Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes)

Black. Very black. Hilarious. Once in a while a movie comes along that expresses the dark side of our wish fulfillment fantasies. If revenge is a plate best eaten cold then this flic is positively glacial. Yet the revenge fantasies played out in this sextet of short stories are infernal, burning, fire breathing, enraging, and ultimately immensely funny and vastly entertaining. Who among you has not wanted to stick it to the tow truck people who unjustly took your wheels? What newlywed - upon learning their recently betrothed had schtupped the co-worker - hasn't wanted to go postal? What if the man who caused your dad to commit suicide walked into your diner, didn't recognize you, and ordered eggs? Director Szifron adroitly peels back the thin veneer of civilized behavior to remind us that underneath we are still animals. His opening title sequence (following a pure genius opening scene involving a group of strangers flying on a jet who have - er...a um...friend in common) consists of still photographs of predatory beasts in the African plains set to music highly reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's and Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns so often quoted by Mr. Tarantino. This is a film 'ole Quentin surely loves - and it's more cerebral, for those of us who like our violence that way. Wild Tales has characters who get under your skin. You want the hurt to happen, you try to look away, you can't, you laugh because it's up there on the screen. If Whiplash was the cinema of cruelty, this is the cinema of cruelty after a hit of laughing gas. Don't miss this gem!

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