I wish I could spend the entire summer sitting in movie theatres watching flicks like the kind I saw this past weekend. The Fantasia Festival opened in Montreal this past week. Exhausted and needing to worship at the Temple of Monkeyhead, I made my weary way via Voyegeur bus to Montreal. If I could sit in the Cinema Imperial all summer and watch Hong Kong action films and anime and the Korean new wave, I'd do it.

You might get to the point when you think, There is nothing new in this world, Anything new would be frightening. To you, I say, Go to Fantasia. Here's what I saw:

Otogiriso (St. John's Wort) was shot entirely on digital video, and as one reviewer commented, is the first all-digital "film" to actually look good. Fantasia used a large, hi-res video projector to show the thing, and it was stunning. Director Ten Shimoyama has no qualms about using video-specific effects, such as increasing colour saturation, to good effect.

This is a movie about a video game: the protagonists are video game makers, and their latest game is Otogiriso. And Otogiriso is, in fact, one of Japan's best selling Playstation and Super Nintendo games. Unlike the doomed film students in the Blair Witch Project, the protagonists visit a haunted house with a mobile phone, video camera, and laptop, along with a wireless Internet connection. During a violent storm, a tree crushes their car; although trapped physically, they can still interact with their colleagues at the video game studio where they work.

Otogiriso's challenge does not come from the plot, or the characters, which fell pretty standard. Rather, there is a discourse here of personal empowerment through technology, not just to solve problems, but to change reality. You will have to watch it all the way through to the end to see what I mean.

Ban-chick-wang (The Foul King) is a wrestling movie, but nothing like El Santo or Vision Quest or Ready to Rumble. Dao-Ho (Song Kang-ho) is a put-upon bank clerk. Late for work once too often, his boss puts him in a headlock and won't let him go. Dao-Ho turns to pro wrestling to learn to defend himself and gain self confidence. High jinks ensue.

The Foul King is the latest from Korean director Kim Ji-wun, who is leading something of a Korean "new wave." Ostensibly this is a comedy; there is a great deal of expert physical humour, performed expertly by Song Kang-ho as the title character. But there is also substantial irony here. Pro wrestling is, after all, a performance. The fighting is not real, and the skills Dao-Ho learns have little application outside the ring. The audience wants Dao-Ho's success to transfer, impossibly, to the real world, and in that tension lies the real success of the film.