LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lame Vigilante Hijinx pale in comparison to the best

Law Abiding Citizen (2009) *1/2
dir. F. Gary Gray
Starring: Gerard Butler,
Jamie Foxx, Colm Meaney

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Great vigilante movies are driven by a hero or anti-hero that we connect with on a personal level and where ultimately, there are few, if no shades of grey in the quest for retribution. They are also driven by a directorial style that is not only efficient, but endowed with a clear obsessive voice.

Michael Winner’s classic 1974 thriller Death Wish is the first mainstream picture in a decidedly urban setting to make vigilantism entertaining and acceptable as an alternative to supposed law and order. Charles Bronson starred as Paul Kersey, a Manhattan architect whose perfect life is shattered when a pack of thugs home invade his wife and daughter, rape and beat them to a pulp, send the wife to her grave and the daughter to a catatonic state. Frustrated by the seeming indifference of the police and the general lack of law and order, Kersey embarks on a one-man vendetta against crime – roaming the mean streets at night and inviting random acts of violence against him to provide ample opportunities to turn the tables and blow the filth away. The chief investigator of these vigilante slayings is a detective played by the sympathetic, jowly and always-engaging Vincent Gardenia. Between bouts of exquisite vigilante violence and an entertaining cat-and-mouse game between Bronson and Gardenia, Death Wish had “hit” written all over it, playing as it did to packed houses of cheering blood-lusting action enthusiasts in addition to crossing over and appealing to movie-goers of all stripes..

Winner himself seemed to hit his stride as a director with Death Wish – displaying virtuosity and a penchant for nastiness that was seldom matched either by his own work or others (save for Don Siegel and Sam Peckinpah who decidedly went further and with even more style in their own ground-breaking pictures). That said, Winner was no slouch in the style department. With Death Wish, his style was dark, clinical and even now, it’s a film that packs a considerable wallop. Aided by Wendell (Anatomy of a Murder) Mayes’s terrific single-minded screenplay, the picture wisely dispensed with the shades of grey in the original source material of Brian Garfield’s novel. The thematic retribution staple of so many westerns and historical pieces was now placed in a contemporary context and was, for quite some time, accepted by audiences with very open arms.

With a great tradition of vigilante pictures since the ground breaking Death Wish (including the delightful surprise hit Taken), Law Abiding Citizen had a lot of potential to join this delicious coterie of moral reprehensibility as mass entertainment. Kurt Wimmer’s ambitious screenplay sets the wheels in motion for vigilantism directed at ALL the perpetrators of crime – the criminals, the lawyers AND the entire justice system. Seeing the filth get their come-uppance is always pleasurable, but to have the vigilante act upon the system itself, not unlike a home-grown terrorist, could have taken the genre into a whole new realm.

The buff macho hero at the centre of Law Abiding Citizen is seeming everyman Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) who is home-invaded, forced to watch as his wife and child are raped and murdered, then left for dead – bound, gagged and bleeding on his living room floor. As if this wasn’t indignity enough, Clyde watches helplessly as the ambitious Philadelphia prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) negotiates a plea-bargain and sends the accomplice to a death sentence while the foul perpetrator of the violence is handed a slap on the wrists. Needless to say, revenge is extracted on both the accomplice and the true person behind the heinous crime in a manner that puts most torture porn to shame. That’s just an appetizer, though. Where the real fun begins is when our hero plays cat and mouse with the system that let him down and he begins murdering lawyers, judges and politicians – in the City of Brotherly Love, no less.

Sadly, the picture is a letdown on two prime counts. Firstly, and most notably, the direction provided by F. Gary Gray is so utterly lacklustre that this potentially stirring narrative plods forward – not with an obsessive quality, but with the dull, single-mindedness of a bull elephant rampaging about a fine china shop. Gray is a director who at his best is barely competent (The Italian Job remake) and at his worst, completely bereft of talent (Be Cool, the miserable sequel to Get Shorty). Secondly, Kurt Wimmer’s potentially solid screenplay veers into confused, schizophrenic territory where the anti-hero becomes a sort of protagonist to the prosecutor, who is portrayed, not as the antagonist, but as the eventual hero. Unfortunately, the prosecutor is clearly a bonehead. He ignores his duties as a family man for his job, he allows ambition to guide his actions and he becomes obsessed with nailing the vigilante to save his own ass – personally and professionally. In many ways, this is a similar problem that drags down Scorsese’s (at least well crafted) remake of Cape Fear where the simple good versus evil story is marred with the wrongheaded attempt to shade the tale with grey – what made J. Lee Thompson’s original so powerful was the pure adherence to black and white (lawyer – good, psychopath – bad, unlike Scorsese’s: lawyer – morally ambiguous, psychopath – bad, but almost justified in exacting terror upon the lawyer).

One wonders if Wimmer’s Law Abiding Citizen screenplay was unceremoniously and bone-headedly over-tweaked-and-tinkered-with to provide new-fangled moral ambiguity to what should have been a simple, but effective white-hat-black-hat action thriller. Most importantly, one also wonders if it might have been a more successful outing if Wimmer had directed himself. As a director, Wimmer's Milla Jovovich ass-kicker Ultraviolet displayed just the sort of panache and obsessive qualities that could have made “Law Abiding Citizen” a genuinely entertaining and effective vigilante picture. It was, alas, not to be. Instead, we’re saddled with a confused, dull and by-the-numbers action thriller that lacks a necessary nastiness and clear directorial voice. We still get to see lawyers, judges and politicians blown away along with criminal scum and while this is not without considerable entertainment value, it all could have risen above the mere IDEA of such delightful proceedings and instead delivered the real goods.

"Law Abiding Citizen" is available on DVD/Blu-Ray from Alliance/E-One.

