Well, day three seemed to be the perfect day to start off with a Japanese serial killer feature and an American cat killer flick.

Our first film of the day, Cure, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, breathes a fresh of breath air into what, in America, has been a somewhat over used and over extended idea in film.

The biggest twist Kurosawa has given to the serial killer genre is the fact that this film features multiple homicides, brutal in the least, identical in their making, only they have all been carried out by separate individuals. Each individual remains completely aware of the crime they have committed following the act. What seems at the time of the murder to be "the natural thing to do", according to the perpetrators, is at that same time traumatic when the realization of their actions is made. For fear of giving away any more of the plot or solution to these incidents I will only say that there is a connection to a single amnesiac vagrant who is both helpless and charismatic at once.

Kurosawa has managed with Cure to very cleverly tie the stresses and mental susceptibility of a stressed police officer together with the vacant stares and methodical questions of the mysterious vagrant to produce a sort of wrestling match of the psyche. There is a unique eerieness lent to the film by the soundtrack as well. The drone of ambient industrial noise that weaves its way through the frames of this film draw you deep inside the characters. The moments of pure silence coupled with these intense layers of sound serve to tell a vast portion of the story on their own.

Cure is a refreshing look at the serial killer vs. investigator film style. The struggle is no longer to discover who the killer is but to discover how and why the murders occur. This struggle becomes a battle of mental strength between the two, neither wanting to succumb to the other. Cure also speaks volumes on the susceptibility of the human mind and the inherent violent nature that lies just millimeters below the surface of every man. While watching this film it is good to remember a line from the film itself in which a psychologist states, "Hypnotism can not drive a person to do anything they do not want to". With this as a basis for approaching the events in the film Kurosawa presents man as the emotional and truly violent creature he is.

Following Cure, and the consumption of one of those fine movie theater hot dogs, I nestled myself snug in a theater seat for the screening of Gummo. Director Harmony Korine, best known as the creator of the intensely disturbing portrait of urban youth with Kids, takes his disturbing vision out of the city to the tornado-torn town of Xenia, Ohio. Presented as much less of a story and much more of a documentary, Gummogives us front row seats to the haunting vision that is an uneducated, non-cultured, slap in the face of the reality that is the interior United States.

In some ways this piece serves as a "buddy" film, following the exploits of two youths, Solly and Tummler. We follow them through a lifestyle that includes huffing glue, hunting cats for pay by the pound from a local grocer, to bathing, as well as their experience with a Down's Syndrome prostitute. This film is not for the faint of heart or the meek whatsoever. Videotape interviews with a cavalcade of the disturbed residents of Korine's Xenia seem frighteningly real. Grinding interludes of death metal are interspersed with strange acts such as a ridiculous display of machismo involving a kitchen chair and a room full of supposedly grown men.

There is a very fine line in Gummo between the reality and the script, much more so than in Korine's previous Kids. This is a must see for anyone who thinks they can't be unsettled or to serve as a reminder to raise your children as literate, cultured individuals. The result of bad parenting and breeding could easily be Gummo.