EUTHANIZER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Creepy, chilly existential male angst @ TIFF 2017

Euthanasia: a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

Euthanizer (2017)
Dir. Teemu Nikki
Starring: Matti Onnismaa, Hannamaija Nikander, Jari Virman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

So, when I first decided to see this movie, I did some simple math. I didn't read any press releases, reviews or the blurb in the TIFF 2017 programme guide. All I knew is that it was from Finland and that it was called Euthanizer. I suspected, based on these addends, that the sum might well yield a product worth seeing, but little did I realize it would bestow a picture that, by its end-title credits would have me soaring, steeped in the joy I so seldom experience these days - the sheer, buoyant jubilance that I have indeed just witnessed the very thing that made me first love movies, more than anything, in the first place.

Though Euthanizer is not a period piece, its aesthetic feels gloriously in line with the existential angst (primarily of the male persuasion) that so defined the cinema of the 70s - notably the work of Karel Reizs (The Gambler), James Toback (Fingers), Peter Yates (The Friends of Eddie Coyle), Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter) and pretty much anything by Werner Herzog from this nasty, tough-minded decade of cinematic perfection.

Veijo (Matti Onnismaa) is a self-employed mechanic who moonlights as a more cost-effective alternative for those needing to euthanize their pets. If the animals are small, he's rigged his car for carbon monoxide poisoning, and for larger beasts, he takes them out into the woods and shoots them in the head. When people bring him their pets, he looks deep into the eyes of the animals - it's as if he can see into their souls, hear their thoughts and feel their pain. He then admonishes the owners. He knows that they are the cause of their animals' suffering and he uncannily assesses their failings as human beings. Even those who purport to not hear Veijo know deep-down that he speaks the truth.

His own father lies paralyzed in a palliative ward, taken care of by a compassionate nurse (Hannamaija Nikander) who slowly comes to admire and even fall in love with the distant Veijo. This is a couple inextricably linked by their proximity to suffering, dying and death. They're made for each other.

One day, Veijo is visited by a loathsome racist proletarian who belongs to a right-wing, White Supremacist group called "The Sons of Finland". The racist wants Veijo to put his dog down. Veijo agrees, takes the scumbag's money, but then chooses to keep the dog alive. There is no reason to kill this dog. It's vibrant, alert and deserves to live. Veijo and the dog become as inseparable as he and the nurse are.

Alas, this is Finland. There can be no happy endings here. An act of violence shatters Veijo's life and he has only one choice. Humanity, and Veijo is nothing if not humane, is something with two extremes twixt the shades of grey.

Vengeance must be exacted, but a price will be paid.

Euthanizer is, to be sure, a film of grace. It is also deeply shocking, insanely romantic, sickeningly horrifying, bleakly/blackly funny and a work of complex layers. It provides no easy answers, no pat resolutions, but when you attempt to catch your breath upon its knockout ending, you know - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that you've seen a motion picture that's seared itself upon your soul and it's never, ever going to leave you. It'll be there forever and it's not going away - at least not until you're six feet under.

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

Euthanizer plays at TIFF 2017

THE DEATH OF STALIN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2017 serves up lame political satire.

Steve Buscemi delivers the performance of a lifetime.

The Death of Stalin (2017)
Dir. Armando Iannucci
Scr. Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin, Peter Fellows
Nvl. Fabien Nury
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Adrian Mcloughlin, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Andrea Riseborough, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Paul Whitehouse, Dermot Crowley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Since he murdered 10 million of my people in Ukraine during the Holodomor, one of the most horrendous genocides of the 20th century, my pump was primed for a glorious satire about the final gasps of life from the Georgian-Russian butcher Joseph Stalin. Unfortunately, the scattershot, overwrought affair that is The Death of Stalin did so little for me as a movie, my heart sank more than a few times while it unspooled.

Not that there aren't a few laughs to be wrought from this manic look at the bushy-moustachioed scumbag-dictator during his last night on earth and the ensuing backdoor power grabs by his cabinet. Most of the guffaws come courtesy of Steve Buscemi as a malevolently wise-acre Nikita Khrushchev. This might be the performance of a lifetime - he's a hurricane-like force amidst a movie that otherwise suffers from massive tonal uncertainty.

The best satire is played dead-straight, but too often director Iannucci resorts to pitching things as "spoof" or worse, like some TV sitcom. The whole affair seems little more than Weekend at Bernie's, albeit set against the backdrop of the Kremlin in 1953 as opposed to the Hamptons in the late 80s. The film is not without some mirth at the expense of the victims of Stalin's purges - God knows why, but seeing Russians following ridiculously exhaustive death lists and summarily executing hapless "enemies of the state" elicited more than a few knee-slaps from this fella. I also loved Jeffrey Tambor's rendering of Malenkov, the ineffectually lunkheaded figurehead propped up to replace Der Russkie Führer.

Alas, the movie just proved to be exhausting. It tries too hard to be funny and when we can see those seams in the fabric we're constantly focusing on the flaws of the designer clothing hanging upon a massive markdown rack at Winner's. As such, we're indelicately wrenched out of the forward thrust. Indelicacy in a satire is just fine, but better it be inherent in the subject matter and characters rather than only within the structure of the work itself.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **½ Two-and-a-Half Stars

The Death of Stalin plays at TIFF 2017.

Les enfants terribles - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Melville and Cocteau make for strange bedfellows in this oddball 1950 effort at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and, via the Criterion Collection DVD.

Can too much Cocteau be too much? Perhaps.

Les enfants terribles (1950)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Scr. Jean Cocteau & Melville
Starring: Nicole Stéphane, Édouard Dermit, Jacques Bernard, Renée Cosima

Review By Greg Klymkiw

God knows I love Jean-Pierre Melville, but sitting through his gun-for-hire directorial effort Les infants terribles is a bit like what a colonoscopy used to feel like before they knocked you out with happy drugs. In fact, it's not dissimilar to suffering through any movie directed by the lumberingly precious Jean Cocteau (Le Sang d'un poète, La Belle et la Bête, Orphée). Well, surprise-surprise, Les infants terribles is based upon the novel of the same title (and co-screenwritten) by Jean Cocteau. Even more appalling is that Cocteau himself, with a nasal, mannered delivery, narrates the movie with his sarcastic, obvious, on-point jackhammered prose.

At times, the movie feels like a Gallic-tinged Howard Hawks comedy with rapid-fire delivery and a score comprised mainly of Vivaldi, which, I'll admit, makes it sound more engaging than it actually is.

But no, it's often painful.

That, however, might be the point and in spite of often detesting the movie, I found it compulsively watchable - mostly because of Melville's direction and in spite of Cocteau's writing (not so much the narrative and dialogue, but the aforementioned narration, which often serves to rip us out of the picture's forward thrust).