9 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lovely Animated Science Fiction Feature a great buy on Blu-Ray

9 (2009) ***½
dir. Shane Acker
Starring the voices of: Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, Martin Landau, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover

Review By Greg Klymkiw

9 is blessed with a simple narrative that, not unlike the little engine that could, drives the picture forward with the force of a powerful springboard – yielding big ideas and exquisitely generating emotional responses as viscerally thrilling as they are profoundly moving. Based on his acclaimed award-winning and Oscar-nominated short, director Shane Acker attracted the likes of such visionaries as Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov to assist with the production of his feature debut. Blending the dark magical qualities of the former and the razzle-dazzle rollercoaster ride action of the latter, Acker goes the distance and then some with this astoundingly gorgeous animated sci-fi adventure. He also brings his own unique visual style to the fore and creates a movie that careens through a futuristic, yet retro look that is altogether unique. On a story-level, Acker builds to a suspenseful climax and a conclusion that is almost as awe-inspiring in its sense of spirituality as the final moments of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It’s a ride that keeps you glued to the screen and desperately wanting, by the end, to not leave the cinema. He keeps you wanting more and this is a considerable virtue, indeed. However, rather than leaving unanswered narrative questions, you are left with much that is cerebral and, dare I say, philosophical.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world that resembles our own (but early 20th century retro), a strange little rag doll with the number 9 stitched on his back (Elijah Wood), comes to life in a ramshackle room with the long-dead body of an old man, his inventor (Alan Oppenheimer). He eventually discovers others like himself, tucked away in a bombed-out cathedral while huge metal machine monsters roam the lifeless planet seeking to destroy the rag dolls. Led by the patriarchal #1 (Christopher Plummer), the dolls are convinced they must hide to survive, but #9 is convinced that the key to their continued existence is to fight back, and most importantly, try to discover the reason why the monsters are hell-bent on wiping them out. #9 leads the battle charge with the help of #5 (John C. Reilly), a mechanical whiz, #2 (Martin Landau), an old scientist, #6 (Crispin Glover), a feverishly crazed artist, #7 (Jennifer Connelly) a “gorgeous” ninja-styled ass-kicker (a “ninjette”?) and the hulking more-brawn-than-brains #8 (Fred Tatasciore). As it turns out, it’s not just the existence of the rag dolls that’s in peril, but the potential to bring real life back to the planet.

One of the extraordinary aspects of 9 is Acker’s use of the all-star cast of voices. This is not the usual assembly of names to inject boxoffice appeal into an animated film. Each and every actor used (save for one sore thumb) is endowed with the sort of voice one needs to give life to animated characters. Christopher Plummer is not surprisingly, in excellent form as the authoritarian figure that demands adherence to his belief that survival can only mean keeping the lowest profile possible. This said, however, would paint a portrait of a character far too one-dimensional for an actor as great as Plummer to be wasted on and there is another aspect of #1 that we get subtle glimpses of so that his eventual transformation comes as one of those surprises we should have seen coming right from the very beginning. All the other actors acquit themselves superbly, but the one low-point is Jennifer Connelly’s weak voice work that borders on cliché. But no matter, Wood is a great, finely textured hero, Reilly a warm and fun presence and Glover, especially and predictably brilliant as a tortured artist.

Acker has a real gift for blending images that are stunning in their detail – in fact, almost awe-inspiring – and yet, that are as dark and bleak as all get out. The shattered ruins of a civilization that once was – lying dead under greenish clouds of some vaguely nuclear haze are powerful indeed. Similar to the strange feelings evoked by John Boorman in Hope and Glory, his live-action autobiographical portrait of England during World War II where, to a child, there was something oddly fun about the Blitz in a boys’ adventure manner – Acker manages to make this dead world a kind of cool playground. To the dolls, it’s as dangerous as it is fascinating. And this is exactly one of the things that stays with you after you see 9. Acker allows you to fill the shoes of his title character and much of what you experience is from his perspective. Even George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead had this going for it – especially in the main setting within the mall where the survivors create their own Heaven on an Earth that has become a living Hell. For the dolls in 9, it’s especially evocative since they’ve never really known anything else and certainly for the title character, he is very much a child born into a world that is dizzyingly intoxicating.

The depiction of life before the apocalypse is seen mostly in strange flashbacks or film footage and yellowed newspaper clippings where Acker creates a Hitler-like global dictator referred to only as The Chancellor (Tom Kane), a foul despot who uses the scientist/inventor (whose corpse we see at the beginning of the film) to create a world of deadly machines that have a life and mind of their own. The scientist, duped into thinking his life’s work will be used for the good of mankind, suffers the slings and arrows of his own genius as he sees the machines used to destroy The Chancellor’s enemies and eventually, mankind itself.

This, of course, is where Acker parcels out the spiritual element of the picture. Though the cathedral is initially seen as a place of sanctuary, it soon becomes, like all symbols of organized religion, a place that represents authoritarian rule and not unlike the totalitarian evil that has destroyed the world. But what’s very interesting and extremely moving is how Acker depicts the notion of how many scientists – especially astrophysicists – have embraced the notion of a higher power. This is not God as some patriarchal old dude with a furry white beard, but something far more mind-boggling. It is the notion that science IS spiritual – that the very idea and essence of soul is so fully rooted in Creation itself. This is what eventually carries the picture to a conclusion that is tremendously moving.

9 has a perfect running time. At 78 minutes it moves in mysterious ways. Though short in length, it’s a picture that has as many moments of breathing room as it does moments of utterly breathtaking, break-neck action. Contemporary audiences are so out of step with just how short many features were during the Golden Age of Cinema that it’s conceivable that some people might be taken aback by just how short it is. This, I feel, is their loss – getting one’s money’s worth at the movies has less to do with how much running time can be applied to a picture, but just how satisfying the ride actually is.

And make no mistake, 9 is a ride that is very much worth taking.

Like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Acker infuses his film with a Judeo-Christian ethic and finally, it is a sacrifice – the ultimate sacrifice, in fact – which opens the doors to a sense of rebirth. And in a world as dead and bleak as the one Acker fashions, mankind’s redemption is only attainable through rebirth.

For much of the film’s running time, Acker presents us with a perfect example of what’s often referred to as “A Terrible Beauty”, but ultimately, what he delivers is pure, unadulterated beauty. It’s not something we get enough of in movies today. Most importantly, it’s not something we get enough of in life. 9 admirably fills a void on both counts.

"9" looks absolutely gorgeous on Blu-Ray and it's well worth owning. It's available in a number of terrific bargain-priced editions via Alliance/E-One.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Michael Moore Entertainingly Defends Common Man

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) ****
dir. Michael Moore

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Michael Moore is a showman – an entertainer of the highest order. He’s also one of the few filmmakers who seems willing (and indeed able) to tackle the insanity that is the United States of America with such a perfect blend of in-your-face chutzpah, humour (of both the dry and broad variety), hard-hitting straight-up journalism, muck-raking reportage of the most obvious kind and a feel for the common man that is as genuine as it is profoundly and resolutely moving.

