A STAR IS BORN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2018 - Horrid, Unnecessary Remake of Classic Tale

A Star is Born (2018)
Dir. Bradley Cooper
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliot

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I have absolutely no problem with remakes. Taking a great story and creating a new adaptation within a different cultural/societal context can yield considerable fruit. A Star is Born has several terrific incarnations. It also has a couple of abominable ones.

It all began in 1932 with George Cukor's marvelous What Price Hollywood? in which a waitress (Constance Bennett) is swept off her feet and turned into a star by an alcoholic film director (Lowell Sherman) who eventually commits suicide after shaming himself, and by extension, the woman he loves.

Producer David O. Selznick though, finally perfected the story in 1937's A Star is Born when the script, co-written by Dorothy Parker and directed by William A. Wellman, paired a big movie star on his way down (Frederic March) with a burgeoning actress (Janet Gaynor). They fall in love naturally and the fading star turns Gaynor into a huge star, but his battles with booze eventually create a situation wherein he realizes that he is dragging down the woman he loves. He commits suicide, not so much out of self-pity (though there's considerable self-loathing on his part) and his death is a sacrifice to "save" the career and life of the woman he loves. The movie is just about perfect and is still one of the most vivid portraits of the Hollywood studio system ever made.

1954, however, brought the greatest version of the film to life when George Cukor returned to the story he first made in 1932. Here he paired James Mason as Norman Maine, a big movie star in serious decline who meets aspiring singer/actress Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland), makes her a star and eventually, sacrifices himself via suicide when his alcoholism not only drags him down, but threatens to destroy the woman he loves. Oh, this version is wonderful! It doesn't get better than Judy Garland and James Mason and Cukor at the peak of his powers.

Alas, 1976 brought us the Frank Pierson-directed abomination starring Kris Kristofferson, a boozing rock star who meets Barbara Streisand, a burgeoning singer. Same deal. They fall in love, he makes her a star, and eventually he dies. The problem with the story is that there's no sacrifice. He gets boozed up and dies in a car accident. That's not the only problem, though. The movie is miserably written, virtually non-directed and little more than a showcase for Streisand. The picture stinks to high heaven.

Though Bradley Cooper's 2018 version of A Star is Born pretty much stinks, it's a masterpiece compared to the dreadful 1976 version. Director Cooper plays an alkie rock star who meets the execrable Lady Gaga, falls in love with her, makes her a star and eventually commits suicide in an act of sacrifice.

This new version of the film does offer a decent performance from director Cooper, but his skills as a director are woeful. Most of the movie is shot in dull closeups and not even the musical numbers have a sense of scope or sweep to them. Lady Gaga is a supremely mediocre actress and it's almost impossible to listen to her thudding dull monotonous line readings. Even worse is the music in the film. It's so mediocre, I'd not even dare to call it music. (At least the horrendous 1976 version had genuine songs written by real songwriters like Paul Williams.)

How anyone could even begin to enjoy this new version of the film is beyond me. It's incompetently directed, has a dreadful score and a complete washout in female lead Lady Gaga.

Look, there are three great versions of this story. Do yourself a favour and watch them instead. And if truth be told, the soundtrack for the awful 1976 version offers some decent tunes worth listening to (as opposed to Cooper's growling and Gaga's caterwauling).

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

A Star is Born is a TIFF 2018 Gala Presentation.

mother! - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Aronofsky's Worst Movie Unleashed @TIFF2017

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BORG/MCENROE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Opening Night TIFF 2017 Gala a major dud!

Good Boy/Bad Boy of Wimbledon find common ground.

Borg/McEnroe (2017)
Dir. Janus Metz
Scr. Ronnie Sandahl
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Sverrir Gudnason

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One of the greatest rivalries in professional sports remains that of 80s tennis champs Bjorn Borg (the height of Swedish civility) and John McEnroe (the nadir of American vulgarity). As such, one might expect a decent enough sports biopic inherent in the subject matter. Not so with Borg/McEnroe.

Director Janus Metz and screenwriter Ronnie Sandahl serve up this tepid misfire with one sloppy volley after another. What we get here is little more than a series of uninspired recreations of tennis matches, a whole lot of clichéd flashbacks leading up to the famed Wimbledon match and little in the way of genuine drama. So much of the movie feels like a Made-for-TV affair, but without the kind of crisp competence that might have made the movie watchable.

The tennis sequences are supremely disappointing - the lack of solid wide and/or long shots, way too many frenetic cuts and no sense of geography all adds up to a whole lot of nothing. The dramatic childhood and early adulthood flashbacks yield by-rote brush strokes of the pair and the most potentially interesting thing about them, their eventual friendship (borne out of rivalry and mutual sporting admiration) is left as a simple post-script at the picture's end.

LaBeouf continues to dazzle as an actor, relishing the opportunity to madly roil and saltily cuss his way through the proceedings. Sadly, poor Gudnason is allowed little more than stoicism as Borg ruminates upon his upcoming death-match at Wimbledon. Skarsgård is relegated to the ho-hum loyal coach perch.

Aside from the picture's near incompetence, it's a bore. That might be its greatest sin.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One Star

Borg/McEnroe is a Mongrel Media release at TIFF 2017.

ATOMIC BLONDE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Special screening at Fantasia 2017 of this lifeless, empty, boring espionage action thriller, not so special.

Charlize kicks ass, but the movie does not.

