Rankin's Feature Debut, World Premiere @ TIFF 2019 / By Greg Klymkiw

The Twentieth Century (2019)
Dir. Matthew Rankin
Starring: Dan Beirne, Louis Negin

Report and Review By Greg Klymkiw

The festivities surrounding the World Premiere of Matthew Rankin’s glorious feature film The Twentieth Century at TIFF 2019 got off to a delightful start when I received a communique from him hoping that I might be able to muster the added “psychic energy” to attend yet another social event.

You see, I’d been kvetching to Matthew about the ridiculous number of film festival social events I had been attending (including a four-hour-long stint at the Canadian Film Centre BBQ on Sunday in which I traversed my way through amongst the throngs on the lawns of the North York Windfields estate).

I was keen to celebrate Matthew’s formidable achievements and when he extended an invitation to a soiree hosted by his Quebec-based distributor Maison 4:3, I was, in fact, thrilled to accept his gracious entreaties. Though Matthew and I hang our hats these days, respectively in Montreal and Toronto, we are both Winnipeggers born-and-bred and any excuse to hang out in our homes away from our Prairie Hearts/Roots, is enough of a cause for celebration.

However, when Matthew provided the address to the fête, my jaw dropped and I wondered if he had concocted a friendly ruse to send me into the heart of darkness in the east end of downtown Toronto. You see, the celebratory event would be taking place just behind a notorious rooming house that doubles as a brothel for street hookers and a home for malcontent veterans.

This same location was also just across the street from a park filled with enterprising purveyors of crack cocaine, meth and other mind-altering delights.

“Seriously, Matthew, is this REALLY where the party is?” He confirmed the address. The cockles of my heart warmed to a comfortable level of Hellfire. 

Gotta love Montreal film distributors!

The party itself was on the top floor of a gorgeous brownstone and outfitted with all manner of delectable comestibles and libations. A special treat included an array of candies (which I filled my pockets with to eventually give to the daughter of Coppers director Alan Zweig).

And, get this: bowls of cigarettes were available.

This was truly a first.

I’ve been going to film festival parties for decades and I have NEVER seen oodles of free cigarettes available on the buffet tables. (Though, in fairness, during one of my sojourns to the Berlin Film Festival in the late 90s, the Berlinale marketplace was crawling with young ladies dressed as Cowgirls handing out mini-packs of Marlboro cigarettes.)

But this was indeed a first! Cigarettes with pita, dips and candies knocked this event right out of the park. Though I had quit smoking cigarettes months ago, I did indeed break down and join Matthew’s producers out in the back alley for several smokes, a grungy locale conveniently perched behind the aforementioned rooming house of dubious repute.

Curiously, given the wide availability of hallucinogens in the park across the street, no such treats were available at the party - at least not in plain view.

And then, on Tuesday came the main event - the official world premiere at the huge packed house at the Ryerson Theatre on Gerrard. This yielded yet another first. The Midnight Madness director of programming Peter Kuplowsky was adorned in full Royal Canadian Mounted Police regalia. Prior to introducing Matthew and the film, Kuplowsky took to the stage and sang “Oh Canada” in both English and French. Hundreds of audience members stood at attention and sang our national anthem along with him.

Needless to say, the movie was a huge hit - greeted with laughs, gasps and applause. Matthew was accompanied after the screening by his entire cast and a spirited Q and A ensued.

The movie is great, to be sure, but the film's mad inspired genius was matched by the showmanship of a truly magnificent party and premiere. Winnipeggers and Montrealers are an unbeatable combination, mais non?

And now, as to a few ruminations on the greatness of Matthew Rankin and the great movie itself...

I wish I could remember the precise year I first met Matthew Rankin, but I do recall it was on the grounds of the Windfields Estate which houses “Uncle” Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre (CFC) during the annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) CFC BBQ. In those halcyon years I taught and mentored young filmmakers there, sharing an office (the late E.P. Taylor’s office, no less) with John Paizs (a pioneer of independent filmmaking in Winnipeg).

