Wild Tales

Once I visited a psychiatrist and anxiously asked him if I was okay, as I am constantly faced with increasingly intense cravings to strangle my children. He assured me that it is a part of almost every parent's fate and that he also experiences it. He said alcohol helps him, and when he doesn't know what to do next, instead of using cutting, stabbing, or shooting weapons, it is better to take out a little ball and squeeze it in the palms until completely calm. Unfortunately, the heroes of Argentine film stories do not use a ball and give full expression to their emotions seasoned with typical South American temperament. I consider this black comedy, which looks at society's flaws and human weaknesses with sarcastic detachment, to be the most pleasant film surprise of 2014. I somehow identified with the humor of Wild Tales and especially envy the protagonist of the first story for his uncompromising efforts because only a few of us have the ability to bring things to a perfect end. Out of the 6 stories, I consider 5 of them to be highly outstanding, while one somewhat does not fit into the overall poetic and comedic style and either the screenwriter should have added a bit more exaggeration and comedic tone, or he should have left it out completely. But that doesn't change the fact that I enjoyed this film about the corruption of the system, albeit differently from the others. Overall impression: 90%. (02/12/2014)

Wild Tales that get the nerves flowing, strain to bursting and they do burst, but the cynical diaphragm also comes into its own. The driver war clearly won it for me, but I can't say that the other stones in this black-humored mosaic were much worse. True, I would have liked it even more if the writer/director had also interwoven the stories in other ways than the ubiquitous insanity, but that's probably the only flaw I noticed.___P.S. If I were to watch Falling Down now (which I was reminded of by the short story with a pyrotechnician), it might not end well with my surroundings. (03/04/2016)

Wild Tales has become the number one must-see film of the year. It’s been promoted everywhere. The truth is that it doesn't actually hurt. It's a series of stories that handle anecdotal situations in which the main characters have lost their nerve. The point is thus clear - everyone would like to experience revenge on their former teacher, transport company, or cheating husband. Straightforwardness is valued as genius nowadays. (01/11/2014)

Argentine bachelor's stories with a bloody coat of paint, sometimes insanely convulsive (the introductory Pasternak barely holds up as a TV sketch, even if the authors of Pečený sněhulák would tear off Szifron's hands), attacks on social criticism killed in shallow morals (jBombito and a story with a wreck), all character limits, structurally and ideologically defensible by the fact that they are "stories" and similar reductivity pertains to them. There is nothing to object to - I just claim that this is an unbalanced film, more for fun than really entertaining and it is explicitly shallow in its more ambitious moments. Only the final wedding is really "wild", but even then one’s smile is replaced by a slightly raised eyebrow. Purely filmed, audience-friendly, but otherwise absolutely amounting to consumer goods. It can be justified by the fact that the (un) ordinary absurdity of existence coincides with the films of Roy Andersson, but Szifron's film does not even come close to its penetration and vision. [60%] (10/09/2014)

The calculated push for mischievous points forces the viewer to not take the creative effort too seriously. That’s quite a shame, considering that morally I only liked the engineering odyssey and that the wedding revelry offered everything that its predecessors didn't, i.e., above all, a twisted merry-go-round of absurdity that presents those cynical life messages with utter sovereignty and ease, as if life itself had written them. I can't help but think that the filmmakers were capable of more. (29/12/2014)