Wild Tales
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This dark and funny anthology film from Argentina, written and directed by Damián Szifron and starring a terrific ensemble of actors, offers up a magnificently barbed concoction of whimsy and brutality. Unlike anthologies that revolve around a central location (Grand Hotel, New York Stories, Paris, je t'aime), a specific individual (Mystery Train, Four Rooms, 32 Films about Glenn Gould), an object (Twenty Bucks, Coffee and Cigarettes, The Red Violin), or a cinematic genre (Eros, Creepshow, Twilight Zone: The Movie), Wild Tales coalesces around a central theme—revenge. Of course, revenge films are a genre unto themselves, but most movies in that category don't look or unfold anything like Wild Tales. Szifron's movie is far from an exploitation picture; in fact, the best way to describe this polished, elegant, masterfully controlled film is "arthouse." But Wild Tales is the type of arthouse picture that should play equally well to the midnight movie crowd. It's a foreign film to which you can drag all your lame friends who refuse to see movies with subtitles.

Each of the six non-connected tales in this feature is an exquisitely constructed narrative that stands alone as a short, but they add up to much more when viewed as a whole. Szifron's gift for visual storytelling, combined with his clearly wicked, anarchic sense of humor, creates a work that is coherent and inventive, intelligent and accessible, politically charged and devilishly funny. It features countless memorable characters, moral conundrums both entertaining and challenging, more surprising twists than a Hitchcock triple feature and the best use of the Flashdance soundtrack since… well, Flashdance.

I'm not a big fan of anthology films for the simple reason that they are usually so uneven. Especially when helmed by multiple directors, the episodes in this type of collection are rarely of equal caliber, and sitting through three to six to thirty-two beginnings, middles, and ends can wear a viewer down. Wild Tales is the rare exception. Sure, by the time it’s over, you are ready for it to end—one can only take so many revenge stories before burning out—but I was amazed that this 122-minute film never falters or lags. Not once while watching did I wish the current episode would hurry up and end in the hope that the next one would be better, and as soon the next one started, I was never nostalgic for the previous chapter. 

Perhaps these six little stories cohere so well together because feelings of anger, aggression, and vengefulness are more direct and universal than the distinctive and often individualistic conceits that unite most omnibus pictures—love, fear, remembrance, or eros. Or maybe Wild Tales succeeds so brilliantly simply because it is written and directed by a single filmmaker who's young and eager to please, while the majority of anthology movies come from older, established (often indulgent) auteurs. Whatever the reason, this irrepressible picture (nominated for many major international awards, including the Palm d'Or at Cannes and the Best Foreign Language Oscar) does not disappoint.