The Film Corner with Greg Klymkiw

NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

SEPTIC MAN was one of my favourite genre pictures of 2013. In my various accolade lists, the movie scored big-time. In my Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2013 Best of the Fest round-up, I bestowed 10 - count 'em - 10 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades" which included:

Most Disgusting Movie
Best Canadian Feature Film
Best Screenwriting: Tony Burgess
Best Art Direction/Production Design: Jason David Brown
Best Makeup: Alex Rotundo
Best Actress (Supporting): Nicole G. Leier
Best Social Commentary Content
Best Movie that DEMANDS a Sequel
Best Line of Dialogue: "I’m a civic-minded shit sucker."
Best Babe Taking a Shit and Vomiting: Nicole G. Leier.

In my 10 Best Lists, I named it one of the 10 BEST HORROR FILMS OF 2013 and in my overall round-up of accolades for the best of the year, I cited the film with my BEST VISUAL & SPECIAL MAKEUP EFFECTS of 2013 Oblation.

This is the result of E-coli poisoning in the water system of Collingwood. Enjoy!

A good SEPTIC MAN is hard to find.

Septic Man (2013) ****
Dir. Jesse Thomas Cook / Screenplay: Tony Burgess
Starring: Jason David Brown, Molly Dunsworth, Robert Maillet, Julian Richings,
Stephen McHattie, Tim Burd, Nicole G. Leier

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Any movie that opens with a weepy babe (Nicole G. Leier) taking a severely punishing crap replete with dulcet echoes of spurting, plopping and gaseous expulsions whilst said babe alternates twixt the release of putrid faecal matter with cum-shot-like geysers of stringy rancid vomit launching from within her maw, splattering triumphantly upon the grotesque tiles of a dimly lit toilet adorned top to bottom in slime, sludge, blown chunks and excrement, should be enough to alert viewers they're in for one mother-pounder of a wild ride into the deepest pits of scatological horror hell.

Septic Man, a new movie from the talented young Canadian horror auteur Jesse Thomas Cook (Monster Brawl), screenwriter Tony Burgess (Ejecta, Pontypool) and the visionary independent production company Foresight Features takes the cake (of the urinal variety) for serving up one heaping, horrific platter o' genre representation of the real-life deadly water contamination that occurred several years ago in the bustling Southern Ontario burgh of Walkerton - known around the world for its inbreeding and, of course, the famous E-coli contamination of its drinking water.

The Walkerton tragedy occurred in May of 2000 when some 5000 people flooded (so to speak) the hospitals with severe cases of bloody diarrhoea and a bevy of other tummy-related ailments. Heading up the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission were the Koebel Brothers, two real prizes who'd held their jobs for over thirty years in spite of having absolutely no qualifications to do so. Stan and Frank, fulfilling the respective responsibilities of manager and water foreman, claimed the drinking water was just fine - pure, clean and safe to drink.

Seven people died and a veritable shit-load (as it were) fell ill. The nastiness could have been averted if the trusty local fellas hadn't lied through their teeth. During a subsequent criminal investigation, the Koebel Boys admitted wrongdoing of astronomical proportions - Stan falsified reports and Frank had been happily juicing on the job because his office was not equipped with a fridge to keep beer cold.

It is this very case, ripped from Canadian headlines and firmly lodged in the country's history of endlessly incompetent public service that clearly inspired director Cook to cook-up (so to speak) this delectable sick puppy of a movie. With the nimble, twisted words of Pontypool, Ejecta scribe Tony Burgess, it's a simple tale with an accent on a claustrophobic setting. While some might compare Septic Man to the 80s Troma Films classic The Toxic Avenger, Cook and Burgess's mordant wit, the hallucinogenic horror styling, intelligent (albeit sledge hammer) social commentary and eye-assaulting viscous-splattering and pustule-sprouting imagery of the foulest kind, all bring it much closer to David Cronenberg's early work (most notably Shivers, Rabid and The Brood).

Rather than Walkerton, Cook chooses to set his fictitious horror movie rendering of heinous incompetence leading to a major health crisis in his home town of Collingwood, Ontario.

This, I will admit, is especially knee-slapping since Collingwood is known far more for tony tourism, over-priced retreats, upscale cottage country and a retirement community for rich old people as opposed to Walkerton's inbreeding claim to fame. While far more ludicrous, it is not, surprisingly, improbable.

Following the aforementioned opening five minutes of pre-credit babe-o-licious crapping and barfing, Septic Man introduces us to a televised report from Collingwood's Mayor (the indomitably brilliant Stephen McHattie) who, with the hilarious timbre of virtually every small town Ontario civic official intones the following with a perfectly appropriate straight face: "I’m gonna be honest with you, like I always am. I’m not going to pull any punches. We are in a heck of a goddamn situation here." He goes on to admit that his office has known for six weeks that the source of a local contamination is from the town's water supply, resulting in the deaths of 16 people and hundreds afflicted with ailments related to crypto sporidium and e-coli (including cholera). The Mayor goes on to announce a complete civilian evacuation of Collingwood orchestrated by military, law enforcement and federal officials.

While all hell breaks loose, we're introduced to the lone efforts of Jack (Jason David Brown), Collingwood's ace septic expert as he toils prodigiously in a stinking pool of sludge on the outskirts of a huge pollution-spewing factory that's emptying the most foul concoction of excrement, slime and dead rats into the town's water table. He's approached by Prosser (played with officious malevolence by one of Canada's finest character actors Julian Richings), a dapper gentleman who makes Jack a highly lucrative offer that just cannot be refused.

Prosser represents a "consortium". When Jack asks, "What's that?", Prosser simply declares: "Results, Jack." This implies that only a consortium, as opposed to government officials, are the only ones to acknowledge that our sludge-caked hero is the sole individual in town who has always been on top of various water-related issues. Furthermore, Prosser notes how Jack's efforts have largely gone been unappreciated by local authorities.

Jack wonders why he should risk staying behind when he has a responsibility to accompany his wife to the curling rink where Collingwood's residents are being bussed out. Prosser suggests that money will be the greatest incentive and a reward for Jack's service and prowess. He also throws in an offer wherein Jack will get a cushy desk job for life where he'll "do fuck-all but put your feet up." This is vaguely compelling, but Prosser seals the deal when he reminds Jack "Your wife probably smells shit every time you fuck her." Jack protests with, "Hey, my wife’s pregnant." Clearly the smell of shit hasn't kept the couple from procreating, but ultimately, Prosser's argument is genuinely the right thing to do.

"I’m a civic-minded shit sucker," Jack proclaims upon agreeing to the mission of delving deep into the bowels of the sewer system emptying into the water from the mysterious factory.

What follows is a lonely odyssey into the darkest depths of utter horror. Reality and nightmare become one as Jack uncovers a series of secret underground pipes and tunnels cluttered with corpses and body parts, then realizes he's trapped in a Knossos-like maze of filth presided over by two clearly inbred psychopaths, Lord Auch (Tim Burd) a nasty little thing with a mouthful of razor-sharp canines and a humungous, hulking, long-faced muscle man of few words (played by former WWF wrestling champ and star of such diverse genre favourites as 300, The Immortals, Pacific Rim and, of course, Cook's own hit Anchor Bay title from last year, Monster Brawl).

The special visual and makeup effects are, by the way, superb - right across the board - which comes as no surprise since the SFX team includes Canada's wizard of wonder Steven Kostanski (Astron-6, Manborg). Then again, one of the hallmarks of Foresight Features productions is the fact that so many of its key above the line creators have no problem doing double-triple-quadruple-quintuple and so on duties - immersing themselves in the entire process in a hands-on fashion. Cook, in particular, is a born filmmaker - cinema seems hardwired into his very DNA and he shares this quality with such new Canadian horror icons as Astron-6 and the Twisted Twins. This is how great low-budget movies get made, but more importantly, Foresight understands that you do NOT make low budget features that pathetically try to emulate the mainstream (including indies since most of them are bargain basement studio pictures anyway) - they seek to plumb depths that others do not dare dive into. They happily swim about in a world of shit.

Plumbing, of course, is exactly what this picture is all about and eventually, deep within the bowels of the factory's sewers, an infection sets in, and Jack begins to transform into something utterly hideous and horrific - something bordering, perhaps, on the immortal. Not unlike a number of seminal low budget cult films - David Lynch's Eraserhead in particular - Septic Man roams into nightmarish and hallucinogenic territory which is a delicious place for the film to go since it logically opens things up for all manner of illness.

Though there's a tiny bit of wheel-spinning that weights the picture down slightly in its middle portion, Cook has overall crafted a truly sickening, creepy and original horror gem that joins the ranks of Canada's west coast twins of the most twisted kind, the delightful Soskas who delivered American Mary and Winnipeg's Astron-6 who gave us the magnificent mega-bum-blaster Father's Day. Though some might feel Septic Man doesn't quite creep into modern masterpiece territory of the Soskas's body modification classic or the Astron-6 celebration of demonic sodomy, Jesse Thomas Cook with this and his supremely entertaining Monster Brawl is well on his way to carving a niche all his own into Canada's worthy tradition of audaciously sicko horror. Ultimately, Septic Man is indeed, a masterpiece of terror.

Between all three Canucks, they form a mighty trinity of delectably diseased subjects. In the name of the Father - Body Modification, The Son - Sodomy and The Holy Ghost - Excrement, young Canadian horror wizards are leaving the rest behind as mere dust in their tracks.

This is truly a must-see motion picture, but to be on the safe side, avoid eating Indian or Mexican cuisine prior to screening it (unless you truly feel the need to purge). And frankly, whether you feel the need to expunge or not, I recommend you load up on the Tums for your tummy before strapping on the feedbag to dine upon this exquisite cinematic cesspool of scary scatological horror that is Jesse Thomas Cook's brazenly foul Septic Man.

Septic Man, a Raven Banner presentation, is available on DVD via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada and Anchor Bay Films on Aug. 19, 2014 with a lovely new transfer to enhance all of the blood and faecal matter. Sadly, there are no extra features. I'd have given my right testicle for a Jesse Thomas Cook commentary track. The movie enjoyed its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2013 in awesome Austin, Texas and launched a mighty home base turd in at the illustrious Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2013. Just buy the movie, already. IF YOU DON'T, YOU ARE A LOSER OF THE HIGHEST MAGNITUDE. Here's some Amazon links to order Septic Man and some other delightful titles.

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NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

One can never go wrong with any movie featuring a ROGER CORMAN cameo.

One can never go wrong with any movie featuring
TONS OF BABES IN BATHING SUITS!!!

Sharktopus (2010)
Dir. Declan O'Brien
Producers: Roger and Julie Corman
Starring: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bursin, Sara Malakul Lane, Liv Boughn, Hector Jimenez, Blake Lindsey

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Sharktopus is a hoot! As a matter of fact, I haven't enjoyed one of these ludicrous shark pictures so much since I saw Sharknado. The big difference is that this one is actually good. Or rather, well, maybe good isn't quite the word, but this movie delivers everything you'd want from a low-budget creature feature and with a few dollops of "and then some". This, of course, is all due to the powerhouse husband and wife producing team of Roger and Julie Corman who ensure that the film delivers massive-impact carnage, a ludicrous number of babes in swimsuits and the same, crazy sense of looney humour that Corman's stalwart tutelage delivered with such delightful 70s New World horror classics like the Joe-Dante-directed Piranha. Though Sharktopus doesn't quite soar to the heights of Dante's giddy, goofy gobble-em-up, it flies a lot higher than such lumbering big-budget creature-feature affairs like Pacific Rim and Godzilla 2014.

The mad monster of the film's title is exactly what it spells out - a shark with octopus tentacles. This allows the creature to attack its victims "normally" like "Bruce" in Jaws or coil its tentacles round the (mostly) nubile bikini-clad babes then stuff 'em down the deadly sharktopus maw and not unlike the insects in Starship Troopers, the dextrous arms are equipped spear-like tips which impale before devouring. Now before you think we're supposed to buy that a creature like this actually exists, let it be said loud and clear that sharktopus is a mad combination of genetic engineering and computers hard-wired into the brain of this human-engineered freak o' nature. Developed by a private corporation using scads of military moolah, the sharktopus is meant to be a secret weapon to be used in battle - whether against genuine countries Uncle Sam is fighting or worse, Somalian pirates, drug smugglers, various cartels and the like.

Eric Roberts is the head of the firm and his gorgeous daughter Nicole (Sara Malakul Lane) is his right hand. Unbeknownst to her, Dad has secretly rewritten the genetic code so that sharktopus becomes an unstoppable killing machine. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem for the American military, but when the computer in the creature's brain goes awry, it starts to munch anything and everything and the plucky father-daughter are ordered to track the beast down and stop it from decimating innocent people.