What I recall about first meeting Matthew was coming face to face with this insanely young, dashing, erudite gentleman and member of the Winnipeg Film Group (WFG) who sought me out amongst the throngs of TIFF denizens prowling the rolling lawns in search of free booze and hamburgers. Matthew might well have been in search of similar libations and comestibles, but I remember this first meeting very fondly due to the fact that I was in the presence of a filmmaker from Winnipeg, my old “Winter City” (a phrase I continue to coin and rip-off from Paizs who placed the term in the mouth of his immortal title character in the legendary WFG short The Obsession of Billy Botski).

I was immediately drawn to Matthew, this brilliant young fellow whose acute cinema literacy was at a highly advanced level, but that he also amazingly seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge and love of those in Winnipeg who came before him. He not only knew and loved the 100+ years of Cinema History, but he was able to rattle off scenes, shots and dialogue from a myriad of WFG films. And now, here we are in 2019. When I first got wind of the title of Matthew's film I assumed it would be an homage to the great 1934 Howard Hawks pre-code screwball romantic comedy Twentieth Century with John Barrymore and Carole Lombard (a movie I’m not embarrassed to admit to having 40+ viewings under my belt). Rankin’s film is definitely in the spirit of that magnificently insane movie - it’s decidedly screwball, wildly romantic and blessed with style to burn. However, as I used to say to all my young filmmakers, it’s important to ingest 100+ years of history to not only “rip-off cool shit”, but to take that influence and use it as a springboard for their own unique voice. Rankin’s film is easily just as funny as the Howard Hawks picture, but it’s pure Rankin.

Over the years I was so privileged to discover and revel in Matthew's work. The Twentieth Century brings me back to everything I loved and continue to love about his short films: the classic piece of prairie post-modernism, Death By Popcorn: The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets (which Rankin co-directed with the estimable Mike Maryniuk and Walter Forsberg); the magnificence that is Mynarski Death Plummet, the only film to ever detail the bravery of that famous Manitoba “Moose Squadron” gunner (and with clear, glorious nods to Powell/Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death); and of course, Rankin’s Cannes Film Festival hit, The Tesla World Light which so grandly plunged us into the magnificent synaesthesia of the visionary Serbian-American engineer-inventor Nikola Tesla. (Of course for me, on a personal level, one of the cool things about The Twentieth Century was seeing Matthew pay homage to a number of films made in Winnipeg that I had actually produced.)

And here’s the amazing thing - Rankin’s work reflects elements of Canadian history that are all but forgotten and ignored. Though some might have a smattering of knowledge with respect to the clearly insane Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (Dan Beirne), the central figure of The Twentieth Century, Rankin plunges us into the early political life of that complete and utter madman in ways that no mere biopic would ever be able to do. (King's perverse relationship with his Mother played by the initimitable Louis Negin is definitely a high point in the film's perversity sweepstakes.)

The Twentieth Century is a kaleidoscopic dreamscape, the likes of which we’ve never quite seen. And it’s not only gorgeous to behold, but it’s laugh-out-loud funny. And yes, it is infused with love for the sheer joy of cinema. Seeing this movie reminds me of why I fell in love with movies in the first place.

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

The Twentieth Century: World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2019) Midnight Madness series

COPPERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2019 - Zweig Explores the Humanity of Policing

Coppers (2019)
Dir. Alan Zweig

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It seems that with each film by Alan Zweig I have the same response after I view the new work for the first time. My response goes something like this:
 
Great. Yet another masterpiece of filmmaking. When will Canadian filmmaker Alan Zweig go wrong? When will the runner stumble? Ever? Or will he continue to feed the soul of the world with one terrific picture after another?

Thus far his output includes such critically acclaimed and award-winning work as There is a House Here, When Jews Were Funny, Hurt, Hope, 15 Reasons to Live, A Hard Name, I, Curmudgeon, Lovable and Vinyl.
 
If his newest film, Coppers, is any indication, there’s no stopping him.
 


