20. 13 Assassins — dir. Takashi Miike (Japan)
… Miike has pulled off nothing less than an old school classic, one that proudly dares to insert itself in the worn-out samurai genre. A born iconoclast, Miike sticks to what he knows: brutality, ultra-violence, human cruelty. A young boy’s fever dream undoubtedly, but one whose execution puts to shame the current stock of action and superhero films that are being made with three times the budget in Hollywood now (that said, there was probably no better pure summer action film than this one in 2011) …