Luckily for everyone, sharktopus heads for the Mexican resort of Puerto Vallarta. It's lucky for us because we get nice scenery and endless frames jam-packed with babes in bikinis. It's especially lucky for producer Roger Corman on two counts. First of all, he and his co-producing wife and key crew members get a nice vacation in the famed sunny resort town.

One can never go wrong with 4 BluRays for 1 low price.

Secondly, the film's production costs will be rock bottom because it's, uh, Mexico. This might be the most important reason of all for Corman to shoot in the Land of Tacos, Tamales and Tequila.

The plot, such as it is, thickens once Eric Roberts hires a hunky, cocky shark hunter (Kerem Bursin) who very quickly falls for Roberts's babe-o-licious daughter. There are some subplots, none of which are all that important, but allow many opportunities to parade babes in front of the camera who will also get munched.

The acting ranges from barely competent to well, uh, competent, with the exception of Eric Roberts, Julia Roberts' brother, Emma Roberts' Dad and at one time, a promising and brilliant young actor during the 80s (Star 80, Runaway Train, The Pope of Greenwich Village and Raggedy Man). Roberts manages to register above the thespian Richter Scale by chewing the scenery with aplomb and oozing slime in his smarmy, villainous role.

Declan O'Brien's direction is competent at best, the special effects are so good-God-awful they're funny and the script perfunctorily hits all the checklist items a movie like this needs (mostly, opportunities for babes in bikinis to strut their stuff before being munched).

One can never go wrong with ERIC ROBERTS

Occasionally, the writing delivers individual lines of dialogue and some banter that's genuinely funny.

In the end, Sharktopus has two elements that raise it above its cellar-dweller aspirations. First of all, it features an absolutely hilarious cameo appearance by Corman as a dirty old man following a babe in a bikini on the beach who's scanning the sand with a metal detector. Corman's eyes appear to be on her ass, but just after she discovers a valuable gold doubloon in the sand, she gets dragged into the ocean by the sharktopus. Corman keeps his eyes peeled on the treasure lying in the sand, ignoring her screams for help. He retrieves the doubloon and happily saunters off. Secondly, most of the killings are delightfully hilarious and some of them border on the surreal - especially since we're treated to some ludicrous musical numbers on the stage of a resort and we get to see cheesy costumes and ethnic dancing until the sharktopus lunges itself onto dry land by using its tentacles as legs and starts eating Mexican señoritas in full traditional Mexican garb. And, of course, one of the best killings involves a mega-babe (Corman's own daughter) getting munched during a bungee jump. Seriously, can you think of any movie featuring a walking octopus/shark and a bungee-jump kill?

One can never go wrong with babes being eaten.

I thought not.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three-Stars

Sharktopus is available on a nice 4-disc/4-movie Blu-Ray set from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada. It features a super commentary track with Corman (and his lovely wife/co-producer Julie). Both are gracious, erudite, full of terrific anecdotes and solid information about making movies. And keep your eyes peeled. The Film Corner will review all four films in this set. The other three include one more Corman production, DinoShark, as well as Jersey Shore Shark Attack and Bait.

In the meantime, feel free to order this terrific four-disc set (and any of the other wonderful Corman titles) directly from the Amazon links below and in so doing, support the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

A fleeting childhood memory permeates a subconscious world
of love, loss and ghost-like shadows of a life once lived.

Real (aka "Riaru") (2013)
dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Takeru Sato, Haruka Ayase, Joe Odagiri, Miki Natakani

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure, Charisma) is nothing if not ambitious. His latest film Real is set in a future not too removed from our own in which it's possible to scan the subconscious of those we love who are deep in a coma. Here, a young couple face their greatest challenge when a wife attempts suicide and her husband is wired to her mind as she lays dead to the living world. Here they are able to communicate in a strange living purgatory of ghosts, shadows and zombie-like replicas of life itself. The couple faces the challenge of solving a mystery which might be able to revive the wife, or at least provide some spiritual solace to her tragic decision. It involves a drawing of a plesiosaur which she gifted to her husband in their childhood and that he's misplaced. To say more is to upset the delicate intricacies of this haunting and deeply moving tale of love and loss. Kurosawa's deliberate pacing is, as always, infectious and though he's lest interested in evoking terror, he does manage to give us the creeps.

Though the film overstays its welcome whilst watching it, you can't get the damn thing out of your head afterwards. As always, it's the mark of a genuine artist.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½Real enjoyed its Quebec Premiere at the FantAsia 2014 Film Festival.

NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

Mind Control is not without merit when you're a monster.

Monsterz (2014)
Dir. Hideo Nakata
Starring: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Takayuki Yamada, Satomi Ishihara, Tomorowo Taguchi, Motoki Ochiai

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A young boy discovers he can telepathically control the minds of others. This comes in mighty handy when he manages to force his abusive father to snap his own neck. When the child reaches adulthood, he has the power to control anyone's mind and can even force large swaths of people in his purview to enter a state of suspended animation. This comes in especially handy when he wants to rob banks - mostly for fun. When he meets another young man with similar powers, all hell breaks loose.

Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Dark Water) is one of Japan's finest directors of horror and here he chooses to remake Haunters, a 2010 Korean film and even manages to trump the original. That the original is not especially good, is wherein the fault lies. Nakata certainly creates a few creepy and fun set pieces and cannot be denied his natural virtuosity. That said, the film feels like a J-Horror version of such teen-oriented American franchise items like the Twilight and Hunger Games series. When the young man is wreaking havoc, all's well, but as it becomes more mano a mano rivalry gymnastics, not even Nakata's great style can breathe much life into this hoary horror of ponderous been-there-done-that.

THE FILM CORNER Rating **½Monsterz had its Canadian Premiere at FantAsia2014 in Montreal.

NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

A Babe, a Hunk, Jerry Granelli & Anne of Green Gables:
All this and more for you in Halifax!!!

Hard Drive (2014)
Dir. William D. McGillivray
Starring: Douglas Smith, Laura Wiggins, Megan Follows, Jerry Granelli

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ditch (Douglas Smith) is a hunky dreamboat loner who lives with his single Mom (Megan "Anne of Green Gables" Follows) and a very cool boarder (legendary jazz drummer Jerry Granelli) in their modest Halifax home. Mom urges Ditch to better himself and enrol in community college, but he seems satisfied with his job at the local dump where he can play frisbee-fetch with the junkyard dog and have carte-blanche access to his employers' beater van. He dreams of becoming a musician himself, like Granelli and his long-out-of-the-picture itinerant drummer Dad, but as is typical of Canadian heroes, Ditch doesn't do much about it. He's yet another in a long line of English-Canadian cinema's "Beautiful Losers" that began with the likes of Pete and Joey in Goin' Down the Road and Marshall Dillon in Paperback Hero. When a mysterious American mega-babe (Laura Wiggins) comes-a-sashayin' into town, Ditch's tongue hangs to the ground and he befriends the young beauty with a - you guessed it - dark secret. Not a whole lot happens save for some Mother-Son disputes, an unexpected death and Ditch burning a strange tattoo off the babe's lower back with a piping-hot iron (at her request, of course). Things race to a "I-did-the-math-on-that-one-in-the-first-half-hour" revelation and hard-to-swallow denouement.

Hard Drive is a superbly-acted and beautifully shot drama with a fine indigenous sense of place, but it pokes about far too foreseeably, riddled with an annoying de rigour indie soundtrack, a surprisingly awkward Granelli score and that dour earnestness of so many Canadian films. McGillivray is one of Canada's great filmmakers. He's given us the astounding Life Classes, Understanding Bliss and the wonderful, but idiotically cancelled CBC-TV series Gullage's. Alas, once in awhile, even the best fail (I'm looking at you John Ford, Frank Capra and, among many others, Ingmar Bergman), so it's hardly the end of the world. He's got a few masterworks left in him.

A deep, dark and predictably Canadian secret just 4 U!!

To be fair. it would be remiss of me not to mention that my 13-year-old daughter enjoyed the film immensely. She loved the two young leads and found the story moving and compelling. As I groused about it during the closing credits, she hurled one of my favourite expressions back at me and cracked, "Dad, really, you're so full of shit sometimes." My burgeoning Pauline Kael has spoken!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **½

Hard Drive is enjoying a first-run engagement at Toronto's Royal Cinema.

NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

Bittersweet comedies always need BABES. This one has two!!! Good deal!!!

Brothers and Doormen make great cinematic bedfellows.

It Was You Charlie (2013)
Dir. Emmanuel Shirinian
Starring: Michael D. Cohen, Aaron Abrams, Anna Hopkins, Emma Fleury

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"You was my brother, Charlie. You should'a looked out for me…I could'a had class, I could'a been a contender. I could'a been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it. It was you, Charlie." -Elia Kazan, Budd Schulberg's On the Waterfront

Any low-budget independent movie that mixes-up its approaches to both comedy and melodrama (sometimes perfectly, at others, not so seamlessly) as this one does, but also has the audacity to overtly reference the sibling relationship of Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger in Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront and then toss in some subtle shadings of The Last Laugh, F. W. Murnau's tragic tale of an old doorman played by Emil Jannings, is a movie, that in spite of occasional stumbles, is well worth seeing. It's one flavourful cinematic kishka.

It Was You Charlie explores the lonely life of Abner (Michael D. Cohen) a short, schluby, suicidally-depressed former teacher-artist turned graveyard shift doorman and the fierce sibling rivalry he endures (if not imagines) with Tom (Aaron Abrams), his tall, handsome, lady-killing brother. Abner also harbours a tragic secret that has debilitated his professional and personal life while Tom not only seems to have everything going for him, but also scores with Madeleine (Anna Hopkins), the babe our haplessly loveable schlemiel has long held a torch for. Seemingly round the corner and under his nose, though, is Zoe (Emma Fleury) a kookie female cab driver who meets cute with him as he's trying to access a suicide help line on a speaker phone when the lovely blonde comes into the front lobby looking for a fare.

Sounding whimsical? Actually, none of it - thank CHRIST!!! - plays as such and is one of the film's gifts to those of us who become deeply nauseated by even the mere thought of whimsy. Shirinian and his first-rate cast careen comedically like a pinball blessed with a bonus-bumper in the gutter to keep the silver orb in play - from straight-up human comedy to pitch-black guffaw-grabbers and (less successfully) broad comedy (Abner's first suicide attempt is played in the latter style and lays a rotten egg rather than a golden one.) The dramatic/melodramtic aspects of the film, however, play superbly. Shirinian is wisely never afraid of indulging in glorious sentiment (a scene with Abner and an infant is a heart-tugger of the finest order).

The film has an especially brave and intelligently-wrought structure involving flashbacks which mesh beautifully with the present-tense dramatics. Alas, there's one almost-horrendously obvious plot element within this structure which is as glaringly obvious as a boil on a fat whore's ass. Thankfully, it's liveable since so much of the film clicks in its delectably oddball fashion.

Working with Luc Montpellier (The Saddest Music in the World, Take This Waltz), the best living cinematographer in Canada (English and French), and surely one of the best in the world, Shirinian is blessed with a look that plays gorgeously with his offbeat mise-en-scene. The lighting is always evocative of both the natural settings and emotional core of every scene and when the camera moves, it's as if we're allowed to cascade with both the narrative and emotional beats with pure fluidity.

That said, there are a few moments where we're begging for either a medium two-shot or closeup and in one case, during a scene between the brothers in a cafe, where we're waiting - nay, emotionally demanding a dolly shot from behind Abner as the camera is perched over his shoulder on Tom so that it swings around to give us a reveal on Abner's face and then swinging back again on Tom, just before a non-existent (but needed) cut to a nice medium two-shot profile of the brothers facing each other in the booth.

This, and a few other salient moments are lacking the kind of panache which, admittedly, are imagined from my perspective, but not, I suspect, because we sense that it hasn't been planned for by either the director or cinematographer, but because of, perchance, exigencies of production as they relate to the budget. (As well, there do seem to be a few too many under-populated settings that betray the film's budget, but chances are, they'll only drive a nit-picking cinema-curmudgeon, like me, crazy.)

Other technical credits are equally impressive as Montpellier's. From Aren (Modra) Hansen's deft cutting (especially so given the strangeness of the storytelling structure), to a fine score from Ryan Latham that beautifully captures the film's spirit, but also works in tandem with the very cool selection of songs by Emma Carbone Fleury, Roger Clown and Sugar Brown and last, but not least, loving production design by Nazgol Goshtasbpour that creates very real interior worlds rooted in both tone and character.

As noted, Shirinian's principal cast is first-rate. Abrams is delightfully sexy, handsome and a perfect brotherly straight-man to Cohen's dervish-like Abner. And speaking of sexy, it's so nice to see a Canadian feature film that casts babes like Hopkins and Fleury, as opposed to the "naturalistic" dish-rags shoved-in as drain-stoppers into the sinks that are so often Canadian films. These ladies are not only, uh, babes, but terrific actresses with great comedic and dramatic range.

