Forced Incest at Gunpoint, Necrophilia (Sort Of), and the Shallow Lives of the Haute Bourgeoisie...

... plus regressive (and racist) nostalgia via Dan Pritzker's faux-silent Louis. To be sure, an off-putting group of subjects mark the films I reviewed this week, but there's one clear winner in the bunch. That would be the Deagol Brothers' teen zombie movie, Make-Out with Violence, a film infused with the tender yearning of youth (and hints of necrophilia). It opens this Friday at Brooklyn's new reRun Gastropub theater. Also, very much worth seeing is Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow which I reviewed last year during New Directors/New Films and which (finally) gets a theatrical release this week.

Change of Plans (Slant)
Louis (Slant)
Make-Out with Violence (Village Voice)
Daniel and Ana (Village Voice)

One Up, One Down

In recent years, there's been no shortage of films exploring (or exploiting) the more brutal episodes of World War II and the trend shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. But as two films opening this week show, the results can differ dramatically: While A Film Unfinished offers a stunning analysis of the Nazi's often contradictory propaganda mission by offering a reading of a single German cinematic production, Robert Guédiguian's French resistance drama, Army of Crime, proves to be, as I conclude my Slant review, "more interested in sentimentalizing history than in analyzing it."

New Releases: Peepli Live and The People I've Slept With

Two films among many will come to New York screens this week and then depart just as quickly, memorialized only by a handful of reviews such as mine below. Neither film is great, and neither is awful, just another pair of mediocre pictures getting a limited run at one of Manhattan's less visible venues.

Peepli Live (Slant)
The People I've Slept With (Time Out New York)

Twelve Times the Agony

I covered seven films this week and only one (Last Letters from Monte Rosa) is at all worth seeing. But the real stinker of the lot is Joel Schumacher's unspeakable Twelve, arguably the worst film released so far this year. Consider yourself warned.

Twelve (Slant)
Cairo Time (Slant)
The Disappearance of Alice Creed (Slant)
Brotherhood (The L Magazine)
Last Letters from Monte Rosa (Village Voice)
The Kid: Chamaco (Village Voice)
Patrik, Age 1.5 (Time Out New York)