Atomic Blonde (2017)
Dir. David Leitch
Scr. Kurt Johnstad
Nvl. Antony Johnston, Sam Hart
Starring: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy,
John Goodman, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella, Toby Jones

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When a movie featuring Charlize Theron kicking ass and engaging in explicit lesbian action (with nudity, no less) during the waning days of the Cold War in Berlin turns out to be a big fat boring mess, the disappointment is enough to hurt. Adding insult to my injury is that I had the distinctly extraordinary experiences of being in East Berlin before the wall came down (in 1988) and actually being in Berlin when the damn wall did finally come down (in 1989). My sufferance through the overall period/atmosphere inadequacies of Atomic Blonde (no matter how many "period" tunes have been annoyingly stuffed onto the film's soundtrack) is all the greater.

Though screenwriter Kurt Johnston (adapting the Antony Jonston/Sam Hart graphic novel) loads up on the tropes of espionage thrillers, he does so with the kind of ham-fisted inadequacy that makes the whole affair unnecessarily obtuse and worse, so that we finally don't care about any of the characters and/or proceedings. I was forced to almost constantly check the time, agog at how slow and dull it all was.

Director David Leitch (co-director of the much-better-written John Wick) at least knows how to stage all the action sequences (especially one delicious set piece that feels like it's all one long take) so that we're not annoyed by the usual herky-jerky on display in virtually every other contemporary action movie, but sadly, his efforts are all for nought since none of these ultra-violent extravaganzas have anything more going for them than the craft itself. We have no emotional stakes in anything or anyone and as such, we're bored to distraction when the film's onscreen participants are being shot and/or pulverized.

For those who care, the picture details the attempts of super-blonde British super-spy Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) to extract an East German political prisoner (Eddie Marsan). A dirty double-dealer (the dullishly smarmy James McAvoy) gums up the works whilst a lesbian wannabe spy (Sofia Boutella) beds down our heroine and places herself at great risk. All of this nonsense is relayed in flashback as Lorraine is interrogated by her boss (Toby Jones) and a C.I.A. bureaucrat (John Goodman). None of this carries any weight or interest and is certainly bereft of the grand atmosphere inherent in works such as the classic John le Carré film adaptations like Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the better James Bond efforts with Sean Connery.

Atomic Blonde is Dullsville - from beginning to end. And oh, does it end. It has one of those interminably predictable endings upon endings upon endings. Not caring about plot and character is one thing, but being boring is the picture's greatest sin.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Atomic Blonde, a Focus Features release had a Special Screening at Fantasia 2017.

BABY DRIVER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lead Character Needs to be Punched in the Face.

Baby needs to be punched in the face - and often.

Baby Driver (2017)
Dir. Edgar Wright
Starring: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jamie Foxx,
Eiza González, Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, Paul Williams, Sky Ferreira

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Baby (Ansel Elgort) is an ace getaway driver for Doc (Kevin Spacey), an Atlanta crime kingpin who never uses the same crew for the bank heists he masterminds, but happily breaks from protocol by using Baby each and every time. The kid is the best. He also owes Doc a whack of "tribute" dough and is paying down the debt. The kid suffers from the tinnitus he acquired in a car accident that spared him, but munched his Mommy and Daddy. He's perpetually plugged into classic R&B to drown out "the hum in his drum" and provide the necessary inspiration to put the pedal to the metal. When Baby isn't driving, he pretty much comports himself the same way. With tunes blasting through earphones, Baby bobs his head with the same metronomic rhythm that a cow chews its cud.

Baby might be the most annoyingly insufferable big-screen figure since Jar-Jar Binks (or, perhaps, Patch Adams or Sam Witwicky) and there isn't a moment this cutesy bonehead doesn't inspire me to want to punch him in the face - repeatedly, I might add. Almost as sickening is Baby's love interest Debora (Lily James), a vapid, toothy waitress who's clearly as empty as he is since she falls in love with him at first sight. Yes, she too needs to be punched in the face.

Look, I love Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead as much as the next fella, but his output ever since has adhered to the law of diminishing returns and Baby Driver is the nadir. Jam-packed with by-rote crime movie cliches in the guise of "homage", the picture seems machine-tooled to appeal to audiences as bovinely-brained as its lead character.

None of the endless car chases have any narrative urgency, nor are they ever rooted in anything resembling genuine desperation. I could almost accept this if Wright handled the heists and chases with some kind of genuine panache, but they're all a compendium of the usual contemporary ADHD editing with cameras all over the place and cuts driven by sound rather than picture. It's deathly dull. The stunt work is fine, but it seems to be captured by sight-bereft filmmakers.

A few nights after seeing this piece of shit I re-watched William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. and had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck during some of the most hair-raising, dramatically urgent car chase footage ever committed to film. No such hairs stood up for me during Baby Driver. In fact, I was often so bored that my mind wandered to the notion of shaving my flaccid pubic hairs to give me something to do whilst watching the tedious proceedings.

Even more egregious is that the whole thing is so moronically sun-dappled that Wright can't even muster up enough balls to generate the kind of gloriously downer ending a great crime picture demands. Baby is involved in several high-profile robberies and is an accessory to a whack of murders, but so many of the film's supporting characters attest to his goodness as a human being that he barely serves any prison time and by the end of the picture hops into some hot wheels with his moron girlfriend to trip the highways fantastic.

Leaving the cinema as Baby Driver ended, I not only wanted to punch Baby in the face, I just wanted to punch everyone happily leaving the cinema. The stupid grins plastered upon their satisfied visages all seemed worthy of rearrangement via my fists.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Baby Driver is in wide release via Tri-Star and Sony Pictures.

Wonder Woman - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lame, voiceless direction sinks WW solo effort

I am Wonder Woman! I kill to bring peace to mankind.