The revelation here, though, is made-for-the-movies character actor Michael D. Cohen who's given a shot at being a delightfully sexy-ugly leading man. With his shiny pate adorned with goofy locks of hockey-helmet-hoser-hair, Cohen bravely runs a gamut of emotions - from whiny to wisecracking, from bitter to sensitive and finally, the kind of screen mensch we want to embrace wholeheartedly. This guy's the real thing. In a real country, with a real movie business, he'd be rightfully ubiquitous on the screens small and large. Let's hope his role here brings him the kind of cache he deserves. (I'd give my right nut to see Cohen and another one of my favourite Canadian character actors, the insanely intense Robert Nolan, together as leads in some perverse genre film.)

So just do it.

High-tailing it down to the TIFF Bell Lightbox or your local art cinema and/or VOD'ing this sucker will be a decent 80 minutes of your life to fork over. Best of all, it'll allow you a chance to get in on the ground floor of a promising English-Canadian director who, prior to this feature debut, delivered two of the country's finest short comedies, The Last Bang (involving an old Jewish man's dalliance with a heart-of-gold hooker) and Song of Slomon (a frothy, feel-good comedy about a Rabbi who discovers disco dancing, the fellowship of gay men and over-indulging in his weakness for crispy, fried bacon). Though It Was You Charlie is not without occasional missteps, it's more often than not on the right track of being naturally skewed without feeling like it's being quirky just for the sake of being quirky.

Me, I'm putting my money on Shirinian's sophomore effort to be something that smacks a major league leather Rawlings clear out of the park. I mean, really: Murnau and Kazan shoehorned into a wonky sentimental comedy? The sky's gotta be the limit next time out.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***It Was You Charlie, from 108 Media and A71, is in limited platform release across North America and is currently unspooling at the majestic TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.

NOTE: The Film Corner's Star Ratings will now appear at the end of the review.

One of Takei's favourite movies as a kid was Errol Flynn
in the classic swashbuckler The Adventures of Robin Hood.

During a celebrity roast, Mr. Takei carves
William Shatner up like a RUMP ROAST.

To Be Takei (2014)
Dir. Jennifer M. Kroot

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Most of us know George Takei as Mr. Sulu the stalwart Asian helmsman of the multi-racial S.S. Enterprise crew on Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, the immortal science fiction television series (and its subsequent blockbuster feature film spin-offs). In recent years, however, Takei has become a symbol of Asian actors who broke out of the offensive stereotyping American drama prescribed for our Asian brothers and sisters. Maybe most important of all, Takei has been one of the world's most tireless champions for Gay Rights and in particular, Gay marriage. As Star Trek is surely the greatest television series ever produced, Mr. Takei is one of America's most important actors and activists. With this in mind, it's fortunate for Takei and audiences all over the world, that his documentary biographer is the extraordinary Jennifer M. Kroot who studied under the late, great filmmaker George Kuchar and went on to direct It Came From Kuchar, the ultimate big-screen love letter to her mentor George and his brilliant brother Mike - two filmmakers who defined 20th century cinema.

Kroot's sophomore effort proves she's no one-trick pony and has carved a lovely niche for herself as one of the medium's best documentary biographers and, in fact, can be considered as one of the foremost filmmakers working in America today. To Be Takei is absolutely joyous - a funny, touching and compelling portrait of a great, great human being - so much so that you'll only be disappointed that the picture eventually ends. Her first-rate DNA-hardwired filmmaking prowess is responsible for leaving us wanting more, in all the best ways. The movie is as close as we're likely to get to actually being able to mainline Takei as if he was the purest heroine. And yes, she's chosen an ideal subject, but her skill and artistry as a filmmaker is what ultimately raises both Takei and the film to stellar heights. By focusing so resolutely on his achievements with all the aplomb of a master storyteller, Kroot has made a movie that not only dazzles, informs and entertains, but is - without question - as important a film as any of us really want all of our film experiences to be. Such is the living legacy that is George Takei.

At 77 or 30, George Takei is the epitome of HOT!

And such is the consummate artistry of Jennifer M. Kroot that she spins the Takei yarn in the context of 20th Century American history. If you ever wanted a portrait of pre-War life amongst Asian Americans, you'll get it here. If you've yearned for a deeply moving and personal exploration into America's racist policies of interning Japanese Americans in concentration camps upon the attack of Pearl Harbor, you've got it. If you're interested in the childhood memories of life in such a concentration camp from the erudite, detailed perspective of a 77-year-old man, Kroot delivers the goods. For a portrait of a young Asian actor finding his place in an American Cinema replete with disgraceful stereotyping, look no further. If you've a hankering for an illuminating look, through the eyes of said actor, at American television and film history from the 50s to the present, To Be Takei offers a riveting, informative window into the last half-century and beyond. As well, the themes of burgeoning sexuality in a repressed America, living in the closet, coming out of the closet (when the dough-headed, at-the-time California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the state's same-sex marriage legislation) and a fervent commitment to activism, fill the film to overflowing.

If, perhaps most movingly of all, bearing witness to the deep love between two wonderful human beings, Takei and his spouse Brad Altman, you'll discover it here.

And then some.

The aforementioned to-die-for grocery list of sumptuous morsels to tantalize, tickle and touch, doesn't even include Takei's brilliant use of social media, his stellar political career, his unwavering support of public transit, his longtime on-air creative relationship with the insanely brilliant shock-jock Howard Stern, his open and generous relationship with fans and his astounding, obsessive and triumphant production of Allegiance, a musical (!!!!!) about the internment of Japanese-Americans.

Hell, if sainthood wasn't tied so inextricably to the evils of Catholicism, George Takei would be an ideal candidate for such lofty canonization and it's this very thing, Takei's importance and impact upon 20th Century (and beyond) culture, which is what makes Kroot's film so damn terrific. There's no need to provide a warts-and-all look at this great man. There are, so to speak, no warts. There is, however, considerable conflict in his tale which Kroot manages ever-so-deftly to provide a stirring narrative.

dif tor heh smusma - WORDS TO LIVE BY

One of the coolest revelations in Kroot's film, at least to me (being the inveterate John Wayne lover that I am) is the regard with which Takei speaks of "The Duke" giving him a juicy starring role in his epic blockbuster war extravaganza The Green Berets (you can read my own in-depth review of the film HERE). It's a movie I love deeply, in spite of its clearly skewed politics, but the fact remains that Wayne, like it or not, broke incredible ground by choosing to make a Vietnam War film at the height of a war that was, and still is, one of America's many dark hours.

That said, seeing this reasonably extended segment in Kroot's film reminded me of how important it is for artists - especially those with "pull" - to always seek out that which is as audacious and unheard of as Wayne did. To not only give Takei a rich role in a high-profile film suggests Wayne's acumen as a filmmaker, but reminds me of how many such individuals, including Takei, pushed all manner of limits - artistically and politically. As well, Kroot's film contrasts this with the horrendous use of Takei in a stupid Jerry Lewis comedy which moronically fell back upon the racist stereotyping of Asians. Takei's regret in this regard, is deeply and profoundly moving.

Needless to say, Takei's regard for Wayne is also touching as is his respect for the visionary genius of Gene Roddenberry to realize that a futuristic space voyage on the scale depicted in Star Trek would, in fact, have to be populated with a multicultural crew.

Kroot herself populates the film with a multitude of faces, places and media to relate this great story. Using archival clips and photos, as well as a variety of all-new interviews (expertly handled, by the way), she boldly takes us to places no documentary biographer has dared to go by affording herself with all the available tools anyone might use, but does so in a fashion that's so seamless, we never feel weighted down by tropes, but instead are veritably cascaded on a journey that takes us into Takei's heart and mind, and in so doing delivers a portrait of life, politics, art and history.

Some of the more delightful interviews come from expected and not-so-expected places. The talented young actor John Cho (the current Sulu and co-star of the hilarious Harold and Kumar films) discusses the childhood thrills he (and his family) experienced whenever Takei came on screen. Sex columnist Dan Savage points out the obvious - how unbelievably HOT Takei is. And perhaps the most literate and heartfelt thoughts come from the great actor/director Leonard Nimoy who shared the Star Trek stage with Takei as everyone's favourite Vulcan, Mr. Spock.

And in the words of Mr. Spock, Kroot has fashioned a film that will ensure that George Takei will "Live long and prosper" - for now and forever.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *****
5-Stars, Highest Film Corner Accolade

To Be Takei is platforming theatrically across North America with a flagship engagement at the majestic TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, to be followed by a massive home entertainment release via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada and Anchor Bay on October 7, 2014. Feel free to order directly from the Amazon links below.

Is it possible to take a documentary
seriously that incorporates the moronic
social networking acronym OMG in its title?
Yes. If the movie is actually good.
This one isn't.

GMO OMG (2013) *
Dir. Jeremy Seifert

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I sincerely believe everyone should see this film - not because it's any good, but because it's important for audiences to experience how egregiously an independently produced, but one-sided, misguided and all-over-the-map propaganda picture like GMO OMG can be just as dangerous to progressive thought and exploration of issues that affect all of us, as propaganda on the flip side from heavily-financed-and-approved corporate/political interests can be.

Let it be said, though, that these days, I have a fairly strong bias of acceptance when it comes to films dealing with environmental concerns. Firstly, I've always been against corporate culture, ideology and bureaucracy. I believe it's downright evil. Secondly, I've also been extremely skeptical about any political process and feel it's usually little more than legal organized crime devoted primarily to nest-feathering of the most blatant and petty kind. Thirdly, and most importantly, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I came late in life to caring about our world in any green sense, but frankly, to use the well-worn, but perfectly reasonable expression: better late than never.

I've become especially committed to animal rights and hugely aware (and mindful) of both energy and environmental issues. To the latter, I've gone so far as to live completely off the grid, grow my own consumable food product (including free-range animal product of the egg variety) and rescuing animals from torture and inhumane slaughter. When I encounter films dealing with any of the aforementioned, I prick up my ears, sharpen my eyes and drink in the myriad of cinematic perspectives on such issues. That said, I demand the films be good - aesthetically and by extension, ideologically. GMO OMG is neither.

Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert is just your regular garden-variety Dad who became alarmed when he discovered just how much food he and his family consumed was derived from genetic modification. He chose to become a bargain basement Michael Moore and explore the world of GMOs by making a film about it. Fair enough, but what he's wrought is not only poor filmmaking, but does little more than preach to the (ignorant) converted. Even worse is that it places a valuable tool in the hands of scumbag corporations like Monsanto which employs vicious strong-arm tactics to foist their product upon food producers and consumers.

At the beginning of the film, Seifert professes to know very little about GMOs until hearing about them, so he first engages in what will be his uncompromising approach to investigative journalism as he asks ordinary Americans in the street what they think about eating GMOs. Well shucks, it turns out that the folks he approaches known nothing about GMOs and frankly, have never even heard of them. What this proves is the ignorance of the American people, or at least, the ignorance of the American people he approaches in his random fashion.

What the film ignores, is that many Canadians are well aware of GMOs (and proudly) since Canadian scientists at the University of Manitoba in the 70s first developed the exquisite and healthy Canola Oil (modified Rapeseed) which has become one of the biggest crops in North America. Yes, corporate scumbags in the 90s began adding herbicide resistant properties to the seed, but the only real threat here has been of the patent copyright variety. The only mention of Canola in Seifert's film appears to be in one of the many slick animated charts which look and sound like they're providing solid information, but are, in fact, delivering a whole lot of nothing.

Seifert includes images of Haitians burning GMO seed donated to them from Monsanto. Fair enough, the people of Haiti wish to grow their own natural variety of seeds and have bought into the anti-GMO lobby, but there's no investigation as to the corporate ramifications of rejecting Monsanto's donation and a whole lot of negative information about the dangers of not using "natural" products. Last I heard, human beings were "natural" and while some have used their considerable natural brain power to genetically/chemically treat a lot of things that are generally considered bad for you (Big Tobacco, anyone?), the film never makes any attempt (save for getting nowhere with Monsanto) to explore what the positives might be with respect to GMOs.

He interviews a variety of farmers about GMOs - some agin, others for and yet many on the fencepost. His line of questions are just plain scattered. At one point, and seemingly by default, he engages in a decent enough conversation with one farmer, then interrupts the flow, fumbles for a stupid question (which most of them appear to be throughout the film) and idiotically asks the gentleman if he's a God-fearin' church-goer and how this affects his use of seeds that might well be seen (moronically) as playing God. This is a dumb question on a number of levels, but mostly because it's a cheap (and clumsy) attempt to play into Right Wing Christian morality with respect to GMOs and, of course, the fact that many thinking people don't believe or are rightly skeptical of the notion of God within the context of what's been seeded (so to speak) by organized crime, oops, I mean, religion.

