GLITTER'S WILD WOMEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2018 - Women Making Movies

A film festival with no viewers? It's the wilderness out there.

Glitter's Wild Women (2018)
Dir. Roney
Starring: Grace Glowicki, Cotey Pope

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Suppose you make a movie. Well, obviously you want people to see it and maybe, just maybe, you decide to launch the film by hosting your very own film festival. You make your own flyers, post them around, set up a makeshift theatre in your front yard and then, wait for the crowds to pour in.

This is, in a nutshell, what the two young women (Grace Glowicki, Cotey Pope) at the centre of Roney's debut film do. It is, however, a bit more complicated than that. Their lives and, by extension Roney's film itself become infused with magic. Inspiration is all around them, to be sure. They live in an isolated country house surrounded by peace and natural beauty. They spend inordinate amounts of time watching 70s movies with tough, kick-butt female heroines, they drive along the empty highways and byways of the rural municipality they find themselves in, emulating the poses and dialogue of the movies, but using that inspiration as a springboard for their own imaginations.

And of course, they harvest the mysterious glitter infusing their bucolic surroundings. Glitter, you see, especially in the world of magic realism (which Roney's film has in spades) has oh-so mysterious ways. However, magic will only get you so far and these two women have a lot more going for them. They mine the gold with sheer determination.

This is one fine debut. The Vancouver-born Roney, who studied at Ryerson University, displays an assured hand behind the camera. She guides this tale with a talent that seems natural. She feels like someone with filmmaking hard-wired into her DNA. Her compositions are rich, she has a natural propensity for hitting the proper dramatic beats to drive the film forward (with plenty of cinematic poetry) and she elicits fine performances from her two leads.

There is, as it turns out, a strange melancholy to the fun proceedings. These women, these friends, these artists, are working in the wilderness and I can't help but think of the patriarchal nature of the film industry itself. They're on their own and it shouldn't have to be that way. So while Glitter's Wild Women offers plenty of entertainment value, it also delivers plenty of food for thought.

As it should be, really.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***1/2 Three and a Half Stars

Glitter's Wild Women premieres in the Short Cuts program at TIFF 2018.

ACROSS THE LINE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hockey, Crime and Racial Divides in Halifax

Two brothers. One's a pimp. The other's a new NHL star.

Across the Line (2015)
Dir. Director X
Scr. Floyd Kane
Starring: Stephan James, Sarah Jeffery, Shamier Anderson,
Lanette Ware, Steven Love, Denis Theriault, Cara Ricketts

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In the movies, racial violence and hatred has almost always seemed like the domain of urban concrete jungles in cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and, among others, Detroit.

But in Halifax, Nova Scotia?

We're talking a big, old small town in Eastern Canada with fiddle players on every corner. The bustling metropolis of Metro Toronto has seen several Canadian films (like the classic Rude) dealing with the African diaspora in the land of Mounties and Beavers, but it's never seemed as mean-spiritedly infused with the kind of roiling racism just looking to explode in violence as the burgh detailed in Across the Line.

The picture focuses on Mattie Slaughter (Stephan James), a hot young hockey forward on the verge of a major N.H.L. deal whose rise to the top is affected by said racism in the seemingly quaint seaside Halifax Harbour and surrounding environs. Add to this a pressure cooker of challenges, many of which are placed in the path of any young man on the verge of sports superstardom, but for a Black kid in a tough school in a backwards backwater, they're exponentially multiplied.

Floyd Kane's script nicely balances a group of engaging characters in a setting that's not only wholly, indigenously Canadian, but is one we're not familiar with (yet feels altogether real). Mattie's brother Carter (Shamier Anderson) brings shame to the family as he pimps out teenage girls from the high school. The relationship between the Slaughter brothers, though not without precedents in the sports movie world, has enough touches of darkness to deliver the sibling strife not unlike Foxcatcher (though nowhere near the twisted Bros in Scorsese's Raging Bull).

Our hockey hero's peer group, Black and White include his friend John (Steven Love), who is dating the mixed-race beauty Jayme (Sarah Jeffrey). In spite of the friendship twixt the two lads, John always feels like Mattie's eye is roving towards the woman he loves.

He wouldn't be wrong about this either.

So suspects the venal, rich boy Todd (Denis Theriault) who is always quick to hurl racial epithets and instigate fisticuffs and/or bullying against Black students in the school. In a nutshell, tensions are running high and a race riot twixt Black and White seems inevitable.

One of the nice things about the movie is how we're pulled into a setting so antithetical to the cliches of other gangland warfare pictures about African-Americans/Canadians pitted against Whitey. No high-rise projects on view in this setting - the families live in Haligonian bungalows in the burbs and the parents are hardworking working stiffs (Mattie's Dad is a self employed cement finisher, Jayme's pops is a uniformed beat cop and John's Mom is a weary nurse).

At times Across the Line reminded me of Charles Burnett's classic of African-American "normal" life To Sleep With Anger, but also, it manages to seethe even a bit closer to Burnett's Killer of Sheep where a working stiff eventually questions the future quality of life for his family due to the overwhelming pressures of daily life amongst his fellow African-American friends and neighbours.

If Charles Burnett made a movie in Halifax, it might feel a lot like this one. Alas, there are moments where Across the Line doesn't quite work as well as it should. The film flip-flops between gorgeously observed, almost Neo-realistic touches to some semi-klunky, seemingly shoehorned-in TV-issue-of-the-week shenanigans. In a sense, the screenplay, which is full of terrific writing, also betrays itself by feeling a bit too worked and polished. There is, for example, a clumsy subplot involving one of the teachers, played by Cara Ricketts, whose experience with racial tensions in her past informs her teaching ethos in the present. This makes sense, but a very strange, near-breakdown sequence she has during a White vs Black school riot just doesn't ring true, except maybe on a CBC Sunday Night made for TV movie.