Wonder Woman (2017)
Dir. Patty Jenkins
Scr. Allan Heinberg
Starring: Gal Godot, Chris Pine, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Robin Wright,
Ewan Bremner, Saïd Taghmaoui, Eugene Brave Rock
Connie Nielsen, Elena Anaya, Lucy Davis

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Though I refused to read any reviews of Wonder Woman before seeing it, I was unable to avoid knowing that "critics" (I use the word loosely these days) have enthusiastically raved about the film. That the picture is such a huge hit, another fact I was unable to avoid knowing, adds insult to injury. Granted, the injury afflicted is to me (and seemingly me and me alone), but it is an injury nonetheless.

Watching the loathsome Wonder Woman was one of the more painful acts of self-flagellation I've recently engaged in. Let me assure you, my flesh is now mighty raw from that scourging. My soul is empty and again I felt bereft of hope for the future of movies. (Luckily, hope was restored one day after suffering through the dross by watching Jean-Pierre Melville's Two Men in Manhattan and David Miller's Sudden Fear - both made when people made real movies.)

I made a point of seeing Wonder Woman in 70mm. Though preferable to unwatchable 3-D, the glorious widescreen film-format ultimately added nothing to the experience. I found myself limping out of the movie theatre after having to yank the nails from my feet, which I was forced to use in order to affix myself in place for the entirety of the loathsome 141 minutes of Patty Jenkins's interminable miserably directed sewage tank of wasted celluloid.

If you must know, Wonder Woman retches up the origin of Diana Prince (Gal Godot), D.C. Comics' lithe raven-haired superhero. We're forced to endure her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood on the all-female-populated island of Themyscira, a kind of Isle of Lesbos without the lesbo action (not even submerged). Here a race of powerful Amazons created by the Gods of Mt. Olympus, endlessly train in the art of killing in order to eventually bring peace to the world.

When an insufferably handsome American pilot, Captain Steve Trevor (the sickeningly smirking Chris Pine), crashes his plane, he's rescued by our heroine. She learns that World War I is raging and as it's her birthright to restore peace to humankind, she joins him on a pilgrimage to Dear Old Blighty. She's convinced the war is not the fault of Kaiser Wilhelm and the Germans, but rather, by Ares, the nasty nemesis of Zeus who has supplanted himself in the body of British politician Sir Patrick Morgan (David Thewlis). (Some might consider this a "spoiler", but if you can't figure it out from the moment you first lay eyes on him, then I suspect you might require a brain transplant.)

Morgan is in cahoots with General Erich Ludendorff (the vaguely amusing, scenery-chewing Danny Huston) and his facially-deformed chief mad-scientist Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya) who are concocting a super-deadly cocktail of mustard gas in the hopes that Germany will bring the world to its knees.

Wonder Woman and the annoying American join forces with a dog's breakfast of wily rascals to kill a whole mess of Germans to bring peace to the world.

Ugh!

I first read the D.C. comic "Wonder Woman" when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s. Unlike the critically-maligned (and boneheadedly so) Zack Snyder-directed Man of Steel and Batman v Superman movies, Patty Jenkins has no feel for the essence of these grand comic books of yore, but even worse, she clearly has no idea where the camera needs to be placed during action scenes. They are the typical contemporary hodgepodge of poorly composed multiple camera setups that the editors are forced to breathe life into (and mostly in vain) by creating sound-based cut-points instead of dramatic "action" cut-points.

The jury is out on whether Jenkins has any genuine talent. Her first film was the competent, decently acted Monster which dramatized the tale of real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos (who was the focus of two great documentaries by a real filmmaker, Nick Broomfield). On the basis of Monster and now Wonder Woman, I see no evidence of a genuine directorial vision. It's little more than a (mostly) badly acted catalogue of dull action scenes. I simply don't understand why the studios keep hiring directors with no feel for action (I'm looking at YOU: Christopher "One Idea" Nolan and Sam "I'm from the thay-uh-tuh" Mendes). When you think of the Zack Snyder DC films, one can at least marvel at the painterly compositions of every shot and even though the cutting is rapid fire, he has actually put thought into creating action set pieces as units of dramatic action, not merely "action".

Just because they gave a woman a shot at directing means nothing. They should have thought of hiring a woman who knows how to direct with some panache. Much as I hate all of the Twilight movies, the very first film in the franchise was at least directed by a woman who has obvious directorial talent/vision. Catherine Hardwicke's distinctive voice as a filmmaker is what raised the level of the 2008 vampire soap opera from a simple "event" movie to that of a genuine work of first-rate pop-art.

Audiences don't care about "voice" or "skill" anymore. They've been systematically indoctrinated into not caring about much of anything other than ADHD-infused pyrotechnics, which Wonder Woman is over-stuffed with.

Also, that the movie threw away an opportunity in the first section with the Amazons by avoiding a healthy infusion of lesbian subtext is beyond the pale.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Wonder Woman is in wide release via Warner Brothers.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2016 - Biopic pillories Nat Turner

Nat Turner at the pillory,
though it's director/star Nate Parker
who deserves to be pilloried.

The Birth of a Nation (2016)
Dir. Nate Parker
Starring: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Jackie Earle Haley,
Penelope Ann Miller, Gabrielle Union, Esther Scott

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Nate Parker shoehorns two rapes into his abysmal big-screen biopic of the legendary African American freedom fighter Nat Turner. That one of them involves the character of Turner's wife, who appears (by all historical accounts) to have never been raped, manages to offer up a mighty rank fish-smell wafting from Parker's fetid onscreen world.

That the other rape in the film involves a character who doesn't have a single line of dialogue, seems more than enough to charge the picture with bearing a strong streak of sexism, if not downright misogyny. Both rapes are indicative of a myriad of poor storytelling choices on Nate Parker's part in this horrid, poorly written and incompetently directed attempt to render a stirring picture about one of America's greatest heroes.