Things begin well enough in the opening scenes at an all-male Catholic school where a bunch of boisterous lads roughhouse after a fresh snowfall. The dashing pretty-boy Dargelos (Renée Cosima) is leading the charge and at one point, he hurls a snowball tightly packed round a stone at the fey, aquiline-featured Paul (Édouard Dermit). Smacking him in the chest, it winds him to such an extent that he crashes to the ground, rendered unconscious and suffering from bruised ribs.

Melville's direction during this sequence is dazzling. We feel like we're in the midst of a war-like skirmish on the fields of Flanders and it's as sprightly and engaging an opening as one could hope for in any movie.

Eventually we're ensconced in the cramped middle-class quarters where Paul lives with his sister Élisabeth (Nicole Stéphane) and their infirm Mother (Maria Cyliakus). It's here where the film's annoyance-meter ramped up for me.

The picture plunges us into the obsessive, seemingly incestuous sibling rivalry/love and the pair engage in a series of tête-à-têtes that eventually reveal themselves to be an ongoing, deep-seededly perverse game. Paul is ordered by the doctor to stay home and in bed and Élisabeth becomes caregiver to both him and his Mother. Needless to say, the claustrophobia of the situation allows for plenty of nasty game-playing. Obsession rules the day - Paul is obsessed with pretty-boy Dargelos and misses him desperately and one of his school chums, Gérard (Jacques Bernard) visits regularly. He's obsessed with both the brother and sister and their games, but he also provides solace to Paul with news about the naughty Dargelos.

Things perk up when Mom dies (a magnificent cut and shot, pure Melville, reveals her to us and the characters). Enter the beautiful Agathe (also played by Renée Cosima) who Paul falls madly in love with since she's a dead ringer for his beloved naughty pal Dargelos. And yes, it's here where the movie hits its stride and ploughs us into the kind of madly delirious melodrama that Melville did so beautifully in the much-better and genuinely great melodrama Le silence de la mer (1949).

It's here wherein Élisabeth becomes so terrified that her brother will eventually marry Agathe and leave her alone (and hence, without the madly incessant game-playing) that what the nutty sister does next is sheer, delicious nastiness.

And you know what? As much as I profess(ed) to hate this movie, I must humbly, shamefully admit (in spite of Cocteau's influence) that I've now seen the picture three times. Well, like the old adage goes, "third time's the charm" and I find myself wanting to see the movie again. What a journey!

Vive Melville!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Les enfants terribles screens at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in the summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and is available for home consumption via the Criterion Collection DVD which includes a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, an audio commentary by Gilbert Adair, interviews with producer Carole Weisweiller, actors Nicole Stéphane and Jacques Bernard and assistant director Claude Pinoteau, "Around Jean Cocteau", a 2003 short video by filmmaker Noel Simsolo discussing Cocteau and Melville’s creative relationship, the theatrical trailer, a gallery of behind-the-scenes stills and a booklet featuring a Gary Indiana essay, a tribute by Stéphane, an excerpt from Rui Nogueira’s "Melville on Melville" and drawings by Cocteau.

Revised and Expanded review of SHE'S ALLERGIC TO CATS - Fantasia 2016 Review By Greg Klymkiw at Electric Sheep Magazine - Link to new review enclosed below

She's Allergic To Cats (2016)
Dir. Michael Reich
Starring: Mike Pinkney, Sophia Kinski

Review By Greg Klymkiw

An all-new expanded review at Electric Sheep Magazine of this endlessly dazzling, deliriously perverse and rapturously romantic comedy about a part time dog groomer who dreams of being a filmmaker by remaking Brian De Palma's Carrie with cats.

Read the full expanded review HERE.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ****

She's Allergic To Cats enjoyed its World Premier at Fantasia 2016

WAR DOGS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lame Arms Dealer Shenanigans Lacks Focus

War Dogs (2016)
Dir. Todd Phillips
Scr. Phillips, Jason Smilovic, Stephen Chin
Starring: Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Ana de Armas, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Pollak

Review By Greg Klymkiw

War Dogs is about assholes. That the picture is based upon real-life assholes certainly takes it out of the usual territory of male mayhem director Todd (The Hangover) Phillips has specialized in to date. Alas, aside from a knockout performance from Jonah Hill and superb support courtesy of Bradley Cooper and Kevin Pollak, the picture never quite lives up to its potential to explore the savagery of international arms dealers.

From an article, then full length book ("Arms and the Dudes") by investigative reporter Guy Lawson, the screenplay cobbled together by Phillips and his co-scribes Jason Smilovic and Stephen Chin never takes flight into the territory of black humour and/or outright satire that might have been its saving grace, especially since it never really works as a straight-up drama, nor a comedy.

Charting the story of old school chums Efraim Diveroli (Hill) and David Packouz (Teller) who team up to secure government contracts to provide arms to the U.S. military, the film reduces most of their actions to cliches. Packouz is a loser facing the responsibilities of being a husband and father who is swept up by his flamboyant buddy into the legal, but morally dubious world of supplying implements of destruction. When the temptation of riches beyond their wildest dreams dangles before them, they acquiesce to illegal activities which will ultimately lead to their downfall. Though fact-based, we've seen stories like this before and a movie like War Dogs needed far more than the derivative bargain-basement Scorsese-like voiceovers and montages driving it.

The film required genuine savagery. Perhaps it even needed to go into Robert Altman-like M*A*S*H territory to make its protagonists even vaguely understandable. If anything, the film seems like bargain-basement Todd Phillips. A lame fact-based version of The Hangover films with arms dealers replacing the hapless clowns of the aforementioned comedy trilogy just isn't very compelling.

Jonah Hill, however, continues to dazzle and display his remarkable range and gifts as an actor. He attacks his role with ferocious, maniacal and nasty glee that injects considerable life into the otherwise blah proceedings. Bradley Cooper pops up as a slime ball arms dealer infused with an oddly friendly malevolence and Kevin Pollak lights the screen up with both humour and slime whenever the dry cleaning mogul he plays shows up.

The entire domestic subplot involving Packouz's wife (Ana de Armas) is a drag, sucking the life out of the proceedings and once the story takes genuinely dark turns, the movie continues to go through the motions, doing very little to shock or move us.

By the end of the film, we're left with a perfunctory wrap-up of the actual events, but never do we feel like we've waded in the utter hell of the world these two men crawled through. They're ultimately less than assholes, they're slugs and vipers and how we're supposed to feel about either of them is finally one big question mark. We don't have to "relate" to them or even empathize with them. It might have been nice if we could have even mildly revelled in their sheer scumbaggery, but the movie doesn't even afford us that one meagre pleasure.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two-Stars

War Dogs is in wide release via Warner Brothers.