What does ring true, though, are the elements of the story involving Mattie needing to "keep his nose clean" to ensure himself an NHL spot. Each moment that threatens to upset this apple cart adds considerable conflict to the story which increasingly feels so unfair that we're open-mouthed at how racist the world of pro sports is - especially one so "white" and "Canadian" like hockey. It is implied constantly and even stated very clearly that because Mattie is Black, he's got to tip-toe around every eggshell.

Luckily music video director, Director X, has a decent eye and good sense of rhythm. Working in tandem with cinematographer Samy Inayeh, editor Dev Singh and a first-rate cast (Stephan James, Shamier Anderson and Sarah Jeffrey all deliver sprightly, star-making and camera-loves-them performances), much of the picture pulsates and sparkles with the stuff of real life and bigger conflicts which pull the picture out of its occasional TV-movie-like toe-dipping.

And hell, the picture's main backdrop involves hockey.

It doesn't get more engaging and Canadian than that.

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

Across the Line opens theatrically in Canada April 15, 2016 via A71 Entertainment.

MY SKINNY SISTER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Terrific Kid Pic ***TIFF 2015 TOP-PICK***

My Skinny Sister (2015)
Dir. Sanna Lenken
Starring: Amy Deasismont, Rebecka Josephson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Why are most contemporary English-language family films so abysmal? They're either completely inconsequential nonsense aimed squarely at the kids or worse, inconsequential nonsense aimed at kids but full of stupid pop-culture jokes and references to amuse the parents to keep them from falling asleep. Most of them are animated, which almost automatically means the stories are interchangeable and bereft of imagination (save for those I can count on half of one hand). If they're actually about something, like, say an "issue", they slip into that stereotypical format of American-style after school specials. Thankfully, we can usually count on filmmakers across both ponds, usually in non-English-speaking countries, to fill the void.

My Skinny Sister, a first feature written and directed by Sweden's Sanna Lenken, has the distinction of being one of the best family films I've seen in years and as part of the TIFF Kids program at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, it also gains a nice perch for me as one of the better films I've seen in this program (and this includes TIFF's adjunct festival and their year-round Kids programming activities).

This is a really funny and poignant look at two very mismatched sisters who come to discover just how bonded they are - by their similarities and differences. Nothing ever feels sappy or by-rote and though the issue of eating orders has oft been applied to such pictures, this one always has itself grounded in the kind of reality so often lacking in the English-language (especially North American) domain.

Telling the tale of the shy, awkward, pleasantly ample 12-year-old Stella (Rebecka Josephson) and her older, beautiful, potential ice-skating champ sister Katja (Amy Deasismont), we experience an entertaining study in contrasts. Katja is doted over by Mom, Dad and most egregiously to Stella, by the handsome skating coach in the local arena.

Katja, for her part, is obsessive about being a champion and she trains, works out and channels all her energies into being "Number One". Stella's needs are far more down to earth - she's trying to fit her pear-shape into a square hole amongst her peers, but learns that the kids who really count, aren't the "squares" at all, but the way cooler types who accept her for her cute, perky qualities and most of all, her sense of humour and intelligence.

However, poor Stella's attempts to come out of her shell are compounded by a very serious problem. She and she alone has discovered the secret that all is not right with Katja. Her "perfect" sister is afflicted with a serious eating disorder and though she'd like to spill the beans, Stella is sworn to secrecy.

Happily, the very real and underlying dilemma is buttressed by considerable good humour - much of it from Stella. Everything from feeling like she must shave her "moustache" (which she really doesn't have at all) to finding some way to consummate her crush on Katja's coach are just a couple of elements amongst many which will have both kids and adults laughing out loud (and not at her, either).

Much of this is due to Lenken's nicely written screenplay and her superb observational skills as a director. Lenken is no mere camera jockey, but has a fine sense of visual fluidity, a pleasing style and a great eye for capturing the details of the girl's lives. The dramatic beats are handled with the kind of grace and intelligence that keep us watching because we're genuinely and subtly being led by Lenken's assured hand. The performances of the two lead sisters are a marvel (as, frankly, are all the kids). If the adult performers seem a touch stiff, it has less to do with their prowess than the fact that most of us, whether we're kids, adults or adults who've never grown up, are just always going to prefer the onscreen antics (fun and serious) of the kids themselves.

The conflicts are always real here and My Little Sister should be the go-to choice for anyone wanting to expose their kids to the best in family drama. I suspect the movie might play especially well in Canada with its colder climes, skating culture and multicultural makeup as opposed to some of America's more melting pot and decidedly ice-bereft locales, but I suspect that the American midwest, especially in states like Minnesota, North Dakota and others in the northernmost regions will be very open to this film if it's handled with a bit of savvy and elbow grease.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-a-half-Stars

My Skinny Sister receives its Canadian Premiere in the TIFF KIDS series during TIFF 2015. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

GOODNIGHT MOMMY (Ich seh Ich seh) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Creepy Austrian Twins

Goodnight Mommy (AKA Ich seh Ich se (2014)
Dir. Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
Prd. Ulrich Seidl
Starring: Susanne Wuest, Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Here's a Pop Quiz as administered by Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl:

1. If Mommy's distinctive mole is missing after reconstructive surgery, is it best to burn a hole in her face with the sun's rays blasting through a magnifying glass?

2. If you are angry with Mommy, is it best to place an icky beetle on her face and watch it slither into her open mouth as she sleeps?

3. If Mommy's tummy is full of beetles, is it best to slice said tummy open to release said bugs?

4. If you're tired of listening to Mommy, is it best to Krazy Glue her mouth shut?

5. If Mommy is hungry and needs pizza, is it best to slice through her Krazy-glued mouth with an Exacto Blade?

The answers to these and other questions can be found in the new Ulrich Seidl production of Goodnight Mommy, the directorial debut of his longtime collaborator Veronika Franz and her life partner Severin Fiala.

