The Best Movies Complex Saw at Fantastic Fest 2013

There was no shortage of memorable castration, S&M, zombies, and more at the world's coolest genre movie festival.

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Every year since 2005, when Tim LeagueHarry Knowles, Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, and Tim McCanlies founded Fantastic Fest, lovers of genre movies have gathered at League's Alamo Drafthouse cinemas in Austin, Texas, to watch the strangest, sickest, most thoroughly entertaining science fiction, horror, fantasy, action, and cult films that the world has to offer. If you want to see a Japanese film about a boy whose goal is to lick his own tip (yes, you read that right, and its name is Maruyama the Middle Schooler), this is where you go. 

This year, Complex staffers Matt Barone and Justin Monroe attended the festival, which moved to Alamo's new Lakeline location. There were laughs, claps, groans, and even a little regurgitation, which is to say that the slate of flicks was an unequivocal success. If you're looking for the best genre flicks to search out in coming months, start here: The Best Movies Complex Saw at Fantastic Fest 2013.

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16. The Sacrament

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Director: Ti West

You don't need ghosts, serial killers, or skyscraper-sized monsters to make a horror movie. Sometimes, all it takes is a little manmade evil.

Within the independent film community, Ti West is one of horror's most respected princes, if you will-not quite a king yet, but regarded with high enough critical acclaim and respect from his peers to give him a special distinction. His strong reputation stems largely from The House of the Devil, the lo-fi 2009 throwback to the widespread Satanism that bubbled underneath the surface in small-town America. Patiently building its tensity, a la old-school Roman Polanski, and climaxing in a round of ghoulish mayhem that owes a great debt to '70s Italian genre moviemaking, The House of the Devil holds up as one of the new millennium's best horror films-it's the kind of show-and-prove calling card that DIY horror directors would kill for. Last year, West followed that universally embraced chiller with the lighter, Ghostbusters-like The Innkeepers, a character-powered little ghost tale that's inferior to The House of the Devil yet still exhibits West's penchants for nuanced screenwriting, multilayered characters, and getting impressive acting performances from his cast.

But both films share an intimacy that, for some, could be viewed as a drawback for West's potential-they're one-location chamber pieces, limited to three characters or less and making the most of contained settings. Perhaps directly motivated to obliterate that conception, West's latest, The Sacrament, is a giant leap forward both stylistically and in scope. Gone are the closed-door locales and the one-on-one dialogue; here, West has gone outdoors, to the vast, wide open landscape occupied by Eden Parish, a Jonestown-like commune overseen by an enigmatic and charismatic elder known as Father (played by Gene Jones). With scaled-back, rural amenities, Eden Parish is an agricultural haven for Father's followers, an ethnically and age-wise mixed group of lost souls who've forfeited their finances in order to turn their new isolated, tropical homeland into a thriving community.

Be warned, though: Yes, The Sacrament is yet another first-person POV film, which some would dub as "found-footage" but, since we never see anyone actually find the footage in such movies, let's do our best to eradicate that term, shall we? Having dabbled in the format for his segment in last year's V/H/S anthology, West doesn't lazily mimic his POV predecessors' mistakes. For one, there's a believable reason for the cameras to be present in the first place. Sam (AJ Bowen) and Jake (Joe Swanberg) work for the hipster-friendly media company Vice, for which they travel the world reporting on odd news stories documentary style. They've traveled to Eden Parish thanks to photographer friend Patrick (Kentucker Audley), whose sister, Caroline (Amy Seimetz), lives amongst Father's minions and has sent him a letter inviting him to visit.