Nate Parker in diapers. Fetishize THAT!

The Birth of a Nation is so awful, it's disheartening that it exists as the first major feature drama to tell such an important story about the history of African-Americans. Nat Turner (played in the film by director Parker) led a major slave uprising in 1831 Virginia. The rebellion resulted in the deaths of about 60 white people who "benefitted" from being slavers. The aftermath saw many of Turner's followers captured and killed. Turner himself eventually suffered the same fate. In spite of a flurry of official measures by Whitey to place further restraints upon African-Americans, the rebellion is an important event which provided hope to slaves and contributed to the anti-slavery sentiments amongst America's liberal class.

Parker's film places considerable emphasis upon Turner's literacy and abilities to preach the words of God. That his financially-strapped owner (Armie Hammer) sells his slave's services to other plantation owners (who hope to quell sentiments of rebellion), is a story element that certainly offers the potential of a very interesting relationship - a kind of bro-mance miscegenation-style, but Parker is such an incompetent film storyteller, it remains firmly lodged up the smelly butthole of potentiality.

The film also spends inordinately saccharine amounts of time on Turner's relationship with his wife, rooted (so to speak) in the director's considerable exertions to bolster his delusional belief in the yummy sex appeal he seems to think he has. This is about as offensive as the aforementioned rapey stuff, but might actually be more bile-inducing.

And so, the movie plods along, rife with cliches and historical inaccuracies and directed with all the aplomb of a made-for-TV movie. Once the "action" begins, Parker's meagre directorial abilities extend to an inability to offer up coverage commensurate with the sort of flair that could have, at the very least, kept an audience awake and sufficiently charged to have something resembling an emotional response to the pallid proceedings.

"Who stole my diapers?"

Given that Parker has attempted to "reclaim" the film's title from D.W. Griffith's racist, but undeniably groundbreaking 1915 feature, he might have attempted to study the film's astonishing mise-en-scene for a few pointers on how to make a movie.

Aside from his film's overall failure to deliver any goods at all, The Birth of a Nation is plagued with two especially egregious elements. First of all, the entire dichotomy between the Old and New Testaments (the former preaching revenge, the latter extolling the virtues of turning the other cheek) is never adequately addressed within the context of character, theme and drama. Secondly, a running dream-motif exploring Turner's belief in his destiny as a "warrior" is handled with all the subtlety of a jackhammer.

Parker even blows these dream sequences in which he appears as Turner, adorned in what appear to be the swaddling attire of cloth diapers, inspiring a whack of unintentional guffaws amongst audiences desperate for something (ANYTHING!!!). But here's the rub (sans tug). By not even bothering to mine the fetishistic possibilities inherent in the film's star (himself, 'natch), dolled up in this sexy attire, Turner seems to add considerable insult to injury. Then again, given the "primitive" context of the dream sequences, it seems unlikely Nat Turner would have been clothed at all. Perhaps Parker decided he didn't quite have the "equipment" to let it all hang out.

On both counts, ultimately, a real filmmaker might have been needed.




Of course we must not ignore the film's rapey "qualities", which seem somewhat curious given that Parker, in real life, was acquitted of rape several years earlier and that his accuser eventually committed suicide. That said, I don't believe it's ever fair to condemn a film based upon anything its maker may or may not have done in his private life. The movie must live or die by its quality as art. It is here, however, that The Birth of a Nation dies a miserable death, simply and solely by virtue of the fact that it's a dreadful picture.

The Film Corner Rating: * (One-Star)

The Birth of a Nation is a Special Presentation at TIFF 2016. It will be released theatrically by Fox-Searchlight.

LA RAGE DU DEMON - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Evil Méliès Possessed?

La Rage du Démon (2016)
Dir. Fabien Delage
Starring: Christophe Gans, Alexandre Aja, Philippe Rouyer, Jean-Jacques Bernard, Christophe Lemaire

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It is said that in 1897, famed magician and father of fantastical cinema Georges Méliès (legendary director of A Trip to the Moon and dramatized in Martin Scorsese's Hugo), directed a film so horrifying and powerful that some believed it to be possessed by a demonic force so abominable that it forced audiences into rages of an unholy nature. Thought to have be lost, if not outright destroyed, a print of the film surfaced in 2012. Screened for a select audience, the film inspired similar violent outbursts.

A group of contemporary filmmakers and cineastes were assembled to provide their feedback for La Rage du Démon. Alas, it turns out to be much ado about nothing. The film is such a lame mockumentary, that most of the interviewed subjects aren't able to pull off the charade with anything resembling believability. Worse yet, the mostly dull talking heads affair reveals not much of anything. There are several Méliès clips used with some perfunctory archival footage, but we never buy any of it for a second.

There's never an attempt to provide clips from the abomination itself, presumably because they're too horrifying, but mostly because this woeful low budget affair would not have been able to afford such recreations.

What we're left with is the promise of what might have been a great horror film - a pure shuddery fiction a la Hugo, but sans anything resembling "feel good". This poor, pointless mockumentary leaves us wondering if there ever will be a great picture made within the premise of a long-dead genius having made a deal with Satan, thus delivering a film so infused with evil that its audiences become minions of the diseased pieces of light flickered upon the screen.

La Rage du Démon is not it, but we're allowed to dream about it. Maybe one of the great filmmakers forced into the mock interviews here will deliver the goods.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

La Rage du Démon enjoys its North American premiere at Fantasia 2016

TO LIFE (À la vie) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Auschwitz survivors get some fun in the sun.

Sand, surf and fun in the sun
await this trio of MILF Holocaust survivors.