To say the film is creepy is, at the very least, an understatement, but creepy it is and scarier than most anything you'll set your eyeballs upon this year. Oh, and yes, the movie provides plenty of chuckles of the most malevolent kind to catch you off guard and relieve (somewhat) the unbearable tension.

It also helps that for most of its running time, the picture is stylishly directed and gorgeously shot on REAL FILM - yes, REAL 35MM film.

Goodnight Mommy is a deceptively simple tale about a pair of identical twins (Elias Schwarz, Lukas Schwarz) who welcome Mommy (Susanne Wuest) home after a stay in the hospital for extreme reconstructive surgery. Mom is covered in Mummy-like bandages, barely hiding the puffy, swelling bruises and pus-oozing scars, so even she can forgive the boys if they don't immediately recognize her as their mother.

Alas, Mommy's become both addled and stern - reasonable enough to anyone who can understand the extreme pain she's in which must be quelled by oodles of happy drugs, but to the boys, it's cause for alarm, especially since Mom is being extra-cruel and downright dismissive of one of the twin brothers. It also doesn't hurt matters that Mom has poisoned a stray cat the lads have brought into the home after rescuing it from an ancient crypt beneath a forgotten graveyard just outside the deep woods surrounding the stately modern country home.

Not only does Mommy not look like Mommy, she's not even behaving like Mommy. If she's an imposter, the lads needs answers and they'll stop at nothing to get the truth.

Nothing!

This is an incredibly well made film on virtually every level. Mr. Seidl, one of the world's greatest living filmmakers proves to be an ideal producer and mentor for this project. In both documentary (Animal Love) and drama (Dog Days), he's demonstrated an uncanny ability to uproot and expose humanity in the most abominably extreme human behaviour. Such is the case here and it's no surprise that half of the directorial team, Veronika Franz, has been Seidl's chief screenwriter and collaborator on so many of his greatest works.

The pace is stately, but never dull. The chills and weirdness are stretched to expertly rendered degrees which feel almost unendurable, but endure we do. It's simply impossible to take one's eyes off the screen. When the visceral horrors begin to ramp up, you might even require an upchuck receptacle.

There's one unfortunate detail to the whole affair which does indeed disappoint. The story is saddled with a rather obvious red herring which you occasionally hope won't bear fruit in the expected manner. When the BIG REVEAL happens, it's everything you've been praying against. It works on an almost satisfactorily and rudimentary level, but is a huge comedown from a film that you feel is taking turns you'd never expect. For the most part, you don't expect any direction it goes in, except for this one thing. When a trope is meant to throw you off the scent and becomes the very stench wafting across your nostrils, you can't help but leave the cinema a tiny bit dejected.

All that said, though, it's a terrific feature debut which, at the very least points to eventual work that will live up to the promise displayed and might, if Franz plays her cards right, match that of her magnificent mentor.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Goodnight Mommy played in both the TIFF 2014 Vanguard series and the 2015 Fantasia Film Festival.

FRAMED - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The insane stunts are the real thing as legendary man's man director Phil Karlson delivers a slice of nasty 70s noir pie, minimal hair pie, manhandled blondes and a whole whack of delectable man-on-man brutality! YEAH!

 This brief snippet from Framed gives you an idea
of how action scenes were directed by filmmakers
who knew what they were doing and why the REAL THING
is ALWAYS so much better than STUPID CGI.
Damn! Movies used to be TRULY insane!!!

Framed (1975)
dir. Phil Karlson
Starring: Joe Don Baker,
Gabriel Dell, Brock Peters,
John Marley, John Larch,
Paul Mantee, Roy Jenson,
Warren Kemmerling,
Connie Van Dyke

Review By Greg Klymkiw


In contemporary cinema, when all or some of the properties that normally characterize the genre (or, if one prefers, movement) of film noir are present in the work, pains always appear to be taken by those who write their analyses of said pictures to use phrases such as “noir-influenced”, “noir-like”, "neo-noir" or “contemporary noir”. Seldom will you see anyone daring to refer to Sin City or its ilk as film noir, but will instead utilize one (or variations of) the aforementioned.

During the 1970s, a number of pictures burst on the scene that – aside from their contemporary settings and dates of production – bear considerable traces of the properties attributed to film noir. Arthur Penn’s Night Moves, Francis Coppola’s The Conversation, Michael Ritchie’s Prime Cut, Peter Yates’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia and numerous others could all be characterized as film noir – especially with their emphasis on such properties as: hard-boiled heroes, the power of the past and its unyielding influence upon the present, the unique and stylized visuals (even those emphasizing visual “realism” have style to burn with their harsh lighting and mega-grain), post-war and/or wartime disillusionment and, amongst others, an overwhelmingly hopeless sense of time lost (and/or wasted).

One picture from the 70s that could also fit the noir tradition permeating that oh-so-rich-and-groovy decade of dissent is one that has largely been forgotten. Since it was neither a hit, nor critically regarded in its year of release, Phil Karlson’s grim, violent crime melodrama Framed is a movie that’s long overdue for discovery, or, if you will, re-discovery.

JOE DON BAKER NUDE SHOWER SCENE

Produced and written by Karlson’s creative partner Mort Briskin (they previously delivered one of the hugest box office hits of the 70s, Walking Tall), the world of Framed resembles a cross between Jules Dassin’s Brute Force and virtually every other revenge-tinged noir fantasy one can think of including Karlson’s 50s noir classics like Kansas City Confidential and the utterly perfect, deliciously mean-spirited Phenix City Story. In fact, Framed comes close to being a remake of Kansas City Confidential, but where it definitely departs is in the permissiveness of the 70s and the levels of wince-inducing violence it ladles on like so many heapin’ helpin’ globs o’ grits into the bowls of hungry Tennessee rednecks patronizing the greasy spoons of the Old South.