This raw, nerve-jangling, darkly funny and extremely moving documentary portrait of retired police officers has its World Premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

 
Zweig’s frank, incisive interview style is always the hallmark of his work and no-more-so does it shine than it does here. In the film, Zweig betrays his deep-seeded hatred and mistrust of cops – something he developed from his many years of driving cab on the night shifts of some of Toronto’s meaner streets. But like all of his previous work, he is genuinely interested in learning something new about the subjects and worlds he chooses to focus upon. What he learns in these explorations is dazzlingly applied to letting us learn things as he does.
 


The retired cops he interviews open up to Zweig and their stories are often horrifying. The movie hits the ground running with one officer’s recollection of her first night on the job when she was forced to save a victim of a violent crime with an empty pizza box. I’ll let you discover on your own why she needs this cardboard receptacle and how she uses it, but it’s worth noting that what Zweig sets up is an extremely effective mode of conveying the horrors cops face everyday by doing interviews in moving vehicles as his subjects drive through the mean streets of their former beats and are reminded continually of events that continue to haunt them.

He revisits the cops in a multitude of settings that allow for continual variations in their respective states of being and memories.
 
I think anyone who thinks they know what being a cop is like or thinks that all cops are scum incarnate, will have their eyes opened. And yes, occasionally all those negative aspects of policing do indeed rear their ugly heads in the film. One of the things I responded to on a personal level, was getting to know these men and women and their lives as officers, but at the same time feeling a sense of familiarity with the subjects – the stories they tell, the manner in which they communicate, often felt queasily recognizable to me – not because of the clichés we’ve become used to in film and television policiers, but I kept seeing and hearing things I heard from my own father who served as a policeman for ten years until the pressure and horrors of the life forced him to leave the force and make a new life for himself.

Like many of the officers depicted in the film, though, there were aspects of the life that never seemed to escape him. For me, I kept seeing something in the eyes of all the officers in Zweig’s movie – men, women, of colour, or not – a sense of having seen things that never leave their hearts and minds, reflected in their gaze so many years after. Even now, I can see that incalculable, almost indescribable pain in my own father’s eyes.

With Coppers, it’s clearly apparent that bad, evil, racist cops exist, but at the same time, Zweig also allows for an alternate perspective – a perspective that he himself discovers on his journey as a filmmaker. Though this might seem like an oxymoron, it’s anything but. Coppers explores the humanity of policing. By putting faces and emotions to the lives of these officers we experience something genuinely unique. We hear about their horrific experiences – everything from blood-spattered homicide scenes to domestic abuse cases and beyond.

Contrasting this are the results of constant exposure to things most of us can only imagine – results that include suicide, depression, PTSD, alcoholism, domestic disfunction and often a need to seek early retirement from a profession that is deeply damaging and disturbing.
 
I hesitate to use the word “sympathetic” to describe the approach, but it is most definitely humane. In spite of this humanity, or perhaps because of it, Zweig’s film doesn’t veer from the ugly side of policing – especially within the organization itself.

One of the stories involves the first Asian woman to work in the Toronto Police Department – the racism and sexism she faces from her colleagues and superiors is beyond the pale. The police service bureaucracy upholds her as a “poster girl” for diversity within the department, yet behind the scenes she is treated with disdain and overt hatred. We get a sense of her dreams and optimism at the beginning, but how her feelings are decimated and betrayed at every turn.

Yes, the film provides plenty of horror stories from out in the field, but doesn’t veer away from the cruelty exhibited behind closed doors. The implications are clear – if this is the kind of behavior exhibited towards officers by colleagues and superiors, how far does this extend to the communities the department is charged to “protect and serve”?
 
What’s wonderful about Zweig’s documentaries is that you always feel like you’re seeing something new, fresh and exciting from a filmmaking standpoint.

He utilizes a number of recurring visual motifs in the lives of these retired officers that are not only effective storytelling techniques, but are genuinely cinematic. In film after film, Zweig displays a unique voice and style that is all his own. He makes documentaries, but he is not a documentarian (a word I hate and often relegate to the lowest order of those cranking out dull informational docs with no voice or real perspective). Zweig is a filmmaker, an artist – of the highest order. Coppers is a great movie and not to be missed.