In the 20 years Moore has been making movies – both the world AND cinema, have been a much better place because of his work. He’s scrappier than a wiry street mutt and as steel-jawed as a mastiff.

Moore’s ramshackle, yet remarkable debut feature Roger and Me examined how General Motors Corporation heartlessly destroyed profitable factories in Flint, Michigan (Moore’s home town) in order to increase profits by simply laying off thousands of workers. With Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore continues to stand his ground as the mouthpiece of the working stiff and the worst nightmare of corporate and political sleazebags.

Using himself as a “character” in his documentaries, Moore has made one deliciously entertaining picture after another. Dealing with such diverse subjects as gun control (or lack thereof), the American health system (or lack thereof) and the inner-workings of the mind of President George W. Bush (or – you guessed it! – lack thereof), Moore is an activist extraordinaire who exposes hard truth with laughs, tears and a whole lot of the old razzle-dazzle.

And Capitalism: A Love Story is nothing if not dazzling. Like all good love stories we get a delightful bit of the old meet-cute (via 50s educational films on capitalism and the American way), the instant attraction (the rise of fake post-war American prosperity), the pursuit (the American dream), the jeopardy (the corporate takeover of America), the loss (how capitalism failed us) and, in a strange way – boy does indeed get girl back again, but in that bittersweet way where he kind of gets something he didn’t bargain for, but still has fresh hope for the future (Obama).

Still, within the picture, there appears little hope for the family who has their home stolen from them by the bank, but is offered $1000.00 to clean the house and dispose of a lifetime of memories. How much hope could their be for another family that refuses to leave their home – waiting for the Sheriff and his men to “illegally” break down the doors and remove them by force? Such images and sad stories are the backdrop for the corporate crime of the mortgage scandal and the even bigger crime of the very non-capitalist government bailout of the banks wherein high placed executives cut themselves huge bonus cheques while continuing to steal homes from honest, hard-working people. Even more scandalous is that these same banks don’t necessarily even hold the mortgages since the debt has been pieced off, bought, sold and traded. This almost unbelievable corporate gangster-ism is countered when Moore gets Ohio Democrat politician Marcy Kaptur on-camera admitting to the fact that she tells all her constituents not to move and to demand, as is their right, a copy of the mortgage itself which she further reveals is probably no longer with the bank anyway.

Another extraordinary and, I daresay groundbreaking moment in Moore’s picture is when – for the very first time in history (!!!!!) – actual film footage of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is shown wherein he declares that all Americans have the basic right to jobs, healthcare, homes and education – a right that must, according to Roosevelt, be inscribed in stone and adhered to if America is to ever become the great country its founders envisioned. Roosevelt steadfastly declares that there must be a new Bill of Rights, a second Bill of Rights that guarantees the basics of a good life (as opposed, one supposes to the right to bear arms). Alas, Roosevelt was too sick to deliver his statements in public. The footage was commissioned by him and filmed privately in the White House. He died some months later. The footage was never shown – not then, not ever and only NOW in Moore’s film. How this astonishing filmed historic record was suppressed is, on one hand, beyond me, but on the other, it makes perfect sense – especially within the picture Moore paints – of a country, if not an entire planet that is ruled, not by government, not by the people, but by corporate entities and a veritable handful of individuals who hold the vast majority of the world’s wealth.

One of the most grotesque insights into the corruption and moral bankruptcy of capitalism is the use of “dead peasant” insurance where major companies (including, naturally, Wal-Mart) take out life insurance policies on their employees and when these employees die, the beneficiary is not the families of the deceased, but the corporation they work for. That this is even legal is bile inducing. To see the shattered families who find out that their departed loved ones have been exploited in this fashion is heartbreaking. To think that companies look upon their departed employees as “dead peasants” is beyond moral reprehensibility. This enters the realm of pure evil. Hitler’s a pussycat compared to these scumbags.

In addition to all the hard-hitting stuff in the movie, we also get healthy doses of Moore up to his (borderline cliché by this point) amusing antics of shit disturbing – tussling with security guards, trying to make citizens’ arrests of corporate bigwigs, wrapping crime scene tape around banks and insurance companies, etc. Thankfully, these moments of levity hammer the point home further, but like the best filmmaking (which frankly is ALL propaganda to my way of thinking), it’s supremely entertaining.

Where the film somewhat betrays Moore’s and, in fact, most of the world’s naïve belief is the bittersweet final moments of the film where Moore questions the notions of all “isms” to be the real answer to solving the world’s woes. Moore feels the real victor is Democracy. Sorry, Mike. Democracy is bought and paid for. Obama winning means nothing. He’s either going to sell out in a more gentle manner than his Republican colleagues or he will be set-up to screw up and be taken down, or if and when he tries to do something genuinely good that’s not a compromise or a half-measure, he’ll be murdered.

For me, Moore does such a good job of exposing the truth behind what and who really rules our souls that I don’t believe in much of anything anymore – other than great entertainment, which this picture most certainly is.

"Capitalism: A Love Story" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD via Alliance/E-One.

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Wherein Ringo Starr Searches For His Very Soul

The Beatles' classic musical comedy as fresh today as if made just yesterday instead of 50 years ago!

A Hard Day’s Night (1964) ****
Dir. Richard Lester
Starring: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfrid Brambell, Victor Spinetti

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is one astounding picture. I first saw A Hard Day's Night at the age of five. It is now almost half a century later and I have seen it innumerable times and in several formats – more times on a big screen in 35mm than I can remember, on 16mm with my own Bell and Howell Auto-load projector, Beta, VHS, laser disc, DVD and now Blu-Ray. It is a movie that never gets stale. Each time I see it, it seems like I’m seeing it for the first time and in this sense, it is truly timeless on a personal level. On every other level, it's just plain timeless. As a movie and in the larger scheme of things, it’s a gleefully entertaining movie - a mad, freewheeling portrait of the greatest rock and roll band of all time and surely one of the most influential motion pictures during the latter half of cinema’s relatively short history.