SUICIDE SQUAD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - David Ayer Delivers Pure Comic Book Joy

Suicide Squad (2016)
Dir. David Ayer
Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Viola Davis, Cara Delevingne,
Karen Fukuhara, Jay Hernandez, Jai Courtney, Joel Kinnaman,
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Adam Beach, Aidan Devine

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Oh, to be a kid again! What pure, unadulterated joy! And I have writer-director David Ayer to thank for this happy blast into my past. Having discovered both DC and Marvel in the 60s, their true golden age, my memories were tweaked by Ayer's snappy, colourful, darkly funny, occasionally nasty and wholly exuberant dive into everything that made comics so special for me.

Suicide Squad has cool heroes, even cooler villains, high stakes for the world of the film (and its characters) and most of all, it's infused with sacrifice, sentiment and a big heart. It's also gorgeously shot, snappily edited, overflowing with a great selection of immortal classic songs, an original score that pounds with power and replete with a juicy ensemble cast.

Seriously.

What's not to like? Or, for that matter, love?

We all remember that Superman died like a Jesus made of steel at the end of Zack Snyder's epic Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and this is the milieu greeting the American government at the beginning of Ayer's film. Sans Christ Kent's powerful alter-ego, the powers-that-be are quaking in their boots that alien hordes and super villains will wreak havoc upon the earth.

Tough military strategist babe Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has an answer - collect the nastiest incarcerated super villains and offer them reduced prison sentences in exchange for fighting on the side of all that is good. The Pentagon balks, but eventually, even the most vocal balking General (Aidan Devine) has his mind changed with the advent of annihilation at the hands of an ancient witch.

It doesn't take long before we get a comic book remake of The Dirty Dozen - one that still manages to resonate with freshness and originality. The simple idea of villains/criminals being used to fight evil drives the picture and Ayer's wonkily wonderful script offers up a fun first third which provides lively origins for the various criminals who will make up the suicide squad of super heroes.

What a team!

Will Smith's Deadshot is a hit man with a conscience, Boomerang (Jai Courtney) is an Aussie psychopath handy with blades and the Down Under implement he's named after, Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) the mutant half-man, half crocodile has a mordant wit to match his massive appetite for humans and crocodiles, El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) turns into a human flame thrower when he gets riled up, Katana (Karen Fukuhara) is the lethal samurai with a sword which holds her late husband's spirit within it, the very cool SlipKnot (a great Adam Beach, but sadly underused) and last, but not least:

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie).

Harley via Robbie's nutzoid performance comes close to stealing the show, but that honour is ultimately reserved for Jared Leto as the suave, giggling madman the Joker - Harley's lover and the man responsible for transforming her (via shock treatment no less) from a prison psychiatrist into a highly skilled and dangerous psychopath. Together, this loving couple of wackos rival Mickey and Mallory Knox, Sailor Ripley and Lula Fortune and, lest we forget, Bonnie and Clyde - all rolled into one.

Have I mentioned how to-the-heavens sexy she is? A deadly sexpot with a potty mouth who's handy with firearms and a baseball bat - she's as sex-drenched a film character as they come. The one rival in the ultra-sexy department is June Moone (Cara Delevingne), the honey-glazed archeologist babe who becomes possessed by the arch-villainess The Enchantress, an ages-old evil superpower bent upon the world's destruction. (Seeing The Enchantress writhe in front of her technicolor doomsday machine like some Paul Verhoeven-imagined pole dancer will inspire erections and/or love-juice-drenched putty-tats to rival those that Robbie inspires as Harley.) And no wonder the squad's team leader, the "mortal" ace soldier Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) is all hot and bothered. He's madly in love with June Moone, but sickened he'll have to kill her when she's in witch enchantress mode.

Given the insane number of characters the film must juggle, Ayer pulls off the impossible and creates individuals we like, love and care about. Damn, even The Joker is pretty goddamn loveable. (Oh, and bothering to compare Leto with the late Heath Ledger is a mug's game. They're both great and different enough that comparing the characters/performances is virtually in apples and oranges territory.)

The action scenes are skilfully staged - perhaps a few too many closeups and rapid-fire cuts for my taste - but there isn't a single shot less than perfect thanks to one of my favourite contemporary cinematographers Roman Vasyanov. He's obviously one of Ayer's favourites since this is the third film they've worked on together.

David Ayer is one of contemporary cinema's great treasures. He directed one of the new century's best crime pictures (Harsh Times), one of the best cop pictures since the 70s (End of Watch) and one of the best war pictures in decades (Fury). With Suicide Squad, he's made a superhero picture that's up there with the best of the best (all three Sam Raimi Spiderman pictures, plus Zack Snyder's Man of Steel and Batman v Superman).

Ayer's also a great screenwriter. Lest we forget he delivered scripts for Training Day, Dark Blue and The Fast and the Furious. His writing is tough, uncompromising and often gritty to the max. He's also got a terrific sense of humour which serves him well. Most of all, he's got considerable heart. There's a sequence towards the film's final bloody climax when the heroes assemble in a bar to assess their lives and situation. Reminiscent of the great moments in the Mexican whorehouse followed by the bloodbath in Peckinpah's western masterpiece The Wild Bunch, Ayer plumbs the humanity of criminality in the face of evil.

It's here where we realize that David Ayer is the real thing and so is his movie.

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

Suicide Squad is in wide release via Warner Brothers.

SHE'S ALLERGIC TO CATS - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw: **** 4 Feature Debut

Can a schlub video artist get to home plate with a mega-babe?

She's Allergic To Cats (2016)
Dir. Michael Reich
Starring: Mike Pinkney, Sonja Kinski

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Every so often, I see a film that reminds me of the joy I experienced during those halcyon days when I produced a whack of no-to-low-budget feature films. The accent was always on the love of cinema, innovation and most of all, cool shit that I and my colleagues would be happy to pay money to see ourselves. Given our collective cinematic predilections, our only nod to "marketplace" was knowing there had to be whack-jobs like us "out there".

My personal credo was thus: If you're making a movie for very little money, it better goddamn well be something that puts you and the film itself on a map. Impersonal "calling card" films had only two results: Making something competent enough that you might end up in regular network series television or worse; not being able to overcome the meagre production value and generating a movie that nobody would want.

She's Allergic To Cats made me happier than happy. From the opening frames to the magnificent cut from a hilariously poignant final image to the first of the end title cards, I found the picture endlessly dazzling, deliriously perverse and rapturously romantic. This is exactly the kind of first feature which an original filmmaker should generate. Writer-director Michael Reich boldly announces his presence with a friendly fuck-you attitude, a great sense of humour and a visual style that should make some veteran directors be ashamed of their by the numbers camera jockey moves.

