Isolation – There's something wrong with a pregnant cow owned by an Irish famer (John Lynch).  For starters, the fetus bites the vet's hand while she's doing a pelvic exam.  And then the darn thing just doesn't want to come out, no matter how hard Farmer Dan pulls on it with his crazy medieval hoof-grabbing device.  The final blow, however, comes when the calf turns out to be pregnant with little killer alien babies, even though she was just born.  Could it have something to do with the evil bio-tech company doing weird tests on Farmer Dan's cows?  Yes.  Will the movie, which was actually quite cool and stylish for the first half, turn into a typical sci-fi/horror/slasher flick?  Yes.  But if you leave when Isolation starts being derivative, you'll miss the closing credits, which play over Jim Ford's "I'm Going to Make Her Love Me ("Til the Cows Come Home)."

Tideland – If anyone out there had their fingers crossed that Terry Gilliam would make a movie crazier that Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, then this is their lucky day.  Adapting a story from Mitch Cullen's novel, Gilliam tells the story of ten-year-old Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), the only daughter of a washed-up guitar player (Jeff Bridges) and a heroin addict (Jennifer Tilly).  When Mom overdoses, Jeliza-Rose and Dad take a bus to his mother's dilapidated farmhouse, where he overdoses, leaving the urchin to explore her fertile fantasy world, which mostly involves conversing with her four bodiless doll heads (Ferland provides different voices for each).  Eventually, she meets some crazy neighbors.  And when I say crazy, I mean really crazy.  This movie is two-hours of crazy that just keeps getting crazier.  It's upsetting and unpredictable; unsettling and dark.

Ferland, however, is phenomenal (you may remember her from Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital).  She's so good, it almost hurts the film by making it even more difficult to watch her plight.  Nobody wants to see a little kid help a parent shoot junk, or be left on her own in the middle of nowhere.  But that's the kind of full-on assault of the senses one should expect from Gilliam.

Revolver – Hey, everybody – Guy Ritchie is totally back, at least in terms of style and gunplay and bloodshed.  If you want to know what Revolver is about, you're going to have to ask somebody else because the film made absolutely no sense to me.  There are twists and turns, but mostly there's just sheer confusion, a sensation echoed by pretty much everyone left in the theatre after my screening.  I really enjoyed watching it, though.  And I seemed to enjoy it more the less I focused on the story.

A shaggy Jason Statham (The Transporter) is Jake Green, a grifter just out of prison after a seven-year stint from a poker game gone wrong.  He's managed to quickly amass a ton of cash, thanks to a secret formula he learned by the two unseen prisoners on either side of his cell while he was in solitary.  When Jake finds out he has a rare blood disease and just three days to live, he is approached by two shady loan sharks (Vincent Pastore and André 3000) who say they can cure what ails him, so long as he gives them all of his money.  Hmmmmmm . . . something seems a little off with that agreement, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, Jake is at war with a casino owner, played by Ray Liotta.  Between these four main characters, and a handful of supporters, you won't have any idea what's happening.  Oh, and there's animation, too.  Really nice on the eyes, especially the scenes were Liotta looks like the Hulk did back when he was gray, but this will make your brain hurt.  I don't think repeated viewings will clarify anything, either.

Brothers of the Head – Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe were here at the Festival with Lost in La Mancha a couple of years ago, but this time, they've gone the faux documentary route with this adapation of Brian Aldiss's novel about a pair of conjoined twins who become flash-in-the-pan rock stars in mid-'70s England.  Ever wonder how much more fun/disastrous Oasis would have been if Noel and Liam were attached at the chest?  This is your chance to find out how that would play out.

I wish the interview subjects in the film didn't talk about the twins in the past tense, since that kind of lets viewers know how the story is going to end.  Loved in the addition of footage from an uncompleted (and completely phony) Ken Russell biopic about the fledgling stars, and the Treadaway brothers do a terrific job portraying the two subjects.  They could really be rock stars if they tried.  Photographed by Manderlay's Anthony Dod Mantle, and penned by Tony Grisoni, who also helped Terry Gilliam adapt Tideland.