Naturally, he brings his filmmaking pals along with him, and at first, The Sacrament casually establishes life in the commune through informational Q&As with various members. West never lies about what's really going on, though-composer Tyler Bates' ominous score sets up an initial dread that carries through to the film's midway shift into darkness, triggered by a little, non-talkative girl who approaches Sam with a cryptic note. As Bates' music has made clear, something's wrong with Eden Parish, particularly with Father. As inhabited by Jones (whom eagle-eyed viewers will recognize as Javier Bardem's coin-tossing co-star in one of No Country for Old Men's best scenes), Father initially comes off as a grandfatherly leader with a gentle, even huggable approachability, but in The Sacrament's best scene, he flips the switch. Seated on a stage, in front of his entire community, Father grants an in-over-his-head Sam an interview that, like a true cult master, Father brilliantly manipulates. It's the exact point when The Sacrament veers into first-rate psychological unease, and it's masterfully handled by Jones.

It's also, however, one of many nods toward West's chief inspiration here: Jim Jones and Jonestown. Without giving too much away, let's just say that, for anyone who's knowledgeable about that infamous late 1970s cult and how it tragically ended, The Sacrament holds little in the way of third-act surprises. West doesn't so much draw influences from Jonestown as fictionalize it in almost too honorable fashion. The Sacrament might as well open with a "based on a true story" title card. What West is able to pull off during the film's latter section is skillfully disturbing, but there's a slightly disappointing lack of originality at play. Worse than that is one particular moment where the, cringe, found-footage aesthetic gets betrayed, with a second but inexplicably retained camera capturing a pivotal scene for what's overall posited as a Vice special. To elaborate would mean spoiler time, but you'll know the slip-up when you see it. It's unfortunately distracting.

One conceptual error can't derail the entire show here, thankfully, and by the end of The Sacrament, its emotional impact and visceral force are resonantly palpable. There are plenty of beasts, creatures, and other grotesqueries marauding the Fantastic Fest screens here in Austin, TX, but West has one-upped them all in the most bleakly human of ways: by creating real-life, man's-heart-of-darkness horror. —MB

15. On the Job

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Director: Erik Matti

The genesis of On the Job, one of cinema's crazier new action crime thrillers, was simple chit chat between Filipino filmmaker Erik Matti and his chauffeur. The driver told an unbelievable story about his time as an inmate, when a crime ring of corrupt prison officials and policemen working with gangsters released him on day passes to fulfill murder contracts for them. Because he was supposedly incarcerated, he always had an alibi for the killings. As batshit as it sounded, a subsequent scandal, which broke when a politician employed a similar service to assassinate his challenger and secure an election, gave credence to the tale and inspired On the Job.

Matti's story follows cops and contract killers coming of age and the perilous attempts of a few moral men to expose systemic corruption. Mario "Tatang" Maghari (Joel Torre) is a veteran hit man from the New Chapter Provincial Jail whose handlers order him to train the younger, less disciplined Daniel Benitez (Gerald Anderson) before leaving on parole. On the other side of the law is Francis Coronel, Jr. (Piolo Pascual), an ambitious young detective whose relationship with politician father-in-law Manrique (Michael De Mesa) lands him the important case of a publicly slain drug dealer but may also corrupt him. Inevitably, honest and corrupt cops, criminals, and the men who are really controlling the country collide with deadly consequences.

On the Job could have been a simple-minded, serviceable action flick if all it had going for it was the grit and grime of Filipino streets, stylized violence, and its insane premise, but Matti's thriller has more substance, driven by more fully realized characters and the compelling relationships between these men as they struggle to survive. Tatang, for example, talks openly with his protégé about the very real possibility that the student may one day have to snuff out his teacher, just as he once did on orders. Despite a wife and daughter he loves and visits during his homicidal day trips, the elder instructs his loyal pupil to do what he must to survive: "It's business, not personal." 

As often happens in action movies, the women are essentially talking props, which lessens the impact of developments as they relate to Tatang's family (his daughter is studying law and his wife's bed is...lonely), Daniel's even less fleshed-out girlfriend and mom, and Francis' beautiful wife, who's torn between loyalty to her husband and father. Ultimately the focus is the men caught in the web of corruption and the dark, dramatic conclusion to what is an unbelievable truth-based story is altogether satisfying, so Matti, like his contract killers, gets a pass. —JM

14. A Field in England

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13. Escape from Tomorrow

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Director: Randy Moore

Walt Disney's severed head must be rolling over in its cryogenic freezer unit. With his fantastic, subversive horror-comedy Escape from Tomorrow, filmmaker Randall Moore has challenged the wholesome image of the well guarded Disney empire and the House of Mouse will never look the same.