To Life (aka À la vie) (2014)
Dir. Jean-Jacques Zilbermann
Scr. Zilbermann, Danièle D'Antoni, Odile Barski
Starring: Julie Depardieu, Suzanne Clement, Johanna ter Steege,
Hippolyte Girardot, Mathias Mlekuz, Benjamin Wangermee

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I suspect I'm going to burn in hell for this, but about thirty minutes into the ludicrous post-holocaust melodrama À la vie, a most (shall we say?) unusual notion crept into my brain, thus making the entire turgid affair watchable without having to nail my feet to the floor. My thoughts began swirling with possibilities when it occurred to me that Three MILFs from Auschwitz might be the more appropriate title for this abomination and its tag-line could be something like: "Hot MILFs at the Beach! They've survived the Holocaust and now they're gonna: Live! Laugh! Cry! Most of all, though, these girls just wanna have fun!"

Ugh! That's really what the picture boils down to.

15 years after meeting, befriending and caring for each other in Auschwitz, three plucky MILFs: Helene from Paris (Julie Depardieu, yes, she's the daughter of Big Daddy Gerard Depardieu), Lily (Johanna her Steege) from Amsterdam and Montreal-based Rose (Suzanne Clement), get together for some sun, fun and frolics on the beaches of the northern French coast town Berck-sur-mer. (Uh, for the uninitiated a MILF is a "Mother I'd Like to Fuck" and the soon-to-be-utlized FILF is a "Father I'd Like to Fuck".)

"Mais oui, but I am a castrato, and you're not!"

Our MILFs are staying in the resort town gratis thanks to the largesse of handsome FILF Raymond (Mathias Mlekuz). He's well aware of the special nature of this reunion and donates the use of his rental property. It doesn't hurt that Raymond still carries a torch for Helene (she turned down his marriage proposal years ago, but they've maintained a close friendship). Instead of a potential union between this perfectly matched couple, Helene married her sad-sack childhood sweetheart Henri (Hippolyte Girardot). Why is he so dour? Well, in Auschwitz, his testes were blasted with radiation, then snipped off.

In a nutshell (so to speak), Helene has been married to a castrato for fifteen years. He can't get it up and is only able to provide kissing, cuddling and caressing. No matter. She loves him dearly. In spite of this undying love, Helene confides to her fellow MILF Holocaust survivors that this state of affairs has been depressing the living crap out of her, especially since she is still a virgin and longs for schwance instead of the (no-doubt) nimble digits drilling into her needy, greedy mutersheyd. Like some MILF Holocaust Survivor version of Porky's, the gals make it their business to get Helene laid.

As luck would have it, klafte-pronging is just around the corner. Jilted hubbie-to-never-be Raymond introduces the gals to the buff figure of Pierre (Benjamin Wangermee), proprietor of Club Mickey, the local beach day camp for kids. This 20-something God of Love turns out to be an Algerian orphan who lived in state care most of his life - it wasn't quite Auschwitz, but traumatic enough to give him some cred in the suffering sweepstakes.

Luckily, he's got a raging hard-on due to being a virgin and he's so smitten with virginal Helene that she is on the verge of getting some strokin' from a bonafide MILF lover.

A young, buff virgin Algerian orphan looking for MILF.

Of course, as this is a film about Holocaust survivors, there's plenty of serious issues to be dealt with. Alas, they're handled very clumsily and rife with cliches. All three women have deep secrets they want to reveal and the screenplay too conveniently allows each woman a shot at spilling the goods which have haunted them for fifteen years.

Everything about the picture is by rote and nothing ever rings true - so much so, that one wonders why director Zilbermann even bothered. Ah, he bothered because this is A TRUE STORY, based upon his own mother and her two friends. "Based on" seems to be the operative phrase to apply here. This is clearly a fictionalized version of the events. Though I've not seen it, Zilbermann has already made a documentary about his mom called Irene and Her Sisters. As it deals with the real subjects, I suspect it's not as ludicrously dappled in the perverse fluorescent colour scheme he employs to capture this empty fictional rendering.

In addition to the dreadful script, lacking as it is in genuine shadings of character, complexity and genuine emotion, the production design goes out of its way to be as accurate as possible in capturing period detail, but nothing ever seems to be "lived in". One of the more egregious elements soiling the picture is the jauntily horrendous ooh-la-la score which makes the film far too similar to a horrendous Claude Lelouch affair with music (if one can call it that) by the (mostly) insufferable accordionist Francis Lai.

About the only positive note is that the performance of Depardieu is extraordinary enough to evoke a genuine tear or two. One scene where she first discovers that one of her friends in Auschwitz is not dead is pretty extraordinary. Sadly, she struggles with attempting to find a character amidst the film's dross.

MILFs have secrets. Whaddya say they're gonna share a few?

Nothing in the film rings true.

"But it's a true story," you say.

I say, "So what?" If a movie can't make itself truthful, then it betrays all tenets of good storytelling.

The most disappointing aspect of the film is dashed when the MILFS declare they will meet regularly every year at the same resort. Damn! There goes the potential for a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby "on the road" franchise (albeit with MILF Holocaust survivors, 'natch). All through this wretched excuse for a movie, I kept imagining different locales for our girls to cavort about in endless sequels. Disappointingly we'll never get to see what shenanigans these wacky MILFs from Auschwitz could have had in Bali, Waikiki and Morocco. The list is endless, but merely relegated to my feverish imagination.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

TO LIFE (À la vie) is an Unobstructed View release which opens May 20 in Canada.

I SAW THE LIGHT, MILES AHEAD, BORN TO BE BLUE - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - Why so many music Biopics all of a sudden? 3 movies about 3 musicians released within 2 months. Go figure.

