Philadelphia Weekly

With more than 120 feature films (plus 60 shorts) available for your perusal, expect a vast rainbow of reactions, from ardor to retching. These 10, though, should fall closer to the former. Try not to let them pass you by.

Hunger

Already near-legendary, this portrait of the last months of IRA martyr Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) from Steve McQueen (no, not that one) chucks context to focus on the tactile. Sands and co.’s escalating, ultimately fatal protests become unbearably physical: The beatings feel 3-D while you can all but smell the feces on the wall during the “dirty protest.” McQueen succumbs to silliness like idyllic flashbacks and bird symbolism during the final hunger strike section. But his attention-getting gambles usually pay off, notably during a 17-minute unbroken static shot that relishes in Fassbender and Liam Cunningham (as a priest trying to dissuade him) kicking actorly ass.

Sat., March 28, 12:15pm and Sun., March 29, 7:15pm, Prince Music Theater.

I’m Going to Explode

Director Gerardo Naranjo (Drama/Mex) has pissed off some with his latest’s brazen appropriation of Jean-Luc Godard’s great Pierrot le Fou. But guess what? He earns it. At once self-aware and stinkin’ drunk on its own excesses, I’m Going to Explode turns the on-the-lam lovers into teens—a 15-year-old (thrilling Maria Deschamps) and a rebellious rich kid (Juan Pablo de Santiago)—and instead of hitting the road they only make it to the roof of his pop’s mansion. Pierrot references fly, but Naranjo’s homage doubles as critique: The focus is on the feminine side, not the brooding male’s, and Naranjo is always conscious—and bemused by—the limitations of his characters’ romantic fatalism.

Fri., April 3, 9:30pm, Ritz Five. Sun., April 5, 7:15pm, the Bridge.

It’s Not Me, I Swear!

The darker and funnier close cousin to Phoebe in Wonderland, French-Canuck Philippe Falardeau’s adaptation of Bruno Hébert’s beloved books offers up a far more dangerous unhinged child: Léon (Antoine L’Écuyer), a young suburban Montrealite who’s already set fire to his parents’ bed before harried Mom destroys him by hightailing it to Greece.

Sat., March 28, 7:30pm, the Bridge. Sun., March 29, 4:30pm, Ritz Five. Tues., March 31, 7pm, Bryn Mawr Film Institute.

Julia

Surely no one thought the sensitive dramatist behind The Dreamlife of Angels would ever film a scene involving screaming, gun-toting Mexican kidnappers. Erick Zonka returns after a decade MIA with this curious semi-riff on John Cassavetes’ Gloria, featuring Tilda Swinton as a despicable aging party girl who makes every possible dumb-as-dirt mistake while engaged in an already idiotic kidnapping plot. At 140 shrill minutes, Julia can’t be called anything but an endurance test—but that, perversely, is part of its unexpected charm.

Sat., April 4, 9:15pm and Sun., April 5, 2:15pm, Ritz East.

Not Quite Hollywood

No shock that Quentin Tarantino is all over this history of “Ozploitation”—the sex films, road movies and demented horror films that thrived throughout the ’70s and ’80s (and paved the way for respectable fare like Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli). Not Quite is shallow but as trashily entertaining as its copious crazy clips.

Sat., March 28, 10pm, the Bridge. Sun., March 29, 9:30pm, Ritz Five.

Revanche

Götz Spielmann’s intensely introspective drama lost the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar a couple weeks back; let’s just say that winner Departures better be the best movie ever. Johannes Krisch leads an incredible small cast playing an ex-con whose Ukrainian prostitute paramour (Irina Potapenko) is accidentally killed by a cop (Andreas Lust) during a bank holdup. Will Krisch enact revenge? Or will he be moved by Lust’s plunge into guilt and depression? An indecisiveness that would irk even Hamlet eats up the film’s transcendently glacial second half.

Fri., March 27, 4:45pm, Ritz East. Sat., March 28, 9:30pm, Ritz Five.