Wilding

WILD TALES (A-minus) - This 2014 hit from Argentina, recently released in North America, will likely end up being the most fun I have in a movie theater in 2015. Writer/director Damian Szifron confidently serves up a pastiche of six stories -- in the classic vein of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" and "Love: American Style" -- each with an O. Henry darkness and a violent ending. It's pure escapist entertainment.

The viewer is served notice before the opening credits roll, with the first vignette, in which the passengers of an airplane slowly realize they all have something in common, which (in an eerie prediction of a recent actual news event) will lead to their doom. The wildest entry involves two men dueling through an ever-escalating battle of road rage. Several clever twists ratchet the tension, and Szifron teaches a valuable lesson: Let things go. Don't reverse course and go back to get the last word or lick in. Drive on. The alternative is an ugly, fiery blast into an ironic eternity.

Speaking of explosions, Ricardo Darin stands out as Simon (a.k.a. Bombito), a munitions expert who seeks revenge on the bureaucratic system after his car keeps getting towed. Darin was memorable in "Nine Queens" and "The Secret in Their Eyes," and here he lends his hangdog emotions and wry smile to the outrage of an everyman tired of taking lumps from everyday life. Other tales involve a diner cook hellbent on avenging a mobster's actions against the family of the diner's waitress, who is a reticent accomplice; and a rich family seeking to buy their way out of their teen son's fatal hit-and-run accident by paying their handyman to take the fall and by greasing the wheels of justice with cash (a variation on Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Three Monkeys" from 2008).

Szifron can do no wrong as he glides from story to story. He is confident and technically adept while spinning these fascinating tales. He some how builds momentum despite having to restart his narrative every 20 minutes or so. It helps that he has assembled a top-notch cast to zip things along.

The filmmaker saves one of his best for last, the tale of a wedding that turns into a knock-down/drag-out spectacle after the bride suspects the groom of having cheated on her. Like with the road-rage chapter, this one melds slapstick with doom, with hints of Three Stooges and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Old-fashioned in presentation and traditional in its storytelling, this improbable whoosh of fresh air plays like a modern serial, with a vigorous new voice to splash it on the big screen. A delight.