Top: I SAW THE LIGHT ***
Bottom right: MILES AHEAD **
Bottom left: BORN TO BE BLUE *

Born to Be Blue (2015)
Dir. Robert Budreau
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Carmen Ejogo, Callum Keith Rennie,
Stephen McHattie, Janet-Laine Green, Dan Lett, Kevin Hanchard, Tony Nappo

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If you've seen Let's Get Lost, Bruce Weber's haunting 1988 feature-length documentary about the sad, sexy, tragic genius Chet Baker, there's no reason to see Robert Budreau's dreadful biopic misfire Born to Be Blue. Weber's documentary succeeds because it harrowingly focuses on Baker's drug addiction as much as his turbulent life and extraordinary music. Rather than obviously charting tried-and-true rise-and-fall beats in Baker's life, we get subtle glimpses into just how Baker's demons were as much a part of his art as they were what ultimately destroyed him.

Born to Be Blue is a fruit-loopy, simple-minded fantasia on Chet getting his musical mojo back after having his teeth knocked out by some scumbag dealers. Writer-Director Robert Budreau's film reduces Baker's life to some kind of Brian Grazer-like "winner" story dappled with plenty of fake dark touches. Amalgamating all of Baker's wives into one convenient punching bag/inspiration (Carmen Ejogo) feels horribly by-the-numbers and on-point.

Hello, my name is Ethan Hawke.
I can be tortured, eh. Just like Chet Baker.

I'll concede the film could not have possibly shoehorned Baker's whole existence into ninety-or-so minutes, but why it felt the need to concoct so much nonsense and avoid even a smattering or pie-slice of the man's genuiely fascinating life as a microcosm of the whole, is beyond me.

Ethan Hawke is a fine actor when he's in good movies, but he seems to take on a lot of garbage. He must know when it's crap, but sometimes, how's a fella to really know? I'm sure he thought the role in Born to Be Blue would have been a supreme challenge and maybe even Oscar bait, but aside from bearing an occasional resemblance to Baker, his performance is never more than skin-deep. We see no demons in Hawke. All we experience is an actor pretending that they're there and working overtime to prove it.

Most of all, though, Baker is presented as a man on the road to self-discovery, hence "success". Neither the film nor Hawke let us forget it. Give me a break.

Skip this. Just watch Let's Get Lost again.

Born to Be Blue is an IFC Films picture in very limited theatrical release.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Shaft? Superfly? Nope. Don Cheadle as Miles Davis.

Miles Ahead(2015)
Dir. Don Cheadle
Scr. Steven Baigelman & Cheadle
Starring: Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corineald

Review By Greg Klymkiw

As jazz legend Miles Davis, there's no denying Don Cheadle's charismatic work as an actor. Veering from the afro-and-shades-adorned 70s cocaine addict to the suave, dapper young man in the 50s flashbacks, Cheadle is never less than engaging and his performance comes close to capturing the genius of this great musical artist.

Unfortunately, we have to put up with the film. Reducing the 70s Davis to some kind of participant in a lame, TV-movie version of a Blaxploitation programmer, then clumsily flashing us back to Davis's loving, but ultimately abusive treatment towards his wife (Emayatzy Corineald), the picture is all over the place and rife with dullsville cliches.

STARSKY and HUTCH? Nope!
The Miles Davis Story as Cop TV show
melded with supremely lame 70s Blaxploitation.

Worse yet, we have to put up with the increasingly insufferable Ewan McGregor. Here he plays a scruffy freelance writer pretending to be a Rolling Stone journalist. Far too much of the movie is Cheadle and McGregor verbally jousting, and not too convincingly at that. What really begins to pale, though, is an endless subplot involving the disappearance of Davis's master tapes to his new album and McGregor helping him retrieve them. The whole movie turns into an endless episode of "Starsky and Hutch", replete with a supremely lame car chase and gunplay action.

Cheadle's direction is, at best, mildly competent and at its worst, barely competent. That said, his performance, especially during his coked-up crazy-ass scenes, is never less than a blast. There was probably a terrific movie with Cheadle as Miles Davis - somewhere out there. Miles Ahead, sadly, is not it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two Stars

Miles Ahead is currently in theatrical release via Mongrel Media.

Tom Hiddleston as fine a Hank Williams
as Gary Busey's Buddy Holly was.

I Saw the Light (2015)
Dir. Marc Abraham
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Maddie Hasson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Marc Abraham's Hank Williams biopic might not go too far beneath the surface, but it hits key points in the life of the famed post-war American country crooner with a spate of lovely performances and an evocative attention to period detail. With only enough manipulation of the facts and compression of the events to make approximately 10+ years of Williams's life pass by amiably and entertainingly in a surprisingly breezy 123 minutes, this is by far the best of the recent trio of musical biopics.

Abraham's screenplay for I Saw the Light is based upon the book “Hank Williams: The Biography” by Colin Escott, George Merritt and William Macewen and as such, it seems less concerned with exploring the ennui which contributed to the singer's unique renderings of hits like the title track, “Why Don’t You Love Me,” "Move it on Over" and among others, “Lovesick Blues”, as it is with charting key events in Williams's life. We go from his romance and marriage to first wife Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen), when he was a local radio performer and follow him on his endless gigs in smoky honky-tonks until he eventually achieves the necessary chops to headline at Nashville's "Grand Ole Opry".

The story doesn't shy away from his Jekyll and Hyde-like transformations from kind, loving and charming to mean-spirited, hard-drinking and philandering. He's both a good father and a negligent father. He's as caring as he is violent. As he rises to the top, we see him abandon his first wife (who insisted too strongly upon performing with him - her voice was, at best, spiritedly competent and at its worst, bordering on caterwauling) and eventually settling down with second wife, Billie Jean Jones (Maddie Hasson).