As well, it is one of the truly important works to come out of a period often referred to as the British New Wave where the silver screens lit-up with a new way of telling stories on both a stylistic and content level. A series of comedies and dramas from a combination of foreign expat directors living in the United Kingdom as well as indigenous talent were the order of the day. These pictures delivered cutting edge satire, anarchic laughs, kitchen sink realism, grim and/or humorous looks at working and middle class society and more often than not, focusing upon the hopes and dreams (both dashed and realized) of young adults.

There were, for example, the "angry young man" pictures featuring the likes of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay - grimy little affairs that were depressingly cool. And then, there were the comedies - the best of which came from a director who contributed a great deal to changing the face of how movies could be made.

Richard Lester, the gifted American-born expatriate in London, was this very director and A Hard Day’s Night is unquestionably his masterpiece. Conceived just before the “Beatlemania” craze really exploded on an international level, Lester was probably the best man for the job of creating the sort of work that would have the greatest impact. Having directed and produced several British TV comedy programs featuring the iconoclastic Goons (including the likes of Peter Sellers, Kevin Connor and Spike Milligan) and with an Oscar nominated short film and a hit feature The Mouse on the Moon under his belt, Lester not only wore the shoes of director ever-so-comfortably on The Beatles' big-screen debut, he dove into the job with the mad passion of a Welles or an Eisenstein. This was not going to be just any rock and roll musical – it was going to be THE rock and roll musical – and as such, it informed filmmaking technique and style in ways we still experience in cinema even now.

Lester’s approach was to capture the slender tale in a documentary style with black and white photography; handheld cameras galore with freewheeling movement, but always gorgeously composed, all stunningly shot by the great Gilbert Taylor of Dr. Strangelove and Repulsion fame. Even more insanely, all sequences aboard moving trains were shot on, uh, moving trains! The approach to editing via John – Frenzy, Zulu, A Fish Called Wanda – Jympson's exquisite shearing would have made Sergei Eisenstein both dizzy and sick with envy.

The usual approach to rock movies at this time was to assemble a gaggle of performers and have them deliver a series of tunes in the dullest, most conservative fashion or worse yet, to plunk the likes of Elvis into (mostly) silly vehicles that were far below the dignity levels such performers demanded. Lester, on the other hand, wanted to propel us with lots of humour (sheer silliness mixed with sharply tuned wit), a dizzying camera and cool cuts that drew attention to their sheer virtuosity as well as performing the task of always moving us forward.

What this approach needed was a script like no other. Securing the services of the Welsh-born and Liverpool-raised actor, comedian, playwright and screenwriter Alun Owen. He proved to be a godsend to both Lester and the Beatles by crafting a simple narrative involving a day and a half in the life of the mop-topped Liverpudlians wherein they repeatedly shirk their responsibilities as rock stars and just have tons of fun – much to the consternation of their road manager (Norman Rossington), the bemusement of his assistant (John Junkin), the exasperation of a harried live TV director (Victor Spinetti) and to the delight of Paul McCartney’s (fictional) Grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) who exploits his proximity to the rock stars to show himself a grand old time.

Amidst all this frivolity, Owen concocts several brilliant character-elements and plot-plots that tie both absurdly and realistically into the personae of the Beatles themselves. The one that infuses the movie with considerable conflict, but also knee-slapping laughs is when Ringo goes missing on a soul search.

Ringo on a soul search?

Ladies and gentlemen, I reiterate and give you - ONE GREAT SCRIPT!

Eventually, all are reunited for a totally kick-ass show in front of thousands of screaming, swooning kids and WOW! Can it get more simple and pure than this? Thankfully no! It’s just what the doctor ordered for this picture. Even more impressive is Owen’s brilliant dialogue and the endless opportunities to have the boys duck in and out of cabs, run from screaming teenyboppers and find as many different means of escape from both their fans and responsibilities – crashing through service doors, cascading down fire escapes and partying up a storm against the backdrop of the swinging-est London imaginable.

Not surprisingly, given the auteurist tendency to downplay the importance of screenwriters that aren’t the auteurs themselves, Richard Lester has uncharitably stated that much of Owen’s script was jettisoned in favour of letting the Beatles ad-lib. Enough statements from many others refute this assertion to support what really seems to be the truth of the matter – Owen spent a considerable amount of time with The Beatles on their journeys before setting narrative and dialogue to paper and went out of his way to create words perfectly suited to John, Paul, George and Ringo so that they’d be comfortable playing them and, on rare occasions have a solid springboard to ad-lib (which according to most reports is no more than 10 to 15% anyway).

And then there is the music! The title track “A Hard Day’s Night” (taken from one of Ringo’s delightful malapropisms), “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “Tell Me Why”, “She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)”, “I Should Have Known Better” and then some are featured in stunning concert footage and/or within the narrative body of the film, and most notably are not unlike music videos before the notion of music videos even existed. This latter point is especially important to add some illumination. Lester, always the consummate filmmaker didn’t throw images and cuts at us willy-nilly, but actually adhered to the conventions of filmmaking (establishing shots, mediums, reverses, close-ups, etc.) by making it seem like he did anything but.

It’s brilliantly, beautifully orchestrated cinematic anarchy in all the purity and simplicity that great pictures are ultimately endowed with, allowing, of course for differing levels and perspectives to grow and to flow naturally and organically out of the mise-en-scene. Most extraordinarily, even though it's a movie set in a different time and shot 50 years ago, it feels as free and original and fresh as if it had been shot, as that great Beatles tune reminds us: Yesterday!

“A Hard Day’s Night” is available on a Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray via Alliance Films (Universal Home Entertainment, Canada). The new Blu-Ray release will disappoint some home videophiles since the source material seems no different that what appeared on the previous DVD and laserdisc releases. That said, Blu-Ray still makes anything and everything look better and “A Hard Day’s Night” is no exception. This recent Blu-Ray release also contains a decent clutch of extra materials, which are surprisingly worth watching (since most of them on most releases, I find, are not). Until a complete re-mastering (or better one) comes along, this will most certainly do.

PANDORUM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Derivative script & one awful performance, BUT dazzling direction.

