 Day 21, Wild Tales, suggested by Claudio Medina and seconded by 13 people. Certainly a more fun suggestion than Claudio's first, the bleak as heck sounding documentary, The Three Deaths of Marisela Escobedo. But hey, there's still time to make me sad again, huh? I will admit that I have, at various points in my life, had intricate and often brutal revenge fantasies. They're never even kind of in proportion to the crime. Take away my phone. I will set your house on fire. Say something mean about one of my YouTube videos. I'll like figure out where you live in staple pictures of your children in your front door. I don't know. The absurd shit that I would never actually do, but in the immediate wake of the perceived transgression. Oh, I want to. Wild Tales is about the people who follow through on these desires. Six disconnected stories about folks who one day decide that they've had enough and someone is going to feel their wrath. I know that they say revenge is a dish best served cold, but only the hilarious introductory segment has any real forethought involved. One other has a day or so of planning, and the rest happened pretty much in the moment. And it feels good. There's always at least a little bit of violence, but sometimes it is more of a centerpiece than others. You've got people who are out to cause physical harm, and then those who want to do financial harm or maybe psychological harm. Each of the stories focuses on a different type of revenge aimed at a different type of perpetrator, some more objectively or societally justified than others. Like who's going to feel badly if a gangster gets rat poisoned or if the clearly criminal government run towing company has some damages to pay? No one. Other times it's a bit more complicated. And in the fifth story, the film steps away from the person who wants vengeance to give us some time with the people who they want vengeance on. It's an interesting change up and in a different movie I might think it was trying to say something about revenge itself. But no, it's definitely not. It's really just about how rich people are bad. Wild Tales isn't here to tell us about the inevitable cycle of violence or how revenge leaves people feeling empty inside while accomplishing nothing. Even when it literally depicts that exact thing, it does so in a way that's fun for the whole family. There is no meaning to any of this. It leans into those base instincts and gratifies them. It wants us to revel in the chaos without fear of judgment. This is a function of both tone and format. In terms of tone, it's funny. Not so much that fifth story, but the rest of them got at least a few chuckles out of me. The opening I mentioned earlier is by far the funniest and probably the only one that could really be considered a comedy without qualification. I laughed out loud when I realized what was happening about 30 seconds before they said it explicitly in the final shot before the opening credits had me damn near clapping with glee. Like what an absurdly dumb and hilarious image. And while it primed me for something a bit more fun than I actually got, I didn't feel let down by what followed. Sure, I liked some of the segments more than others, but I've never seen any anthology where every piece was equally good, and the fact that we've got six stories in two hours, including opening and closing credits, means that there's no chance for any of the shorts to overstay their welcome. Each is given just enough time to set up the conflict, play out the vengeance with maybe a little capper at the end showing consequences or lack thereof, and as soon as you've seen that, you're off to the next one. And everything is fine again. Until it isn't anymore. And that keeps the energy from lagging. You cannot predict what's coming next because you don't even know what the story is going to be, let alone where that story will go. And in a film about crimes of passion, about choices made in the heat of the moment, and the wild places that they will take you, that unpredictability is exactly what you need. 7.6 out of 10. Thank you so much for watching and thank you particularly to my patrons, my mom, hammering Marco, Kat Zarikata, Benjamin Schiff, Anthony Cole, Elliot Fowler, Greg Lucina, Kojo, Phil Bates, Willow, I am the sword, Riley Zimmerman, Claire Bear, Taylor Lindyce, Andrew Madison Design, and the folks who'd rather be read than said. If you liked this video, that's great. If not, oh well. If you want to see more, you can suggest what I'll talk about in three days in the comments. So do that. Awesome. We're almost done, sort of.