The Notebook

In János Szász's WWII-set The Notebook, a desperate mother drops her pampered twins off at the Hungarian border with their irascible grandmother, forcing the city boys to survive the rigors of rural life. That sounds like the set-up for a sun-kissed, coming-of-age take on the horrors of war, something that might co-star Armin Mueller-Stahl and an adorable donkey. But The Notebook is more like Forbidden Games mixed with a serial killer origin story. At the beginning of the film, the boys' father gives them a notebook and asks that they write down everything they see. All they see in their war-torn village is venality and cruelty and perversity and hate, so that's what they write down. Eventually, the boys decide they can only survive by being harder and crueler than everyone else, and the film becomes a fascinating study of sociopathic behavior as the purest form of self-defense.