And let us, for a moment, get back to the Monsanto issue. The real problem here is that they are forcing farmers to use their product in a manner in which the corporation decides, at prices the corporation sets and then engages in endless legal harassment (the right of all God-Given Corporate assholes) of those rejecting them on a number of levels. Seifert touches on this, but he's more interested in getting Monsanto and its ilk to discuss and/or release their own scientific findings with respect to the safety and production issues of their seed. This is fair enough, but all we get here is the fact that Seifert's getting the runaround on the telephone (Duh! No surprises here, really) and when he physically enters Monsanto, all we hear is an audio recording of his conversation at the front desk wherein he is told to leave. The cameras remain outside until he returns to express his frustration.

Bud, if you really want to be Michael Moore, why aren't you in there with your cameras and worse yet, why are you giving up so easily? Afraid of getting arrested? That's commitment for you.

Okay, so Monsanto doesn't want to reveal any of this info and is being sneaky about it. The fact remains that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the U.S. of A. has its own guidelines with respect to GMOs and has not only given them an okay, but seeing as it's based upon what Seifert and many others charge is a potentially low level of scientific investigation, where are the raft of scientists not employed by Monsanto and/or the FDA who agree with this? Where are all the politicians and bureaucrats who do agree? Why do we only meet one anti-GMO politician who wants greater openness with respect to the whole issue? Aren't there more? If not, why not? Seifert even whines about the legality of patenting seeds. How, he wonders, can life be owned by a corporation? Hey Bud, try taking a Business 101 course sometime.

While Seifert dredges up one scientist in Europe who's come up with some fairly damning evidence against GMOs, were there no others who could agree with him? And what about those scientists who refuted the findings? What do they have to say about it? Specifically, that is. Could they be right? Who says so? Why? Beats me. The film sheds no light on this.

Aside from what feels like a whole lot of personal home movie footage in the movie, Seifert engages in a series of conversations, photo-ops and experiments (strictly for the cameras) with his own kids. One of the little shavers always looks especially terrified - not, I suspect, by truly understanding the ramifications of GMOs, but by his potentially crazy Dad making him do a bunch of stuff that seems a whole lot scarier (to me, anyway) than any of the doom and gloom Seifert espouses.

One jaw-droppingly stupid and seemingly unnecessary "experiment" is when Seifert talks about how kids used to be able to run free and wild through corn rows, but that nowadays, because of genetic modification, the corn is full of potentially poisonous pesticides hard-wired into its DNA, making it dangerous to do so. What does the filmmaker do? He adorns his kidlets with heavy-duty, scary-looking body suits and gas masks, then forces them into the cornfields for the edification of the cameras. The suits are heavy and hot and once they're doffed, he and the children are drenched with sweat and out of breath. One of the kids is upset and crying.

Perhaps this isn't child abuse to the precise letter of the law, but it sure damn well feels like it. This and other such sequences with the kids seem so creepy, I almost think that if the film were directed and produced by someone other than Seifert, it might have, Sherman's March-style, turned into being about something altogether different from what it started to be about: that is, a documentary about a committed, well-intentioned Dad who goes in search of answers to his concerns about GMOs, then morphs into a documentary about a committed, well-intentioned Dad with a bunch of half-baked ideas who runs around trying to prove them and puts his kids through hell in order to do so.

I might have actually enjoyed that movie instead of having to infer it from the available footage in this one. Watching Seifert's kids gaze longingly out the window on a hot summer day as an ice cream truck rings its bell and seeing that they can't run out and grab a yummy cone because Dad tells them it has GMOs in it, has got to be seen to be believed.

There are many outright laughable items in this movie, but one of the biggest for me is that it would have you believe everything is genetically modified. There is, however, such a thing as ages-old breeding: all natural and all part of the long-accepted practice of shaping our agricultural product, uh, naturally. Seifert takes us to the famous Norwegian underground storage facility where every known seed to man (including those of the ancient variety), but all this does is make thinking viewers realize even more than man has been selectively modifying seeds since the beginning of time - doing it genetically does not necessarily mean it's a bad thing.

On a separate note, the movie is jam-packed with a whack of slanted, sentimental montage sequences meant to bolster Seifert's thesis (whatever it ultimately is, anyway) and using some of the most sickeningly twee original music I've ever had the displeasure to suffer through, I was more compelled to upchuck than be moved by the "sad truth". The tunes are warbled by a group called The Jubilee Singers. If, God forbid, you actually like the music, I'm sure it's available on the film's website along with other paraphernalia related to the film. It's strictly of the Kumbaya, My Lord variety, but if you're into it, knock yourself out.

Here's what I think you need to do. See this movie. However, see it at the myriad of independent cinemas that are playing the film across North America - you'll at least be putting money in their pockets. God knows, they deserve it. If you miss it on a big screen, though, skip it. No need putting money in the pockets of anyone else associated with this dreadful and, in its own way, dangerous, ill-informed propaganda.

GMO OMG opens for a limited run at Toronto's first-rate independent cinema, The Royal, on July 25, 2014. It's also playing in a variety of independent theatrical and non-theatrical venues across North America.

Here are some genuinely GREAT documentaries dealing with a variety of environmental issues (and/or just plain great documentaries) that you can buy at Amazon via accessing the various links below directly, and in so doing, assisting with the maintenance of The Film Corner.

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For
Dir. Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Greene, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Powers Boothe, Julia Garner, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Chung, Dennis Haysbert, Bruce Willis, Stacy Keach, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Lloyd, Jamie Chung, Marton Csokas, Ray Liotta, Juno Temple, Jude Ciccolella, Jaime King, Alexa PenaVega, Lady Gaga

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The biggest sin this movie commits is being more boring than a soused, fat, old, skunk-pussy whore trying to pathetically coax a hard-on from a flaccid dick, but failing miserably with every attempt to inspire even a half-mast to poke through the globs of cellulite folding over a fetid, purulent orifice of love. This is especially disappointing since nine-years-ago, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller grabbed us by the short and curlies with the stylish, audacious and supremely entertaining Sin City. This time around, the neo-noir magic just isn't there. In fairness, the overwrought visual palette of high-contrast black & white splashed with snot-balls of garish colour hasn't lost its appeal, nor has the extreme violence. What's dishearteningly awry in this installment of short, loosely-connected pulp stories is that they're simply no match for the compelling, original nastiness that slugged us repeatedly in the face like a solid pistol-whipping that felt like it was never going to end. In fact, we didn't want it to end. I would have been happy for Rodriguez and Miller to keep smacking away at my flabby mug with some cold, hard, black steel. Here, though, we're constantly compelled to check the time on our smart phones every ten minutes or so and on occasion, the temptation to open up a game app like Bejeweled is stronger than the pull of the thundering Niagara Falls when you insanely hop the barrier and creep too close to the edge.

Alack and alas, the five stories in this prequel/sequel are simply not as good as those in the previous outing and the hard boiled overripe dialogue feels way more machine-tooled. The latter element jackhammers away at us with such force that it pretty much numbs us to the few decent lines peppered throughout.

Happily, Rodriguez and Miller don't save the best for last. The first tale, "Just Another Saturday Night" genuinely captures a fair bit of the old magic and sets us up to expect a ride as crazed and original as the first. We focus on everyone's favourite pug-ugly muscle-packed hood Marv (Michey Rourke) flaked out on a lonely stretch of highway overlooking The Projects and he's got no idea why he's there. The dead bodies strewn about provide enough clues to retrace his steps from earlier in the evening. His adventure-laden flashback includes ogling Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) gyrating onstage at Kadies, stopping some rich young scumbags from torching a drunk, stealing a police car in pursuit of the well-to-do filth, following them into the projects and engaging in a delicious spree of mayhem.

So far, so good. It's just after this point where, aside from a handful of bright spots, our hearts sink. "The Long Bad Night (Part I)" isn't bad, mind you. Johnny (Joseph Gordon Levitt) joins a card game in Kadie's back salon which is presided over by A-1 dirt-bag Senator Roarke (Powers Booth). With babe Marcie (Julia Garner) in tow for good luck, Johnny cleans up. The Senator is pissed at being humiliated. A big secret is soon revealed. A certain someone gets their fingers broken with a pair of pliers. And revenge, is sworn. Close, but no cigar with this tale, and we're on to the next dark segment.

"A Dame to Kill For" is surprisingly the weakest of the bunch. Too bad it's the centre-piece. A prequel to the first film's glorious "The Big Fat Kill", the story features the pre-plastic surgery Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin). He was played by Clive Owen in the previous picture and Brolin is a decent enough replacement. Unfortunately this long, deadly-dull tale involves his old flame Ava Lord (Eva Green) hinting at needing protection from her sexual deviant rich hubby Damian Lord (Marton Csokas) and the powerful manhandling Manute (Dennis Haysbert, replacing the late, great Michael Clarke Duncan). The convolutions involve a whack of femme fatale manipulations, a couple of cops Mort (Christopher Meloni) and Bob (Jeremy Piven), one of whom goes rogue, the return of hot whore Gail (Rosario Dawson, looking very bored) plus the deadly assassin Miho (Jamie Chung, a lame replacement for Devon Aoki). There's a too-short appearance by Stacy Keach as the sweating, corpulent, repulsive mobster Wallensquist and even a supernatural angle involving witchcraft.

The whole thing plays out like molasses.

The only decent stuff is the first few minutes involving Juno Temple as a whore marked for death by a slimy Ray Liotta, but it's disappointingly short and dispatched ingloriously in favour of and as a lead-in to the aforementioned nonsense with Ava. Eva Green is often wonderful, in spite of how dreadful this segment is and it might be great to see an entire feature devoted to her character. Green, to be blunt, is definitely as boner-inducing, if not more so than in Zack Snyder's 300.

"The Long Bad Night (Part II)" is a completely inconsequential tale of Johnny's attempted revenge upon Roarke and its only pleasures are to be found in Christopher Lloyd's great cameo as a heroin-shooting private doctor whom Johnny hires to straighten out his broken fingers.

"Nancy's Last Dance" involves our gyrating stripper "daughter" of Bruce Willis (who appears as - I kid you not - a ghost) and her desire to kill Roarke who's eventually going to rub her out to avenge the death of his "Yellow Bastard" son from Sin City. And no, this is not a case of best-for-last, but thanks to a great sequence with Marv and Nancy zipping along on their respective motorcycles and a genuinely decent blood bath in Roarke's mansion, the tale is more akin to being not-bad-for-last.

Powers Boothe, by the way, is always terrific as Roarke and he, like Eva Green, demands his own movie.

The addition of 3-D adds nothing and as per usual, renders everything murky in all the wrong ways.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2-Stars

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is an e-One release. It's also a humungous flop at the box office.

In search of redemption:
WHORE, WRITER, BANKER

TIFF 2014 (Discovery)
Life in a Fishbowl (aka Vonarstræti) (2014)
Dir. Baldvin Zophoníasson
Script: Birgir Steinarsson & Zophoníasson
Starring: Hera Hilmar, Thor Kristjansson, Þorsteinn Bachmann

Review By Greg Klymkiw

As a Canadian who writes about movies, has made more than a few movies and loves movies, I'm ashamed to the depths of my bowels at having to admit that the highest grossing Canadian film over the last year was the utterly loathsome flop The Mortal Instrument: City of Bones. By virtue of our nation's tax credit system and international co-production agreements and the blatant, sorrowful waste of our talent and locations, this sickeningly moronic teen fantasy-adventure based on a dreadful franchise of illiterate-ture, aimed at the lowest common denominator of those who purport to read, is no more Canadian, in terms of its content (if you want to call it that, I prefer to describe it as faecal matter), than a hairy, barefoot, offensively unwashed, stove-top-hat-adorned, shotgun-toting, Ozark-dwelling hillbilly.

Oh Canada, how dare anyone stand on guard for thee?

As these thoughts of national shame permeate the gelatinous goo of my brain matter, I seek respite from the horror and instead, as a longtime cottager in Gimli, Manitoba, I look to the tiny country of which I feel honorarily bound by virtue of so many years celebrating Islendingadagurinn and secretly whacking off to photographs of those grand old ladies crowned each year as "New Iceland's"Fjallkona.

Yes, Iceland, I'm looking at you, baby and I rejoice that your audiences recently supported a superb new indigenous film and turned it into a humungous domestic box office hit, higher and more powerful than the mighty Mount Askja. That the film is a dark, disturbing, multi-layered, hauntingly textured and deeply moving multi-character drama that focuses on the legacy of three major banking institutions collapsing during the Icelandic Financial Crises of 2008, is what ultimately makes this picture's existence and success even more of a victory. North American exhibitors, broadcasters and distributors of motion picture product would never even green-light, much less allow an indigenous film with this subject matter to be seen by those who would embrace it. Thankfully, one of Canada's most visionary sales companies, Raven Banner, has done us proud by acquiring this motion picture for distribution.