Pandorum (2009) **1/2
dir. Christian Alvart
Starring: Ben Foster, Dennis Quaid, Antje Traus, Eddie Rouse
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Pandorum is a derivative celluloid gumbo of Alien, Event Horizon, The Descent and a few hundred other movies of a similar ilk. It's infused with some of the stupidest dialogue imaginable and the peformance of one of the picture's leads is so godawful, it's hard to believe he was once a good actor. And yet in spite of ALL this, the picture manages to succeed on a level of pure visceral thrills and the giddy directorial flourishes of Christian Alvart who energizes the proceedings with the kind of kid-in-a-sandbox joy that allows us the feeling of being invited into said sandbox to have one grand old time with him.

The plot is pretty straightforward. The Earth is a mess. A humungous spaceship with 1500 crew members is sent into deep space to another Earth-like planet. The journey is so long that several crews rotate in the ship's operation. When not at work, the crew members are shoved into icy pods where they live in a state of suspended animation.

Senior officer Dennis Quaid and a subordinate (Ben Foster) soon wake from their slumber, find themselves locked in a tiny room with no crew to greet them and no realize they have no way out. Eventually, Quaid stays behind to navigate while Foster makes his way through a heating duct and into the ship itself. Once out into the ship proper, Foster encounters a fetching Ninja-trained female soldier of the German persuasion (Antje Traue) and a kung-fu fighting Vietnamese crew member. Their mission is to get through the ship to reset the nuclear reactor in order to restore power to the ship, but first, they must fight a seemingly infinite army of bloodthirsty monsters who are suitably cool looking and one delightfully crazy cannibal (delectably played by Eddie Rouse). As well, they have to fight the "pandorum" - a deep-space disease that causes massive paranoia and psychotic behaviour.

Amidst several violent, terrifying set-pieces, they all learn to respect each other and as the dangerous journey ventures deeper into the bowels of the ship they all come to (Ugh!) understand each other.

Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya!

We've seen it all before, but this still works on a roller coaster ride level - the jolts of suspense and at times, utter horror, are thrown at us with style and aplomb. It's well photographed and, for the most part, Alvart's mise-en-scene lacks the confusing geography so often inherent in most other contemporary action thrillers and the pathetic herky-jerky incompetence of such boneheads as J. J. Abrams who continues to astonish with his inability to craft action scenes.

Most of the performances are terrific, too, but Dennis Quaid, looking a bit bloated, blotchy and disinterested, is completely in the let's-get-this-over-with-so-I-can-cash-my-cheque zone. That said, his sleepwalking seems perfectly in keeping with the picture's B-movie roots. In fact, Quaid almost appears to be turning into his generation's version of ex-Mr. Shirley Temple stalwart of 50s Bs, John Agar.

I can live with that! I do hope Mr. Quaid can.

There's even a surprise ending (kind of in the original Planet of the Apes zone) that genuinely worked on jaded-seen-it-all-old-me. When a by-the-numbers plot can actually deliver on an ending I have NOT already predicted within the first ten minutes of a picture (coupled with its considerable style, thrills and chills), I'm happy to recommend such a picture even to discriminating fans of such genre pieces.

The "Pandorum" Alliance DVD/Blu-Ray release comes replete with all the usual making-of extra features which will satisfy fans of this sort of thing, but I personally hate it when too much is given away about the filmmaking process - especially special effects. It takes away all the magic for me.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - COUNTDOWN TO CANADA DAY 2013 - What could possibly be more Canadian than an East Coast miner with a pickaxe hell-bent on vengeance?

My Bloody Valentine (1981) ***
dir. George Mihalka
Starring: Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, Neil Affleck, Cynthia Dale and Don Francks

Review By Greg Klymkiw

My Bloody Valentine is one of the best slasher movies ever made, and one of the primary reasons it’s so good is that it’s Canadian. Both of these assertions (proclamations, if you will) might be viewed with a mixture of skepticism and gales of derisive laughter. Well, doubt away and yuck-it-up to your heart’s content, I stand by this controversial claim – especially in light of all the remakes of 70s horror fouling our screens, and most notably the dull My Bloody Valentine 3-D.

Of all the slasher pictures from this period, this delectable Canuck blood spurter splashed onto the silver screen with an indigenous sense of time and place that contributed very significantly to the overall creepiness of the picture. Unlike the demonic, unstoppable, supernatural forces of Jason, Michael and Freddie, the central killer in My Bloody Valentine is a disgruntled miner who, due to the carelessness of some colleagues and mine officials, is trapped in a deadly mine explosion wherein he is eventually forced to devour the flesh of his deceased co-workers in order to survive.

As the accident happened on the night of a Valentine’s Day Dance at the Union Hall in town, our reluctant cannibal miner begins a reign of terror that forces the mining town of Valentine Bluffs to stop presenting a Valentine dance for 20 years. After two decades, however, the citizenry feel that it’s time to resurrect the annual love-fest, especially since the killer has been safely incarcerated in a loony bin.

Bad move. No sooner than you can spit-out a Valentine salutation or create a saliva rope whilst kissing your best gal (or guy), the mysterious miner – replete with super-scary helmet, goggle eyes, Darth-Vader-like breathing mask, adorned in blacks duds from head to toe and utilizing a variety of fine items like pick axes, nail guns, rope and other mining accoutrements, begins to dispatch a whole passel of townsfolk in some of the most grotesque, stomach-turning killings ever committed to film.

The killings are even more delightful now that they’ve been restored to their unrated, uncensored glory on the special edition DVD from Lionsgate. My favourites include death by tumble dryer, face-in-a-pot-of-boiling-hot-wiener-water (one of the greatest pot p.o.v. shots ever) and an impaling from the neck and out through the mouth on a gushing water pipe.

While some might argue that the abovementioned proceedings may seem stock, if not downright derivative of the earlier work of the likes of Mario (Twitch of the Death Nerve, Blood and Black Lace) Bava, Bob (Black Christmas) Clark and John (Halloween) Carpenter, the fact remains that there is absolutely no attempt to hide the fact that this is set IN Canada, IN a real mining town, IN Nova Scotia, IN a real mine and featuring an all-Canadian cast replete with unmistakably Canadian accents (including some obviously “local” extras).

