This isn’t an easy movie. It’s not supposed to be, and more movies should be like Mommy, even if the experience is terrifying, uncomfortable and miserable. It’s also hilarious, heartbreaking and inspiring, sometimes in spite of yourself. The film itself is fearless, even if its characters are consumed by it.

Mommy was Canada’s official submission for foreign language film at the Oscars (but snubbed for nomination), winning the Jury Prize at Cannes, and is a disturbing family portrait of a mother and her extremely troubled, violent, ADHD riddled son. The film exists in an alternate future of 2015 where Canada has passed legislation where a parent has the right to commit their kid to a psychiatric hospital if they prove too troublesome to take care of.

That should clue you in right away: this movie is going to punch you in the gut. Diane (Anne Dorval) is a white trash-y, loud mouth and vulgar widowed mother (think a French Canadian Marisa Tomei). She’s called to a detention facility, where her 15 year old son Steve (Antoine Olivier Pilon) has been kicked out again, this time for starting a fire that left a boy with third degree burns. This is his last chance before jail, and once we meet this enraged, volatile, possibly insane kid, we wonder how that hasn’t happened already. In fact, you kind of want him there, hating yourself for it, because he’s still just a kid. If you squint, you could see the crazed tyrant of a little kid in The Babadook growing up to be Steve, and just like in that incredible Australian horror film, Mommy forces you to contemplate the ultimate taboo: giving up on, or stop loving your son.

If you thought it was a minor accomplishment when you could start swearing in front of your mother and not get scolded for it, Diane and Steve’s relationship will blow you away. The two swap obscenities like they grew up on Deadwood, without the verbal poetry. There’s so much yelling and berating vitriol between the two of them, it makes you cower in your seat. Diane walks in on Steve masturbating, and there’s no embarrassment: they’re going to be late to work. It takes awhile, and I often wondered if I could stomach that journey, but it becomes clear the two do love each other, that they are a team, and that it’s them vs. the world, as they try to scrap together an existence in a world constantly beating them down.

They’re saved from each other by a neighbor who needs saving just as much as they do, a quiet, stuttering, and forlorn mother who lives next door, Kyla (Suzanne Clément). It’s clear something tragic has happened in Kyla’s recent past, but somehow, this family is a breath of fresh air; it helps her grieve to surround herself with people that are just as screwed up as she is. Kyla’s been on sabbatical for teaching, but tutoring and home schooling Steve helps her, the kid and Diane.

Writer-director Xavier Dolan shot Mommy on 35 mm film with a 1.1 aspect ratio, meaning you’re watching a perfect square. It’s like “thinscreen,” or watching video from a cell phone vertically, leaving a lot of black space in the theater. It’s jarring, but it’s effective; the theater is darker for it, practically drowning these characters in darkness; the camera often can only capture one character, and so often rests close on their face, revealing an uncomfortable portrait of the kind of family we’re afraid to make eye contact with at the supermarket, forcing us to do so.

But it’s not all darkness. In fact, it’s that much more triumphant when these characters are happy, when they’re improving, when they help each other, when they have crazy dance parties in the kitchen. There are few moments in cinema over the past year as inspiring as when Steve, on his skateboard, opens the curtains, pushing the 1.1 aspect ratio outward, spreading his wings and freeing the movie from its square prison, into a widescreen we’re familiar with, Oasis’ “Wonderwall” thumping in his headphones.

Of course, that freedom, like in life, doesn’t last. A lawsuit and the world’s worst karaoke scene follow, and ugly reality returns. Or does it? This movie is about love, and the wildly different definitions of such a foolish concept, and how stubborn it is. Love does prevail; Mommy is about hope, even if you’re lying to yourself, or dreaming about an alternate ending. Is false hope any less than the real thing? Mommy is a long, oftentimes torturous movie, but no doubt a worthwhile one, filled with three of the best performances of the past year. The film has several endings, letting you decide how you want this story to end, a blessing many people in this world don’t get.

MOMMY will be released in theaters January 23, 2015.

