Wild Tales
Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes): six short films about everyday people being pushed over the edge. Unlike most anthology movies, these are all done by the same director, which should give the segments more consistency than usual – right? Wrong! The six stories are all varying lengths, and wildly different in their tone, ‘enjoyability’, and humour. The shorter, punchier ideas are great but the longer ones in the second half all feel dragged out. With the throughline being ‘revenge’ they’re all quite dark with varying degrees of gallows / black humour. Stylistically though, they’re all meticulously directed, with dozens of striking and stand-out shots. The acting is also rock solid, with a lot of familiar faces from ‘World Cinema‘. It also walks a very tight line between reality and a tiny sprinkle of magic / surrealism – the obvious comparison being something like The Twilight Zone – but this doesn’t go near full on fiction. I really enjoyed the first half of this, but as the stories go forward, they get far too serious (and less funny). Overall, Wild Tales is a decent film with some great ideas, that suffers the same problem as most anthology pictures: the quality of each section is completely different.
Score: 6.5/10
Pasternak | The Rats | Road to Hell | Bombita | The Deal | Till Death Do Us Part
Paragraph Film Reviews 
I liked this movie a bit more than you did, although I have to agree that the first ones are stronger compared to the later ones. The opening one and the one with the drivers fighting are my favorite.
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I was surprised to see that this broke all kinds of foreign film records last year. Enjoyed it, and I’ve kept going back and thinking about it in the weeks since watching; however, it would have been brilliant if it had a couple more ideas but kept them as short and punchy as the first couple (Pasternak & The Rats)
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