And indeed, Tennessee is where Framed was shot and is, in fact, set (not unlike the Karlson-Briskin Buford Pusser shit-kicker Walking Tall). While this down-home haven for rednecks seems “a might” incongruous for a film noir thriller, it’s actually in keeping with the sordid backdrops of numerous noir classics – many of which are set against the small mindedness of middle America. Not all noir was in the big cities – the sleepy suburbs, seedy tank towns and just plain wide-open spaces – could all provide ample atmosphere for any number of these dark crime classics. Not that Framed qualifies as a classic, but it’s damn close and delivers the kind of goods one expects from a kick-butt director like Phil Karlson.

CONNIE VAN DYKE IS MANHANDLED

His grim, brutal picture recounts the gripping saga of Ron Lewis (Joe Don Baker) a beefy, semi-amiable (albeit semi-smarmy) gambler and club owner who arrives home with a satchel-full of cash he’s just won in Vegas. His lover and partner in the club, platinum ice-queen country singer Susan Barrett (frosty, sexy Connie Van Dyke) begs him to stop gambling and quit while he’s ahead. If he did, there’d be no movie. Instead, beefy-boy takes his satchel and enters a high-stakes poker game and cleans up even bigger.

On his way home, someone tries shooting at him and when he pulls into his garage a redneck deputy harasses him. A brutal fight ensues (with eye-gouging – yeah!) and the lawman dies, whilst our hero, a mangled heap o’ beef, slips into a coma. Ron wakes up to find that he needs to plea-bargain his way out of a sticky situation wherein he faces life imprisonment for murder. He also discovers that his money has been stolen and that he’s been set-up big-time. (Granted, he DID actually kill the redneck lawman, but it was in self-defense.) Adding insult to injury, Ron’s ice queen is beaten, then raped by some bad guys and soon, our hero is sent up the river to a maximum-security prison.

Luckily, once he’s firmly ensconced in the Big House, he hooks up with a friendly hitman (former Bowery Boy – I kid you not – Gabriel Dell) and an equally amiable mob boss (John Marley, The Godfather producer who wakes up to find a horse’s head in his bed). Time passes with relative ease, and soon, our beefy hero – with a little help from his new prison pals – is on the loose and on a rampage o’ sweet, sweet revenge.

Loaded with violence and plenty of dark, seedy characters and locales (and a few welcome dollops of humour), Framed is a nasty, fast-paced and thoroughly entertaining crime picture. Joe Don Baker is a suitably fleshy hero and Gabriel Dell a perfect smart-ass sidekick. What’s especially cool about the movie is just how amoral a world ALL the characters move in and frankly, how their shades of grey don’t actually confuse things, but work beautifully with the noir trappings of the story and style.

And DAMN! Phil Karlson sure knows how to direct action. No CGI here. The utterly insane car stunts and hand-to-hand fight scenes are astoundingly choreographed and captured with his trademark brute-force aplomb. What an eye! What a MAN! They don't make filmmakers like Karlson anymore nor, frankly, do they make crime pictures like Framed.

If nothing else, the movie features a nude Joe Don Baker shower scene. That alone offers plenty of titillation.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-a-half Stars

Framed” is available as a barebones DVD release from Legend Films. As well, other terrific Phil Karlson pictures are available and can be ordered directly below.

In Canada BUY PHIL KARLSON movies HERE, eh!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY PHIL KARLSON movies HERE!

COTTON COMES TO HARLEM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ossie-Davis does Blaxploitation like nobody ever did in this extremely entertaining adaptation of the Chester Himes novel with super dicks Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, now on Kino Lorber Blu-Ray

Cotton Comes To Harlem (1970)
Dir. Ossie Davis
Starring: Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Calvin Lockhart, Redd Foxx, Judy Pace, Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche, J.D. Cannon, Cleavon Little

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"We may have broken some heads,
but we've never broken any promises." - Coffin Ed Johnson

Coffin Ed (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) do what great cops do best; they always get their man and if THE MAN says, "Don't bust heads," they sure as hell make sure to bust all the heads that need busting to clean the scum off the streets of Harlem in glorious NYC.

And, they're cool.

Coffin Ed suavely serves up a sardonic wit, whilst Gravedigger Jones favours a more broad approach to inspiring yucks. As drawn by novelist Chester Himes, these cats have been immortalized in one of the ultimate Blaxploitation pictures of the 70s by none other than screenwriter-director Ossie Davis, one of the greatest African-American actors of all time (lovers of Spike Lee will never forget Davis as the philosophizing old man in Do The Right Thing and genre fans have long admired Davis as JFK - YES! - JFK in Don Coscarelli's immortal Bubba Ho-Tep).

Ed and Jones were perfect heroes for helmer Davis to march through their action-comedy paces. These two guys, as penned by Himes and immortalized onscreen by Davis, seem practically born with crime-fighting in their blood and they do the citizenry proud by never kowtowing to the rules imposed upon them by those uptight honkies running the NYPD and the city at large. No job is too big, small or untouchable. The People love 'em to death.

And, they're damn funny.

Call them an ebony Abbot and Costello if you must, but for whatever laughs they wrench consistently from us, they're mean buggers with lightning fists and sharp-shooting pistols, always ready for action.

Now, every good cop picture has a mystery to be solved, but the one which plagues Cotton Comes To Harlem is a doozy. The primary question that drives the picture is thus:

"Now what in the hell would a bale of cotton be doing in Harlem?"

Not just any cotton. We're talking raw, untreated and oh-so pure fluff, straight off the fields in the deep south. Buried within it is the quarry of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. A sleazy slime ball common criminal, the "good" Reverend Deke O'Malley (a deliciously ooze-dripping Calvin Lockhart) has been running what our boys know is a scam. The slick-talking man of the cloth has been running a major scam (or so our super dicks are convinced) to secure oodles of money from the good, poor, hard-working folks of Harlem in order to transplant them back to their roots in Africa and out of the mire of America which snatched up their forefathers in the first place.

