Heartfelt, well-crafted, but sunk by the most cliché screenplay this side of ABC afterschool specials, La Mission purports to be a touching portrait of San Francisco’s Latino lowrider community. The film makes an honest effort to be just that, but the off-the-shelf formula script is so predictable that I called every scene with disappointing accuracy. Benjamin Bratt clocks in a competent enough performance, with an earnestness that gamely seems oblivious to the weak dialog and by the numbers story. You got your single father with a checkered past. Check. His son is gay, and the father flies into a rage and refuses to accept his son. Check. Of course the son is perfect, and has been accepted into college. Check. There is one thug going around the neighborhood causing trouble. Check. You have the more liberal uncle and wife, who take in the son. Check. The father and his hot neighbor hate each other’s guts, but eventually become romantically involved. Check. And the whole family melodrama gets wrapped up before the credits start rolling. Check. Sigh.

It’s all too bad, as Peter Bratt has gathered together a very competent cinematographer, film editor, and good looking, strong cast. But regardless its slick appearance of the film, La Mission remains amateurish and insufferably naïve. And the notion that a father, in this day and age, is unable to accept homosexuality in the middle of flippin’ San Francisco seems a bit of a stretch, even for a conservative former Latino gangster. I couldn’t help but think “what a doucebag.” It would be like me living in India, and being completely shocked and horrified that spicy food is being served and eaten everywhere. The end result is La Mission is a timid, preachy, and ultimately self-congratulatory session designed for middle-brow audiences to feel progressive and with-it on an issue that is quickly becoming a cold potato. La Mission is about fifteen years too late.

Like all great zombie films, Tommy Wirkola’s stylish Dead Snow breaks all the zombie movie rules, yet definitely will satisfy fans of the those lovable folk who shamble about in search of human flesh to munch on. Half mockery and half tribute, Dead Snow often goes for laughs ala Shaun of the Dead and Evil Dead, but the film still packs some pretty gruesome scenes.

Four young men and three young ladies (not my favorite ratio, but what can you do?) drive up to a cabin in the snowy mountains of Norway. Little do they know that the mountains are infested by zombies (or they would have gone to the beach instead). But these aren’t your everyday, run of the mill zombies that a turtle could outrun. These are nothing less than Nazi zombies! Back in World War II, a company of German soldiers was forced out of nearby village, and left to freeze to death in the mountains. When these particular evil beings eventually rose up to feed on the living, they still retained their strict military training and discipline. As a result, these zombies are agile, fast, and work in coordination; they could definitely keep up with the sprinting monsters of 28 Days Later. Sweet!

Dead Snow is wonderfully shot, and Wirkola creates a naturally creepy atmosphere in a very unusual way…by having much of the story take place in broad daylight. The result is very disorienting, as not even the daylight can save you (as is the case in most horror films). The film is sprinkled with dozens of cinematic inside jokes, including the leader of the zombies, Colonel Herzog (which I can only presume is named in “honor” of cult German director Werner Herzog). The good colonel gets the biggest laugh in the film in a scene involving binoculars. The film is also well scored, so the music does not give away any of the delightful frights.

If you don’t care to see someone’s head torn apart, intestines unreeled like a clothesline, and a first-person perspective of a disembowelment (in the film’s most disturbing and inventive scene), you may want to give Dead Snow a pass. But if you dug any of the other films I mentioned in this review, hop on your nearest snowmobile and head for Dead Snow!

They just don’t make these kinds of movies anymore. Bronson, like the name connotes, is a delightful throwback to the nihilistic and wildly experimental 70s, when mavericks took over Hollywood, and art-house films were the mainstream. Bronson also serves as a gut-punching antidote to Hollywood’s assembly line of disingenuous stories of false redemption, the biopic; I like to think of Bronson as an anti-biopic, much in the same vein as 24 Hour Party People and Auto Focus.

The subject in question is Charles Bronson, but not the mustached hero of Deathwish, though this particular character does sport an old fashioned handlebar mustache himself. Charles Bronson, born Michael Peterson, has the dubious distinction of being “Britain’s most violent prisoner,” and has served 34 years in various prisons and mental institutions. I cannot exaggerate the raw animal power of Tom Hardy’s performance, as he seamlessly fuses this beguiling and frustrating personality of half beast, half vaudeville entertainer. For the entire film, Bronson is playing to an audience, presumably us. Indeed, his snarky, cynical, tired, and enraged narrations reminded me of twisted version Joel Gray from Carbaret.

Bronson leads us through his sordid life through a series of naturalistic and surreal vignettes, from the fateful day he knocked over a store for a £26.18 to his short-lived career as a bare knuckle boxer. Through it all, Bronson refuses to be tamed, no matter how many times life (and life’s prisons guards) pummel him. Seemingly addicted to violence, he keeps starting fights, taking hostages, and starting prison riots. He refers to his prison cell as a “hotel room,” and after he gets thrown into a mental institution, he ruthlessly schemes to get himself back into prison.

As Bronson expounds upon his seedy, go nowhere life to a clearly entertained audience, we the real audience eventually realize that it is us, not Bronson, that is getting systematically deconstructed. Why is that we are so fascinated by criminals, and that it seems half our films center on their lives and exploits? But Bronson refuses to give any easy, glib answers, such as “we crave the wild and free life” or “we are titillated by the forbidden.” There is little titillating or appealing about Bronson’s wretched life, and we’re left feeling as if we were gaping at a zoo animal. Bronson is more than happy to accommodate us and play the animal, but regardless of his animalistic antics, he remains a man, and therefore remains tied to us.

Even the usual homoerotic overtones do not provide any clear signposts. The gay men that play the key roles in Bronson’s life are just as puzzled as we are about why Bronson does the things he does. They exert as much control over Bronson as the hapless prison guards, and one prison art teacher eventually discovers just how little he knows Bronson in the film’s spectacular finale. So no, this is not a tale of a man exploding because he’s in the closet. Even if Bronson were indeed gay, it would only be beside the point.

Shot in grim grey and brown colors, Bronson is a runaway freight train of a movie, and I can only wonder how director Nicolas Refn got that hardcore Method Actor performance out of Hardy. It must have been an extremely tense set, but it was worth it. Bronson is not just a cinematic triumph; it’s a reminder of what we lost when we migrated to cineplexes and traded in our honest anti-heroes for cartoonish and phony “heroes.”