Life in a Fishbowl was a very difficult and challenging work for me to get through - not because it lacked anything aesthetically, but because it's so damn rich and emotionally complex. That said, like all truly great drama, the surface layers work with very simple, basic standards to allow for its textures of theme, character and narrative complexity to bubble and roil like molten lava and when necessary, explode with the force of Icelandic volcanoes. The screenplay by director Baldvin Zophoníasson and Birgir Steinarsson practically sings with a musical quality - highs, lows, moments of contemplation and some sequences that both soar and jangle. When I eventually looked up the film's credits, something my readers and colleagues know I only do after I see a movie, I was delighted to learn that this was the first shot at screenwriting from the singer-songwriter of the legendary Icelandic rock band Maus. It made perfect sense to me. Let's not forget that one of the best contemporary screenwriters in the world, Nick Cave, has a similar pedigree to this film's co-writer Birgir Steinarsson.

Life in a Fishbowl compellingly and powerfully focuses on three characters who live out their lives separately after the horrendous Icelandic financial crisis, but all of whom intersect in a variety of interesting and gloriously meshed ways.

Eik (Hera Hilmar) is a drop-dead-gorgeous single mother who works in a pre-school. Ravaged with debt, she puts on a brave face for her child and others in her life. She has a strained relationship with her parents. They seem well-off enough to assist her, but even if they could, one doubts Eik would accept such help in light of an extremely horrendous and harrowing series of events from her childhood. Eik's nights are occasionally filled with part-time work to supplement her meagre income, but it's the kind of work she approaches by shutting herself down emotionally with as much inner strength as she can muster.

Hilmar's performance here is astonishing. She evokes a wide-range of emotions and the camera clearly loves her. She's got all the potential to be snatched up by the Hollywood machine as her star potential ascends very high, indeed. That said. her work here is so challenging and luminous, one questions whether she'd ever get the kind of roles in mainstream work that she's more than capable of playing. She's already been used in such typically cliched work as David S. Goyer's slick, faux-sophisticated, but empty TV series Da Vinci's Demons. Ugh! Please give this lady work worthy of her talent. Then again, one supposes she can always count on Icelandic, European or independent filmmakers to fill the need for truly great roles.

Móri (Þorsteinn Bachmann) is an acclaimed and much-beloved Icelandic literary figure, but he also lives alone in a house that seems untouched, as if it were a museum piece reflecting both happier times and tragedy. He's also an alcoholic. Many great writers have been and he, like they, uses booze to numb the pain which wracks his soul. He's written a new novel, but it's his first in a long time and while waiting for word from his publisher, he whiles away his time performing poetry in a local "arts" bar, downing gallons of fiery rotgut with other drunks in a less-than-upscale dive and during his benders, he's prone to both accidents and being beaten, robbed and left on the pavement by his "fair-weather", equally-soused cronies.

When Móri meets Eik and her daughter, he develops a loving friendship with both and even manages to hit the wagon. Unfortunately, all the elements that make his life have new, added meaning, are also the very things which threaten to knock him off the wagon.

Bachmann, like Hilmar, offers a deeply absorbing and complex performance. His moments of kindness, humour and even paternal caring betray his sensitivity, but he, like Eik, looks to shutting down emotionally. Móri, however, seeks booze to turn the inner faucet of his soul to the "off" position.

(As a side note, there were a few moments in Bachmann's performance wherein I was happily reminded of a legendary night of drunken laughs, tears, hugs and general male bonding in Toronto's Bistro 990, the now-defunct TIFF watering hole, where I shall never forget hoisting more-than-a-few with the great German documentary filmmaker and ZDF executive Alexander Bohr and the brilliant Icelandic auteur Friðrik Þór Friðriksson. But, I digress.)

Sölvi (Thor Kristjansson) is a former pro-athlete who has been sidelined by a debilitating injury and now works as an executive in a financial corporation. Here, he seems destined for success, but his immediate superior is the kind of immoral scumbag who'd think nothing of perpetrating the kind of criminal actions that brought Iceland to its knees. Sölvi is placed in charge of a sleazy real-estate deal which will buy up a swath of properties to erect a new mega-complex.

Kristjansson deftly handles the complexities of this role wherein his character's sense of morality is challenged by his need to provide for his beautiful wife and child. After all, in tough times, how can anyone in this position place integrity ahead of business? This is also a business of temptations beyond getting-ahead, it is a world where part of getting the deal done involves bonding with male colleagues in the exploitation of women-for-hire.

There is a sequence of debauchery on a Florida yacht which clearly rivals the antics of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese's thrilling biopic of financial scumbag Jordan Belfort. I use this harrowing sequence of whoring and boozing as one which best exemplifies Zophoníasson's superb direction and proves that the excellent work he displayed in his phenomenal debut Jitters was no fluke.

Zophoníasson's touch here contrasts Scorsese's in a very interesting way. Where the Maestro from Little Italy injected immorality with a dazzling virtuosity that heightened the depravity by exploiting it, Zophoníasson captures the exploitation with a kind of documentarian's eye - it's not fun at all, at least not for the audience. In fact, it's gross and horrific what these grown men are up to on this yacht of banal depravity. Brilliantly though, Zophoníasson and Steinarsson's screenplay allows for a series of subtle directorial movements into territory that borders on another sort of dazzling style - one that is tender and romantic, but that eventually dovetails into something else altogether. There's a denouement to this sequence which occurs a few scenes later that is as maddening as it is heartbreaking.

One film "critic" recently complained that Life in a Fishbowl is hampered by "plot weaknesses and a tendency to the obvious", but what these purported weaknesses might be, are not (as per usual in mainstream criticism), detailed in any way, nor is the review forthcoming in explaining what is meant by a "tendency to the obvious". Yes, metaphorically one cannot help but see these characters like those fish in a bowl who have clearly been trapped into swimming endlessly in every available which-way with no hope of ever adding new boundaries or horizons, but it's these simple visual symbols that allow for films to be truly great and transcend them the way Zophoníasson's film clearly does.

The simple surface elements of the narrative also give way to layers of emotional and narrative complexity. The aforementioned whoring-on-the-boat sequence is just one of many moments wherein the filmmakers transcend the tools that only the very best will adhere to in order to create work that has lasting value and yes, maybe, just maybe, hope.

Make no mistake, Life in a Fishbowl is blessed with qualities that are not ephemeral. The movie is universal. It's what makes movies worth seeing.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** FOUR STARS

Life in a Fishbowl is playing during the 2014 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival in the Discovery series. It's been programmed by one of the world's leading proponents of Nordic, Scandic and Canadian Cinema, Steve Gravestock. For further information on dates, times and tickets, visit TIFF's website HERE. Raven Banner is the film's distributor.

A daughter, whose child can never be hers.
A mother, whose daughter is everything.
A woman who has come between them.
A baby that binds all three for eternity.

In Her Place (2014)
Dir. Albert Shin
Script: Shin & Pearl Ball-Harding
Prods. Igor Drljaca, Yoon Hyun Chan & Shin
Starring: Yoon Da Kyung, Ahn Ji Hye, Kil Hae Yeon, Kim Sung Cheol, Kim Chang Hwan, Kim Kyung Ik

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Now and again, I find myself seeing a movie that feels so perfect, so lacking in anything resembling a single false note and so affecting on every level that I'm compelled to constantly pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. In Her Place, enjoying its World Premiere at the 2014 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival is a dream, but most decidedly of the dream-come-true variety. This is exactly the sort of film that restores my faith in the poetic properties of cinema and how the simplest of tales, at their surface, allow its artists to dig deep and yield the treasures inherent in the picture's soul. When a film is imbued with an inner spirit as this one is, you know you're watching something that hasn't been machine-tooled strictly for ephemeral needs. In Her Place is a film about yearning, love and the extraordinary tears and magic that are borne out of the company and shared experience of women. And, it is exquisite.

A childless couple nearing the early stages of middle-age, cut a private deal to adopt outside the purview of an official agency, which, they're convinced, will be the ideal no-muss-no-fuss arrangement. The Wife (Yoon Da-kyung), having been previously afflicted with serious health issues, especially wants the world to think she's the biological birth-mother of the adopted newborn. She and her Husband (Kim Kyung Ik) concoct a cover for friends and family that she's waiting out her pregnancy in America instead of Seoul. In reality, she's not left South Korea at all and is staying on an isolated farm. Her hosts are The Mother (Kil Hae-yeon), widowed and forced to run the sprawling acreage on her own and her daughter, a shy, pregnant teenage Girl (Ahn Ji-hye). For a substantial sum, this financially needy rural family agrees to give up the baby to the well-to-do couple from the big city. The Wife stays in modest digs originally meant for onsite farmhands while her Husband returns to Seoul to work. From here, she can maintain the optics of being away from home during pregnancy but also take an active role in nurturing the young lady carrying "her" child. The arrangement seems too good to be true and sure enough, complications slowly surface and threaten to scuttle an otherwise perfect plan.

In Her Place is director Albert Shin's stunning sophomore feature-length outing. Working with co-writer Pearl Ball-Harding and co-producer Igor Drljaca (director of 2012's dazzling Krivina and Shin's old York University film school pal and partner in their company TimeLapse Pictures), Shin and Drljaca seem to have pulled off another miracle in the relatively short life of their seemingly perfect partnership. Evocatively photographed by Moon Myoung Hwan, wrenchingly and beautifully scored by Alexandre Klinke, featuring a cast as perfect as any director (or audience) would want and edited by Shin himself with the pace and deep sensitivity that's reminiscent of a Robert Bresson film, you'll experience as haunting and touching a film as any of the very best that have been wrought. This is great filmmaking, pure and simple.

What I love about this movie, aside from its emotional content, is just how Shin trusts in the beautiful writing and employs a mise-en-scène that allows his actors to inhabit the frame (always perfectly composed) for the kind of maximum impact that can come from holding steady on narrative action and only cutting when absolutely necessary to spin things forward in subtle ways - parcelling out information so that we are allowed to take in both information and the affecting layers of very palpable impression and subtext.

A perfect example of Shin's assured direction occurs right off the top. The film opens with a fade up from black into a perfectly composed fixed shot of a well-worn gravel road. Flanked by lush, green trees, an unassuming, slightly worn farmhouse sits deep in the centre background, while a car makes its way into the frame and moves with purpose onto the property. All is swathed in a strange grey light from the overcast sky and as the car reaches a halfway point on the road, Shin cuts to place us in a reverse as the vehicle comes even closer to the house. It's as if the point of view was not so much from that of a character, or even from the inanimate house as if it were personified, but rather taking the perspective of an omnipresent observer. This won't be the first time Shin delivers such a POV. From this point and onwards, he allows us, the audience to participate with a kind of fly-on-the-wall scrutiny.

This second shot of the film is masterful on several important fronts.

In both the writing and staging, the camera lets action play out in the time it takes and in so doing, always keeps us guessing (in all the right ways) as to who is in the car, who the people are once we meet them as they exit the vehicle, get an immediate sense of character from how the two people are positioned in the frame and also by their actions and finally, a very subtle dolly back as the two characters move forward and encounter a sweet, friendly, but sad-eyed dog, chained next to an empty food bowl as it observes the visitors.

This image of a chained dog resonates incalculably as the film progresses.

Another important element here is that these two people become identifiable as a married couple because the shot takes its time and is so perfectly blocked. Even more extraordinarily, the shot allows enough time for one of the people to notice something in the distance and move towards it before the next cut.

This entire shot is a brave and bold stroke so early in the proceedings. The shot lasts for two minutes of screen time, setting the mood, tone and pace of how the tale will unfold, but also establishing how we, as viewers, are observers. And we are not passive viewers. It's as if we were actually in the frame, unseen by the characters, but participants in the narrative nevertheless, almost complicit in the actions of the story. Complicity is indeed a key thematic element at play in the film and Shin does not let us off the hook.

Finally, though, the shot also gives us the sense that this will be the story of The Husband. He is, after all, the most active half of the couple. This is essential at this point, especially since we soon find ourselves within an interior shot set back from a table where the Husband, his back to us, continues to be the most active character in terms of his domination of the conversation and by his declarative statements regarding the heat and stuffiness of the interior.

The notion of being able to breathe, to feel the sort of freedom this natural, rural environment should inspire, to not be hemmed in by circumstance, a lack of communication and/or connection to the outside world is also an element that is established and will reverberate throughout the film with great force.

The other vital component here is that the position of the camera allows us to see all three women very clearly. Though their interaction seems tentative compared to that of the husband, the very length of the shot allows Shin to establish trinity between these women and we're soon plunged into their story - which ultimately, the film is. The Husband seems a mere appendage or, if you will, the chauffeur. He gets his wife there, he even gets us there, but when his job is done, he's dispensed with save for a few key moments later on wherein he still, strangely, feels more like an instrument of mere conveyance.

The dynamic between these three women is so powerful, so telling and finally, so devastating, that Shin's subtle control of his film is at once invisible and yet always present because we are where we have to be for every single emotional and narrative beat.

In Her Place so quietly rips our hearts to shreds. We are included in the emotional journeys of a daughter whose child can never be hers, a mother whose daughter is everything to her but comes to this realization when it's too late and a woman who has come between them because her own desire to love and nurture is so strong and true.