This goes a long way to creating an experience that makes the genre’s situations and requirements richer and, dare I say it, more realistic. Not that the film is replete with the typically “quirky” Canadian casting – most of the young leads are suitably hunky and/or babe-o-licious (especially leading lady Lori Hallier), but they look especially appealing in their Canadian-hoser plaid, faded jeans, dirty caps and small town and decidedly (un)chic Woolco/K-Mart duds. (Though one young lady appears to be adorned in an angora sweater – Hubba! Hubba!)

That said, there are a number of supporting players who feel a bit more “quirky” including a John Candy look-alike fat guy who ends up being pretty tough and courageous – that’s definitely “Canadian”. And cool, too. (The only obvious non-Canadian thing is that Don Francks plays a sheriff – something Canucks do not really have presiding over the law and order of small towns.)



The way in which director George Mihalka uses his excellent locations is especially welcome. The small-town union hall, the Laundromat, the numerous signs proudly proclaiming the availability of Moosehead Beer and that dank, dark, creepy and VERY REAL mine all contribute to presenting a tale of terror with a real local flavour.

In scene after scene, Mihalka makes practical and imaginative use of everything real that’s available to him – certainly something every good filmmaker should do, but especially when directing a thriller. Hitchcock’s rule of thumb in terms of utilizing EVERYTHING that is naturally around you to generate thrills is exploited beautifully in this picture by both the script and Mihalka’s direction.

In addition to the great locations, both the art direction and costume design go a long way to creating a work that lives beyond the stock situations. As well, the cinematography is first-rate. Above ground, there’s a terrific, slightly over lit quality that captures every decrepit detail of the town and in the mine, the use of light, shadow and black is expertly rendered and adds considerably to the terror below.

At the end of the day (or night, if you will) it’s great that Lionsgate secured the rights to the original My Bloody Valentine from Paramount and expertly restored it to the glory originally envisioned by its makers. The especially cool thing is that these enhancements are JUST THAT – enhancements. My Bloody Valentine always felt like an original and stayed in one’s mind for over two decades. Now, it is in a much better form where it can shock, thrill and delight future generations of horror fans.

The original 1981 “My Bloody Valentine” is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Lionsgate Home Entertainment (Alliance/E-One).

SINISTER - BluRay and DVD Review By Greg Klymkiw

SINISTER occasionally feels familiar, but it's superbly directed. Following a down-on-his-luck alcoholic crime writer as he squares off with demons, the real kind as well as those haunting his psyche, indeed makes for one scary movie. As our hero's self-worth dwindles amidst supernatural shocks and an abundance of creepy psychological shivers, one wishes the script was up to the director's flourishes.

Sinister (2012) *** dir. Scott Derrickson
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Dalton Thompson, James Ransone, Michael Hall D'Addario, Clare Foley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Let's say you have this annoying habit of continually moving your family near sites of horrendous, violent crimes so you can more accurately write your true crime tomes. Given how disturbing this is to those you love, promises are made to the wife and kids that it won't happen again.

But old habits die hard.

So whaddya do? You go and move your family right smack dab INTO a house where something very, very evil once transpired. You don't tell them and hope, living in a small town, that they'll never find out.

Are you really that stupid? Or is it the screenplay that's a tad bereft of grey matter? Whichever one it is, there's no denying you're a sick puppy and someone's going to pay for your boneheadedness (or the script's).

You are, however, a writer fallen on hard times AND an alcoholic. Your actions are ultimately understandable. You want to recapture your former glory. You're sure this foul crime can be solved and that you're the man to do it. You want to listen to your wife's pleas that you give up writing and get a "real job", but you're an artist (of sorts) and you simply can't.

You need to get your mojo back.

Besides, if you didn't do what you just did, there wouldn't be a movie called Sinister which, in spite of the familiar and/or plot-hole-ridden script, still manages to be of the creepiest pictures of the year.

Why? Well, first and foremost, the central character is portrayed by the terrific Ethan Hawke, an actor who is becoming so much better with the ravages of time. Now at an age betraying some hard miles, Hawke is becoming the ultimate handsome, but grizzled anti-hero a la 70s actors who took all those wrong forks in the road to be part of a narrative fraught with urgency, desperation and a doomed, compulsively watchable quality. In fact, we pretty much guess where the writer and his family's going to end up, but it matters not - it's the ride that counts.

And yes, Sinister is a generally satisfying ride. Once Hawke and his family settle into the troubled domicile, it doesn't take long for bad shit to start happening. Especially creepy are the ancient A/V materials that keep mysteriously appearing - 8mm film reels and a projector.

What's on the reels is abominable.

Hawke can't get enough of watching the horrific images. Night after night, he belts back gallons of booze and sit transfixed as a series of violent deaths are unspooled. Alas, if any of his kids watch these images, the consequences will be dire. He doesn't quite know this yet, but in the footage, what he does know is what he sees - grim flashes of something not unlike . . . a demon.

This is not good.

Hell is about to break loose.

When it does, director Scott Derrickson, who has been wending his way though the flawed narrative and muting as many of its speed bumps as possible, delivers one shocker after another. Sinister made me jump out of my chair on numerous occasions when I first saw it on a big screen and it held up nicely on a second viewing. Happily, there weren't too many cheap scares, but the kind that are rooted in the pure, creepy crawler horror one ultimately expects from a top-flight genre picture.

Feel free to wear a pair or two of "Depends" in case you soil yourself.

I was glad I did.

"Sinister" is now available on BluRay and DVD via Alliance Films. The stunning HD transfer makes the most out the film's colour palette - especially the eerie grain on view in the 8mm footage in contrast to the "real-life" drabness of the setting. The extra features are definitely a treat. There are two excellent commentary tracks for the main feature. The best one is definitely Scott Derrickson who adds plenty of genuinely useful bits about the filmmaking process. The interesting one is with Derrickson and his co-writer where the emphasis is on story elements as they relate to a number of practical filmmaking elements. I was finally, not convinced the script was any better, but it was interesting to hear the perspective of the writers. The deleted scenes are the usual assortment of stuff that should have been cut, though you can watch them with Derrickson's commentary which provides added insight. A couple of dull, stock featurettes are thrown in for good measure. The BluRay combo comes with a downloadable digital copy.

If you're interested in purchasing Sinister, feel free to use the direct links below and you'll also be assisting with the overall maintenance of the site itself.