The film, which Moore and cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham shot surreptitiously at Florida's Epcot Center/Disney World, using handheld Canon DSLR cameras to blend in with tourists, follows the White family on its last day at the resort. Patriarch Jim (Roy Abramsohn) hides his recent firing but still manages to disappoint his frigid nagging wife Emily (Elena Schuber) as he develops an unhealthy obsession with two pubescent French girls (Annet Mahendru and Danielle Safady), neglects his kids, feuds with a crippled man on a motorized cart, and drinks like a fish from The Little Mermaid. Jim's mind is elsewhere, but it may be lost entirely, as he starts seeing strange things, like the park's angelic animatronic Disney characters flashing the sinister eyes and razor teeth of the Cheshire Cat, and Disney Princesses whoring it up for Asian businessmen. Is it in his head or does the park have a dark side that's bringing out his own?

Much has been made of the remarkable methods Moore used to film without permission in Disney World-he got stunning shots of the empty park by being first in line with his undercover crew each morning for seven days and racing to preplanned locations to shoot for 10-15 seconds before visitors flooded in-but lost in logistics and the debate over whether Disney lawyers could and would block its release is what an amazing, ballsy, and challenging work of art Escape from Tomorrow is. By removing the park's bright, joy-inducing colors and forcing viewers to see the world of Disney in black and white, juxtaposed with disturbing sexual and violent imagery, Moore turns the child's dreamland into a decidely adult nightmare. It's over the top and surreal, but actually not much stranger than what goes on at Disney World every day, when you step back and think about all those grown folks in cartoon costumes hugging kids while fountains spurt behind them.

Disney owns a piece of almost everyone's childhood, so do yourself a favor and let those happy memories be perverted for your adult amusement. And if it somehow gets you out of one day spending an arm and a leg to take a screaming brood to the park, that's truly some Disney magic. —JM

12. Miss Zombie

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Director: Sabu

The recent news about AMC's in-development spinoff of The Walking Dead excited some people, but, for this lifelong zombie movie fanatic, the reaction was merely a groan. As much as I appreciate The Walking Dead, does the world really need another zombie-heavy TV show? Why must every popular horror trend get run six-feet into the ground? We've seen it happen recently with vampires, no thanks to Twilight and True Blood, and now it's looking like those in-vogue reanimated corpses are on the verge of overexposure. When imagination-free producers decide to bastardize George A. Romero's classic Day of the Dead (1985) with a second sure-to-be-abysmal remake, you know it's time to worry.

Which explains my initial trepidation to spend 85 minutes with Miss Zombie here at Fantastic Fest. But, alas, my predilection towards fictional walkers compelled me into the theatre, anticipating very little from Japanese actor-turned-filmmaker Sabu (recognized by his country's government as Hiroyuki Tanaka). Even the plot synopsis sounds anticlimactic, if not Snooze City: A doctor, with his wife and young son, receive a mysterious box, in which there's a twenty-something aged member of the living dead. Zombies are as commonplace as gardeners in this faux version of Japan, though, so there's no cause for alarm. In fact, they immediately put her (or it?) to work outside, washing their concrete walkway every day. How exciting does that seem? About as enthralling as watching grass grow in a cemetery.

