Wild Tales, directed by Damian Szifron (R, 122 minutes)
People are capable of amazing acts of love, generosity and self-sacrifice. They can also be vain, bitter and vengeful creatures who use their intelligence in precisely calibrated ways.
The wonder of Argentinian writer-director Damian Szifron’s Wild Tales is that it is somehow able to demonstrate the extremes of human unkindness without reducing its characters to caricatures. For all its cartoonish violence, it never allows us to imagine ourselves much different from the perpetrators and victims on the screen.
The film is a collection of six sketches, mostly about the way we get back at those we believe did us wrong. The best story is the first one, “Pasternak,” in which the passengers on a plane slowly begin to realize they all have a connection to an untalented composer of classical music.
This wacky yet elegant opener gives way to a lower-key story where an ex-con cook (Rita Cortese) tries to talk an idealistic young waitress (Julieta Zylberberg) into taking revenge on a former loan shark turned politician (Cesar Bordon) who ruined the waitress’s life by driving her father to suicide. The cook suggests that the only chance the waitress will ever have to get even with a powerful man is in close quarters. For a moment this mighty figure is vulnerable. So what if there’s a price to be paid?
Then a smug Audi driver (Leonardo Sbaraglia) shouts “Redneck!” when he passes a working stiff (Walter Donado) at the wheel of a filthy heap of a truck. The Audi breaks down and the truck appears on the horizon. The macho duel that ensues is nasty and weirdly plausible.
The wickedly deranged finale, “Till Death Do Us Part,” in which a new bride (Erica Rivas) becomes an avenging angel when she discovers her husband (Diego Gentile) cheated on her during their wedding reception, celebrates the film’s feral spirit. Throughout the stories, Szifron keeps us off-balance and unsettled. Somehow his lack of control makes him more effective.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
The Wrecking Crew (PG, 101 minutes) After Tommy Tedesco, described by Guitar Player magazine as the most recorded guitarist in history, was diagnosed with cancer in 1996, his son Denny decided to tell his story. The resulting documentary, The Wrecking Crew, is a fun, unpretentious look back at some amazingly talented people (mostly men, but bassist Carol Kaye emerges as one of the stars) who knocked out hit after hit in their heyday — at one point drummer Hal Blaine, who was more or less the leader of the group, played on six straight recordings that won the Grammy for Record of the Year.
There’s a lot here that those enamored of the period’s music as well as casual viewers will find arresting. Brian Wilson’s genius is reconfirmed, Kaye demonstrates how she souped up the bass line in “The Beat Goes On,” and we learn that jazz musicians can learn to love rock ’n’ roll when it pays the bills.
While the film lacks the drama of 20 Feet From Stardom or Muscle Shoals, recent music documentaries that also touched on societal issues (the role of women in the former, racial typecasting in the latter), it’s an enjoyable labor of love that nicely complements those films as well as 2014’s Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me. (Before he became a pop star, Campbell was a member of the outfit.)
Tommy Tedesco died in 1997, and since Denny started filming the project, six others have passed on. The film is a loving testament to their legacy.
Stop the Pounding Heart (unrated, 100 minutes) The complexities of being a teenager are quietly spelled out in this sincere and empathetic story of 14-year-old Sara (Sara Carlson who, along with everybody else in the cast, is a nonprofessional actor playing a version of herself), a member of a strict fundamentalist family who raise goats in rural Texas. She and her 11 hardworking home-schooled siblings are taught to follow the Bible, obey their elders, and be devout and pure — especially the girls, who are expected to submit to male authority throughout their lives. Then she meets amateur bull rider Colby (Colby Trichell), which leads her to discover that everything she’s been taught and believes in no longer applies. Written and directed by Roberto Minervini.