Finally, it's all about a baby - a new life that binds all three women for what will be an eternity.

This is a great picture. See it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

In Her Place enjoys its World Premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. For tickets, dates, venues and showtimes, be sure to visit the TIFF website HERE.

IT is transmitted sexually. IT follows. IT kills.

It Follows (2014)
Dir. David Robert Mitchell
Starring: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's early morning magic hour. A stately home rests quietly in a leafy suburb. The front door bursts open. A babe in her undies races outside, her melons bobbling. In no time at all, she'll be found horribly mutilated. Dead, in fact. Granted, we're in Detroit, one of the most poverty-stricken, crime-ridden and decrepit cities in America, but this grotesque sequence has played out in a bucolic setting, far away from the urban blight.

What gives?

Well, after this shocking preamble to David Robert Mitchell's It Follows, we meet our heroine Jay (Maika Monroe) and in no time we find out exactly what the deal is. She too lives in a 'burb o' Detroit and when she goes on a date with a hot hunk, she's so charmed, she hops into the back seat of his car, tosses off her panties and lets him deliver one right royal solid boning. Lolling about in post-coital bliss, the hunk goes to the trunk to retrieve something. When he returns, he smothers the scantily clad miss with a chloroform-soaked rag. When she wakes up, he's got her strapped into a wheelchair - in her undies, 'natch. He forces her to look at something and what he shows her is so jaw-agape ghastly she can't quite believe her gorgeous eyes as she trains her gaze at IT.

Make no mistake, IT is real, alright, and now, IT is after her. According to the stud-hunk, the only way to get rid of IT is to pass IT on through sexual intercourse. He offers Jay a bit of solace when he says that IT should be no problem for her to pass on since, she's a girl and most any red-blooded male will want to nail her. Once she convinces her friends that she's cursed, they all make like Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Delightfully enough, the notion of passing on the curse sexually allows for some added boinkage in addition to the carnage and shock-til-you-jump jolts. And, of course, the movie gives us IT.

IT is a formidable supernatural villain. If this is the first thing you've read about the movie, read no other reviews, puff pieces and any other literature which might provide TMI. It's a lot scarier, creepier and deliciously perverse if you go in without knowing anything more than this - IT follows you constantly and IT will kill you if IT catches you. If this happens, the curse reverts to afflicting the entire line of boinkers who've preceded you.

Though the movie doesn't quite go into the sickeningly, darkly hilarious territory of David Cronenberg's Shivers (which also featured a sexually transmitted horror), It Follows is a solidly directed shocker with plenty of homages to John Carpenter's output from the late 70s to early 80s. If Mitchell's screenplay is, save for its supremely original "villain", a bit too reliant on well-worn tropes of the genre, his filmmaking is both dazzling and assured. He's the real thing. He handles the proceedings with great style, visual flourish and far more intelligence than your run-of-the-mill horror-fest. Then again, it also has what any horror movie needs - babes, root-slipping and killing.

We even get some scary sojourns into the downtown decrepitude of Detroit. This stuff in the abandoned Detropia of Motor City is so creepy, one almost wishes most of it were set there. If Mitchell generates a sequel, maybe, just maybe, he'll oblige us. As someone who loves a good horror picture and having been conceived in Detroit, I, for one, can hardly wait. My drool is dripping and pooling up like the thick, crimson rivers of blood which permeate the ever-so-delightful It Follows.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

It Follows enjoys a bang-up TIFF 2014 launch during the spectacularly fun Colin Geddes-programmed series Midnight Madness. For tickets, dates, venues and showtimes, visit the TIFF website HERE. The movie is being distributed in Canada by Mongrel Media.

This fellow is having a harder day than most.

A Hard Day (aka Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da) (2014)
Dir. Kim Seong-hun
Starring: Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Jin-woong

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Have you ever have one of those days? You know the kind. We all have them. You're as boiled as a fucking owl on whatever rotgut you've chugged back before getting in your car to drive to the funeral parlour so you can deliver a fond farewell to your mother, laying stiff in her coffin, and then you hit some goddamn pedestrian, killing the bastard, and adding insult to injury, after tossing his sack of potatoes carcass in the trunk, you're stopped and hassled by a bunch of rookie traffic cops doing a spot check. It's a total piss-off, right?

Luckily, for Ko Gun-soo (Lee Sun-kyun) in Kim Seong-hun's A Hard Day, he gets a reprieve when the boneheaded tax-collectors-with-guns drop a few loads in their drawers upon discovering that he's a highly-placed detective within the Seoul police department.

Phew! He's on top of the world. For now.

Unfortunately, just as he's in the middle of a ceremony involving the nailing shut of Mom's coffin, he finds out about some mega-shit going down. A clutch of internal affairs dicks are onto his graft and high-tailing it to the funeral home to roust him. Now, he's gotta figure out some way to smuggle the corpse in his trunk into the funeral parlour and get it into his mother's coffin before the turncoats get there. Adding insult to injury, his partners want him to take the fall, the pedestrian he killed is a notorious made-man in the Korean mafia and he's eventually assigned to investigate the disappearance of said gangster.

This is going to be a hard day, indeed.

For us, Ko Gun-soo's troubles mount exponentially and we're treated to one of the most suspenseful, brutal and funny Asian crime thrillers in many a day. Director Kim Seong-hun displays a taut command of cinematic language to keep us sliding off the edge of our seats and both the action and laughs come fast and furious. Even more extraordinary is the perverse likability of this nasty piece of work for a hero. Granted he's Jesus Christ incarnate compared to the other filth around him, so that we're allowed to root for the least egregious wad of crap is some kind of miracle.

Reminiscent of Jon Finch's accused murderer Blaney in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy Ko Gin-soo just can't seem to get a break. His troubles pile up so insurmountably that we're hoping against all hope that he gets out of the various sticky wickets assailing him. The movie puts us directly in his shoes and as such, we can't help but marvel at director Kim Seong-hun's complex and downright dazzling approach to the material.

I'd like to say that Hollywood would do well to pay attention to these extraordinary Asian masters of art, craft and genre, but the reality is this: all that's going to happen is the crapping out of more lifeless American remakes of Asian movies directed by round-eyed losers with eyes made of tin.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ Three-and-a-half Stars

A Hard Day is in the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014) City to City program. Visit the TIFF website for tickets and further info HERE.

A great movie for steno-girls, retail clerks
and 70-year-old women looking for
cheap thrills on cable TV.

October Gale (2014)
Dir. Rubba Nadda
Starring: Patricia Clarkson, Scott Speedman, Tim Roth, Aidan Devine, Callum Keith Rennie

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I went to see this movie knowing only the title and that it was starting at a time when I had nothing else to see. Usually, this is perfect. Knowing nothing about what you're going to see at a film festival is what yields the greatest treats. However, I knew I was in for trouble when the picture started in black with one sole, sombre note plunked on a piano. Ugh! When this happens, I usually think, "Oh fuck, another Canadian movie with a crappy piano score." No sooner did the next plop on the keyboard resonate in my auricular cavities when the soul-sucking credit "Produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada" did spew, like a spray of chunky regurgitate onto the screen. Though the opening score continued with a bit more variety of piano plunking, it sounded like something rendered by a Ferrante and Teicher tribute artist on a HiFi LP in the $1 bin at a used record store.

Luckily, things began looking a bit better when the gorgeous and great Patricia Clarkson appeared as a recently widowed doctor heading up to her Northern Ontario island cottage on majestic Georgian Bay to open it up for the spring. Alas, the first 15 minutes is devoted to more Ferrante and Teicher homages as she cleans the cottage, puts all her dead hubby's clothing in storage boxes, takes a ride on her boat and - ugh - launches into sickening flashback mode wherein we learn how much she loved her now-dead hubby (Callum Keith Rennie).

I thought to myself, "Oh Jesus! Is this going to be some Harlequin Romance where she meets a hunky rural guy and falls in love with him?" Luckily, her boat goes all sputter-sputter and she calls in a distress signal to the local boat repair guy. He retrieves her boat, tells her it's going to take a few days to fix and dumps her back at the isolated island. Alone, 'natch!

Briefly I'm thinking, "Hmmmm, a hot babe alone on an island. Maybe we're going to get a throwback to 70s Canadian tax shelter thrillers and she'll be assailed by some country cousin psychopaths and have to kill them all as revenge for being gang-raped." Though there's been nothing to suggest we're going into thriller territory I'm momentarily fooled that this might be a fairly clever script that's setting us up for one thing (potential Harlequin Romance) and delivering another (the great Canadian tax shelter rape revenge thriller Death Weekend).

Soon after these delights danced across my cerebellum, Patricia Clarkson's lovely breasts are revealed in a bathtub scene.

I'm stoked.

Fooled me, again. The movie is essentially a Harlequin Romance cross-pollinated with an extremely lame, poorly executed thriller. Hunky Scott Speedman shows up on her dock, bleeding and near death from a gunshot wound. As Clarkson is a doctor she patches him up really well. At one point he gets up from bed and his pants are so low-riding that we get a nice glimpse of Speedman's upper butt cheeks and ass crack.

Can romance be far behind?

Aidan Devine, one of Canada's greatest character actors is wasted when he shows up as a friendly local. When he buggers off, Speedman is terrified. He informs Clarkson that when Devine comes back, he's going to be joined by a super-bad dude and they're both going to be dead. Good gracious!

When Devine does pop back, a semi-smarmy Tim Roth is in tow. He's hell-bent on killing Speedman for one of the stupidest reasons imaginable (I won't ruin it for you). Roth works hard enough that we can ascertain he's been paid upfront to sleepwalk through his dull role and the film delivers a few minutes of incompetently helmed suspense that might have my mother (and other 70-year-old suburban women looking for a thrill on cable) on the edge of her seat. That said, I'm sure it will also appeal to more than a few steno-girls, retail clerks and middle-aged empty-nest housewives.

How and why (aside from marginal marquee value) the filmmakers bothered to waste money on Tim Roth when the great Aidan Devine could have outacted the shit out of him is something that briefly haunted me. Even more pressing a question is this: How in God's name this movie ever landed a Special Presentation berth at one of the world's most prestigious film festivals is almost beyond me. I say "almost" because it does have Patricia Clarkson, Scott Speedman and Tim Roth in it and its picture postcard cinematography delivers enough production value to look professional on a big screen, but other than that, it's a nothing movie aimed at an under-served demographic. I've personally seen several fine low budget Canadian thrillers and horror films made this year - any of which display more thrills and virtuosity in one frame than October Gale possesses throughout its short, but still lugubriously interminable running time.

Ah well, if you fit the aforementioned demographic, go ahead. Knock yourself out. Steno-girls, retail clerks, middle-aged empty-nest housewives and 70-year-old ladies deserve movies too.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: LOWEST FILM CORNER RATING:

Delivered to films too bad to garner one-star (*).

Said films would normally then receive the "One Pubic Hair" rating, however, not to besmirch the fine pubic hair recipient Sharknado by lumping it in (so to speak) with genuine turds, I was forced to create a critical rating even lower for Ridley Scott's abominable The Counsellor.

The Rating is, quite simply and evocatively:

"TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND
HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE".

As pictured to the left, this an actual turd found by myself and Project Grizzly filmmaker Peter Lynch in the illustrious Parkdale parking lot behind Harry's wherein the two of us had just dined with writer Geoff Pevere.

Recipients of this hallowed rating since Scott's atrocity have been the wretched 2014 remake of Endless Love, the putrid Veronica Mars movie, the stinking Dead Before Dawn 3D and the horrendous 2014 Godzilla.

Now, please feel free to add: October Gale to the aforementioned list of recipients of this most appalling critical rating which will, one hopes, seal the work's fate in some manner of infamy.

October Gale is playing at the Toronto International Film Festival 2014 as a Special Presentation. For tix, dates and showtimes, visit the TIFF website by clicking HERE. It will be distributed in Canada via Pacific Northwest Pictures.

The fetishization of our greatest fears

The Captive (2014)
Dir. Atom Egoyan
Script: David Fraser & Egoyan
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Scott Speedman, Rosario Dawson, Mireille Enos, Kevin Durand, Christine Horne, Alexia Fast, Peyton Kennedy, Bruce Greenwood, Aaron Poole, Jason Blicker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Spanning eight years in the life of Cassandra (Alexia Fast/Peyton Kennedy), a child kidnapped from her father Matthew's (Ryan Reynolds) car while he pops into a roadside bakery to bring home a treat, The Captive focuses upon both the Stockholm-Syndrome-like effects upon the girl and the devastation her disappearance wreaks upon the family and cops looking for some closure (positive or negative) to the mystery. It's subject matter that hits all the chords most of us want to eradicate from our world and as such, perfect material for the masterful Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan.

