Not with a Bang, But a Film Fest

AFI Fest is certainly forward looking: these films seem plucked from 2012.

Film lovers, start your...engines? Popcorn makers? The AFI Fest 2011 Presented by Audi (vvvrooom!) starts tonight in Hollywood with Oscar contender J. Edgar and closes on November 10 with Steven Spielberg's animated The Adventures of Tintin. You've already heard of those flicks, so we've chosen to fix our gaze on a few other films with lower budgets, but higher stakes: the future of mankind.

 Melancholia - When Lars von Trier decided to do horror, we got Antichrist, which lovers and haters can agree was genuinely horrific. Now, he takes on the sci-fi disaster genre with a rogue planet about to collide with Earth. Naturally, a team of miners fly into space to blow it up the movie focuses on two sisters having emotional breakdowns. But will there be talking foxes?

 Carre Blanc - Soylent burgers are people! THEY'RE PEEEEOPLE! Don't worry, we haven't blown the twist of this sci-fi film; that secret gets revealed early on. There's more to this bleak future, including daily brainwashing and mandatory business attire, blech! Doesn't sound like Charlton Heston can save the day...though did he save much of anything in his own dystopian movies?

 Beyond the Black Rainbow - It might look like the future, but we're told this actually takes place in an alternate past, 1983 to be exact. A girl with special abilities serves as pet project to a seriously mad scientist, or so we think. It's impossible to find coherent descriptions of the plot, though phrases like "fever dream" come up a lot and it's supposedly inspired by midnight movies and Saturday-morning cartoons. We'll gladly see for ourselves.

Check out our full list of festival highlights (including a whole bunch not enamored with end times) and then visit the official AFI Fest website to get free tickets.

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