Well, color me incorrect. What could very well end up being Fantastic Fest's most pleasant surprise, Miss Zombie is the best undead horror flick to come around in years. Much like how Jim Mickle's profoundly slept-on Stake Land (2011) breathed new energy into the vampire motif, Sabu's black-and-white horror-drama takes the zombie template and subverts in intelligent, fascinating ways. The titular servant girl, played terrifically by actress Komatsu Ayaka, harkens back to the aforementioned Day of the Dead's "Bub," Romero's obedient and endearing ghoul. With its limited dialogue and hypnotic repetition (the characters' daily routines rarely change throughout the film;s first half), Miss Zombie slowly lulls the viewer into a trance, with Ayaka's zombie acting as the magician's ticking clock. Unable to say anything, Ayaka's performance is all in the eyes, those seemingly lifeless pupils through which she channels sadness, helplessness, and, once Miss Zombie inevitably veers into violence, muted rage.

Sabu's hook is an interesting one: How far can people be pushed before they snap, even if they're, you know, dead? The no-pulse protagonist is constantly treated like a second-class citizen-neighborhood kids throw rocks at her, juvenile delinquents regularly plunge sharp objects into her shoulder to see if she'll ever react. The real disturbance, however, comes from what could be a horror movie first: zombie rape. Compliant to men's demands because, well, she's incapable of thinking freely (being brain-dead and all), the eponymous girl gradually becomes a sexual plaything for several men. It's through that narrative wrinkle that Sabu delicately sends Miss Zombie into the pantheon of women-revenge cinema, sharing space with movies like I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and Ms. 45 (1981). Unlike the vengeful ladies in those films, though, Ayaka never loses her sympathetic nature-it's evident that her retribution is just as painful for her as it is for the victims.

Film festivals are a gift and a curse for movies like Miss Zombie. Explanation for the former is obvious-with countless press members and distribution company buyers in attendance, events like Fantastic Fest are launching pads for independent movies to either receive positive online reviews or land at companies that will eventually give the filmmakers VOD and/or theatrical exposure, or both. But what about the numerous films that don't get bought yet are just as good as, and sometimes even better than, the ones that do? Sadly, their fates often don't extend past "Remember that great film we saw last year-whatever happened to that?" It'd be a damn shame if Miss Zombie follows that unfortunate path.

Sabu has done something special here, tapping into the inherent humanity found within zombie fiction without neglecting the horror genre's need to unsettle. The film's final scenes are deeply disturbing and tough to shake off. There's no commercial break or Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick to downplay the trauma. —MB

11. Grand Piano

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Director: Eugenio Mira

Let's be clear: Grand Piano is patently absurd. That might be a problem if Spanish director Eugenio Mira (Agnosia) and his hammy cast were not completely in on the joke, embracing the absurdity and turning what could be a laborious, eye-rolling fail into a slick thriller that delivers suspense and laughs in equal measure.

Five years after botching a piece and developing a crippling case of stage fright, classical pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) and his dexterous hands return to the stage to honor his deceased mentor. While capably performing some of his instructor's most challenging works, Selznick discovers a menacing note written on his sheet music: Play a wrong note and you die. Practical joke this is not. An assassin (John Cusack) with a powerful silenced rifle and laser scope is in the house. Via earpiece, he conducts the pianist and demands that Selznick conclude the performance by masterfully playing the "unplayable piece" that screwed him up in the first place. If he fails, the gunman will give Selznick and his famous actress wife (Kerry Bishé) lead instead of standing o's. Talk about performance anxiety!

The assassin's motives in this certifiable cat-and-mouse plot are laughable, but then everything about the film is winking at the audience, including a number of references to classic thrillers (see the catalogues of Hitchcock, Polanski, Kubrick, etc.). Over-acted in a good way (yes, that's Alex Winter from The Lost Boys getting his henchman on), the wine-and-cheesy performances perfectly complement the absurdity of the situation. And like Wood's fingers, which dance manically over the ebony and ivory, the pace is fast and ticklish, eliciting appreciative giggles while still keeping the viewer on edge waiting for a false note. All respect due to Mira and his cast, there are none to be found. —JM

10. Moebius

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9. Nothing Bad Can Happen

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8. Borgman

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7. Coherence

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6. Why Don't You Play in Hell

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Director: Sion Sono

One of the many indelible images seen at this year's Fantastic Fest: a young, inexperienced dolly shot operator happily filming two opposing mob families hacking each other into pieces while, in his left hand, he's mowing through as many of them as possible with a machine gun, while smiling like it's the greatest moment of his life. Which it undoubtedly is.

