Freak Weather

Viewing writer-director Kuryla's Freak Weather is like watching your rowdy cousins play football in the dining room: You're always wincing, certain that something's about to break. The film follows Penny (McKenzie), a severely masochistic single mother with a lying streak and an omnivorous appetite for illicit substances, as she careers around in a pickup truck running errands for her abusive boyfriend. Her seemingly simple tasks—"losing" the despised family dog or picking up her cretinous man's paycheck—result in nasty snafus. But as staunchly rendered by McKenzie, our hallucinating heroine's resolve becomes almost admirable.