A magnificently deranged study of overboard pop-culture fandom and authoritarian rule's destructive effect on its citizenry, Tony Manero vigorously rubs one's face in the horrors of life under Augusto Pinochet. The center of director Pablo Larraín's social-realist nightmare is Raúl (Alfredo Castro), a corpse-gaunt 52-year-old obsessed with Saturday Night Fever, a film he constantly attends and plans to stage at a dingy local Santiago cantina above which he lives with his needy girlfriend Cony (Amparo Noguera), her sensual daughter Pauli (Paola Lattus), and her daughter's boyfriend Goya (Hector Morales). Raúl's stoic face reveals little other than pitiless disinterest in the world and its inhabitants save for John Travolta's titular disco dancer, whom at story's outset Raúl hopes to impersonate on a TV celebrity contest, only to discover that the week's show is, in fact, featuring Chuck Norris lookalikes. Thus, he goes home to sit around his grimy apartment in his underwear, smoking cigarettes, until he sees a woman on the street getting mugged, dresses and helps her return home, where after watching a bit of television, he mechanically bludgeons her to death. And then feeds her cat, eats some dinner, and pawns her TV.  Nick Schager