Husband and Wife Duet
One Sings, The Other Doesn't

Abraham lets the narrative plane touch down on Hank's squabbles with the record company and promoters, his debilitating back pain and his eventual reliance upon highly addictive painkillers. A good chunk of the film is imbued with a pleasing sentiment and basks in the warm glow of Dante Spinotti's gorgeous cinematography.

The real star of the picture is the music. Leading man Tom Hiddleston (Loki in the Thor movies) is nothing less than compelling when voicing Williams's work and much of the running time is pleasingly toe-tapping. If anything, I Saw the Light shares a great deal with Steve Rash's Buddy Holly biopic with Gary Busey - it's old fashioned and goes down easy.

The picture's like a nice, mellow moonshine. It cuts through the dust in the throat, clears the pipes, the senses, the raw emotions and finally keeps us glued to the proceedings just long enough to leave the cinema satisfied, but also compelled to whip out our own vinyl and CDs of Hank's music, so we can keep our toes a tapping and the tears a flowing.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

I Saw the Light is in national release via Mongrel Media.

Greg Klymkiw at The Film Corner Proclaims: HYENA ROAD on BLU-RAY/DVD not worth buying due to omission of Maddin short

Home entertainment release of
dreadful Paul Gross film sans the
only reason one would ever want to
buy it. Soon to be available in
$5.00 Walmart Bargain Bins!!!

Hyena Road (2015)
Blu-Ray/DVD Review By Greg Klymkiw

Though the Paul Gross Afghanistan War folly Hyena Road is a disgrace, its real problem is that it's just plain bad as opposed to being the unmitigated stinker Gross's WWI tiptoe through the trenches Passchendaele was. That film at least had a passel of unintentional howls. This one, is bereft of even those meagre pleasures. Though Hyena Road was a theatrical flop, the Elevation Pictures/Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Blu-Ray/DVD has even more reason to tank and quickly find its way to the WalMart $5 bargain bins.

The admittedly well-transferred Blu-Ray comes on a pathetically extras-light edition. In addition to the risible film itself, it is accompanied by a few lame "making-of" featurettes which bear the unmistakeable stench of EPK. I was actually excited that the home release would be accompanied by the actual "making-of" film that the producers commissioned, the astonishing Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton: The Making of Hyena Road by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson.

Alas, the makers and distributors of Hyena Road have chosen to NOT include the only thing that would have made the home entertainment version worth buying.

Feel free to read my trashing of Hyena Road itself HERE, my rave review of Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton: The Making of Hyena Road HERE and my delightful reports on how the film flopped at the box-office HERE and HERE and HERE.

Even more reasons to NOT waste your money buying Hyena Road on home video.

Cineplex Entertainment Honcho Mike Kennedy extols virtues of floperoo HYENA ROAD!

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 2: Review By Greg Klymkiw: Finally! It's Over!

"Hmmm, shall I shoot or make another tedious speech?"

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015)
Dir. Francis Lawrence
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth,
Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Banks,
Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Claflin

Obnoxious Preface and Review By Greg Klymkiw

Preface - Death Be Not Proud

Though I've suffered through every single Hunger Games picture, I only bothered to write about the first film. Life is, after all, short and none of the movies ever got any better. In 2014, I almost blew this perfect record when I found myself visiting my old hometown of Winnipeg to spend a few weeks watching my mother die from one of the most virulent, painful forms of stomach cancer.

One night, I was in one of those desperate-to-see-a-movie moods and the only film playing in the entire city that I had not seen (Winnipeg has little in the way of movie-viewing choice these days) was The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1.

This might be the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman's
very last on-screen appearances. Death be not proud.

Upon watching it I was flummoxed as all get out because the movie seemed to work for me. Yes, it was full of the idiotically-monickered characters I'd come to detest (Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are, amongst many others, some of the stupidest character names in the history of cinema). And yes, the movie was replete with all the inanities money could buy.

However, for some reason, its dour tone, relatively-measured pace and accent upon the theme of war propaganda were almost enough to make me think I was watching a movie I liked - perhaps even loved.

I began to pen a rave review, but then, my mother finally died and I became otherwise indisposed with funeral arrangements, et al. When I finally decided it was time to return to my review, I snuck in a second screening to refresh my grief-addled memory before putting cyber-pen to virtual-paper.

Oops! The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 WAS dreadful. Everything I thought I loved about it was finally exposed as by-the-numbers and cinematically intolerable. As I'd recently had a similar experience with the execrable Birdman (loving it pre-Mother's-death and hating it post-Mother's-death), I chalked it all up to mortifying despair and heartache.

And now, here I find myself on the one-year-anniversary of my Mother's long, pain-wracked death. My decision was clear. Since I had only bothered to write about the first in the franchise, it made perfect sense to write about the last.

"To make another speech or not to make another speech?"

The Review

Beginning precisely where the first cash-grab left off, we're introduced to our plucky heroine Katniss Everkleer (Jennifer Lawrence) as she gets some much needed physical therapy to restore her voice after brainwashed lover Peetmoss Larkvomit (Josh Hutcherson) tried to viciously strangle her.

Thankfully, our beloved Katnip's dulcet tones are restored just in time to participate in a new assault upon President Snowball (Donald Sutherland) and the Capitol. This also allows her to make more monotonous speeches throughout the entire movie.

"Just call me PizzaPocket Malarkey."