Coffin and Gravedigger know better. They're convinced O'Malley, always adorned in fine clothes, jewels and living with a hot babe in a slinky pad, is going to take the money and run, run, run. Hunches, however, are not evidence and this is something our boys are going to have to beat out of a few heads. O'Malley, you see, has just collected a huge whack of dough during a rally which, has conveniently been hit by deadly, armed marauders in masks.

And the secret's in the cotton.

Damn, where's that cotton?

Davis generates a fun, slam-bang cops and robbers steam engine replete with a breakneck pace, plenty of babes, oodles of action and one of the best damn car chases on the streets old NYC - ever.

Replete with a great soundtrack, loads of laughs and sheer dogged detective work, Ossie Davis plunges us into a grand, two-fisted crime picture.

St. Jacques and Cambridge acquit themselves with aplomb and the rest of the cast is jam-packed with a who's who of African-American comic talent like Redd Foxx (Sanford and Son) and Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles), plus a stalwart team of grizzled character actors including Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche and J.D. Cannon.

And then, there are the babes, the most luscious being Judy Pace, as O'Malley's wily, sharp-tongued mistress.

This great working actress should have been a much bigger star than Hollywood let her be, though as Vicki Fletcher in the famous TV nighttime soap opera Peyton Place and the one of three beauties who "love" a philanderer to death in Three in the Attic, let her prove to be no slouch in the popularity and talent department.

Blaxploitation was a long and popular sub-genre in the movies, but Cotton Comes to Harlem manages to transcend that label by being one of the best cop pictures of the 70s - period. Sadly, Ossie Davis only directed five feature films and one TV movie. He clearly had a great command of the camera and could easily dance rings round most studio hacks of the period and certainly held his own with the period's better filmmakers.

Davis delivered a lovely, but little seen drama called Black Girl and Gordon's War, a magnificently nasty action film with Paul Winfield leading a charge of Vietnam Veterans against scumbag drug dealers, pimps and other assorted miscreants. Still, Davis left behind an amazing legacy of legendary performances and with Cotton Comes To Harlem, he delivered an absolute must-see.

And, of course, there's Judy Pace.

Damn, she is fine!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Cotton Comes To Harlem is available on a gorgeously Blu-Ray that captures all the grain, grit and colour of the 70s from Kino Lorber. In Canada, the title is distributed by VSC (Video Services Corp).

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THE DOUBLE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ayoade's Darkly Funny Dostoyevsky Romp on dFilms BRD

A nebbish and a babe in Dostoyevskyville

The Double (2013)
Dir. Richard Ayoade
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, James Fox

Review By Greg Klymkiw

You're alone in a fetid, dark, dank subway car save for one lone faceless fellow buried in a newspaper. You spy a babe through the window on another car. Your reverie is shattered when the one other person rudely tells you that you're in his spot. You move. The train stops, but your new position keeps you from catching up to the babe AND your brief case with your whole life in it gets stuck in the train door.

This is not going to be a good day.

This is the story of Simon (Jesse Eisenberg), a nebbish in a living nightmare - one in which we ourselves might all feel we're in from time to time. Such is the superb writing of Avi Korine and director Richard Ayoade that Dostoyevsky's immortal novella not only springs to life, but does so in ways that enhance the universal qualities of the original source material.

The beats of this perverse tale never miss a step and our eyes are glued to the screen thanks to a winning combination of the droll writing and its director's mise-en-scene which hangs clouds of dreamlike putrescence before us that are thick enough to cut with a knife.

The elements of nastiness and savagery within the grotesque corporate bureaucracy we're thrust into also cut with a knife. Simon is just trying to get ahead in life which means getting a girl and moving up in the squalid company he works for. Alas, he's badgered every time he tries to get into the office building since he's lost his I.D. and is furthermore assailed by his snarky boss Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn) who feels Simon's just not pulling his weight.

Simon knows differently, though. He's been making great progress and he has some knock-em-dead ideas he wants to get to the CEO, the mysteriously monickered The Colonel (James Fox). He also has his eye on that babe Hannah (Mia Wasikowska) from the train. She works in the company's photocopy room and, as luck would have it, she lives in an apartment across the way from his. He can spy her (or rather, on her, through a telescope) every night.

The problem, it seems, is that nasty wretch he met on the train. That lout, James (Jesse Eisenberg - no, not a typo) is a new employee in his department at work and worse yet, he's a double for Simon. The difference, though, is that James is everything Simon isn't and the horror of this situation and the mounting layers of bureaucratic corporate chicanery all point to one thing - Simon is on his way out because James is rapidly taking over his life.

Adding insult to injury is one of my favourite elements of this twisted tome. Papadopoulos has a mega-babe teenage daughter Melanie secured in his office. He puts Simon in charge of mentoring her as she has no ambition. Perhaps Simon can score some points, but alas, it's only going to be his double James who scores. He scores BIGTIME and moves in on the hot, lithe, little lassie and fills some holes in her education. If Papadopoulos thinks Simon is drilling his pert daughter, it's going to be tits-up for our corporate dweeb.

The Double is almost always funny and Eisenberg clearly relishes the opportunity to play the two decidedly different sides of the coin. The movie has babes, of course, so this is definitely a good deal and Wallace Shawn is always a welcome presence in any movie.

Though the film does tend to get a tiny bit measured in its final third, resulting in a strangely predictable denouement (strange given the original tone of the picture), it's a movie that finally holds its own as a savage indictment of how humanity tends to get the life sucked out of it in a world where everyone is a worker bee, a mere cog in the machine.

It doesn't get scarier than that. Nor funnier.

And, uh, it has babes to boot.

