LAFF: the Best of the Fest

CRITIC'S PICK FOUR LIONS With its finger on every button and wired for a cultural explosion, British satirist Chris Morris' brilliant, raucously irreverent take on Islamic jihadism follows a hapless, bickering quartet of wannabe suicide bombers as they plot to blow up London. Whether they are disguising themselves in ridiculous ostrich and Ninja Turtles costumes, filming propaganda videos in close-up so that their tiny AK-47s look actual size, practicing high-pitched female voices to indiscreetly ask for "12 bottles of bleach, please" or communicating secretively online as animated puffins, the absurdity of these fools underscores that even the most wrongheaded ideologies belong to humans, not faceless boogeymen. Terrorism is no laughing matter, of course, and Morris is no fool. He employs complex tonal shifts so that farce turns to tragedy on a dime, which then gives the violence enough weight that we have to ask ourselves why we're laughing — the sign of a truly radical comedy. (Regal; Thurs., June 24 7:30 p.m., Sun., June 27, 1:30 p.m.) (A.H.)

GASLAND As if there weren't reason enough to worry about domestic oil drilling, Josh Fox's knockout documentary exposes the shocking costs of natural-resource exploitation. After receiving a letter from a corporation offering six-figure compensation for permission to drill on the land of his family's Hudson Valley home, Fox learned that such companies specialize in a process called "fracking" — a method of natural-gas extraction that tends to leave large amounts of fuel in an area's water supply. He then set out on a road trip, documenting American families feeling the effects of fracking: flammable tap water; spontaneous combustions; dying livestock; sudden, inexplicable serious illnesses. Fox, the figurehead of an agitprop theater collective in Manhattan, paints himself not entirely ingenuously as a banjo-plucking commoner, but his indignation is rightfully genuine and appealingly scrappy, and the material he collects from real Everyperson fracking victims around the country is undeniably frightening. You have at least two chances to get your panic on: LAFF's screening on June 20, and Gasland's premiere on HBO June 21. (Regal; Sun., June 20, 2:15 p.m.) (K.L.)

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More About

• Christina Kolozsvary Chrissy
• Trieste Kelly Dunn
• Grace Drummond-Hay
• Pat Tillman
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

CRITIC'S PICK KATALIN VARGA An old-country magic haunts director Peter Strickland's exceptional debut — an unpredictable tale of a steely-nerved woman's revenge. Shot in Transylvania and somehow dwelling in both past and present, the compact film follows a kerchiefed young mother as she flees her husband with her son and tracks down two men who wronged her years ago. Katalin is played by remarkable Romanian first-timer Hilda Peter, a lank, almost mischievously intense actress who captivates with her avidity, as well as bouts of eyes-wide-open panic. Her Katalin is a compellingly ambiguous tragic figure, forging ahead with her seduce-and-destroy mission, as she conceals facts from her boy. Strickland's resourceful sound design is terrific, settling a pregnant silence on the often breathtaking countryside, bringing in frenetic Gypsy violin for a campfire dance, or dropping a cell-phone burble at just the right macabre moment. It's almost worth it for the boat scene alone, in which Katalin unspools a monologue for the ages while waters whirl vertiginously behind her. (Regal; Wed., June 23, 8 p.m.) (Nicolas Rapold)

LIFE WITH MURDER After 18-year-old Jennifer Jenkins is brutally murdered, her parents' grief is compounded by the arrest of their only son for the crime; they spend the next decade trying to prove his innocence, as friends and (some) family fall away, and the law refuses to budge. In this masterfully orchestrated documentary, director John Kastner slowly combines crime-scene video, police-interrogation footage and talking-head interviews into a slowly sketched psychological profile that is devastating (the father's debilitating grief, in particular, is painful to witness) as the truth finally comes out and the parents learn what really happened to their daughter. (Regal; Fri., June 18, 9:45 p.m.; Sun., June 20, 4 p.m., Mon., June 21, 5 p.m.) (E.H.)

MARWENCOL Jeff Malmberg's first feature is a portrait of Mark Hogencamp, a brain-damaged artist who creates and photographs a one-sixth-scale replica of a World War II–era town, with action figures and Barbie dolls standing in for Nazis, catfighting waitresses, and an American fighter pilot — the latter a surrogate for Hogencamp himself. Fusing several different strands of contemporary nonfiction filmmaking that rarely coexist within the same film, Marwencol deals with social issues (mental disability, alcoholism, sexual identity) in an extraordinarily personal way. Hogencamp's story unfolds so organically that it seems as though the subject is talking directly to the viewer, gradually revealing more of himself as one would with a stranger turned confidant, as if we're earning his trust as the film goes along. (Regal; Fri., June 18, 10 p.m., Thurs., June 24, 7:45 p.m.) (K.L.)

CRITIC'S PICK THE NEW YEAR A slow-building stunner of a character study. Trieste Kelly Dunn stars as Sunny, a budding writer who returned to her working-class hometown of Pensacola to take care of her sick academic father, and got stuck. Her routine, and her safe relationship with a sweet but unremarkable local dude, are thrown into relief when Isaac (Ryan Hunter), Sunny's high school rival–turned–New York hipster stand-up comedian, comes home for the holidays. As Sunny's quarter-life crisis sneaks up on her and then explodes, director Brett Haley steers far away from sad-young-person movie clichés. The supporting players are expertly cast and all turn in solid performances, but this is Dunn's show. In a sense, she's playing a dual role: Sunny as seen by others, quiet, dutiful, nearly selfless, and the repressed Sunny, ambitious, resentful and desperate to do something for herself for a change. As the days drop down to the end of the year, pressure mounts for Sunny to figure out which version of herself she's going to be, a crisis of self-confrontation embodied in a single long shot of Dunn's face in a mirror, which will break your heart. (Regal; Fri., June 18, 10:15 p.m., Tues., June 22, 4:45 p.m., Wed., June 23, 7:30 p.m.) (K.L.)