ZERO DARK THIRTY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Countdown to Oscar 2013 (Nominated Films from 2012 I Haven't Written About Until Now)

A SHADOW OVER AMERICA

ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012) ****
dir. Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Mark Strong, Jennifer Ehle, Kyle Chandler, Chris Pratt, James Gandolfini

Review By Greg Klymkiw

ZERO DARK THIRTY is one of the best directed films I've seen in recent years.

In painstaking and riveting detail, the movie unfurls the brave efforts of the CIA to orchestrate the assassination an unarmed man in his sleep. You know the type - a man who wasn't all that heavily guarded and lived with a whole bunch of women and children, a man who could have effortlessly been taken alive and tried as a war criminal or, for that matter, a common criminal; a man, who at least to my mind, appeared to believe in something - certainly something well beyond what most Western power-brokers believe in and finally, a man whose actions - if in fact there exists conclusive proof of his involvement in 9/11 and other criminal terrorism WITHIN widely accepted standards of jurisprudence - are not beyond what has already been committed a thousand-fold by corporate (or colonialist) imperialists who hide their money-grubbing Totalitarianism behind the tenets of democracy.

All that aside, ZERO DARK THIRTY boasts a rich and detailed screenplay by former war reporter Mark Boal that focuses upon Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA field worker who maintains a seeming passivity during her hunt for the aforementioned most hated man in the Western World.

Maya is a great character and it's great writing that generates this fascinating human being played with a skin-deep detachment by Chastain. I love the fact that we know NOTHING about her other than what we learn by her actions through the film.

This IS cinema.

Thank Christ she doesn't have a significant other. If she does, it matters little to her. Then again, Maya's actions speak louder than words - there's no way in Hell she'd let some stupid boyfriend, husband or even fuck-buddy get in the way of her work.

Does she, perchance, have a mother or father? Do they love her? Did they beat her? Did they chain her up in a basement cold storage locker? Did Momma look the other way when Daddy paid special visits to Maya's bedroom? Did they force her to worship on Sundays? I have no idea and I'm eternally grateful to Boal and Bigelow that they didn't bore the fuck out of me with any such nonsense.

Besides, what's cool about her - REALLY cool - is that as written and acted, Maya's passivity is deceiving. Beneath the calm and even her initial doubts about utilizing torture to gain needed information, Maya is only passive on the surface.

Just below the downy white flesh of Ms. Chastain is a roiling, scheming and extremely intense young woman who is not only formidably active, but ultimately instrumental in successfully pursuing her quarry. It's a great role that could only be tackled by the very best of actresses (which Chastain most certainly is).

That said, I must confess to you my odd fantasy involving either Kate Hepburn or Roz Russell in this part - somehow ported from their early years through a stitch in time to take on the Maya role.

But, I digress.

Chastain's genuinely great!

She is. of course, bouyed beautifully by Kathryn Bigelow's dazzling direction. The Academy Award winning director always has the camera in the right place, the right time and with the right composition. This is a good thing when you're making any movie, but especially one set against torture, espionage and war. Most contemporary directors haven't grasped the idea of using CLASSICAL movie making as the springboard into dangerous and exciting cinematic territory. This, of course, is because most of them are no good. Not so with Bigelow. She tackles the narrative with all skill and artistry great filmmakers possess.

Basically, what we've got in ZERO DARK THIRTY is a story we all know the ending to.

Ah, but even familiar tales are always worth telling when both the perspective and the ride itself are as unique and thrilling as Bigelow's work here proves to be. Frankly, while I appreciated her work in THE HURT LOCKER, it's not a film I found especially engaging. Until ZERO DARK THIRTY, my favourite Bigelow remained her unrelentingly terrifying vampire thriller NEAR DARK. Her command of the medium and a deft touch with generating suspense in that picture are finally (and genuinely) surpassed here. ZERO DARK THIRTY is a film that finally even manages to overtake the Grandfather of all movies we knew the ending to before seeing it (and where IT made NO difference at all).

Fred Zinnemann's 70s classic thriller, a film adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's best-selling book The Day of the Jackal follows a failed assassination attempt upon French President Charles de Gaulle. It's a cooly detached portrait of a hired killer pursuing his quarry and a cop pursuing HIS quarry, the hired killer. Though we knew de Gaulle survived all attempts on his life, Zinnemann's meticulous direction rendered a chilling and suspenseful motion picture experience (that holds up to this very day). Like Zinnemann's relentless killer and cop, Bigelow focuses a similar intensity upon her special bird of prey with the kind of classic aplomb and downright great craft that's so lacking in contemporary cinema.

Now, unless you've been residing in a monastic cloister, you'd be the only one NOT to know that ZERO DARK THIRTY is the true tale of how al-Qaeda's head honcho Osama bin Laden was doggedly pursued by the CIA over a ten-year period following the events of 9/11 and how he was eventually assassinated in 2011 by America's brave Navy SEALs who stormed a home within a Pakistani compound filled with mostly sleeping women and children.

And you also must know, there's simply no two ways about it; that ZERO DARK THIRTY is pure, unadulterated cinema of the highest order. Utilizing a series of composite characters based on real people and events, all derived from extensive research and access to a variety of both materials and perspectives, it's finally all the details - some minute, others not so - that keep us gripped to the edge of our seats. The movie making is first-rate!

For me, though, there is still a problem with the whole enterprise.

Boal and Bigelow maintain an admirable sense of detachment to this story - not, of course, on the visceral or kinetic levels where the picture infuses you with continual jolts of electricity, but on a moral plateau. Maya's intensity and belief in the pursuit of her goal is so unquestionable that we're with her all the way. We know she (and America) did indeed succeed in the goal of finding bin Laden, but while watching the movie, all Maya's struggles, setbacks, disappointments and eventually, triumphs are so expertly handled that we find ourselves rooting for her in ways that are finally not unlike those ascribed to the very best genre pictures.

In spite of this, or maybe BECAUSE of it, something very foul keeps sticking in my craw.

First of all, let it be said that the movie is not even close to the idiotic levels of racism and propagandistic tub-thumping on display in the barely competent Ben Affleck-directed abomination ARGO. ZERO DARK THIRTY is not just a good movie, it might actually be a great movie, BUT is it, like many great films (far more than many wish to admit), pure propaganda? Is Bigelow akin to the likes of Leni Riefenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein, both of whom did go on to brilliantly, excitingly and artistically extol the values of butchers? (Hitler and Stalin respectively.)

