Further helpings of articulate and soulful intensity from highly-acclaimed British singer-songwriter on the follow-up to his Mercury Prize-nominated debut from 2001, Here Be Monsters
Set in and around a half-built rubble-strewn suburb of nowhere Vienna, pounded by summer sunstroke, and featuring brutal scenes of rape and battery, Dog Days is a bracing blast of arthouse nihilism from Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl. And like a bleak psychotropic Short Cuts, the success of this multi-character piece depends on how the viewer responds to Seidl's remarkable yet savagely pessimistic world view.
Sandra Bullock got little credit for branching out as a gum-chewing, neurotic hardcase in this clever Barbet Schroeder cop thriller. Two Dostoyevsky students commit the perfect murder as an intellectual challenge; it's up to boozy Bullock and sidekick Ben Chaplin to rattle their smugness. Schroeder ensures it has a dark heart.
