EXCISION
Dir: Richard Bates Jr - Starring: AnnaLynne McCord, Traci Lords, Ariel Winter.

OK. Sometimes the clear 'Pick of the Week” is not a film that is suitable for everyone. Or even the majority of people. This is one. I suspect many will be horrified by it or turn it off after the first five minutes. Fair enough. But it stuck in my mind and is certainly the most strikingly original film I've seen this year. It's just not very pleasant.
The story of troubled schoolgirl Pauline and her psycho-sexual inner life – strange fantasies with a necrophiliac bent, stemming, one assumes, from her teenage alienation – is pretty disturbing from the get-go. But can you really blame the socially inept girl for her weirdness when her mother is (ex-porn star) Traci Lords, teacher is Malcolm McDowell and priest/councillor ('alternative” film director) John Waters?
But, though you might expect it, this is not so much a Waters' exercise in low-budget campiness as it is a Cronenberg-style coming-of-age body horror. It manages to be both emotionally moving and continually alarming, with the less said about the devastating ending the better. The look of it is impressively stylised and the uncompromising nature of the film-making can only be admired. But you need nerves of steel for this one.

Despite the props heaped on him at the Golden Globe Awards by Jodie Foster and Robert Downey Jr, Mel Gibson's star is still struggling to regain its previous lustre. All those 'uncomfortable” stories do make it hard to embrace the man (even though we all know the media lie and distort). But Mel can still rock it on screen, as he proves in Get The Gringo. It's a return to the tough action style of Payback, set in the eye-opening world of a Mexican prison, almost a town in itself. The prison 'boss” is after a liver transplant from a young boy whom Mel ends up protecting. And they've got to escape of course. It's back to what the man does best and he does it very well. Hard-nosed entertaining action.

Bellflower has divided audiences and I must admit to feeling somewhat conflicted. On the one hand it is a tough, remarkable piece of low-budget guerilla film-making. On the other hand it can be a bit overblown and pretentious. Not that the story is pretentious. It's about two twenty-something reprobates who think the world will end Mad Max-style so build flame throwers while tooling around in an armoured muscle car. The main protagonist falls for a girl when both enter a cricket-eating competition in a redneck bar: this is the grungy down ‘n' dirty story of the ill-fated relationship. Unique and aggressively made, it possibly has more style than substance, though it's worth a look as a possible zeitgeist moment for indie films.

Hit and Run is an amiable enough romp, written by, directed by and starring Dax Shepard. It's a romantic action comedy centred round Dax's witness-protected bank robber and his girlfriend (Kirsten Bell), road-tripping in a souped-up Lincoln with a comedy US Marshal (Tom Arnold) and eccentric ex-crim buddies (notably Bradley Cooper) on their trail. There's a pleasant and surprising vein of character humour and the slightly rambling plot gives an odd 'home movie with friends” feel to things, but the central duo are just about likeable enough to carry it off.

I came to The Factory completely blind: never heard of it, knew nothing except it stars John Cussack and is the latest of his films to end up going straight to DVD. The man's appeal seems to be sadly waning. A title card says 'inspired by actual events”, though this seems unlikely. Cussack's police detective is obsessed by a string of missing prostitutes, missing because they have been killed. We see the killer in the opening scene so this isn't much of a whodunit. Instead there's an amazing plot coincidence and it all turns personal for a nasty little thriller that builds a fair head of steam and has a twist ending that certainly surprised me.