Every couple years, director Mike Leigh (Another Year; Vera Drake) delivers a delightfully British drama, oftentimes mined from history (Topsy-Turvy). This year brings Mr. Turner, a dour biopic illuminating the life of Joseph Mallard William Turner, one of the finest landscape painters (with a nautical obsession; Orlando Bloom’s character name in Pirates of the Caribbean is no accident), whose legacy is colored by his decision in leaving over 19,000 pieces of artwork to the British nation upon his death.

Mr. Turner chronicles an unspecified amount of time in the life of the controversial painter (one might say too long), and there’s no disputing that Timothy Spall (Harry Potter) is perfect for the role, as the thespian won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his all-consuming performance.

As Turner, Spall’s voice is a permanent bellow, punctuated often by grunts and growls. He has the deep gravelly voice befitting a chain-smoking British rockstar on his death bed, yet more often than not, he merely speaks in pointed grumbles, brow furrowed, his lips pursed permanently in a scowl, lower lip jutting out, as if Turner lives his life inches away from a particularly noxious fish dish. Dollop on his unwieldy sideburns, bushy eyebrows and blotched pink skin, and you have a particularly unappealing character who actually says things like, “I beseech you brook your ire.” It’s a testament to Spall’s talent that Turner doesn’t wholly devolve into caricature.

As is the norm with Mike Leigh, Mr. Turner is blessed with terrific costume design and lived-in sets, with as much attention to detail as one of Turner’s impressionist paintings. The movie is peppered with beautiful landscapes of the sea, forest and cliffs of England and abroad. The sanguine, placidly gorgeous vistas are jaw-dropping shots meant to contrast the chaotic nature of Turner’s life and his oil paintings, but mostly contrast the rest of the film because they’re actually pleasant to watch.

The movie’s too long, depressing and at times, boring. More interesting than Mr. Turner is how he affects other people. Turner barely acknowledges his gregarious and obnoxious wife, and we can hardly blame him based on her limited, one-note portrayal, but it’s still disheartening that he denies his children’s existence, skipping his daughter’s funeral. I’d have liked to see their side of things. Of course, we do get to see what his coming and goings and lack of interest in anyone else but himself does to Hannah Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), a hired hand who looks after his house and well-being (and random sexual desires) throughout his life, but aside from being increasingly scarred, sad and loopy, we never get a sense of who Hannah is. She clearly wants more from Turner (everyone does, especially his increasingly less adoring fans) to the point where she actually relishes his inconsistent but forceful advances, but we never know why, or if there even is one: Hannah almost comes off as a doddering, mentally challenged invalid. Of course, Mr. Turner treats everyone like a mentally challenged invalid, perhaps growing used to his simpleton father (Paul Jesson). While the elder Turner ostensibly appears to be the only person he cares about besides himself and his canvases, he really just likes to have a man around who reveres him that he can completely dominate intellectually.

We see a slightly cheerier relationship with Mrs. Booth (Marion Bailey), an elderly widower he woos, a relationship that never feels as comfortable for the viewer as it seemingly does to them. Turner is supposed to be a charming figure at times, but we never see any evidence for it, leaving us forever wondering why anyone wants to share his company.

Mr. Turner might be the most British movie I’ve ever seen, for better or worse. There’s a hilarious scene in which Turner bounces from artist to artist, “helping” them with their work with pointed suggestions, as they feverishly put the finishing touches of work that is to be proudly displayed for the king and queen. Turner’s the Naval commander of one of the many ships he’s painted, at home in the storm of war of politics, putting on a performance for his peers. He deliberately puts a massive splotch of red paint on what seemed to be a finished work, ruining a masterpiece. Instead, he transforms the blot into a buoy swaying in the sea, delighting his audience.

At one point, Mr. Turner and a few of his contemporaries meet over tea and discuss how the outside temperature affects the taste and refinement of the noble fruit, the gooseberry, replete with a snobby, petulant, effeminate art critic who slurs his r’s in cartoonish fashion (About Time’s Joshua McGuire).  Could it be any more British? Mr. Turner feels like a two and a half hour long Monty Python sketch that doesn’t realize it is one.