Accompanied by her other lover Gaylord "Jacob Black" Hawberry (Liam Hemsworth), the hunky antithesis to the spindly Robert Pattinson-like Pitabread, Katnap is shocked when the rebels begin to mercilessly shoot the refugees while she's trying to deliver a propaganda speech. She puts a stop to this foul nonsense by putting herself in harm's way, only to be kidnapped by a refugee who threatens to kill her. When she tells him she'd welcome death, he understands why she's the genuine rebel Queen and lets her go.

As she begins one of many tedious propaganda speeches, she's shot.

We are shocked - not.

It's early in the movie and only an idiot would believe she's dead.

In the movie, however, one of those idiots is President SnowballAficianado as he raises a glass to toast her assassination. Oh, Woe! Would Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H ever fall for this one? Of course not, but that was a great character, in a great movie, by a great director. This picture, of course is the complete opposite of anything resembling greatness, plus with all that white hair adorning the old man's pate, it's obvious both Sutherland and the character he plays here is in a kind of dementia-addled dotage.

Just one of many poorly directed action scenes.

Dead, our heroine, is not. Katnipple wants to desperately return to the fields of battle, but is ordered to stay-put by the seemingly supportive, but ultimately fascist President Llama Coil (Julianne Moore) and her bumboy Plufeltch Heavenswasp (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Dejected, Katsass attends an insufferable wedding celebration replete with Newfie-style fiddling and clog dancing. This is enough to sicken anyone, but luckily, she's given an idea on how to sneak away and continue with the campaign to take over the Capitol.

A sickening wedding celebration.

From here, we're treated to endless poorly directed action scenes (of the herky-jerky lack-of-spatial-geography variety) until (no surprise) the Capitol is breached and the complete cash-grab of the Hunger Games films finally draws to a predictably sleepy close. (There's a surprise moment during a final execution scene that will only surprise complete dimwits.) Worse yet, we're treated to a bile-inducing montage of Katnutts and Peeboy reuniting as lovers, having kids and our heroine thinking back on the horrors of the past in order to move forward with the future.

One can only hope and pray it's all over, but frankly, I suspect our prayers will not be answered. As long as there are millions of suckers out there, Hollywood will continue to deliver endless variations on the Twilight and Hunger Gamessagas. This, of course, only makes us look forward to more Transformers films.

And that, my friends, is truly sad.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 is, predictably, gobbling up far too many screens worldwide and come to Canada courtesy of E-one, Entertainment One.

THE LAST WITCH HUNTER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hopefully the first and LAST!!!

"I'm hoping this franchise can transform me into a Steve Reeves for the New Millennium."

The Last Witch Hunter (2015)
Dir. Breck Eisner
Starring: Vin Diesel (dubbed "Not His Real Name" by the late, great film critic John Harkness), Michael Caine, Rose Leslie, Elijah Wood, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One doesn't go to a movie entitled The Last Witch Hunter expecting a masterpiece, especially when its lead is played by Vin ("Not His Real Name") Diesel, the bald, vaguely simian wiseacre star of the Fast and Furious and XXX franchises who, it seems, is seeking a whole new persona to exploit in yet another potential franchise. In fact, one expects something considerably lower on the rung when its revealed that the director will be Breck (Sahara, The Crazies) Eisner, a man who has yet to direct anything resembling a good movie.

In spite of these strikes against it, one grits ones teeth and hopes the movie will at least be fun on the level of 50s/60s Italian sword and sandal epics starring the likes of Steve Reeves. For the first few minutes, with Diesel traipsing about some Middle Ages fantasy setting with a ludicrous bushy beard and wielding a humungous sword, one believes that the modest hopes one had going in might blossom into something a bit more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, Diesel's character is defeated by the head honcho of all witches and cursed with eternal life and banished to an eternity of always remembering he didn't avenge the murder of his wife and child. That said, he becomes a witch hunter and, for a few hundred years he's been decimating "bad" witches all over the place.

"Look, this babe behind me has such a bad speech impediment I can't understand a word she says. Can we use some witchcraft to fix this up?"

For the rest of this movie, Diesel (sans beard) lives high atop the city in a swanky Manhattan pad and continues his vendetta against witches who refuse to live peacefully with humans. He even has a sidekick in the form of a Catholic priest played by Michael Caine (who no doubt earned a sizeable cheque to pay for a few more mansions in the sky). When Sir Michael is savagely tortured and left for dead, Diesel not only gets mad, he's going to get even. Related to this injustice is the fact that some bad witches are about to release a plague upon New York, so the Diesel-meister is going to have his hands full. The Catholics, always on top of such matters, give him a new Holy mortal sidekick in the form of a young priest (Elijah Wood) who means well, but is lacking the know-how of his predecessor.

Even all this might have been palatable if it wasn't for the fact that the movie gets increasingly convoluted and stupid. Stupid is fine, but once its commingled with convolutions, it becomes deadly. Add to this an uninspired villain (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and a horrendous leading lady (Rose Leslie, she of the speech impediment which renders all her lines to mush and a grating high-pitched voice which is probably enough to send canines the world over into a tizzy rivalling the silent dog whistles one can buy from ads at the back of comic books) and worst of all, a character working both sides of the good/evil coin that we can see from the first minute he appears on screen, we know - beyond a shadow of any doubt - that this picture is going to be a boring stinker.

One of the most repulsive screen kisses in recent memory.

Eisner's non-direction proves he's not even grasped basic skill sets to put him in hack territory. He simply has no idea of where to place his camera and the action scenes are all a miss-mashed mess.

Diesel has apparently announced a sequel is in the works. Let's hope it quietly goes the way of the Dodo. That said, I'd be up for a Fast and Furious sequel which offers Diesel in full-on sword-and-sandal beard. Now that, could be a howler worth enjoying.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

The Last Witch Hunter is a Lions Gate production in release world wide via eOne.