Untitled Jonathan Parker's art-world spoof (co-written with Catherine DiNapoli) is witty, sharply observed and makes good use of its talented leads. Marley Shelton steals the movie as a manipulative, overreaching but oddly idealistic gallery owner who convinces herself that she's providing a huge public service by presenting the extravagantly eccentric works of her pet artists: one is an egomaniacal womanizer whose art consists of dead animal corpses displayed like road kill.

Adam Goldberg's atonal musician is both disgruntled and delusional. There's a bit of cheeky foreplay between Goldberg and Shelton when he demands she remove her noisy leatherette pants so he can sample their rustling for his next collage. Goldberg, who has amusingly deadpanned his way through several cerebral satires such as Julie Delpy's Two Days in Paris, should shed his thick beard before he totally morphs into a Jules Feiffer caricature.

A great metaphor for today's ruined financial markets: a jaded young collector remarks, as he's putting his penis-head mannequins in a closet, "Art doesn't look as good when it goes down in value." By the second viewing, I was actually enjoying Goldberg's "kick the can" atonal compositions.

The Maid Chilean director/writer Sebastian Silva's (with Pedro Peirano) domestic farce about a posh Santiago family's fumbling for a new way to view a cherished but misunderstood domestic servant is a lens for viewing a post-Pinochet Chile.

The Maid opens on an awkward birthday party as family members – mom, dad, nearly grown daughter, horny, mischievous teen son and grade-school-age twin boys – try to lure their cranky, aging maid Raquel

Catalina Saavedro in The Maid .

(Catalina Saavedra) into the dining room for cake and presents.  At 42, Raquel has devoted her adult life to serving the Valdes family, for whom she is an oddly vexing, comforting presence, neither kin nor entirely employee. To daughter Camila (Andrea Garcia-Huidobro), Raquel is a grouchy obstacle between her and her professor mom, Pilar (Claudia Celedon); for the perpetually randy Lucas (Agustin Silva), Raquel is a treasured connection to childhood, a sort of pal and an icon of impending adult conquests. Raquel feels closest to the boy, whose cum-stained sheets and pajamas she constantly refreshes.

Prompted by Raquel's fainting spells, Pilar hires a young Peruvian girl to share the chores. Raquel responds with a vicious cold war against the girl, who flees in terror, only to be replaced by an even older retainer. As the battle escalates, it appears that The Maid will venture into the dark territory of American misanthrope Todd Solondz, and there'll be a body count. But then a younger woman, Lucy (Mariana Loyola), appears, and the tale pivots around the notion that Raquel may actually get a life.

Told with refreshing, non-Puritanical sexual candor – there is non-gratuitous male and female frontal nudity, plus horny-boy masturbation – The Maid examines a wealthy Chilean family as both buttress against change and unlikely incubator for new social and political mores. Rooted in the director's childhood memories of a national institution (there are reportedly 250,000 Chilean maids), the film has strong ensemble performances, especially Catalina Saavedra's glacial transformation. It's a rich, humane dramedy that confounds one's expectations in the most delicious way.

Gentlemen Broncos This inspired bit of lunacy from the creators of Napoleon Dynamite is an instant cult classic, spoofing home-schooled kids, Mormon geeks, Star Trek fanatics, cross-dressing divas and the question of original authorship.

The soul of the piece is aspiring sci-fi author Benjamin (Michael Angarano), whose futuristic novel Yeast Lords gets ripped off by competing kitsch-masters: first, his fantasy author idol, the self-enamored Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clements), passes it off as his next bestseller; then, a putative girlfriend (Halley Feifer) buys an option for an Ed Wood-worthy local filmmaker (Hector Jimenez) with a post-dated check. Stuck penniless in a Hobbit house with his nightgown-designing mom (Jennifer Coolidge), Benjamin soon acquires a queer guardian angel (Mike White) to help regain his twice-pilfered work, in the process sending up squeaky clean if clueless boy heroes.

Director/co-writer Jared Hess (collaborating with wife Jerusha) provides cockeyed glimpses of what the plagiarists seek to do with Benjamin's surreal creatures. Powered by the fey butch energy of White's angel, Gentlemen Broncos would probably succumb to its artistic inspirations if not for the old-soul sweetness and surefire comic timing of its boyish lead. Angarano diffuses his Teddy Bear cuteness by playing the most preposterous moments with resolute sincerity. Hess' world is a kind of utopia where warrior heroes wake up on a sterile lab table to find their balls pickled in a jar, while the audience is seduced into rooting for a man-child hero. It's a highly eroticized world that is cleansed of normal sexual paranoia and anxieties.