Why Don't You Play in Hell, the latest film from Japanese provocateur Sion Sono (Suicide Club 2001; Love Exposure, 2008), defies simple explanation, but, screw it, here goes nothing: Two rival yakuza gangs (Japan's answer to American mob families) get ready for war over one yakuza leader named Muto's (Jun Kunimara) beautiful, wild child daughter, Mitsuko (Fumi Nikaido), who also happens to be a failed movie actress. Muto's wife, who's coming home in 10 days from a decade-long prison bid, dreams of seeing her little girl on the big screen. As a "Welcome Home" gift to the woman he loves, Muto decides to make a movie starring Mitsuko, which, through a random series of events, leads him to a rag-tag crew of wannabe filmmakers self-dubbed "the Fuck Bombers." Led by excitable cinephile Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa), the group has been aspiring to become action cinema titans since childhood but have fuck-all to show for those goals.

That's about as concise of a plot synopsis Why Don't You Play in Hell will receive, although, frankly, Sono's anarchist crowd-pleaser of a midnight movie doesn't really need to be succinctly defined. It's several films in one: a yakuza crime flick, a Super 8-esque love letter to kids who adore moviemaking, a slapstick comedy, a martial arts bruiser, and heightened genre bloodbath. The beauty of Why Don't You Play in Hell is that it's all of those things at all times, and, miraculously, Sono is totally able to sustain the tonal raucousness throughout the film's 122-minute duration. It's a long haul, yet it's so much damn fun that those two hours whiz by with the fury of Mitsuko's samurai sword. Because, yes, Why Don't You Play in Hell is, to bring one more category into play, also has pieces of sexy-women-with-blades (i.e., the wonderful Nikaido, seen above, who, apart from being a deadpan scene-stealer, is a stunner) eye candy that will make Quentin Tarantino want to reboot Kill Bill immediately.

Tarantino will similarly love Sono's modus operandi here. More than a blood-splattered action-comedy blowout, Why Don't You Play in Hell is the writer-director's loving ode to classic Japanese cinema that works on two equally efficient levels. For the uninitiated, Sono crams in the perfectly overzealous amount of larger-than-life characters, broad humor, and lively stylistic flourishes to lend the film an accessibility to anyone who prefers their movies way left of center. But Why Don't You Play in Hell is rooted in the director's influences, from the B-movie gangsterism seen through Muto's suit-clad minions to the kimono style of his enemy Ikegama's crew (Shinichi Tsutsumi) that's straight out of an old Akira Kurosawa period film. Sono doesn't limit the winks to his native country, though. One of the Fuck Bombers dresses in the yellow jumpsuit made famous by Bruce Lee in Game of Death (1979).

Mr. Kill Bill's favorite part of Why Don't You Play in Hell, however, just might be the film's out-of-control climax, during which the aforementioned dolly shot character's Scarface moment happens. Along with, in no particular order of craziness, Mitsuko slicing off seven or eight combatants' heads off with one sword swoop, another character professing his love to his dreamgirl while a blade's jammed into his skull, and a headless man chucking up a deuce before his body goes limp. Actually, make that two indelible images the rest of Fantastic Fest's filmmakers somehow need to top. —MB

5. Cheap Thrills

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Director: E.L. Katz

Back people up against a wall, either literally or figuratively, and they'll do whatever it takes to break free. Smack someone in the face. Go from civilized human to ravenous monster. Commit homicide. The possibilities are endless, albeit uniformly bleak, when it comes to survival tactics.