Egoyan's meticulously complex films have almost always been tinged with creepy thriller-like elements, darkly droll humour and deep humanity buried beneath layers of existential disconnect and deliberate puzzle-like manipulations of time and space. His superb 1999 adaptation of William Trevor's novel Felicia's Journey is still one of the best serial killer movies made in the last two decades. I'd even place it far above such fake "A"-picture studio exploitation items making thrills palatable to the mainstream like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. Featuring Bob Hoskins' finest performance (ever) as Hilditch, the gastronomically-obsessed and even somewhat banal psychopath, Felicia's Journey struck me as being a kind of demented play on Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy as if that 70s classic had been pumped full of deliciously near-lethal doses of lovely lithium. It was sickeningly terrifying and oddly, deeply moving. I longed for Egoyan to make another thriller and even now wish he'd do nothing but thrillers or maybe even a flat-out horror.

The Captive is nothing if not downright shudder-inducing. Set against the overcast snow blanket of Southern Ontario's Niagara region, the film taps directly into every parent's greatest terror - the disappearance of a child without a single, solitary trace. It's a surefire starting point, but Egoyan and David Fraser's twisted, ominously fetishistic screenplay provides a solid framework for the film to go well beyond merely tapping into the fear everyone harbours. It's as much a genre picture of the highest order as it is a harrowing exploration of faith, family and the soul-sickening sense of hope that drives all those touched by the horrendous violence perpetrated against children.

The Captive's potential to anger audiences (especially, it seems, quite a few boneheaded, know-nothing film "critics") is not unlike that of Lars von Trier's AntiChrist (sans, of course, that film's genital mutilation). I feel strongly, though, that neither film seeks to intentionally raise ire, but rather, to dive into all sorts of places that most people simply don't want to go, places that are so necessary and vital to confront, grotesquely dark corners of existence to reflect upon and/or expose.

The Captive achieves this in two brilliant ways. First of all, Fraser and Egoyan set up a number of familiar narrative tropes of the thriller genre and give them a decidedly shaken, not stirred, quality. What's structurally mundane becomes extraordinarily abhorrent, creepily unnerving. Inherent in both the narrative and the aesthetic are the especially horrendous fetishistic qualities of perspective which place us as observers in the pain of the film's victims/subjects.

Visually and stylistically, Egoyan's rich compositions, supported by cinematographer Paul Sarossy's delicate shadings and painterly dappling of light capture the very essence of white-grey exteriors and the (mostly) clinical interiors. When the visual palette includes warmth, it comes in the unlikeliest of places like the psychopath's lair, the victim's prison, Nicole the cop's (Rosario Dawson) office and, of course, the roadside bakery which is where the horror really begins.

There's so much I admire about this movie. Ryan Reynolds continues to prove he's one of the great living actors and here he taps emotional depths he's yet to uncover - his despair is so palpable we can't help but walk in his shoes. Mychael Danna's score is a marvel - tapping both the moving power and jangling force of Bernard Herrmann. Witness the opening movements of the score - so lushly bucolic, but as the camera slowly reveals more and more snow and bush of the isolated setting, we hear ever-so slight tinges of unease. Then, of course, during moments of pulse-pounding suspense (two sequences during the film's climactic moments in particular had me rendering my fingertips to bloody, pulpy stubs), Danna slams us with everything he's got and then some.

Kevin Durand as the full-on sicko ringleader of an online community of pain-fetishists is slime-incarnate and there isn't a moment he's onscreen that we don't feel like vomiting. His performance is bravely in sharp contrast to Hoskins from Felicia's Journey where the late British bombast actually tapped into human aspects that allowed us to care for him. Durand does something even more difficult, he taps into humanity - and yes, it IS humanity - that we never hope to experience, but indeed exists. This is no Snidely Whiplash villain, but the kind of sick, venal, mind-numbingly banal and even pretentious evil that's finally more the reality of these sick freaks.

Though the film has its share of universal qualities, the manner with which Egoyan explores the dark-net subculture of predators is also rooted in truly indigenous qualities of Canadian culture. The country has long had a history of monsters infused with the vapid desires of such empty vessels as Bernardo-Homolka, Clifford Olson and, amongst many, many others, Dennis Melvin Howe. Unlike Hannibal Lecter, serial criminal psychopaths are not brilliant, they're petty, pretentious and boring.

This, for me, might be the scariest, most sickening element of The Captive. So much pain and wasted time in the lives decent people comes from the actions of a trite, haughty dullard. Thank Christ Egoyan shoves our faces in the faecal matter of this reality. Doing so manages to expose terrible truths and give us one hell of a thrilling ride.

The Captive is in theatrical release across the country via eOne.

Guidance Counsellors are NOT cool.
This one most definitely IS.

Guidance (2014)
Dir. Pat Mills
Starring: Pat Mills, Zahra Bentham, Laytrel McMullen, Alex Ozerov, Kevin Hanchard, Tracey Hoyt

Review By Greg Klymkiw

David Gold (Pat Mills) is a loser. He's a former child star reduced to taking non-union voice gigs, the latest of which he gets fired from because of his haughty, petulant, pretentious attitude. This is bad news because he's way behind on his share of the rent and on the verge of being turfed. He's got serious drug and alcohol problems and he's so deeply in the closet he won't even admit to himself that he's gay. Oh yeah, he's been diagnosed with late-stage skin cancer.

None of this phases our hero. For us, the audience, it's one hell of a good deal because Guidance (the feature debut of writer, director and star Pat Mills) is all about David's decision to bamboozle his way into a job he's not qualified for, but thinks will be perfect for him. Cribbing from a child psychologist YouTube guru, David lands a cushy dream job that will not only pay well, but give him a chance to help teenagers which, for utterly insane reasons, he believes he'll be good at. David Gold becomes the new Guidance Counsellor of Grusin High.

Think of a considerably thinner, more handsome, spiffily-attired and decidedly light-in-the-loafers Jack Black from School of Rock and it all adds up to one of the funniest, sweetest and wonkily outrageous low budget indie comedies you'll have seen in quite some time. David, however, is not an immediate success in his position and it's his approaches to providing guidance to win over his charges that allows for some of the biggest laughs. David eventually becomes the most popular teacher in the school, much to the ire and jealousy of his colleagues - save perhaps for the screamingly fruity gym teacher who keeps trying to out our denial-infused hero and, of course, partake of the "virgin" meat buffet David represents.

Even bigger laughs come from David's sensitivity.

You see, he's all about sharing - sharing wisdom, sharing advice and, uh, sharing booze and drugs. In no time, he actually becomes a very cool, fun and even able role model for the problem kids in the school. However, complications (albeit of the somewhat too predictable variety) arise and his journey is not all preaches and cream.

It is, however, a winner most of the way.

Mills has got terrific screen presence, generates a whole whack of crackling dialogue, elicits a clutch of vibrant performances from his talented, youthful cast and directs with snappiness and flare. At times the film's budget affects our total enjoyment since the movie is almost egregiously light in the population department. I think, though, that most audiences, as even I did, will excuse this niggling detail and just kick back and have one hell of a good time.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Guidance is enjoying its World Premiere in the Discovery section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. Visit the TIFF website for fix, venues, times and dates by clicking HERE.

The politics and propaganda in American Sports
The politics and Propaganda in American Cinema

Red Army (2014)
Dir. Gabe Polsky

Foxcatcher (2014)
Dir. Bennett Miller

Canada vs. America: The Politics and Propaganda of Sports in Gabe Polsky’s Red Army and Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher

By Greg Klymkiw

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014) report in my latest "Colonial Report (on Cinema) from the Dominion of Canada" column in the super-cool UK film mag "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" Here's a couple of snippets to whet your appetite:

Foxcatcher, one of the most exciting American movies of the year, very strangely employs propagandistic elements within the narrative structure provided by screenwriters E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, which, in turn, the director Bennett Miller superbly jockeys in his overall mise-en-scène. Astonishingly, the filmmakers manage to have their cake and eat it too. By offering a detailed examination of propaganda within the context of American history and society, as well as a mounting an ever-subtle critical eye upon it, Miller might continue to add accolades to his mantle in addition to the Best Director nod he copped at Cannes.

Gabe Polsky’s feature length documentary Red Army is as much about the propaganda machine (of Cold War Russia) as it is pure propaganda unto itself, by placing undue emphasis upon the rivalry between America and the Soviet Union on the blood-spattered battleground of ice hockey competition. Polsky has fashioned a downright spellbinding history of the Red Army hockey team, which eventually became a near-juggernaut of Soviet skill and superiority in the world. In spite of this, many Canadians will call the film a total crock-and-bull story. While a Maple Leaf perspective might provide an eye more sensitive to Miller’s exploration of the propagandistic gymnastics of American blue blood powerbrokers, there is bound to be more than just a little crying foul over Polsky’s film.

Read the FULL article by clicking HERE

Red Army and Foxcatcher are Mongrel Media releases.

Revenge of the Green Dragons (2014)
Dir. Andrew Lau, Andrew Loo
Screenplay: Michael Di Jiacomo
Executive Producer: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Ray Liotta, Justin Chon, Kevin Wu, Harry Shum Jr, Shuya Chang, Geoff Pierson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some pictures bring a solid pedigree to the table so that you're pretty much guaranteed a mega-quality product. Revenge of the Green Dragons is registered to an extremely prestigious stud book (the gold standard of registries in animal husbandry). One half of the picture's directing team is the prolific dynamo who launched the 2002 Hong Kong crime hit Infernal Affairs and its prequel and sequel, which, in turn, eventually yielded the American remake The Departed, Martin Scorsese's longtime-coming Oscar-winner as Best Director. Here, adding to the pedigree, Scorsese also serves as Executive Producer of this sprawling saga of Asian gangland warfare in New York during the 1980s. Alas, "pedigree" in the case of this new film is best linked to animal husbandry rather than anything else since Revenge of the Green Dragons is a mangy, drooling dog that's more of the mongrel rather than purebred variety.

There isn't a single original element in this ploddingly familiar tale of childhood immigrants who grow up as members of a powerful mob dynasty. Michael Di Jiacomo (whose own dubious pedigree is linked to a few obscure indie pictures) is the purported writer of the dull screenplay which trots out the usual blend of mixed loyalties, betrayals and excuses for competently-helmed sequences involving a surfeit of gunplay - none of which has much impact since the characters aren't even interesting enough to be called cardboard cutouts. The movie is full of expository narration, all meant to infuse the picture with a sense of history and epic sweep, but serving little more than to provide opportunities for posturing and over-scored, lame-duck montages of the most bargain-basement-Scorsese kind.

Ultimately, Revenge of the Green Dragons proves that no matter what the pedigree, aberrations are always a distinct possibility. This one is especially hobbled and deformed. It doesn't even have a particularly engaging spirit so it can be pitied. This one's fair game for euthanasia. And speaking of assisted suicide, the film features an especially egregious misuse of a pasty, disinterested Ray Liotta (Henry Hill from Scorsese's Goodfellas) who somnambulistically shuffles through the proceedings as an FBI agent who, on paper, is intent on breaking the mob, but in practice just looks like he needs another drink or snort.

It'd be great to see a good, kick-ass hybrid of Asian and American criminal shenanigans. This, is not it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Revenge of the Green Dragons is a Special Presentation at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and distributed in Canada via VVS Films. For tix, times and venues, visit the TIFF website HERE.

Russia's continued oppression of Ukraine batters
the most vulnerable members of society.

The Tribe (2014)
(aka Plemya/плем'я)
Dir. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
Starring: Yana Novikova, Grigoriy Fesenko, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich, Yaroslav Biletskiy, Ivan Tishko, Alexander Sidelnikov

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One of the most appalling legacies of Russian colonization/dictatorship over the country of Ukraine has, in recent years, been the sexual exploitation of women (often children and teenagers). Add all the poverty and violence coursing through the nation's soul, much of it attributable to Mother Russia's tentacles of corruption, organized crime and twisted notions of law, order and government, that it's clearly not rocket science to realize how threatening the Russian regime is, not only to Ukraine, but the rest of Eastern Europe and possibly, beyond.

Being a Ukrainian-Canadian who has spent a lot of time in Ukraine, especially in the beleaguered Eastern regions, I've witnessed first-hand the horrible corruption and exploitation. (Ask me sometime about the Russian pimps who wait outside Ukrainian orphanages for days when teenage girls are released penniless into the world, only to be coerced into rust-bucket vans and dispatched to God knows where.)

The Tribe is a homespun indigenous Ukrainian film that is a sad, shocking and undeniably harrowing dramatic reflection of Ukraine with the searingly truthful lens of a stylistic documentary treatment (at times similar to that of Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl).

Focusing upon children, the most vulnerable victims of Russia's aforementioned oppression, this is a film that you'll simply never forget.