Though there is no official genre called "schlubs who get to successfully seduce babes", She's Allergic To Cats would definitely be leading the charge if such a thing did officially exist - it's kind of like a Woody Allen picture on acid through the lens of wonky, nutty 80s video art.

Are you a schlub? Don't worry. Babes await you.

Mike Pinkney, the actor, plays Mike Pinkney, the lead character - a schlub extraordinaire who works a day job as a dog groomer and in his off hours, makes retro-styled video art and/or endlessly watches the horrendous, compulsively watchable 70s TV movie with John Travolta, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. These viewings include Mike eating sweet, unhealthy breakfast cereals. His home is also disgustingly infested with rats who seem to devour everything - from bananas to condoms. The landlord's only solution is to eventually "look up" a solution on Wikipedia.

Mike's dream is to make a feature film homage to Brian De Palma's Carrie - with CATS!!! His producer thinks it's the stupidest idea he's every heard. Mike is dejected and persistent all at the same time. Amidst the slacker/McJob existence he leads, Mike miraculously hits it off with Cora (Sonja Kinski - Nastassja's daughter, Klaus's granddaughter) a mega-babe who happily agrees to a date.

Here, director Reich deserves to win some manner of official accolade for creating the most depraved "meet-cute" in cinema history. All I will say is that it involves the incompetent clipping of a dog's nails on the quick, causing them to bleed.

The entire love story is mediated through Mike's filmmaking/video-art perspective. The result is a chiaroscuro-like melange of garish "video" colours, cheesy (though gorgeous) dissolves and plenty of sexy video tracking errors.

Though the film's final actions can be seen from a mile away, "surprise" is hardly the point. There's a sad and deeply moving inevitability to where things go. Reich achieves the near-impossible. We laugh with his main character, we laugh at him and finally, we're given a chance to weep for him.

Yes, on many levels, She's Allergic to Cats is a head-film extraordinaire, but it has heart and soul. This is something of a miracle. Then again, this should come as no surprise. Getting the film made must have been a miracle and what Reich's efforts have yielded is nothing less than revelatory.

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

She's Allergic To Cats enjoys its World Premiere at FANTASIA 2016

AS THE GODS WILL - FANTASIA 2016 - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - Daruma head explosions

As The Gods Will (2016)
Dir. Takeshi Miike
Starring: Shôta Sometani, Ryûnosuke Kamiki, Rirî Furankî

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The ridiculously prolific Takeshi Miike generates a blood-spattered Lewis Carroll-like fantasy from the manga by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akeji Fujimura in which a trio of high school students need to outwit a few bizarre entities in order to survive. The first episode is a truly hilarious and vicious adventure involving a not-to-bright daruma doll playing red-light-green-light with a classroom full of adolescents.

Any student caught moving in the daruma's gaze results in their head exploding. Needles to say, there are plenty of opportunities for Miike to focus on cerebellum-popping carnage. Head explosions never overstay their welcome. Unfortunatelty, a few other elements, do.

Alas, the film grinds oppressively after this terrific opening as our hapless heroes are pursued by a huge "waving cat, amongst other other grotesqueries. There's a kind of live-action video gaming quality to the proceedings and things just seem to go on and on for what seems like an eternity.

At four minutes shy of two hours, "eternity" seems to be the operative word here.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two Stars

As the Gods Will enjoys its Canuck premiere at Fantasia 2016.

THE INTERIOR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - "Office Space" Meets "Deliverance" Meets "Repulsion" Meets "Willow Creek" Meets "Fight Club" Meets "Repo Man" Meets "Billy Liar" Meets "O Lucky Man!" in this creepy, hilarious, terrifying, original & potential cult classic, a very promising Canuck First-Feature by Trevor Juras - TADFF 2015

Hope springs eternal in the young man's breast.
New Beginnings. New Job. New Boss. New Horizons.

The Interior (2015)
Dir. Trevor Juras
Prd. Peter Kuplowsky
Starring: Patrick McFadden, Delphine Roussel, Hyun-Jin Kim, Andrew Hayes,
Lucas Mailing, Ryan Austin, Shaina Silver-Baird, Jake Beczala

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I hope not to oversell the subtle, albeit glorious charms of The Interior, but when I see a movie as bold and original as this one, it's hard not to. Let me say, right off the bat, though, that writer-director Trevor Juras has broken a big rule in storytelling that not only works beautifully, but warms the cockles of my heart because this particular approach is so rooted to my personal peccadilloes as both a critic and film producer. For anyone who cares, my production of Guy Maddin's Careful had a deliciously insane narrative rule-breaker (among a shitload, really) that's not unlike the one employed by Juras in this brilliant black comedy/horror thriller.

Though I was pleased this film reminded me of several films, this is not to say Juras employs by-rote geek-homages, but that his film made me think positively about it in the historical context of such disparate items as Office Space/Silicon Valley (knee-slappingly funny white-collar shenanigans), Deliverance (creepy-ass shit in the deep woods), Repulsion/The Tenant (loneliness and insanity converging to create horror), Willow Creek (sheer terror in a tent), Fight Club (eating food with one's digits directly from the fridge), Repo Man (a mordantly hilarious and realistic blend of workplace strangeness with, uh, just plain cult-movie strangeness), Billy Liar (the famous Brit New Wave rendering of a young man with "fantasies") and O Lucky Man! (the bizarre adventures of a coffee salesman played by Malcolm McDowell).

For a first feature to get an old curmudgeon like me to put its director's name, Trevor Juras, in a pantheon that includes Guy Maddin, Mike Judge, John Boorman, Roman Polanski, Bobcat Goldthwait, David Fincher, Alex Cox, John Schlesinger and Lindsay Anderson, is indeed a heart-felt pleasure.

How's that for an oversell?

Well, screw it. This movie gave me so much pleasure, I can't help myself.

Things get off to a rip-snortingly deadpan start. Yes, "rip-snortingly deadpan" might seem like an oxymoron, but that's just the kind of picture The Interior is. It's a leave it or lump it affair, but if you leave it, you lose (and potentially display your crappy taste, lack of cinema literacy and sense of humour).

Under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, we first meet a handsome, cleanly, but conservatively attired James (Patrick McFadden in an astonishingly great performance, an amalgam of Emilio Estevez in Repo Man and Buster Keaton in anything). He betrays little emotion as he rigidly drills his eyes downward into nothingness whilst the angry thumping of a rap song pulsates on the soundtrack. Given the composition and lighting, as well as what little of the set we see, his emotion-bereft reverie could well be in the copier room of some white collar offices as he daydreams in place of his gaze upon the progress of the copy machine.

