01
Faults
Why this pick
Stearns’s earlier film shares the same deadpan, unnerving comic precision: a socially stranded protagonist is drawn into a power game that grows stranger and more uncomfortable by degrees.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE2019 1h 44m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
The Art of Self-Defense
Comedy
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved The Art of Self-Defense, try these.
01
02
Deerskin
Why this pick
Its bone-dry absurdism turns a man’s fragile identity into increasingly deranged commitment, with minimalist staging and a coolly comic refusal to reassure the viewer.
03
The Lobster
Why this pick
Deadpan ritual, rigid social rules, and bleakly funny emotional repression create a similarly precise world where self-improvement culture becomes quietly menacing.
04
The Foot Fist Way
Why this pick
A brutal, painfully funny portrait of martial-arts authority and wounded male ego; less surreal, but it shares the uncomfortable comedy found in performative toughness.
05
The Menu
Why this pick
Its polished, controlled satire gradually exposes the menace beneath status rituals and masculine authority, delivering dark laughs with similarly exact, unsettling tonal control.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
Casey is a young man who, after a rough encounter on the street, decides to take up martial arts in order to better protect himself, falling more and more into his own paranoia in the process.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Steve Terada
Thomas
Phillip Andre Botello
Kennith
Jason Burkey
Alex
Alessandro Nivola
Sensei
Jesse Eisenberg
Casey
Imogen Poots
Anna