Day: March 18, 2015

REVIEW: Relatos salvajes [Wild Tales] [2014]

Jared Mobarak

“Crime of passion?” Best. Wedding. Ever. And trip to the bureaucratic black hole that is government sanctioned towing. And expertly planned, faux fateful airline flight this side of “Lost”. I mean it. Damián Szifrón‘s Relatos salvejes [Wild Tales] is a twisted cousin of Krzysztof Kieslowski‘s The Decalogue, a sextet of darkly comic morality plays where chaos reigns and vengeance rewards the unhinged desperate for a win. From the hilariously absurd yet perfectly revealed machinations of its opening segment “Pasternak” to the vicious table turn of its last “Til Death Do…

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REVIEW: Track [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“I probably should have picked up your gun” There have been many iterations of the dark morality tale known most recently as “The Scorpion and the Frog”. Before its take around 1954, however, came similar fables from Aesop (“The Farmer and the Viper” and “The Snake and the Farmer”) as well as that of Arab/West African origins by the name of “The Scorpion and the Turtle”. What they all have in common is the idea that we cannot change what we are at a fundamental level. A scorpion may be…

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