The reverie is broken. The door opens. An exotically attractive woman with high cheekbones that never end, inviting eyes, a gorgeously buffed aquiline profile and adorned in medical-white attire, enters and grabs a chart near the door. We realize there's no copy machine and that James is actually in a doctor's office.

This opening shot and subsequent shots during the rest of the scene is a terrific indicator of what's to follow - rigid, well-composed tableaux which appear to be something other than they actually are. This is a consistent attribute of Juras's direction within the film as a whole. It's not just an effective visual flourish, but is rooted in the movie's structure, narrative and thematic core - that nothing is ever as it seems, but, uh, maybe it is, like, after all, but, like, who the fuck really knows in this cold world of contemporary ennui. I loved this point of view which permeates The Interior with the force and consistency of a master, yet possibly only achievable in an artist's earliest work (only to grow and morph with maturity and subsequent pictures).

During this thorough exam, James reveals a number of troubling symptoms which have the doctor quite concerned. She orders an MRI, passes him some documentation, then watches as he strangely keeps missing the insertion-target of his shirt pocket. She delicately expresses more concern. James has a roach twixt his fingers and has clearly been puffing on a joint whilst waiting for the doctor to come into the room.

This is our perfect entry point into the seemingly empty life of James. He works as a low level executive in an advertising agency run by a complete asshole (Andrew Hayes), spending much time gazing into a bathroom mirror, having a myriad of daydreams and eventually pulling a weirdly brilliant and hilarious stunt which gets him fired. He eventually applies for a new job, expressing his need to the proprietor (Ryan "Please Let This Man Be In More Movies" Austin) that he wishes to work with his hands. His interview is a success, he's hired by MAXI-VAC, an air duct cleaning firm, gets a shocking medical prognosis, breaks up with his girlfriend (Shaina Silver-Baird) without even looking her in the eye and then, finally decides that TRUE change is in order.

Two things were clear to me on a first helping of The Interior and remain with me after subsequent helpings. First of all, during this opening section, I howled with laughter so hysterically that I induced a few unwanted dribblings twixt my loins. Secondly, this first chunk of the movie features the funniest job interview scene that I've ever seen. EVER. NO KIDDING. Much of this is thanks to Juras's terrific writing, but also the insanely hysterical performance by Ryan Austin.

As the film, by this point, felt like James would indeed plunge into the "big change", I realized that after almost 30 minutes of screen time, something was missing. Seconds after this thought scuttled across my cerebellum, the film's title finally appeared on-screen.

Excellent.

No more noggin-scratching on my part and the title also announces that our hapless city-dweller is now in The Interior.

The story structure might feel wonky to some, but in reality, it's rooted in the very nature of what James has had to face all along. Going from a black comedy about urban emptiness to what becomes a chilling exploration of a man facing his own demons and maybe some real ones in nature, is so simple and powerful.

It helps that Juras is blessed with the cinematography of Othello J. Ubalde (who deserves some kind of award for the name most resembling a giallo lenser). Ubalde exposes gorgeously, mostly with natural light and light sources, his compositions are exquisite and his moves like the golden ooze of honey. Juras, for his part, wisely and bravely trusts in the power of the tableau, allowing one to take in every detail - no matter how beautiful, scary or mundane.

And yes, with a knapsack on his back, James has left cold, soul-bereft Toronto behind and is now in the middle of deep bush in British Columbia's dense, lush and unpopulated hinterlands. He breaks into a cottage, already shuttered for the season, helps himself to a nice bottle of wine and leaves this vestige of civilization behind.

Once ensconced in nature's loving embrace with his tent erected and his cooler hung high above on a tree so critters won't get at it, he seems, content. Now, here is where audiences must display a smidgen of patience. If they do, it will be rewarded a thousand-fold.

Mr. Juras shifts gears into borderline neorealism as we experience every simple, mundane act anyone might perform alone in deep bush. This includes eating, tent-erection, napping, reading, exploring, napping, eating, reading, sleeping soundly into the deep night and finally - YES! FINALLY! - taking a most leisurely dump in the woods. Heaven on Earth!

And then, whilst enjoying his bowel movement in the fresh air of the outdoors:

James sees someone.

Here, The Interior moves into an even slower crawl - never boring, but even more time for every twig snap to take on substantial, shuddering power. Not only does Juras spend time to establish the rhythm of time in nature, the often glorious feeling of being cozily blanketed in a tent in the deep night, but he slowly lures us into the creepy crawly terror of a man in a red jacket (Jake Beczala), seen only fleetingly, often at night, but eventually daring to lurk outside of the tent Jason is bundled in. Soon, the man even pushes against the nylon, ever-so gently, just enough to let James know he's there.

Juras uses a skillfully crafted sound design which captures the sounds of "silence" beautifully. His editing is a thing of beauty. His visual design is such that when a cut comes, it's not only absolutely necessary at just the right beat, but also allows for occasional cuts to simply take your breath away.

Curiously, the film often feels like a silent movie - that wonderful period of film history when both narrative and emotion had to be conveyed by picture and music (always live - sometimes with an orchestra and often with a lone piano or organ). There's one "scare" sequence where the blacks are deep and we catch fleeting brightly lit irises of James's horrified face as he moves through the dark in sickeningly horrifying slow motion as a simple Chopin piano solo carries us away with its haunting accompaniment.

This is the cinema of gooseflesh.

There are, of course, quite a few terrifying set pieces which are as scary as anything I've seen recently - not in cheap, obvious ways, but the kind of "scary" that gets deep in your bones. Most extraordinarily, Juras captures the joy and terror of nature, but does so by using his seemingly slender narrative, measured pace and attention to detail to explore that horrifying feeling that maybe, just maybe, all your senses play tricks on you, but then, as quickly as you settle into the notion that it's all a figment of loneliness, the realities rear their ugly heads and within no time, imagination and nightmare become one with reality.

And you know, this is what really fucking curdles your blood.

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

The Interior enjoyed its Toronto Premiere at TADFF 2015.

IRRATIONAL MAN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Woody Allen pulls one out of the drawer.

Irrational Man (2015)
Dir. Woody Allen
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey, Jamie Blackley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Once again Woody Allen dusts off a script from his drawer of un-produced projects (at least this is how it seems of late) and, surprise-surprise, delivers another old-man-boinking-younger-babe trifle. I have no problem with this.

Bring it on, Wood-Man, bring it on.

Irrational Man creepily and amusingly lurks about territory Allen's already explored in Crimes and Misdemeanours and Match Point, nowhere in the realm of the former, but certainly a lot more enjoyable than the latter. He slices and dices more than a few bits o' Hitchcock to bolster his derivative stew, most notably Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt, both homages adding bulk to the Konigsberg cauldron. Even more happily, he plunges his characters amidst the backdrop of academia which allows for a fair share of heady verbal volleys.

Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) joins the Philosophy Department of a dozy Rhode Island university just in time for summer session. Grumpy, morose and sucking back booze from a flask, Abe carries a dubious reputation on his shoulders, but this isn't enough to stop babe-o-licious student Jill (Emma Stone) from falling head over heels in love with him. Abe abandons his comely, horny married lover (Parker Posey) for some fresh-tastic quim d' Emma Stone who, in turn, abandons her fiancé Roy (Jamie Blackley) to partake of some schwance de Joaquin.

When Abe gets wind of a nefarious plot to destroy an innocent woman's life via legal means, he becomes obsessed with murdering the man responsible. He believes he's planned the perfect crime, but upon carrying it out, he didn't quite reckon on his bouncy undergrad sniffing him out. With Jill going all Teresa Wright on him, Abe comes to the only "logical" conclusion. He's killed once, so why not kill again? He is, after all, a philosopher of the highest order and can pretty much justify any heinous actions he chooses to commit - at least to himself.

Amusingly enough, movie buffs will not only see Stone's character transform into "Charlie" Newton, but Allen gives us a trip to the fairgrounds a la Strangers on a Train and a funny Shadow of a Doubt-like murder-most-foul guessing game. Yeah, this is geek stuff all the way, but I accept it wholeheartedly.

Though the laughs are few and far between, those that come, come heartily and darkly. Allen never takes us as deep as he did in Crimes and Misdemeanours, but one senses that this isn't foremost on his mind, anyway. If anything, he's chosen to root homicide in a playground and as such, he delivers a strange, but sprightly 96 minutes of mildly perverse fun.

Amidst all the roller coaster rides of summer, I'm delighted enough to gobble down some Woody Allen, even if it's a bit more lower drawer than one might have hoped for. His least-inspired makes the best of most look like crap.

The Film Corner Rating: *** 3-Stars

Irrational Man is a Mongrel Media release of a Sony Pictures Classics film.

A HARD DAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Tense, Darkly Hilarious Korean Cop Thriller

This fellow
is having a harder day
than most.

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

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

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

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

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

This is going to be a hard day, indeed.

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

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

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

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

A Hard Day plays at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto via VSC. Visit the TIFF website for tickets and further info HERE.

WYRMWOOD: ROAD OF THE DEAD - BLU-RAY review by Greg Klymkiw - Why Horror Fans Must Own This Terrific Blu-Ray from Raven Banner/Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada

I 

GREG KLYMKIW PROVIDES

5 GREAT REASONS WHY YOU MUST OWN THE

RAVEN BANNER/ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT CANADA

BLU-RAY/DVD COMBO PACK OF

WYRMWOOD: ROAD OF THE DEAD

1. The deleted scenes include - NOT JUST SNIPPETS, BUT WHOLE SCENES - as good as anything in the movie and a delightful supplement to an amazing picture. (All that's missing is every single out, blooper and alternate take involving mega-babe starlet Bianca Bradey.) 

2. The storyboard photo gallery is not only fascinating viewing, but proof positive as to why REAL filmmakers with MEAGRE DOLLARS at their disposal absolutely MUST storyboard their films in order to create the kind of visually stunning action sequences which put overrated tin-eyed assholes like Christopher Nolan, Sam Mendes and J.J. Abrams to utter shame. (All that's missing is a separate photo gallery of the film's mega-babe starlet Bianca Bradey.)

3. THE AUDIO COMMENTARY by Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner is not ONLY entertaining, but JAM-PACKED with ALL the PRACTICAL INFO on why these guys were able to get this movie in the can for $150K and make it LOOK GREAT!!! (All that's missing is a separate audio track from the film's mega-babe starlet Bianca Bradey.)

4. It's a FUCKING TERRIFIC MOVIE! (Klymkiw's Review To Follow)

5. The most important reason is embedded in the graphic below.

Wyrmwood (2014)
Dir. Kiah Roache-Turner
Starring: Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey, Leon Burchill

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The new Australian living dead chiller-thriller Wyrmwood might, at first glance, look and feel like a derivative post-apocalyptic zombie picture, but there's nothing run-of-the-mill about it. Constructed with solid craft, spewing globs of gallows humour, walloping your senses, and, uh, walloping you senseless with bowel-loosening jolts, all adds up to a rollicking good time.

Have I mentioned all the inspiring cold-cocking scares that slide you to the edge of your seat and onto the floor?

Have I mentioned that the picture offers up a kick-ass babe (mega-babe starlet Bianca Bradey) of the highest order?

No? Well, consider it mentioned, you happy Geek mo-fos!

With plenty of loving homages to George Miller's Mad Max pictures and George Romero's Dead extravaganzas, helmer Kiah Roache-Turner and his co-scribe Tristan Roache-Turner, serve up a white-knuckle roller coaster ride through the unyielding Australian bushland as a family man (who's had to slaughter his family when they "turn" into zombies) and a ragtag group of tough guys, equip themselves with heavy-duty armour, armament and steely resolve to survive.

Blasting through hordes of flesh-eating slabs of viscous decay, they careen on a collision course with a group of Nazi-like government soldiers who are kidnapping both zombies and humans so a wing-nut scientist can perform brutal experiments upon them. The family man's insanely well-built, athletic and gorgeous sister (played by mega-babe starlet Bianca Bradey) is nabbed by the fascist egghead which allows for a harrowing rescue attempt and a bevy of scenes involving our babe (played by mega-babe starlet Bianca Bradey) in lethal fighting mode.

The movie has two very cool variations on zombie lore - one, a way for humans to telepathically communicate and subsequently control the zombies and two, the handy discovery that zombie blood can be used as petrol for the heroes' souped-up fighting truck.

Roache-Turner proves himself a formidable directorial talent. He employs very little herky-jerky action and keeps things in nice clean shots which allow the action and violence to play out stunningly (including a few harrowing chases on foot and IN MOVING VEHICLES). He manages, on what feels like a meagre budget, to put numerous blockbusting studio films of a similar ilk to shame. Production design, cinematography, makeup, effects and editing are all first-rate.

This movie delivers the goods and then some.

You'll feel a bit like you've seen Wyrmwood before, but as it progresses, the picture gets increasingly more intense and original. It's also great seeing aboriginal characters playing heroes and zombies, adding a unique flavour to the proceedings. (Have I yet mentioned the astonishing performance from mega-babe starlet Bianca Bradey?)

So hold on tight to your fur-lined Aussie Akubra hats, mother-fuckers, and prepare for the blood-splashing ride of your life.