Are we to blindly, unconsciously accept that the "butcher" in ZERO DARK THIRTY just had to do what had to be done?

And who, exactly, is the butcher? It's not Maya. She's doing her job, which is, ultimately her duty. She's not just "following orders". She's got her own agendas and needs. The real butchers are the very butchers at war with anyone or anything in the way of their ravenous need to accumulate wealth. After all, American foreign policy since the post-WWII period cannot in all reality be ascribed to one specific Totalitarian ruler (or even several). The country's leaders are (and have been through most of the 20th Century) little more than puppets for the real puppet masters. Call these string-pullers what you will - corporations, big money, the New World Order of the One World Government persuasion; they all add up to the same thing - an invisible enemy that flouts international rules of war with the same tactics employed by terrorists.

For the life of me, though, I simply can't escape the kind of queasy, sickening feeling the aforementioned "narrative" elements of ZERO DARK THIRTY gave me and continue to deliver. In fact, the movie makes me think that it's possibly even a big cheat on Bigelow's part NOT to take a moral stand somewhere within the proceedings.

Or is she taking a moral stand?

Better yet, is it submerged - sitting there and waiting for US to find it?

I think it might be a bit of both. The final attack upon bin Laden's compound is tremendously, pulse-poundingly suspenseful. Shooting through the creepy, ghostly puke-green night vision goggles goes a long way to putting you on edge. Bigelow's compositions and camera moves are initially so stealthy that virtually every sight, sound and unexpected motion jangles our nerves. This is no cavalry charge. Bigelow shoots the sequence like an animal stalking its prey and as we follow the NavySEALS deeper and deeper into the interior of the compound it's like we're ploughing headlong into chambers of doom.

This achieves two things. First of all, it's just plain fucking scary - especially if you're happily ignorant of what precisely went on in the compound (as I was), save for knowing the bin Laden was assassinated. Secondly, there's that strange thing that happens when you're watching something where you DO KNOW the final outcome. Even though you're watching a fictionalized rendering of real events, a part of you begins to hear the women and children crying and the acceleration towards the ultimate action and there's this part of you - either your own sense of humanity or that which the movie rips out of you and for a moment or two just before shots ring out and a pool of blood begins to slowly creep across the floor, you have this sense that maybe, just maybe we won't be seeing what amounts to a cold blooded assassination. Even while this goes through your mind, you know it's not going to happen that way and you're overwhelmed with incredible sadness over the act itself and the very horrendous state of the world.

I personally feel Bigelow IS taking a moral stand here, but is also leaving plenty of ambiguity throughout the film and even this sequence that it's nigh impossible to forget the overall effect this has upon you and that the movie has delivered something you might well be wrestling with forever.

Are we then to accept that Bigelow's "objectively" extolling the virtues of torture, of illegally entering foreign territories to wage war and/or commit assassinations? I hope not, but the movie doesn't slam it's gavel down hard enough on that point.

Even now, i continue to have questions about this for myself. Am I the only one who feels this way about the picture? Am I naive to think it could have been presented another way and still achieve Bigelow's seemingly desired effect?

Am I, as an audience member and human being just supposed to accept we are witnessing an entertainment detailing assassination as a justifiable means to an end? (And we MUST not forget that this IS ultimately an "entertainment".)

And if we accept this as a justifiable means to an end, what is that end? An end to what? An end to the thousands upon thousands upon millions of innocent people in the Middle East (and for good measure, Korea, Vietnam, Central and South America, etc.) who have already been and continue to be murdered and tortured either directly or indirectly by America?

And for what? The preservation of democratic values? (Yes, an oxymoron if there ever was one.)

Or is it for Revenge?

Justice?

Oil?

Is it enough for the film - ANY film - to leave me with these questions?

Is this what possibly makes it great?

The fuck if I really know, but something tells me that YES, it IS the questions that will ensure the film's eventual masterpiece status. And like all master filmmakers prove, we're not asking these questions while the film is rolling. That all mostly happens when the movie is over.

And is the film propaganda? Yes, I do think it is, but not necessarily on the sledgehammer side of the equation.

In a recent Facebook conversation with the brilliant writer Anne Billson, she astutely notes:

"I concluded that presenting the facts (including torture and assassination) without any sort of moral editorialising (or jingoism and triumphalism, for that matter) was the only way to tell this story and the opposite of cheating. I think it's a very brave film, and while people who condemn it for "endorsing" torture are missing the point (unless you think showing something is automatically an "endorsement" of it), the viewer's reactions are as much a part of the experience as the film itself, and thus negative ones are as important and necessary as positive ones."

Billson's comment about how some might believe that the act of merely showing something could be seen as an endorsement of it, is a point in her own astute assessment of the movie that hit me like a tsunami. I'm extremely grateful to her for bringing this up because it forced me to assess my own beliefs in this regard and realize that YES, I do think - in some cases there will always be an element of "endorsement" - conscious or not on the part of both the artist AND the viewer. I'd go further to say that the very act of making the film (almost ANY film, really) is indeed infused with propagandistic elements. I'm also not saying it's "bad" or "good", but just the way it is.

What's most apparent about this genuinely important and powerful film is that Bigelow is NOT wearing her heart on her sleeve.

And neither is her movie.

In spite of this, it's a picture with a lot of heart and in these terrible times we live in, heart might be what's needed most.

ZERO DARK THIRTY is nominated for 5 Oscars - all of which are highly deserving: Best Picture, Actress (Jessica Chastain), Original Screenplay, Film Editing and Sound Editing. To not be nominated for Directing, however, is a disgrace (almost as disgraceful as how Paul Thomas Anderson's THE MASTER has been given an ignoble short shrift in this horse race called Oscar). ZERO DARK THIRTY is in wide release in Canada through Alliance Films and in the USA via Columbia/Sony. And you DO need to see it. Preferably on a big screen in a real movie theatre.

GREG KLYMKIW'S 10 BEST BLU-RAY & DVD RELEASES OF 2012 - MEGA POST WITH FULL REVIEWS OF ALL DISCS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

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