Set in a special boarding school, writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, paints an evocative portrait of students living within a tribal societal structure (literally as per the title) where adult supervision is minimal at best and even culpable in the desecration of youth. Living in an insular world, carved out by years of developing survival skills in this institutional environment, the kids have a long-established criminal gang culture and they engage in all manner of nefarious activities including, but not limited to thieving, black marketeering and pimping.

Slaboshpytskiy's mise-en-scène includes long, superbly composed shots and a stately, but never dull pace. This allows the film's audience to contemplate - in tandem with the narrative's forward movement - both the almost matter-of-fact horrors its young protagonists accept, live with and even excel at while also getting a profound sense of the ebbs and flows of life in this drab, dingy institutional setting. In a sense, the movie evokes life as it actually unfolds (or, at least, seems to).

The violence is often brutal and the film never shies away from explicit sexual frankness. We watch the beautiful teenage girls being pimped out at overnight truck stops, engaging in degrading acts of wham-bam without protection, perpetrated against their various orifices by truckers who shell out cash for the privilege of doing so. As well, we experience how the same girls are cum-receptacles for their fellow male students, delivering blow-jobs or intercourse when it's required.

On occasion, we witness consensual, pleasurable lovemaking, but it always seems tempered by the fact that it's the only physical and emotional contact these children, of both sexes, have ever, ow will ever experience. Even more harrowing is when we follow the literal results of this constant sexual activity and witness a necessary, protracted, pain-wracked scene wherein one young lady seeks out and receives an unsanitary and painful abortion.

While there are occasional moments of tenderness, especially in a romance that blossoms between one young boy and girl, there's virtually no sense of hope that any of these children will ever escape the cycles of abuse, aberrant behaviour and debasement that rules their lives. The performances elicited by Slaboshpytskiy are so astonishing, you're constantly in amazement over how naturalistic and reflective of life these young actors are, conveying no false notes with the kind of skill and honesty one expects from far more seasoned players.

The special circumstances these children are afflicted with also allows Slaboshpytskiy to bravely and brilliantly tell his story completely though the purest of cinematic approaches. Visuals and actions are what drive the film and ultimately prove to be far more powerful than words ever could be. Chances are very good that you'll realize what you're seeing is so wholly original that you'll ultimately sit there, mouth agape at the notion that what you're seeing on-screen is unlike anything you will have ever seen before.

Try, if you can, to see the film without seeing or reading anything about it. Your experience will be all the richer should you choose to go in and see it this way. Even if you don't adhere to this, the movie is overflowing with touches and incidents in which you'll feel you're seeing something just as original. The Tribe evokes a world of silence and suffering that is also perversely borderline romantic, a world where connections and communication are key elements to add some variation to a youth culture that is as entrenched as it is ultimately constant and, frankly, inescapable.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars, highest rating.

The Tribe is being distributed in the USA and Canada via Drafthouse Films and Films We Like. It's enjoying its North American premiere in the TIFF Discovery series at the Toronto International Film Festival 2014. For tix, times and venues, visit the TIFF website by clicking HERE.

THE EDITOR - Udo Kier, lovemaking, and a virgin bending over in the
triumphant new Astron-6 production that presents
more than a few things you don't see everyday!

Great giallo must have babes screaming.

The Editor (2014)
Dir. Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy
Starring: Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Paz de le Huerta, Udo Kier, Laurence R. Harvey, Tristan Risk, Samantha Hill, Conor Sweeney, Brent Neale, Kevin Anderson, Mackenzie Murdock, John Paizs

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Okay, ladies and gents, strap-on your biggest vibrating butt-plugs and get ready to plop your ass cheeks upon your theatre seat and glue your eyeballs upon The Editor, the newest and most triumphant Astron-6 production to date and easily the greatest thrill ride since Italy spewed out the likes of Tenebre, Inferno, Opera, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Beyond, Strip Nude For Your Killer, Don't Torture a Duckling, Hitch-Hike, Shock, Blood and Black Lace, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Kill Baby Kill and, of course, Hatchet for the Honeymoon. You will relive, beyond your wildest dreams, those films which scorched silver screens the world over during those lazy, hazy, summer days of Giallo. But, be prepared! The Editor is no mere copycat, homage and/or parody - well, it is all three, but more than that, directors Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy have done the impossible by creating a film that holds its own with the greatest gialli of all time. It's laugh-out-loud funny, grotesquely gory and viciously violent. Though it draws inspiration from Argento, Fulci, Bava, et al, the movie is so dazzlingly original that you'll be weeping buckets of joy because finally, someone has managed to mix-master all the giallo elements, but in so doing has served up a delicious platter of post-modern pasta du cinema that both harkens back to simpler, bloodier and nastier times whilst also creating a piece actually made in this day and age.

What, for example, can anyone say about a film that features the following dialogue:

BLONDE STUD: So where were you on the night of the murder?
BLONDE BABE: I was at home washing my hair and shaving my pussy.

A TRUE Giallo Hero MUST sport a stylish
FRANCO NERO moustache!!!!!

Well, let me tell you what one can say to this sampling of dialogue thats 's indicative of the film's approach to all things irreverent and original:

HALLELUJAH!!!

To the uninitiated, Giallo is the Italian word for "yellow". Its cultural significance is derived from pulp novels published in Italy with trademark yellow paperback covers. Giallo films are the cinematic expression of this literary tradition. The stories usually involve a psychopath (often wearing black gloves and other costume-like elements to hide his, and sometimes her, identity) who stalks and murders babes. All other kills are strictly of the opportunistic variety and usually include anyone who gets in the way (expected or not) of the killer's motives/quarry.

The movies are splashed with globs of garish colour, replete with cool jarring camera moves like quick pans, swish pans, zany zooms and a delightful abundance of shock cuts. The narrative ingredients will almost always include a hero whom everyone thinks is guilty, a few red herring suspects, disloyal and/or uppity wives, sweet young things to tempt cuckolded hubbies and detectives who are almost always on the wrong trail (some are decent-enough dicks), others well-meaning and others yet, are boneheads rivalling the Order of Clouseau. Studs and babes are de rigueur. Nudity and sex are almost always the norm. This is a world we ALL want to live in. (If "we" don't, "we" are dullards.)

Into this time-honoured tradition comes The Editor. Its deceptively simple plot involves Rey Ciso (Adam Brooks, with the greatest Franco Nero moustache since Franco Nero). A once-prominent film editor who accidentally chopped four of his fingers off and now sports four hooks in their stead, covered by a stylish flesh-coloured, finger-shaped slipcover-like glove. His handicap, more often than not, forces him to edit with one hand.

Working for a sleazy producer, our title hero eventually becomes the prime suspect in a series of brutal murders perpetrated one-by-one against the members of the film's cast. The salient detail is that all the victims have had four of their fingers chopped off. If any of them had actually survived, they, like Rey, would suffer the indignity of being referred to as "the cripple".

To complicate matters, Rey has fallen head over heels for his beautiful, young assistant editor, but he tries to resist seducing her, even though at one point she demands, "Make me a woman." Rey, however, points out their age difference: "You are just a little girl. Play with the boys your own age."

Besides, he's locked into an unhappy marriage with a sexy, but spiteful has-been actress (Paz de le Huerta) - a harping shrew who openly cuckolds Rey. At one point, she admits to having eyes for one of the lead actors in the film Rey is editing. Our hero snidely quips, "What would you do if he died?" Wifey is outraged by his mind games and responds: "I would cry. I would cry. I would cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry," and then adds, ""I would cry. I would. I would never, ever stop crying, you stupid cripple!"

Detective Peter Porfiry (Matthew Kennedy, also sporting a Nero 'stache), is hell-bent on finding the killer and upon first laying eyes on Rey, he suspiciously asks, "Who's he?" The sleazy producer makes a most gracious introduction: "That's the cripple, the editor." Porfiry, a lusty swordsman with a penchant for slapping his eager women on the face when they talk back, dogs poor Rey at every step. This is not the ideal situation for our hero since he has to keep editing around all the actors who keep getting murdered. Still, he handles the stress as well as could be expected and when he inadvertently lets an amusing comment slip out, the Producer happily announces: "Good one, Ray. I knew it would be fun having a cripple around."

As bodies pile up, Porfiry slaps together a brilliant undercover idea and manages to get his junior detective (Brent Neale) onto the film as the editor. Hapless Rey is being replaced by an Italian version of Jethro Beaudine. The producer tries to let Rey go graciously. "Honestly Ray," he says, "I thought it would be fun to have a cripple around, but I was dead wrong."

The Editor has all the makings of a horror classic. The writing is always sharp and delightfully mordant, the cinematography is first-rate - capturing all the near-fluorescent colours of gialli, the special effects are outstanding (and wonderfully over-the-top), and the musical score is a marvel of aurally rapturous 70s/80s-styled sleaze. Though the film appears to have a bigger budget than previous Astron-6 titles like Manborg and Father's Day, it's lost none of those pictures' independent spirit.

FUCHMAN, (from "Father's Day"), right, is up to his old shenanigans, left.

Hell, we even get teased with a cameo by Mackenzie Murdock in the role of Fuchman ("ch" naturally pronounced like "k") the Daddy-Sodomizing serial killer of Father's Day. And speaking of actors, the cast of The Editor is to-die-for. Brooks is a terrific schlubby hero, Kennedy is suitably, sexily smarmy, the gorgeous Tristan Risk is a Giallo scream-queen incarnate, Brent Neale is galumphingly hilarious as the junior cop, Conor Sweeney (as per usual) dazzles us with his stunning pretty boy looks and utterly astounding ability to play a terrible actor and among many other astonishing thespians delivering spot-on work, the movie features Udo Kier, the greatest actor of all time, as a demented psychiatrist.

Giallo fans will recognize the source of these specific images in "The Editor".

John Paizs' CRIMEWAVE
the FATHER of Astron-6

Finally though, the importance of this film in terms of Canadian Cinema, and cinema period, is that it's a genuine contemporary contribution to the exciting wave of prairie post-modernism that was spawned out of Winnipeg by the brilliant John Paizs (whose classic Crimewave has been given a gorgeous, TIFF-funded 2K restoration which will premiere at TIFF 2014 as well as The Editor).

Among other Winnipeg practitioners of the art of paying homage to genres and being the thing itself, the crazed Guy Maddin (Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel, Careful, My Winnipeg) is also part of this tradition.

Consider John Paizs as God the Father of Astron-6 and Guy Maddin as the collective's Uncle Jesus Christ.

Chainsaw VS. Conor Sweeney, Axe VS. Tristan Risk
Who will Survive? What will be left of them?

Brooks and Kennedy via the Astron-6 collective in Winnipeg have joined the ranks of the very best filmmakers to smash through the traditional boundaries of the medium and create work of genuinely lasting value. Best of all, though, The Editor is probably the coolest film you'll see this year and one you'll want to partake of again and again and yet again. Cult classics never die. They get better and better.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars Highest Rating

The Editor is enjoying its World Premiere in the Midnight Madness series programmed by the brilliant Colin Geddes at the 2014 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014). For tix, times, dates and venues, visit the TIFF website by clicking HERE.

HEY YOU! If you want to buy any of the following movies, click directly onto the Amazon links below and keep-a-goin' until you checkout. All sales and ad-clicks on this site assist greatly with the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

SHARKTOPUS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Crown Jewel of Anchor Bay BLU-RAY "SHARK 4 Movie Collection"

REAL (aka "Riaru") - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Kiyoshi Kurosawa visits a subconscious ghosts @FantAsia2014

MONSTERZ - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ringu director Hideo Nakata explores mind control @FantAsia2014

HARD DRIVE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Well acted, but dour, predictable and typically earnest Canuck drama

IT WAS YOU CHARLIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Sad & Funny First Feature By Indie English-Canuck Shirinian

TO BE TAKEI - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Kuchar Bros. Film Biographer Jennifer M. Kroot serves up superb doc on Star Trek's Mr. Sulu @TIFF BellLightbox followed by a DVD Release via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada

GMO OMG - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Annoying, 1-sided personal doc about the GMO controversy misses boat.

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Rodriguez-Miller Noir Sequel Too Little, Too Late

LIFE IN A FISHBOWL (aka Vonarstræti) - TIFF 2014 (TIFF Discovery) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

IN HER PLACE - TIFF 2014 (TIFF Discovery) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

IT FOLLOWS - TIFF 2014 (TIFF Midnight Madness) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

A HARD DAY (aka Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da) - TIFF 2014 - (TIFF CITY TO CITY) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

OCTOBER GALE - TIFF 2014 (Special Presentation) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

THE CAPTIVE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Creepy Egoyan Thriller NOT @TIFF14, but in Real Movie Theatres

GUIDANCE - TIFF 2014 (TIFF DISCOVERY) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

REVENGE OF THE GREEN DRAGONS - TIFF 2014 (Special Presentation) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

THE TRIBE (aka PLEMYA) - TIFF 2014 (TIFF Discovery) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

THE EDITOR - TIFF 2014 (TIFF MIDNIGHT MADNESS) - Review By Greg Klymkiw