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

Wyrmwood is available via Raven Banner and Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada in a wonderful extras-packed Blu-Ray/DVD Combination pack. You can buy it from Amazon directly from this site by clicking HEREand in so doing, support the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

BLOOD CAR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Bloody Original Regional Indie on Kino-Lorber DVD

Blood, Babes and Fast Cars in the great state o' Georgia

Blood Car
Dir. Alex Orr
Scr. Orr & Adam Pinney & Hugh Braselton
Starring: Mike Brune, Anna Chlumsky, Katie Rowlett

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Preface: Blood Car and the
importance of independent, regional cinema

In a recent review I mentioned how I almost missed seeing a great movie (Liza The Fox-Fairy). If it hadn't been gently recommended to me by its publicist for the Niagara Integrated Film Festival (GAT PR's Ingrid Hamilton), I'd still be ignorant of its charms. A similarly fortuitous intervention occurred with this movie. In an email copied to the KL publicity director to ensure a specific review title was added to my list, Bret Wood, filmmaker and home entertainment production executive at Kino-Lorber wrote:

"If you haven't already requested it, you should get a copy of Blood Car. I think it would appeal to your warped sensibility."

Two simple sentences which spoke loudly to this fella.

That said, I've had recommendations before which, on occasion, have not always yielded happy results. However, I'm starting to detect a certain tone in such urgings from certain parties which places their suggestions on another rung altogether.

After five minutes of watching this movie and occasionally throughout, a thought occasionally did glide upon my cerebellum:

How in the name of Jesus H. Christ did I missed this film's 2007 release? I eventually discovered it played during my favourite film festival in Canada, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, the one year, 2007, in which I was sadly unable to attend.

Blood Car more than appealed to my own perversities, but was, in fact, a genuinely terrific regional indie genre film which additionally warmed the sentimental cockles of my heart as it reminded me of the kind of stuff I loved promoting and making in my youth when I lived far away from the Canadian "centres of [film industry] excellence" like Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver and wherein I produced, sold and marketed similar movies whilst programming a repertory cinema in the middle of Nowheresville - Winnipeg.

For me, what typifies regional indie filmmaking are the exclusive perspectives brought to the work which are rooted, not only in the specific time and place in which the films are set, but are infused with their unique qualities by virtue of telling the kind of stories which mainstream industrial factory towns like Hollywood, could never hope to achieve. For example, George Romero or John Waters created early, low-budget cinema that was inextricably linked to places like Pittsburgh (Night of the Living Dead) and Baltimore (Pink Flamingoes) respectively, just as the work I produced, amongst which included the early shorts by John Paizs and the first three feature films by Guy Maddin, etc. brought genuine indigenous qualities to them which also helped to translate into a kind of originality that lived outside their hermetically sealed worlds whilst capturing elements of said worlds which were intrinsic to their ultimate artistic success.

An engine which rivals gas-guzzlers and even the Electric Car

The Movie Itself

Blood Car exists along blood lines of the very special pedigree which initially spawned Seymour Krelborn, the main character played by Jonathan Haze in Roger Corman and Charles B. Griffith's immortal 1960 Little Shop of Horrors. Shot on the fly over two days with virtually no money, it told the story of a nebbish plant shop employee who nurtures Audrey, a very special flower which can only feed upon human blood. At first, pin pricks drained from Seymour's fingers into the plant's maw prove acceptable, but as the film progresses, Audrey requires the bodies of those Seymour must murder.

Here, we have Archie Andrews (Mike Brune), a nebbish vegan kindergarten teacher in the severely underpopulated region surrounding Atlanta, Georgia. His world is just slightly in the future, one in which gas prices have soared to over $30 per gallon. Archie invents a new motor he hopes to fuel with the disgusting lime green wheat germ drink he purchases from the sweet, innocent babe Lorraine (Anna Chlumsky) who runs the local outdoor health food stand. Alas, his invention keeps sputtering out until he discovers, quite by accident, that a geyser of his blood infuses it with the force it needs.

At first, our geeky hero attempts an extremely grotesque and painful blood transfusion, then outfits his long-dormant car with the new invention which rests conveniently in the rear trunk. It works!!! He drives over to the Veggie Stand to impress Lorraine, though he dupes her into believing that it's her special wheat germ beverage that fuels the car, not blood.

Just across from the Vegan Stand is a Meat Stand presided over by the hot trollop Denise (Kate Rowlett). Where but in a zero-budget independent indigenously-produced film would you find a Vegan food stand and a rival Meat stand, both in the middle of an empty field through which only a handful of people pass through?

Denise's deep-seeded fetish for cars soon manifests itself in the vigorous provision of endless sexual gratification for our hero. Her first ride in the car inspires the dark, Goth-like babe to deliver an enthusiastic knob-polishing upon Archie as he puts the pedal to the metal. Archie soon realizes that the mad sex will only continue if he can keep his vehicle fuelled up. Happily, his infirm elderly neighbour Mrs. Butterfield keels over from a heart attack and he tosses her corpse into the trunk where the blades shred her body to a bloody pulp which feeds the engine with all the nutrition it needs.

Unfortunately, the old broad's scarlet viscous hamburger meat (as it were) lasts only so long and like Seymour Krelborn in Little Shop of Horrors, Archie begins to murder his fuel providers. Add to this mix the romantic back and forth between the good girl and the bad girl, hilarious montages of both murder and sex (at one point culminating in a golden shower) plus mysterious Men in Black-style government agents, following and observing Archie's every move - all of which yields an endlessly hilarious and caustic satire of America, delectably, perfectly and appropriately rooted in the Georgia Hinterlands.

The movie is often rough around the edges, as per its budgetary constraints, but for the most part, it more than makes up for such occasional deficiencies, many of which are cleverly spun by its director into virtues and the added bonus of delightfully over-the-top gore effects, often unique camera compositions, a breakneck pace not unlike a Hawks' screwball comedy, a magnificently short running time (keeping you wanting more in all the right ways), a constantly hilarious and engaging screenplay rife with absurdity and mordantly snappy dialogue and, of course, there are the babes. Not only do we have two leading-lady babes, but the film is full of Georgia Peaches so quim-moist over Archie's wheels, that they're constantly baring their breasts in his general direction to entice him.

Blood Car careens wildly from sharp satire to down and dirty raunch. Roger Corman would certainly be proud and so too should the entire team who generated this no-budget treat.

As for the rest of us, it's a wild ride well worth taking.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Blood Car is available on DVD via Kino-Lorber Films. Its only extras include two brilliant, savage and funny short films from the same creative team and confirm this feature is no fluke. Orr and associates are on to something very special indeed.

