20 Best Foreign Movies Of 2016

Italian director Matteo Garrone’s latest movie, fantasy flick Tale of Tales, is inspired by the fairy tales of Baroque era poet and writer Giambattista Basile, who wrote some of the earliest versions of popular stories like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel. If you’re expecting some cutesy, Disney-esque affair though, you’re watching the wrong movie. R-rated, sexy, full of violence and gore and most of all fantastically surreal, it’s a dark fantasy for adults that’s much more in the vein of the gruesome medieval fairy tales of yore than the twee versions we’ve become used to in recent years.

If Salma Hayek gorging on a raw dragon’s heart, Toby Jones spooning a giant Kafkaesque flea, and princesses decapitating ogres sounds like a riot, Tale of Tales is the film for you.