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

The Double is now available on a gorgeously transferred Blu-Ray with a variety of extra features from D Films.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

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METRO MANILA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Sundance-winning thriller opens TiffBellLightbox

Loyalty, poverty, corruption, prostitution.
A few flavourful items in any crime thriller.

Metro Manila (2013)
Dir. Sean Ellis
Starring: Jake Macapagal, John Arcilla, Althea Vega

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Metro Manila sucks you into the soul-crushing, borderline neo-realist tale of Oscar and Mai Ramirez (Jake Macapagal, Althea Vega), a poverty-stricken rural couple in the Philippines with two kids and another on the way. They back-breakingly harvest their crop of rice and are paid so little for it that the likelihood of being able to afford seed for the next growing season is nigh impossible. Faced with ruin and starvation, they pack what few belongings they have and move to Manila in search of work and a better life. Though the city teems with hustle and bustle, work is scarce.

Desperate to avoid living on the fetid, filthy mean streets, the family are duped lickety-split into shelling out all their money to an unscrupulous con man for a squalid apartment which, they're summarily tossed out of by the real landlord. They're forced to squat in even more repulsive surroundings, a ramshackle slum on the outskirts of the city.

Oscar takes a labour intensive job and discovers it doesn't pay cash, but merely a single meal for each of the men slaving away. Mai is forced to work in a brothel run by a fiery Dragon Lady mama-san type. It has a grotesque in-house daycare service presided over by a surly old Granny and we eventually discover that some of the little girls are pimped out to pedophiles with the full agreement of their desperate mothers.

Things can't get any bleaker than this.

Thank God for a surprising shift in fortune for the family and an even happier, skilfully rendered shift in genre (which frankly, the film has been subtly rooted in from the start). At the end of his tether, Oscar applies for one of the most dangerous, life-threatening, unenviable jobs in Manila, but damn, it's steady and it pays really well. Douglas Ong (John Arcilla), a senior officer in an armoured security firm takes a liking to the earnest country boy. Oscar seems a perfect candidate; he's served in the armed forces, knows his weaponry, has a strong work ethic, needs the dough and comes across as supremely pliable.

Crime in Manila is so insane that armoured trucks are almost constantly held-up by scumbags hopped up on drugs (and poverty). Very entertainingly, the movie takes us through anything and everything one would want to know and/or experience in this high-tension job. Attempted hijackings, dubious scumbag clients, corruption and double-crosses become the order of the day. The writing by Ellis and Frank E. Flowers is sharp and for the most part, the adrenalin-charged narrative thrust comes on with the force of a Tsunami.

The film's writing sadly falters in its final twenty-or-so minutes and the movie nose-dives into a tried-and-true heist picture with a con that feels a bit too close to comfort to something like The Sting (but, delightfully, with extreme macho violence and not much in the way of feel-good). Sean Ellis's direction throughout is nothing less than exemplary - his eye for the varied locations and topography is first-rate, his compositions and coverage of all the dramatic beats are handled with the skill of a master and moments of suspense and action are delivered with considerable aplomb.

Loyalty, betrayal and sacrifice are the real order of the day though, and as such, it's no surprise the film has picked up numerous accolades including a prize at Sundance and two British Independent Film Awards. While some might idiotically condemn Ellis for representing a British colonial attitude to the proceedings, they'd be full of shit. It's a crime picture, for Christ's sake. The rural districts of the Philippines look anything but bucolic and Manila itself feels as mean as any overpopulated metropolis would be. Most of all, aside from the disappointingly conventional and somewhat lazy turn the story takes at the end (and for many it might feel quite satisfying), the movie crackles with the sort of grim, gritty stuff anyone would want from a crime picture.

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

Metro Manila plays theatrically at the TIFF Bell Lightbox via Juice Worldwide. Hopefully it will widen out in the rest of the country and if and when it gets to home video, let's hope it comes equipped with a gorgeous Blu-Ray transfer and what I'm sure would be an incredibly informative commentary track from its director.

MYNARSKI DEATH PLUMMET, THE WEATHERMAN AND THE SHADOWBOXER, THE UNDERGROUND: 3 SHORT CANADIAN FILMS at TIFF 2014 (TIFF Short Cuts Canada) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Canada's Great War Hero,
Andrew Mynarski VC,
Shooting Star of
Selfless Sacrifice,
a man of Bronze.

Mynarski Death Plummet aka Mynarski chute mortelle (2014)
Dir. Matthew Rankin
Starring: Alek Rzeszowski, Annie St-Pierre, Robert Vilar, Louis Negin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The true promise, the very future of the great Dominion of Canada and La Belle Province lies beneath the soil of France and Belgium. Between World Wars I and II, Canada lost close to 2% of its population, the vast majority of whom were the country's youngest and brightest from the ages of 16 to 30. Canadian lads bravely served on the front lines, well ahead of the glory-grabbing Americans, the Yankee Doodle mop-up crew that dandily sauntered overseas after all the hard work was paid for by the blood spilled upon European soil by the very heart and soul of Canada's future and that of so many other countries not bearing the Red, White and Blue emblem of puffery. As a matter of fact, any of the best and bravest in Canada came from Winnipeg and if you had to pick only one hero of the Great Wars from anywhere in the country, Andrew Mynarski, a gunner in the famed Moose Squadron, would be the one, the only. He is the subject of Matthew Rankin's perfect gem of a film, the one, the only genuine cinematic work of art to detail the valiant sacrifice, the one, the only, the unforgettable Mynarski Death Plummet.

Played dashingly in Rankin's film by a real, live, honest-to-goodness, in-the-flesh, Goralska-Sausage-Slurping Polish-Canadian actor, Alek Rzeszowski, Mynarski himself was a fearless Polish-Canadian kid born and raised in the the North End, the only neighbourhood in Winnipeg (alongside St. Boniface, 'natch) that bears any real historical significance in Canada's keystone to the west, the former "Little Chicago" perched majestically on the forks of the mighty Red and Assiniboine Rivers. In 1944, Mynarski flew an Avro Lancaster bomber into the heavy action of northern France. After taking out his fair share of Nazi Pigs, the plane was aflame. He ordered the other lads aboard to drop the Polski Ogórki from his Mom, grab their chutes and bail. They did so with pride in a job well done.