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE (En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The third in Roy Andersson's "Living" Trilogy is a fond, sad and funny farewell to a world of muted existence, of deadpan whimsy (Swedish-style, of course). @ TIFF BellLightbox & rest of Canada via FilmsWeLike

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2015)
Dir. Roy Andersson
Starring: Nils Westblom, Holger Andersson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

How much you'll enjoy Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence will most likely depend upon how much Roy Andersson you can take, if at all. He is, to be sure, either an acquired taste or one who is immediately embraced by those who experience his unique vision for the first time. Though he made his first feature in 1970 (the acclaimed A Swedish Love Story) and his sophomore effort in 1975 (the unjustly reviled Gillap), most of his contemporary followers discovered him with the first in his astonishing "life" trilogy, Songs from the Second Floor in 2000, then the second, You, the Living, in 2007 and just this past year with the final instalment which won the Grand Prize at the Venice International Film Festival.

If you've never seen his previous work, never fear. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence can easily be enjoyed without having experienced any of his films, including those first two instalments of the trilogy. What you might have to first get over - I know I did - are the touches of whimsy permeating the work. If there's anything I can't stand, it's whimsy. Happily, this is neither French nor Belgian whimsy, so it doesn't immediately land like so many globs of bilious chunks blown into a vomit bucket.

It's Swedish - THANK CHRIST! - which immediately takes it into the territory of deep, almost unrelenting sadness. Not that you won't laugh, though. Andersson is a veritable knee-slap-inducer of the highest order. Some have idiotically linked him to the grotesqueries of mid-to-late Fellini, but for me, he's always been a curious amalgam of Chaplin (albeit on heavy doses of lithium) with splashes of De Sica/Rossellini neo-realism and, best of all, the deep ennui of Ingmar Bergman and the pathologically insane reliance upon tableaux so rooted in most of Carl Dreyer's canon (post-The Passion of Joan of Arc and notably in Ordet and Wrath of God).

Andersson creates images and situations which are often deeply sublime and the laughs he wrenches from you must be paid for in dire, often endless moments where you're shedding tears - often due to the universal truths of humanity which he brilliantly exposes, but just as often because one is simply blown away by his virtuosity as a film artist.

Set in the major sea port city of Göteborg, one would immediately think the place is utterly bereft of the joyous cultural and historical touchstones that make it one of the most vibrant cities, not just in Sweden, but the world. I can't recall a single instance of sun peeking through the heavy clouds, nor any interior that wasn't splashed in fluorescent light and a kind of spartan decor which borders on a complete lack of anything resembling warmth, taste or style. In fact, there are only two instances in the entire film where we see anyone smile. One involves an ever-so brief moment involving children and the other, so heart-rending I refuse to spoil it for you (and, you might even miss it altogether).

Gotta love Roy Andersson! There's nobody out there like him in contemporary cinema, though I'd argue that Austrian Ulrich Seidl or bad boy Lars von Trier are not unlike a Roy Andersson who train their lenses upon the most vile aspects of human ugliness and moral decrepitude.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is as episodic as they come. Andersson presents several mini-playlets (he's happily all-too-in-love with a kind of skewed proscenium quality to his compositions) in which we observe slices of life involving numerous characters who are only connected by virtue of living in the same city. Andersson affixes his camera in one position, usually in a slightly off-kilter angle from some discrete corner viewpoint as he almost sneakily seems to be spying upon the action of the scenes. All 100-minutes of the picture is comprised of - I kid you not! - about 35 single shots and they are beautiful, as much as for the dramatic content as they are for their compositional qualities. Somehow, Andersson manages to make the harshly bland quality of the settings as pulchritudinous as all get out.

The movie begins with a series of short snappers which are presented with the inter-title "Three Meetings With Death" and they are exactly that. From a man suffering a fatal heart attack in his dining room after unsuccessfully attempting to uncork a bottle of wine while his wife continues to putter about the kitchen, through to an absolutely hilarious sequence involving a dead man on the floor of a cafeteria aboard a ferry as the cashier wonders what to do with the meal and beer the man ordered and paid for, before keeling over, of course. The middle vignette is as heartbreaking as it is funny - a self-contained mini-masterpiece within the larger whole as a woman on her deathbed refuses to part with her handbag full of jewels and money, hoping to take it with her to the afterlife.

Throughout the movie are several other vignettes - one involving a chunky flamenco teacher and her obsession with a lithe, beautiful young man in her class, a befuddled military officer searching for a lecture, an inexperienced barber filling in for his infirm friend (and scaring away customers as he describes that he hasn't cut hair since his military days), several sequences involving different characters engaged in telephone calls in which they all utter similar pleasantries of the “I’m happy to hear you’re doing fine” variety.

There are moments of out and out surrealism. My least favourite involves a bar which keeps receiving visits from King Charles XII and his army and my "favourite", though that's not quite the right word to describe it, is a horrific dream sequence involving stiff-upper-lip British Colonial soldiers forcing a huge lineup of African slaves into a humungous copper drum, locking them in, setting fires underneath and rigidly observing as it revolves like a spit and roasts the people alive.

There is one narrative thread which ties the movie together and involves two sad-sack door-to-door salesmen specializing in wholesale novelty items to mostly uninterested or payment-welching shopkeepers. Both men seem fraught with the mental illness of depression, though it's poor Sam (Nils Westblom) who appears to suffer the most, especially since his partner Jonathan (Holger Andersson) is an inveterate bully who keeps referring to his old pal as a "crybaby" (which, he actually resembles since he's prone to breaking out into painful sobs at the drop of a hat).

Their scenes are the funniest and saddest in Andersson's film (and perhaps up there with some of the funniest and saddest moments in all of film history). When Sam, with dour deadpan, oft-repeats his sales pitch, "We want to help people have fun," it's clearly obvious these men are ill-prepared to sell vampire teeth with extra-long fangs, a laugh-bag (described by Jonathan as guaranteed to "bring out a smile at parties, either at home or in the office") and their "new item" which they place a lot of faith in, a grotesque rubber mask called "Uncle One Tooth" which crybaby Sam is forced to repeatedly demonstrate, an item so horrific it even terrifies a store clerk upon first viewing it.

Of all the characters in this kaleidoscope of humanity, Sam and Jonathan are a perfect pair for us to follow as Andersson takes us on this genuinely exquisite journey. It's a world most of us would never want to live in, but we're grateful for the experience of living it in the film. Indeed, like Bruegel's 1565 oil on wood painting "The Hunters in the Snow", Andersson's chief influence here, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence works on a similar plane as those birds in the 14th Century masterpiece looking down upon the weary, downtrodden men trudging through snow under grey skies. Andersson's a sly one, though. We'd like to think we're the pigeons, but ultimately, we're all the dupes.

Andersson uses his film to hold up a mirror to all of us.

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

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is in theatrical release via FilmWeLike. It plays in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and throughout the rest of Canada soon after.