A summertime question for Twitch's Todd.

God, that's a hard call just because we're so eclectic and there's so much out there that I haven't had the chance to see yet. I have a hunch that the correct answer will prove to be Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Invisible Waves - with The Host and maybe Severance giving it a run - thanks to the intersection of smarts, style and cult coolness. Plus, I just love Pen-Ek.

Of what I have seen, I've been greatly impressed by Satoshi Kon's Paprika, which I managed to score an advance screener of. Kon's an odd figure in that he's an animator who will likely never be known for his animation, but his stories are just fantastic, and this finds him mining the mind-bending, nature of reality stuff - with darkly sexual undertones - that he does better than pretty much anyone else.

Also in the darkly sexual arena, Pal Sletaune's Naboer is just a lean, fierce piece of work that absolutely blew me away. Bit of Polanski, bit of Hitchcock, bit of Lynch, all packed into a 75-minute runtime. Not a scrap of waste to be found in this psycho-sexual thriller, and even if you see what's coming, Sletaune executes it so well that it just doesn't matter.

Japanese omnibus film Rampo Noir is pretty stunning as well, an adaptation of four stories by Edogawa Rampo, all of them starring Tadanobu Asano. This will probably end up classed as a horror film because of its overall oddness, but it isn't really - it's something all it's own. Frequently grotesque and gothic, yes, but horror? Not really. As with all omnibus films, it's a little bit uneven, but I though the opening and closing pieces, in particular, were just spectacular.

There's lots of other stuff I'm looking forward to, but I think those are the winners so far.

Posted by dwhudson at July 24, 2006 10:13 AM