Even before Turner gets sick and deteriorates, succumbing to fits of choking, coughing and other avenues of human flatulence, Timothy Spall is fearless in portraying such a repulsive character. The whole film is noisy. I’ve never seen a movie where coughing seemed to overshadow the plot of the film. It’s not just wheezing; this movie has the weirdest crying scene I’ve ever seen, like Turner is a choking, dying wheezing pig. The whole movie sounds like a petting zoo hit by Ebola; Mr. Turner has a horrific fascination with these noises, and it’s wholly uncomfortable to sit through (and provokes violent reactions). There likely has never been a movie with more bodily babel, though I haven’t seen The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps.

You know how, while you feel sorry for the poor sap coughing through a play the row behind you, you’re immediately annoyed and wish he would just go home? Mr. Turner is a movie about that man that you can’t escape from for 150 minutes. I appreciate Timothy Spall’s performance, because I’ve never seen anything like it (nor care to again), but even so, it was hard to take seriously, even in the middle of what wanted to be a prestigious artsy British biopic. Mr. Turner was a difficult figure to categorize; so is the film dedicated to his life.

Mr. Turner opens December 19th in NY and LA. 

We know that revenge never ends well, but we never cease seeking it, and films love depicting it. It’s always captivating to witness a plan unravel, for a character to go too far, for untold consequences to unfold when someone does what we’re ashamed to fantasize about, let alone actually do. BLUE RUIN is one such revenge tale, blood-soaked, lean and bleak, a brutal American indie that highlights the talents of stalwart newcomer writer-director Jeremy Saulnier (MURDER PARTY), and why Kickstarter is revolutionizing movie-making.

Dwight (the visceral and incredible Macon Blair) is one of those haggard men you see collecting bottles on the beach. He breaks into houses when their occupants are on vacation to shower. He lives out of a bullet ridden, dilapidated car, the last vestige of his previous life. When the cops come poking by, we immediately think he’s in trouble. But not so: they warn him that someone has been released from jail, a “double murderer” has been freed. It’s clear this murder involved Dwight’s parents, and this event fractured Dwight’s life, dooming him to beach bum status. Upon receiving the news, Dwight and this film wastes absolutely no time in taking action.

Dwight buys a map, puts the battery back in his car and gasses up with money he’s collected over the years. His car isn’t the only thing that hums to life when Dwight gets back on the road, seeking his parent’s killer.

What’s striking about BLUE RUIN is precisely how foolish and inexperienced Dwight is. With his shaggy hair and ragged beard, he looks like a vagrant, maybe even a killer, but once he enacts revenge, it’s clear how little Dwight had planned, how little he thought about the consequences. When he cuts his hair and shaves his face to reveal the frightened, foolish young man beneath (Macon looks like a frumpy American version of John Hannah), you feel shitty because you entertained the idea that this man was a capable killer merely because of how decrepit he looked. The transformation is shocking, and it’s even more shocking how much time remains in the movie.

He tracks down his parent’s killer and his family. It (blue) ruins nothing to say that Dwight gets entirely more than he bargains for, as he lights a fire under the dangerous, murderous Cleland family that is entirely too used to killing and crime. In a way, Dwight revitalizes a decidedly one-sided Hatfields & McCoy’s family feud. He puts his sister Sam (Amy Hargreaves) and her children in danger by returning home, putting a target on his remaining family’s back that they didn’t deserve, the only innocents in a film overflowing with guilt.

There’s no turning back for Dwight, and everything that happens seems inevitable, even if completely pointless (yet he has “No Regrets”). There’s more to Dwight’s parents murder than he ever could’ve suspected (a plotty decision that almost derails the grim proceedings), and you wince whenever Dwight involves more people in his turgid affair. Even when that person is ex-military, former high school buddy Ben Gaffney (Devin Ratray AKA Buzz from HOME ALONE; mind sufficiently blown), who graciously provides guns and the only light-hearted moments that escape the dark and gory blue ruin.

BLUE RUIN is what would actually happen if a random guy found himself pitted against an arms-bearing family, and not the glorified Hollywood version of vengeful actions that we’ve seen so many times before. The violence (and blood) comes in disturbing jolts, rather than hypnotic waves. BLUE RUIN is a lot harder to sit through because of it, but it’s much more worthy of your attention.

BLUE RUIN comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray JULY 22nd, 2014. Order on Amazon today. For more information, check out the film’s website.