As the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in first-time director E.L. Katz's blacker-than-tar comedy Cheap Thrills, desperation breeds personal disintegration. Co-written by Trent Haaga and David Chirchirillo, the film is many things: original, satirical, violent, funny. Most importantly, though, it's a dynamite example of cinematic shock value, best experienced with little to no knowledge of what's in store. Thus, writing this review won't be an easy task, since the beauty of Cheap Thrills lies in its unpredictability and narrative fearlessness. In terms of Katz's desire to make audiences squirm while they laugh, nothing is off-limits, and he's not afraid to escalate the situation to its meanest possible level.

It's reality-based genre cinema at its most uncompromising and visceral, and, yes, it co-stars David "Champ Kind" Koechner, a comedic veteran who, aside from Anchorman and a few other exceptions, has made a career out of popping up in lowbrow duds (A Haunted House, anyone?). His involvement is part of the film's surprise attack-after all, he's the guy from silly time-wasters like Snakes on a Plane (2006), Balls of Fury (2007), and The Comebacks (2007). But that false sense of security quickly disappears in Cheap Thrills. Here, Koechner is a revelation, playing the manic, dominant ringmaster for Katz's circus of depravity.

In the eyes of protagonist Craig (Pat Healy, perfectly sympathetic before turning explosive), Koechner's character, Colin, might as well be Lucifer himself. Craig's life is in dire straits-he just lost his job at the car wash, he's in overwhelming debt, and he, as well as his loving wife (Amanda Fuller) and their 15-month-old son, are about to get evicted out of their humble apartment. Trapped in a haze of self-defeat and sinking depression, Craig wanders into a ratty bar where he randomly bumps into an old friend, Vince (Ethan Embry), with whom he pounds some beers and relays his sad-sack existence. During their heart-to-heart, fellow bar patron Colin and his younger, sexy wife (Sara Paxton), interrupt the conversation with some bizarre yet tempting propositions-it's Violet's birthday, so Colin wants to entertain her by paying strangers to take absurd dares, like smacking a stripper's derriere and snuffing the muscular bouncer in the face. Since both Craig and Vince are financially strapped, they accept the challenges.

With each bet, the danger increases, even as the foursome head back to Colin's swanky loft for some night caps and more intimate fuckery. And with that, Cheap Thrills takes a hard left turn into humiliation, sadism, and mutilation, all in the name of earning upwards of $200,000 for simply doing one thing or another. Cheap Thrills masks its deeper themes underneath the comedy and thriller genre exteriors. As much as Katz clearly wants the viewer to laugh and cringe in all the right places, he and screenwriters Haaga and Chirchirillo have a rather downbeat perspective on humanity-flash tons of cash in front of a man's face and watch him turn completely savage in order to claim it as his own. With little remorse for its characters, Katz' wickedly punishing film evolves into one of the smartest commentaries on our society's current economic darkness, presenting a scenario where the wealthy toss away money like it's tissue paper, having a merry old time at the expense of the less fortunate bastards who'll cut off their limbs or commit infidelity just for the almighty dollar.

Following its triumphant SXSW Film Festival premiere in March, Cheap Thrills was picked up for distribution by Drafthouse Films, and is currently on track for an early 2014 release. Consider yourself warned. Genre flicks this unique, daring, and perversely thoughtful don't come around very often. Which, one gets the impression, Katz seems to realize-the film ends with an impeccably spot-on closing image, one that, if Cheap Thrills earns the cult hit status it damn well deserves, should be emblazoned on posters, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia you'd find available for purchase at future Fantastic Fest editions. He might not have the most optimistic outlook on humanity, but Katz certainly knows how to leave them on humorously grim high. —MB

4. Blue Ruin

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Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Has America ever encountered an apple pie that it didn't slice to death? Violence pervades life in the U.S. It's such a part of our reality and our fiction that society is generally numb to it. But every now and then an American film forces audiences to look in a mirror before smashing their faces into the glass, perfectly capturing a troubled culture and the grim, ugly reality of the acts we commit to settle disputes. Like No Country for Old MenIn the BedroomElephantA History of Violence, and the Peckinpah catalogue, Jeremy Saulnier's Kickstarter-funded Blue Ruin is one of those poignant films.