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

Coppers: World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2019)

THE FIREFLIES ARE GONE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2018 - Sébastien Pilote Scores Again

The Fireflies are Gone (2018)
Dir. Sébastien Pilote
Starring: Kapelle Tremblay, Pierre-Luc Brillant

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who is Sébastien Pilote? Seriously, who in the hell is this guy, anyway? These were the questions I asked myself upon seeing Quebec-based Canadian filmmaker Sébastien Pilote's extraordinary first feature film Le Vendeur. This stunning Québec-made kitchen-sink drama was so raw, real and infused with a seldom-paralleled acute pain that the film's quiet power betrayed its creator's cinematic genius immediately.
 
Starring the magnificent Gilberte Sicotte as an ace car salesman in a small factory town in Québec on the brink of total financial collapse, this staggeringly powerful, exquisitely-acted and beautifully written motion picture was, for me, the first genuine Québec heir apparent to the beautiful-yet-not-so-beautiful-loser genre of English-Canadian cinema of the 60s and 70s (best exemplified by films like Don Shebib's Goin' Down the Road, Peter Pearson's Paperback Hero and Zale Dalen's Skip Tracer).
 
As if making a modern masterpiece of Québec cinema as a first feature wasn't enough, he’d knocked one out of the park before that with his early short film DUST BOWL HA! HA!  It featured Andre Bouchard as a hard-working family man in small-town Québec who stoically maintains his dignity in a world where nothing and nobody escapes the crushing weight of the financial crisis. This turned out to be one of the best short films I had ever seen – period – a phenomenal drama, so graceful and so simple, that upon seeing it I felt about as winded as I did after I first saw Le Vendeur.
 
With his second feature Le démantèlement, I had MORE reason to ask, just who in the hell is this guy anyway?
 
Starring the legendary Gabriel Arcand as a Québec sheep farmer forced into selling off his beloved home and livelihood to help his daughter was a movie that extraordinarily blended a neo-realist sensibility in a great, thought-provoking drama that was visually astonishing – gorgeously captured by cinematographer Michel La Veaux in a classical tradition not unlike that of the late Haskell Wexler's heartbreakingly beautiful work in Bound For Glory.
 
And then, his third feature film, The Fireflies Are Gone came along. Wow! He’s the real thing! No doubt about it.
 
Amusingly, when Mr. Pilote invited me to the Canadian premiere of his film, he expressed considerable trepidation. He was worried I wouldn’t like his third feature because it was such a departure from his previous work. His concerns were unfounded. I loved it so much that I saw it twice at TIFF.
 
I urge everyone to see it.
 
First of all, it bears many hallmarks of what makes Pilote’s films special: it’s set in small town Québec, it blends neo-realist qualities with classical filmmaking and is finally infused with moments of humanity that are so indelible that it leaves one deeply moved. Where it departs is that the central character is female and that the movie displays considerable charm and humour.
 
The characters in Pilote’s previous features were nearing the end of their “productive” lives, but not so here. Léonie (Karelle Tremblay) can hardly wait for high school to end and actually begin her life as an adult. Existence in this small Saguenay town is stifling, but she finds solace in her friendship with the much older Steve (Pierre Luc-Brilliant), a guitar teacher who lives in a suburban basement with his mother.
 
The two of them while away their time playing music together, wandering the empty streets and hanging out eating poutine in a local greasy spoon, but alas, Léonie is restless. She’s also not getting along with her Mom (and Mom’s new-ish husband) and though she enjoys visiting with her estranged Dad, he too does little to fill the void in her life.
 
Much is made of how the fireflies in the town have disappeared due to the factories belching out pollution, but it’s not just industrialization that has decimated this once beautiful rural paradise, but small mindedness. Léonie, like those fireflies might have to leave, but if she does, will her light ever be replaced?
 
It’s an eternal question and one that Pilote posits brilliantly in his gorgeous, magical movie. 

