‘Why Don’t You Play in Hell?’ Is a Love Letter to Cinema, Dismemberment, and Toothpaste Commercials

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.The Pitch: Is This Gift from the Fuck Bombers the Greatest Movie Ever Made?One dramatic question plays out twice in Sion Sono’s gleeful, blood-soaked, meta-masterpiece “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?” As a ragtag group of amateur filmmakers known as the Fuck Bombers pursues their earnest quest — to achieve all-time cinematic superiority by capturing the real violence of a yakuza war — every slice of skin and splice of footage demands to know: Is this the greatest movie ever made?In short, not quite.As a matter of craft, Sono’s…

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