The Wolves of the Steppes

I don't know when, if ever, this movie will get a proper release here in the U.S., but I've just seen what will inevitably be one of the best movies of my year at the Fantasia Film Festival -- click on over to Pajiba to read my thoughts on Kazakh filmmaker Adilkhan Yerzhanov's Steppenwolf, a bleak-as-fuck war film that takes violence very very seriously while also being weirdly kind of funny, in the most harrowing sort of ways. In my review I shout out both Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump and the 1985 Soviet nightmare Come and See, if you'd like to have yourselves a lil' stroke trying to bridge the gap to put those two together. And yet somehow it all works, while starring one of the most vile lead characters I've ever witnessed. I even trotted out the word "masterpiece" which I never use for new movies (although I did hedge my bets with a "maybe" just in case). It's really a tremendous achievment to my eye -- an action movie that makes violence sickening. Anyway I really hope somebody releases it here in the States and I will keep my ear to the ground for that news.