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

The Fireflies are Gone is a Contemporary World Cinema presentation at TIFF 2018.

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

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

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

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

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

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

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

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

As it should be, really.

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

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

DEATH BY POPCORN: THE TRAGEDY OF THE WINNIPEG JETS - Review By Greg Klymkiw: Hot Docs 2018 Hot Pick - REDUX series

Little did Burton Cummings know that the WHA Jets
would be gone with the wind, forever.

Death By Popcorn: The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets (2006)
Dir. Matthew Rankin, Mike Maryniuk, Walter Forsberg

Review (sort of) By Greg Klymkiw

In honour of the Hot Docs 2018 25th Anniversary, ace programmer/critic Kiva Reardon put together a selection of Canadian documentaries in a series entitled "Redux". When she asked me to recommend Canadian documentaries from the city of Winnipeg, I put together a long and detailed list of films I loved from my beloved Winter City where I'm currently residing and helming the legendary Winnipeg Film Group as its Executive Director.

From that list, which I might publish sometime since it contains fairly extensive assessments of said films, Kiva chose Matthew Rankin, Mike Maryniuk and Walter Forsberg's classic piece of prairie post-modernism, Death By Popcorn: The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets. The film, of course, targets that horrible time when Winnipeg lost its beloved team. However, the team is back and actually in the midst of playoff fever.

For me, the real tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets was not losing the team, but rather, that the Winnipeg Jets joined the NHL and that furthermore, the beloved WHA disbanded. (The other tragedy was the decimation of the historic Winnipeg Arena in favour of a cold, corporate, ugly new arena in downtown Winnipeg which was built on the spot which once housed the beloved, historic Eaton's department store at Portage and Donald. But, I digress).

In any event, I'll just reprint Kiva's capsule note in the Hot Docs 2018 program book which quotes me extensively. I do this because I am, like most Winnipeggers, in need of a nap.

Here it is:

SUGGESTED for Redux by Greg Klymkiw, executive director of the Winnipeg Film Group, Death by Popcorn is an unsung Canadian tragicomedy. "A collaboration," writes Klymkiw, "twixt the inimitable Matthew Rankin (heir apparent to John Paizs and Guy Maddin), Mike Maryniuk (who just had a world premiere at Rotterdam) and Walter Forsberg (a film archivist with uber-artistic flair)," the found-footage documentary explores the star-crossed romance between Winnipeggers and their ill-fated Jets. Containing footage from the local news and Jets games, and including familiar faces like Wayne Gretzky and Gary Bettman, Death by Popcorn is a postmodern portrait of corporate greed and Winnipeg itself. Though a sell-out at the Winnipeg Cinematheque upon its release, Death by Popcorn seemed destined to suffer the same fate as the NHL team it followed, as copyright issues plagued subsequent screenings. Now, come relish the highs and lows of the film billed as "sadness on ice."

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

Death By Popcorn: The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets, plays at Hot Docs 2018 in the Redux series.

THE OSLO DIARIES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - 2018 Hot Docs Hot Pick: ***** Five-Stars

Arab-Israeli peace talks at centre of dazzling doc.

The Oslo Diaries (2018)
Dir. Mor Loushy, Daniel Sivan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are documentaries that get by on compelling subject matter alone. There are others that apply the standards, such as they are these days, of journalism and render work that makes for compelling television. Then there are documentaries that are pure, dazzling cinema with all the scope, poetry and virtuosity that place them upon the pedestal of art. When such films are also infused with journalistic principles that don't get in the way of great filmmaking and have vital, coercive and downright imperative subject matter, then what you get is something like Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan's The Oslo Diaries.

Loushy and Sivan have delivered the goods before with 2015's Censored Voices, one of the most profound anti-war films made in our new millennium, a staggeringly original and deeply poetic exploration of the 1967 Arab–Israeli Six Day War. Like that great film, The Oslo Diaries does not rest on the run-of-the-mill laurels so many documentaries are content to perch themselves upon.

