a fascinating culture phenomenon, and The Conspiracy has no interest in that.  In fact, writer-director Christopher MacBride has no interest in probing deeper into the nature of conspiracies, and instead turns his attention to churning out the most generic, tired conspiracy yarn possible.  Then, in an obvious gimmick, he couches his weak story inside the framing device of a faux-documentary.  There’s no attempt to play off other loony-bin documentaries like Loose Change, or any trace of a serious effort to keep us guessing to the authenticity of the documentary form.  Until a horribly clumsy ending, everything in The Conspiracy is at face value: the one-dimensional characters, the thoughtless clichés, and the total lack of insight about why conspiracies are interesting in the first place.

This review is a steal, because it’s one review for two movies.  Luis Prieto‘s remake of Pusher is in no way significantly different than Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Pusher other than Prieto’s film takes place in London instead of Copenhagen, and the characters speak the primary language of their respective cities.  Both films share the same strengths, and Refn’s Pusher is a solid crime flick that takes a lean, gritty premise that runs its protagonist ragged.  Prieto doesn’t add anything to the formula, but his mixture still works thanks to the aggressive direction, a strong central performance, and tense pacing.

When I’m in the checkout line at the supermarket, and I see all of the celebrity magazines, I’m confused.  People who would buy those magazines and tabloids don’t seem to realize that celebrities are strangers.  If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have a baby, then I don’t see how that impacts anyone’s lives but their own.  But celebrities are viewed as a commodity, and Brandon Cronenberg‘s clever film Antiviral carries out this extension of human commodity into a perverse economy where there’s just enough shreds of truth to make us wonder if his world could really happen if the science was possible.  However, despite the fascinating ideas at the forefront, the story and characters almost feel perfunctory, and any attempts to make the movie feel like a thriller come off as heavy-handed.  Cronenberg has crafted a film that is sick, sad, smart, and serviceable.

Frankenweenie is a paradox for writer-director Tim Burton.  Burton’s style has become a cage.  His spirals, stripes, high-contrast colors, preference for Danny Elfman‘s scores, and reliance on Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter made it seem like Burton had reached the limits of his creative powers.  This limitation was highlighted by using it as a catch-all for any adaptation, and he’s only done adaptations since 2005′s Corpse Bride (and that was his only non-adaptation since 1990′s Edward Scissorhands).  Strangely enough, by doing a stop-motion animated adaptation of Frankenweenie—based off his 1984 short film of the same name—Burton has come back to his origins in a way that hasn’t changed his style (although there’s no Depp or Carter), but rediscovered the fun and warmth that used to be intertwined into his visuals and tone.

We’ve already seen two waves of film announcements for the upcoming Fantastic Fest in Austin, including Dredd 3D, Room 237, The Shining, Looper, Sinister, The ABCs of Death, and Red Dawn as the festival’s closing film.  Now the festival has announced the final wave of films including the world premiere of the horror film The Collection. This final wave of films also includes Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral, the remake of Pusher, and the bizarre World War II film Danger 5.

Hit the jump to check out the press release, which includes the full final wave of film announcements.  The 2012 Fantastic Fest will take place September 20 – 27 in Austin, Texas at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Last month, Fantastic Fest announced the first-wave of movies included in their line-up.  Today, they’ve announced Wave Two, and there’s even more greatness on the way.  The big name additions are Rian Johnson‘s Looper, the horror anthology The ABCs of Death, and the Ethan Hawke horror flick Sinister.  While these are awesome films to have in the line-up and they’ll unquestionably pack the house, Fantastic Fest is all about finding the smaller genre flicks, and there are fifteen smaller movies in addition to the three I mentioned above.  Add that to that the 18 movies in the first wave, and there’s already 36 movies to discover.

Hit the jump to check out the full second wave line-up.  Fantastic Fest 2012 runs from September 20 – 27th.