Compliance

A young woman is accused of theft and subjected to a traumatizing search in this taut, provocative film. Based on a true story, Compliance follows the Bullitt County McDonald's Strip Search Prank Call Case nearly to the letter, and I'm glad they told me as the events are so horrifying I nearly didn't believe it. After a caller identifying himself as a police officer informs a harried restaurant manager that one of her employees is being accused of theft, the manager follows the instructions from the slick, convincing, manipulative, and flattering prank caller, and then detains the hapless employee for over 3 hours. Ann Dowd as the manager deftly portrays a gullible, desperate, and overworked character while supplying hints of narcissism, tenderness, and shame. Heather McIntosh's unobtrusive, anxious cello score heightens the tension throughout.

Holy Motors

A mysterious man is chauffeured around in his hoarder-limousine as he dresses up for various appointments in this challenging avant-garde film.

Well, I've been trying to make my way through a couple of lists of The 50 Weirdest Movies Ever...

http://flavorwire.com/476770/the-50-weirdest-movies-ever-made/view-all

http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/at-the-movies/a494945/20-greatest-mindfk-movies-inception-donnie-darko-fight-club.html#~p2GmdwvmIWE1Kc

...because I'm all like, "Uh, yeah, right. I'm pretty weird, and I think I can handle it". Unfortunately, I'm now about a dozen reviews behind. Back to Holy Motors. It was pretty to look at, but I found it to be rather meh. Denis Lavant gives a tour de force performance, while Leos Carax directs a smug, jokey script in a forced, look-at-me-I'm-avant-garde manner. There were a few eyebrow-raising moments, particularly the motion-capture scene, but the chimps and the talking cars elicited eye-rolls instead. I wanted to like it more than I did.

The Interview

I don't really follow the news, but from what I gather, the vanity Road comedy from Seth Rogen and James Franco known as The Interview caused a little international kerfluffle recently, and after seeing it, I'm not entirely surprised. The wafer-thin plot consists of the affable, goofy duo traveling to North Korea to interview a margarita-sipping, Katy Perry-listening Kim Jong-Un, and its scatological humor falls flat. Failing as a comedy, The Interview only just succeeds as a US Government propaganda weapon. Check out this spoileriffic shot I snapped, where two of Rogen's fingers are bitten off during a pivotal moment near the end of the film.

Having wrapped his bleeding hand with the North Korean flag, Rogen leaves his middle finger extended in a salute. Onscreen for a fraction of a second, it's a surely ad-libbed but probably suggested by CIA moment in a film that has the half-baked aroma of being ghostwritten by a secretive Washington agency.  I can only guess that the team of Rogen and Franco were seemingly allowed by a round-table of shadow operatives working within the framework of a stale 1960s TV skit to dead-horse their chummy, literally crotch-focused humor over an excessively redacted Cold War-era anti-Communist memo from a conspiratorial closet of the US government, somehow hammering it into the vague shape of an actual film, and if someone were to trim an hour and 20 minutes and replace James Franco with Barbara Eden and North Korea with Cocoa Beach, the end result wouldn't seem out of place slipped into a season of I Dream Of Jeannie. The Interview is as cuddly as a puppy, and a few of their drawn-out, awkwardly-smoochy shenanigans warrant a weak smile, but it's best enjoyed as a nefarious, breadcrumb-laden honeypot of espionage created to embarrass and undermine a dictator.

Sweet Movie

I've gone on this rant before in, I don't know, maybe 500 movie reviews, but seriously, I don't care what era the movie was filmed in or the socio-economic challenges of the time, but there's just no excuse for the shocking reality of wicker furniture.

Film-makers, if your budget only allows for set design to include a wicker fan chair, then don't make your film. I don't care if you're making a political statement about capitalism by including a sequence featuring a wicker chair. Don't do it. I don't care if you decide to go upscale and include a piece of modern, stylish white linen-covered wicker furniture that looks like two hammocks. Don't do it.

And I certainly don't care if you decide to use a piece of wicker furniture that looks like the car Gary Numan drove around in Urgh! A Music War. Don't do it.

OK, after watching that clip from Urgh! A Music War, I've softened my stance on whether or not film-makers should use wicker furniture that looks like the tiny future car Gary Numan drove around in Urgh! A Music War, and by "softened my stance" I mean "film-makers should use footage of Gary Numan driving around a tiny future car in all their films". I'd watch that movie. It would be sweet.

The Double

In a world where everything is antiquated, in need of repair, in need of a good scrub, in need of a coat of paint in any color but olive drab, ill-fitting, and probably formerly soviet, a man meets his doppelgänger. The Double is appropriately stagey, artificial, and dystopian, fitting for a film based on Dostoyevsky's novella. The bureaucracy of The Double is equally as villainous as the main character's double.

I live in fear that I might have a doppelgänger. Somewhere out there, someone could be my exact opposite, and plotting my downfall. Someone could be thoughtful, caring, considerate. Someone could be sitting around not watching movies, not eating Junior Mints, not being a successful entrepreneur, not having billions of dollars at their disposal, in other words, being totally, totally lame. I shudder at the thought.

Mundo Depravados

Burlesque star Tempest Storm stars in this comedic sex murder mystery, where two detectives hunt down a pantyhose-masked, trenchcoat-clad, Keds-wearing sex monster, which is apparently a thing that exists. After the sex monster unconvincingly murders a woman in a doll factory who looks like the Jesus And Mary chain held her down and teased her hair, two detectives with a penchant for impersonations search for clues in two likely places: a television station that is host to an unconvincing, 15-second-long exercise program and the burlesque house because those two places are well known for containing clues. Every male character would rather peep through peepholes, through cracked doorways, and through heating vents instead of buying a ticket to Tempest Storm's burlesque act where she pretends to be murdered by the sex monster, and the two detectives become concerned that her act might upset the real sex monster. He shouldn't, unless sex monsters are often upset by Tempest Storm wearing two sets of lingerie and pretending to be unconvincingly stabbed in front of a unconvincingly strip-teased audience. Mundo Depravados is poorly mic'd, poorly acted, and very, very boring.

Frank

A wannabe musician stumbles onto a gig as a keyboardist for an avant-garde rock group in this bittersweet film loosely based on the career of outsider musician/comedian Frank Sidebottom. Featuring scenes of the musicians playing bendy straws, 11 months of rehearsals, a viking funeral, a safety word, and a gig at South By Southwest, Frank may play fast and loose with the history of Frank Sidebottom's band The Freshies but makes up for it with intriguing performances by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Fassbender. Plus, I'm a big fan of theremins, and I don't want anyone touching mine, either.