Mynarski was last to leave. Or so he thought until he realized that Officer Pat Brophy (Robert Vilar) was trapped in the tail gun compartment. Our North End Hero did everything possible to save his friend until Brophy demanded Mynarski save himself. The lads exchanged salutes and the Polish Prince of King Edward and Isaac Newton schools, his chute now sadly in flames, took a fateful plunge from the plummeting Avro. His fire-engulfed body shot itself over the fields of France, mistaken as a bomb by some, including a rural mayor (Louis Negin, Canada's greatest actor - like, ever), but was correctly identified by a ravishing, babe-o-licious, though simple country girl of France as 100% REAL MAN, his body melted to bronze as the woman shot beams of love and gratitude from her heart into the spirit of the eventual posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross and honoured by Winnipeg's citizenry with a legendary North End Junior High School in his name.

This is such a great film. I could have watched all seven minutes of it if they'd somehow been elongated to a Dreyer-like pace and spread out over 90 minutes. That said, it's perfect as it is. The fact that you don't want it to end is a testament to director Matthew Rankin one of the young torchbearers (along with Astron-6) of the prairie post-modernist movement which hatched out of Winnipeg via the brilliantly demented minds of John Paizs and Guy Maddin. Blending gorgeously arcane techniques from old Hollywood, ancient government propaganda films with dollops of staggeringly, heart-achingly beautiful animation - bursting with colour and blended with superbly art-directed and costumed live action - Mynarski Death Plummet takes its rightful place alongside such classic Canadian short films as John Martins-Manteiga's The Mario Lanza Story, John Paizs's Springtime in Greenland, Guy Maddin's The Dead Father and Deco Dawson's Ne Crâne pas sois modeste / Keep a Modest Head.

In many ways, Rankin's film is history in the making of history. Most Canadians of my generation know Andrew Mynarski's story by heart, but even still, Rankin's film is so compelling, I kept hoping it wouldn't end as tragically as it did. Thankfully, Rankin infuses his tale with the sumptuous, wildly romantic image of the French babe looking longingly into the night sky and her magical explosion of squid-like polyps from within her big heart, allowing them to sail into the black Gallic atmosphere and plunge into Mynarski's very soul before he transforms into the likeness of the bronze memorial statue erected in Ottawa, the capital of our fair Dominion.

The other part of the story that all Canadians of my generation know is that Officer Brophy actually survived the crash. He was not only able to recount Mynarski's bravery and sacrifice, but he was kept alive by the strength and just-plain brick shithouse qualities of the Canadian-invented-and-manufactured Avro Bomber - an incredibly moving moment Rankin recreates in his film. (And sadly, the AVRO corp and its eventual superior aircraft, including "The Arrow", were decimated by the Americans into smithereens when Uncle Sam couldn't hack the fact that Canada had actually created something, uh, better than they could.)

A final important thought about Rankin's astonishing film. There is so much ludicrous, politically correct lip service paid to the new "face" of Canada and the need to represent the histories and stories of the said "new face". I'm all for that, but the problem is that Canadian Cinema has not even properly addressed its own history prior to the "new face of Canada". Until that happens, I think it might not be a bad idea to begin recounting and mythologizing Canada's true heroes as Rankin has done with Mynarski Death Plummet.

I hope this film is shown everywhere - especially in schools, especially to our "new" faces. It's bad enough Canadian History is so poorly taught in our schools, but maybe, just maybe, a super-cool new masterpiece of cinema is a good first-step to begin writing wrongs that the past century has wrought upon our great Dominion. When I say our future was decimated in the World Wars, I'm not exaggerating, but there's more to it than that. Our country has long been besieged by a cultural colonialism that has stifled genuine creativity and placed far too much emphasis on staid approaches to the cultural industries decided mostly by unimaginative bureaucrats who seek either the Status Quo of dull-edged blades or worse, hang pathetically onto their jobs by promoting "diversity" rather than genuinely looking to find ways of dramatically and artistically render a history and stories that have sadly been neglected.

Mynarski Death Plummet is a mere seven minutes long, but its impact and lasting value can be multiplied to the power of the infinite - a fine equation, if you ask me.

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

Mynarski Death Plummet is part of TIFF14's Short Cuts Canada program. Visit TIFF's website HERE for more info.

A maze that begins
in childhood
and never ends.

The Weatherman
and the Shadowboxer (2014)
Dir. Randall Okita

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One of Canada's national filmmaking treasures, Randall Okita (Portrait as a Random Act of Violence), takes the very simple story of two brothers and charts how a tragic event in childhood placed them on very different, yet equally haunted (and haunting) paths.

Mixing live action that ranges from noir-like, shadowy, rain-splattered locales to the strange, colourful (yet antiseptically so) world of busy, high-tech, yet empty reportage, mixing it up with reversal-stock-like home movie footage, blending it altogether in a kind of cinematic mixmaster with eye popping animation and we're offered-up a simple tale that provides a myriad of levels to tantalize, intrigue and finally, catch us totally off-guard and wind us on a staggering emotional level.

Okita's cinematographer Samy Inayeh is more than up to the challenge of attacking a variety of visual styles with superb compositions and gorgeous lighting. Editor Mike Reisacher knocks us on our proverbial love-buns with his thrilling slicing and dicing.

As per Okita's mise-en-scene, Reisacher's challenge is to maintain the film's avant-garde nature with its equally profound narrative and thematic elements. He's more than up to the challenge and cuts a picture that we're unable to ever look away from and follow a trajectory that wends its way like a complex maze between two different characters and lands us to a spot that kicks us in the solar plexus and wrenches our hearts.