Focusing on the secret 1992 peace talks in Oslo between participants on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the equation, this is a film that is at once hopeful, but also feels as dangerous and tense as a great espionage thriller - keep in mind that these talks were so secret that the participants were actually breaking the law by holding them. Imagine peace talks that could have resulted in substantial prison time.

As well, the visual juxtaposition between sunny Israel and frigid, wintry Norway, creates the kind of cinematic shorthand that only great filmmakers truly understand in terms of rendering work of lasting value. There's nothing ephemeral about the filmmaking, nor the subject matter. Then again, the notion of peace being ephemeral is not only scary, but is one of the things that forcefully drives the movie.

Another great juxtaposition is the judicious use of archival footage from the period (including the Camp David accord with Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat) with contemporary interviews (including the last interview ever given by Shimon Peres before his 2016 death).

Finally, the pièce de résistance are readings from the actual diaries kept by the secret peace talk participants and dramatized recreations of the talks themselves (chilly Kyiv, Ukraine standing in very nicely for chilly Oslo) and skilfully blended interviews conducted very recently.

This is a film that breaks rule after rule, but does so with such aplomb and intelligence and grace, that we are left with a picture that not only confounds expectations, but breaks rules for two of the best reasons I can think of: to create great cinema and to further peace. These are fine considerations. One wishes more pictures had such lofty goals and were able to pull them off as astoundingly as The Oslo Diaries.

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

The Oslo Diaries enjoys its Canadian Premiere at Hot Docs 2018.

THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ - Review By Greg Klymkiw - 2018 Hot Docs Hot Pick: ***½

Nonagenarian Nazi Oskar Groning

The Accountant of Auschwitz (2018)
Dir. Matthew Shoychet

Review By Greg Klymkiww

I have to admit that before seeing this movie, the story of Oskar Groning had somehow escaped me. I still don't know why. After all, it's not everyday a nonagenarian stands trial for being an accessory to the murder of over 300,000 people, but so be it, the story escaped my purview. Then again, in recent years, I've tended to avoid reading conventional news sources and since I try not to watch television, I guess anything's possible. Well, thank stars for the movies. I'm still obsessed with watching at least one movie a day and I'm especially grateful for film festivals like Hot Docs which allow me to binge on documentaries.

I suspect I won't be the only one to learn this, but what I learned from Matthew Shoychet's slick, informative and extremely proficient documentary, is that in 2015, Oskar Groning faced prosecution in Lüneburg, Germany for his part as a junior SS officer at the Auschwitz extermination camp during World War II. His time there was to function as a low-level bureaucrat, but frankly, this is the sort of bureaucracy that sends chills down the spine. Groning's job was to take charge of all the prisoners' personal possessions - most notably, their money and valuables.

Yes, as the title of the film declares, Groning was indeed The Accountant of Auschwitz.

Interestingly, the film seems less interested in detailing Groning's activities in the camp, nor is it, in any way, shape or form a biographical documentary, but rather, Groning's trial is used by the film to provide a far more important context for larger issues.

First and foremost, what one takes away from the film, is Germany's utterly horrendous historical record for prosecuting war criminals. The movie takes great pains to deliver the facts on this truly shameful atrocity. That Germany let thousands upon thousands of war criminals go untried and unpunished is an abomination, but even more telling is how the country is scrambling to make up for these sins by dragging nonagenarians onto the stand - now!!!

It's been well over six decades since World War II ended. Germany had plenty of time to mete justice, but not only dragged its jackbooted heels (so to speak), but how, other than a few token death sentences, most of those prosecuted and found guilty, served terms that were hardly commensurate with their foul crimes. If anything, this is the biggest shocker of Shoychet's film.

The other shocker, of course, is Groning himself. His prosecution was actually possible due to the fact that he was so disgusted by Holocaust-deniers, that he denounced these idiots by publicly discussing his role at Auschwitz and describing the atrocities he witnessed.

The Accountant of Auschwitz is full of shockers! This is the sort of compulsive television documentary that keeps you glued to your seat as it delivers one jaw-dropping revelation after another. It also asks many important questions. They're so important, I'm not going to reveal them here, because it's part of the film's aesthetic to not only pose them, but wend these questions skilfully within the narrative fabric of the film. They're shockers, too. One shocker after another.