Devastated by his parents' murder, Dwight (the award-worthy Macon Blair) lives a sad, solitary, vagrant's life on the fringes of society. He sneaks baths in people's homes, eats out of dumpsters, and sleeps in his car by the Maryland shore, where his family used to vacation. When he learns that his parents' killer, who took a plea deal for a reduced sentence, is getting out of prison, his aimless existence suddenly takes on a vengeful purpose. But what Dwight, blinded by inertia and his jittery pursuit of retribution in his Virginia hometown, fails to recognize is that the killer has a family too, and an eye for an eye creates a boom in the eye patch industry. As blood spills, it is inevitable that more will flow.

In Blue Ruin, when a knife, arrow, or bullet graphically meets skin, it is wholly and appropriately unsatisfying. The acts are brutal and unpleasant and, more important, Saulnier is clear that each of them has an unsettling ripple effect. The aggrieved always need someone to feel their pain, and it doesn't matter if the target is the perpetrator of violence or merely someone whose death will hurt them. In the middle of it all is Dwight, played masterfully by Blair, who brings fragility and reluctance to the decidedly non-action hero protagonist. His understanding of violence is sadly misguided and no match for a hardscrabble, gun-loving, hunting family that is familiar with blood-letting. What he learns of it in Saulnier's stunning and brilliant sophomore effort will ruin not only him but anyone who watches it. —JM

3. Narco Cultura

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Director: Shaul Schwarz

In Juarez, Mexico, there's a cartel war going on outside no man is safe from. In the graphic, disturbing, and beautifully shot documentary Narco Cultura, director Shaul Schwarz focuses his lens on the once lively city, which now appears to be a ghost town because the populace hides indoors, afraid of becoming another statistic in the high kidnapping and murder rates. Although there are many who see the drug dealers as a villainous plague, others in Mexico and the U.S. have turned them into Robin Hood-esque folk heroes, singing their praises in popular drug ballads known as narcocorridos, which are like a polka-infused Mexican version of 1990s gangster rap that raises similar questions about whether they document or exploit suffering. 

Schwarz interviews people on all sides of the violence, from children milling about murder scenes, to politicians, police, drug dealers, and musicians. He rides with a Juarez homicide investigator who has to hide his face with a mask at crime scenes, where large crowds gather around bullet-riddled, burned, dismembered, and decapitated victims, for fear of being identified and targeted for murder. He has lost numerous colleagues and lives a prisoner's life, only leaving the barred home he grew up in to work. 

In contrast, singers of narcocorridos like Bukanas de Culiacan and El Komander live cushy celebrity lives, writings songs from the drug dealer's POV (sometimes paid by them to write the ballads). In gaudy outfits, they posture like smugglers-the lead singer of Bukanas goes so far as to bring a bazooka on stage with him-and tour the United States and Mexico, performing in front of houses packed with people who giddily sing along to songs that celebrate cruel men who torture and decapitate people. Producers of equally popular Spanish language narco films cast them in movies where they act out these parts. While those living in the middle of the violence flee from it, those singing about it from a safe distance struggle mostly with keeping it real, and research online to get the stories and slang right.

Schwarz is unflinching as he visits crime scenes and incarcerated drug dealers who describe torture sessions. At times, if his shots weren't so gorgeously constructed, it would be difficult to not look away. The end result is a fascinating documentary that makes the viewer ponder the relationship of real-life barbarism and showy faux violence for entertainment's sake. Even if you never go to Mexico or listen to a narcocorrido, you'll likely pause for a second and think the next time you throw on Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Murder was the Case." —JM

2. Jodorowsky's Dune

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1. R100

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Director: Hitoshi Matsumoto

There's a definite genius at work in R100, the new surrealistic oddity from Japanese megastar Hitoshi Matsumoto. One half of the comedy duo Downtown, the tandem of stand-up comics who've been headlining popular variety shows in Japan since the 1980s, Matsumoto has been described by some as the country's version of Jerry Seinfeld, but bigger.