Unbelievably for some, this was produced by the National Film Board of Canada, but it appears to have been seeded and birthed out of the Montreal offices which still manages to consistently escape the often dour safety-zone prevalent in much of the Board's English Canadian output.

As for Okita, he's delivered yet another roundhouse for the ages. This is what cinema should be. Screw ephemeral needs. Immortality is, uh, like, better, eh.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer is in TIFF14's Short Cuts Canada program. Visit TIFF's website HERE for more info.

We're all cockroaches.
Don't forget it.

The Underground (2014)
Dir. Michelle Latimer
Starring: Omar Hady

Review By Greg Klymkiw

What's especially fine in this slice-of-life/slice-of-consciousness dramatic cinematic tone poem is how it presents a contemporary political and social reality that's seemingly the exclusive domain of a very specific segment of our population. Through its careful mise-en-scene, that comes close to overplaying its metaphorical hand, but pulls back in time to maintain the necessary poker face (as it were), The Underground deftly creates feelings that can, indeed, be universal.

Inspired by Rawi Hage's novel "Cockroach", the film feels all of a piece rather than some horrendous calling card for an eventual feature length adaptation. If, God forbid, it's supposed to serve this purpose, it would be a tad disappointing to know, but at least it has a singular integrity that allows it to work as a piece of film art unto itself. Cleverly rooted in simplicity to yield complexity, we follow a young refugee from some Middle Eastern hell hole as he lives out his lonely life in Canada within the isolation of a filthy, cockroach-infested slum apartment.

Part of the reason for the cockroaches could be his fascination with these seemingly vile creatures and his penchant for capturing them and setting up strange domiciles in glass jars. He spends much of his time on the floor of his filthy suite intently examining his "pets", but also experiencing flashbacks to the horror of what must have been his incarceration and torture. When a notice is slipped under his door to prepare for a visit from a pest control company, the film truly takes on the feeling of a living nightmare.

We become immersed in paranoia through a cockroach-eye-view and indeed, the images of hooded pest-control guys take on the same kind of creepy horror so prevalent in David Cronenberg's very early genre features that featured similarly-masked and/or accoutred killers/exterminators. There's a truly sickening and recognizable sense of fear, paranoia and loneliness so acute one wants the protagonist to scream. He won't, though. His is a silent scream.

And though we might all not be or can even fully comprehend what it's like to be a political refugee in a strange land, the film does make us feel and believe that at some point in our lives, if not for always and for ever, we are all little more than cockroaches in a world hell-bent upon weighing us down. We cower, hugging our floors as if we were a fetus in a blood-lined belly of viscous fluids and we wait for the secret police to drag us out of our home, or our cell, to be ripped from the safety of a womb we've made for ourselves.

And then, and only then, are we plunged into sheer horror.

The Film Corner Rating: ***½ Three-and-a-half Stars

The Underground is in TIFF14's Short Cuts Canada program. Visit TIFF's website HERE for more info.

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A similar scene to the one experienced by Jim Jarmusch and others in New York during the 70s and 80s and captured in the documentary BLANK CITY as well as many other works in the "Forgotten Winnipeg" series was happening in Winnipeg. A very cool explosion in indie underground cinema that I and many colleagues and friends were involved with was spawned during these halcyon days. This period, coined by film critic Geoff Pevere as Prairie Post-Modernism included the works of John Paizs, Guy Maddin, Greg Hanec and many others.

A great selection of early Guy Maddin, many of which that I produced and were written by George Toles, can be secured directly through the following links:



Another great film from Winnipeg during this period is Greg Hanec's extraordinary DOWNTIME which has the distinction of being a parallel cinematic universe to Jim Jarmusch's "STRANGER THAN PARADISE". Both films were made at the same time in two completely different cities and scenes and both Hanec and Jarmusch premiered their films at the same time at the Berlin Film Festival. One's famous, the other isn't - but now that the "lost" and "found" DOWNTIME has been remastered from original elements to DVD, it can now be purchased directly online.

Order DOWNTIME directly
from the film's new website
by clicking HERE

Perhaps the greatest Canadian independent underground filmmaker of all-time is Winnipeg's John Paizs. It's virtually impossible to secure copies of his astounding work which, frankly, is responsible for influencing the work of Guy Maddin, David Lynch, Bruce McDonald and an endless number of great indie filmmakers the world over. Paizs' great short film SPRINGTIME IN GREENLAND is available for purchase in a beautiful remastered edition from a fan website, the inimitable Frank Norman. Norman has Paizs' blessing to provide copies of the film, so feel free to directly make your request to Mr. Norman by clicking HERE.

Visit Frank Norman's CRIME WAVE
fan site by clicking HERE

Alas, it's super-impossible to get a copy of Paizs' masterpiece CRIME WAVE (not to be confused with the super-awful Coen Bros/Sam Raimi film of the same name that was released the same year Paizs' film was NOT released properly by its scumbag Canadian distributor Norstar Releasing, which eventually became Alliance Films (where the boneheads sat on the film and turned down several excellent offers from small indie companies to release the film properly on DVD in super-deluxe special editions because they lazily purported to be negotiating a massive package deal on its catalogue titles with some tiny scumbag public domain company that, as far as I can tell, has neither purchased nor released the film). This truly great and highly influential film is, no doubt, languishing in some boneheaded distribution purgatory within the deep anal cavities of the new owner of Alliance Films, a humungous mega-corporation called E-One. Feel free to repeatedly bug their stinking asses and demand a proper release. In the meantime, VHS copies of CRIME WAVE can still be found with the ludicrous title THE BIG CRIME WAVE. Here's a copy available on Amazon:

BLANK CITY and other works in the "Forgotten Winnipeg" Series can be accessed here: