perica-43151 Perhaps the best omnibus dark comedy ever made. This movie is funny, it explores some of the darker parts of humanity but it does so with so much wit and intelligence. It was a great hit in South America, and understandably so. Despite dark and cynical take on the human condition, the movie is lighthearted and highly watchable, and uncompromisingly original.

Anssi Vartiainen Wild Tales is a collage of six short films, all different in circumstance and characters. Yet they all deal with the same thing. What would it look like if someone reached their utter breaking point, was taken over the line of what is bearable, and just... snapped.It can sound a bit over the top, and the film is labeled comedy for a reason, but at the same time director Damián Szifron gives it a dark undertone. Many of the stories are more than critical towards Argentinian government and public offices, and lets face it, people rarely snap in a graceful manner. Still the balance is always there. It is ugly, jarring and sometimes even a bit unpleasant, but you can always find the humour in the situation.I'd even argue that it isn't played enough for laughs. The first story, taking place on an airplane, is easily the most outlandish of the six. A truly bizarre scene that ends just about perfectly. It raises the bar quite high and none of the stories that follow can match it. To be fair, they're not even trying to, being more realistic in scope and circumstance, but it's still somewhat a shame.My second favourite is actually the second most outlandish one. A man has his car towed on the day of his daughter's birthday, and being a demolition engineer, he figures it's a high time to do something about this veritable highway robbery that masquerades as a towing office.My least favourite would probably be the last one, taking place at a wedding. It's a bit on the long side and the humour just isn't there. It has some good moments in it, but overall it left me feeling quite ambivalent.Still, none of the stories were bad by any means. Definitely worth a watch for all fans of dark humour and for those wanting to check out what South American film industry looks like.

aspergian If you relish at the act of forming pretentious psychoanalytic symbology of simplistic random, occasionally cartoonish collections of "edgy" stories whose leading characters all meet some form of gratuitously violent and disturbing demise, this is the film for you. While there is something that tries to pass as dark/black humour in there at all the usual cues, it just wasn't funny. Personally, I found it all quite predictable, boring and a little sad. The sadness came about as a result of the total pointlessness of the film. However, based on all the exaggerated glowing reviews, I think that sort of cynical, snobby, postmodern, existential, angsty "edginess" is exactly the sort of thing that this film was aiming for.

steveo122 Within the first minute, I thought the Cinematographer, Javier Julia, is a master jeweler in the use of light. Every aspect of the production would fit that category. It was as the third story started that I realized I had seen this before, a couple of years ago. No matter. It deserves mention again, with enthusiasm. The writing in these stories reminds me of the slightly twisted black comedy mystery stories told on the old "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" a few decades ago. Only here there's no 'slightly'.