The comparison seems lightweight, though, once you've seen any of Matsumoto's films, namely the 2007 mockumentary Big Man Japanabout an average guy who sprouts up to a tall building's height and throws down against Godzilla-like monsters—and now R100, since, well, Seinfeld's sole movie from behind the camera (as a writer and producer) is Bee Movie. That 2007 animated flick for kids isn't in the same league as Matsumoto's latest, which, to simplify it, follows a nebbish, middle-aged furniture salesman whose decision to solicit an enigmatic S&M company called "Bondage" results in dominatrixes randomly interrupting his life, in public places, and humiliating him with physical violence and other ego-bashing.

And that's putting it lightly. R100 starts off just like that, with poor Takafumi (Momori Nao) submitting himself to various forms of degradation-one leather-clad woman shows up at a sushi restaurant, smashes all of his food, and makes him eat the mushed shrimp and rolls; another beats the piss out of him on a sidewalk. At this point, R100 doesn't play like the work of a bizarre funnyman like Matsumoto. The mood is solemn, even poignant; Takafumi visits his comatose wife in the hospital without any punch lines. There's humor elsewhere, but it's meditative, not wacky, with slight hints of insanity whenever Takafumi experiences intense pleasure-his face stretches into a smile straight out of Soundgarden's infamous "Black Hole Sun" music video. Those touches aside, though, the hyperbolic reputation that the film earned when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month-mainly hinged around the sentiment of "It's the craziest movie you'll see all year"-doesn't register during R100's somber first half, but then Matsumoto reveals his master plan with an unexpected and hilariously timed title card, disrupting the natural order of how movies are supposed to transpire like Janet Leigh's midpoint death in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Matsumoto's style of comedy requires patience, in how he calmly sets up his jokes through world-building. Once R100's weirdness kicks in, you're settled into its groove, which allows Matsumoto to then go full-on Monty Python. Playing off the film's title (a riff on the Japanese movie rating system, whose equivalent to NC-17 is R18), R100 introduces a group of censors watching R100's madness alongside the audience and amazingly commenting on all of its plot-holes and confusion, similar to the final scene in the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading, only more often and, frankly, much funnier. After one of the dominatrixes dies, her colleagues give random, mournful on-camera interviews directly to the camera, as if R100 has suddenly turned into a faux documentary. You almost expect John Cleese to walk into the frame and announce, "And now for something completely different."

Even the title R100 is a sly ruse on Matsumoto's part. Despite the whole S&M angle, the film is relatively tame, with the only nudity coming from Takafumi giving his son a bath in one of R100's genuinely tender moments. It's a bait-and-switch from Matsumoto-he knows you're expecting extreme kink but never delivers it. Well, except for the film's incredibly batshit center-piece, in which Takafumi is stripped down to his skivvies, gagged, and tied up as "The Queen of Saliva," an overweight dominatrix who loves to dance, repeatedly spits on him. In a way, it's also an instance where Matsumoto's spitting on the viewer's anticipation, replacing any chances of seeing beautiful women do dangerous things with the sight of a chubby one being gross.

The further R100 gets into its cerebral, thinking man's absurdity, the more ambiguous and abstract the meta-narrative becomes. By having his movie-censors-within-the-movie demonstrating that they're just as bewildered as you, the viewer, are, Matsumoto makes it clear that he's both in on the jokes and in total control of them. The 100-year-old director seated inside the ratings board's theatre, his facial expression stern the entire time beforehand, closes the film with his very own "Black Hole Sun" grin. He, representative of Matsumoto, knows he's just blown everyone's minds, and you're right there laughing with him, ready to wrap one of those red ball mouth gags around your head and beg Matsumoto for more. —MB

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