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

The Accountant of Auschwitz enjoys its World Premiere at Hot Docs 2018.

BICKFORD PARK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Skateboard pas de deux at TIFF 2017

The babe suffers, but NOT in silence. Ain't it always the way?

Bickford Park (2017)
Dir. Dane Clark, Linsey Stewart
Starring: Lianne Balaban

Review By Greg Klymkiw

So you've had to suffer through listening to your long-haired loser husband tinkling the ivories in the basement as he caterwauls his way through a contemptibly worthless tune he's composed and now, after a long day at work, you're sitting in your car reading a book, conveniently avoiding home.

The phone rings.

It's hubby. He wants you to pick something up on your way back. Uh, what's he been doing all day? He delivers the expected answer.

"I meant to go out, but I got pretty deep into it today."

Trying to imagine what bottomless chasm of talent-bereft hack-dom he'd plunged into fills you, no doubt, with utter dread.

Such is the current lot in life for Jill (Lianne Balaban), a bright gorgeous thirty-something who spends her evenings jogging the streets as far away from hearth, home and hubby as possible. One evening during a restorative sojourn in sneakers and shorts, she spies a lone skateboard. It beckons. She gets on board. Her attempt is shaky, and perhaps even more so when the owner of the board, a hunky dude at least ten years her junior, claims it as his own and asks for its return.

This delightful new form of physical activity (and escape from the emptiness of domesticity) sends her straight to a sporting goods store. It doesn't take long before she return to the park to try out her new skateboard. Happily, the hunky dude shows up.

The lessons begin - a pas de deux on wheels. What sparks will fly? Is romance in the air? Watching Bickford Park, one certainly hopes so. Smartly, directors Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart don't take any expected turns. There's a reason why they chosen to film in monochrome - shades of grey are always more interesting.

Their film is sweet and enchanting but ultimately infused with melancholy. We want to spend a lot more time with its characters, we want to see it play out well beyond its running time, we get expected delights to be sure, but it's the unexpected hands we're dealt that offer the kind of layers of complexity that send us out of the theatre with so much more than the by-rote fodder most contemporary romantic comedies pass off as clever.

Bickford Park delivers something far richer.

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

Bickford Park plays at TIFF 2017

THE CRESCENT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2017: Lewtonesque Horror in Nova Scotia

Grief shared by a mother and son.

The Crescent (2017)
Dir. Seth A. Smith
Scr. Seth A. Smith, Darcy Spidle
Starring: Danika Vandersteen, Woodrow Graves, Andrew Gillis

Review By Greg Klymkiw

More often than not we choose to confront numbing grief with escape. Facing bereavement head-on is said to be the best way of dealing with the debilitation that loss inspires, but we're all only human after all and it's just so much easier to run away and repress. (And believe you me, repression is not always without merit.)

Beth (Danika Vandersteen) is a beautiful young (recent) widow who hightails it to a remote house at Silver Crescent Beach (outside of Halifax) with her 2-year-old child Lowen (Woodrow Graves, real-life son of producer Nancy Urich and director Seth Smith). They find themselves in a huge, stylishly imposing domicile overlooking the roiling seas of the Atlantic Ocean and live out a quiet existence of walking the beach, playing together and for Beth, a brilliant talented visual artist, losing herself in the creation of gorgeously disturbing pieces generated through the abstract printing process of paper marbling.

From time to time, there are a few residents they encounter. On the surface, these denizens of the remote environs appear relatively benevolent, but given the film's increasingly mounting creepiness and the simple fact that it's a horror film, it doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that they might not be who, or rather, what they appear to be.

As the events unfurl in a meticulous slow-burn pace, with plenty of cerebral mind-blowing explosions of visual fireworks, director Smith eventually unleashes all-out, drawer-filling scares and in one delicious set piece, the kind of sickening visceral splatter that horror aficionados will love. It's always lovely seeing a quiet, intelligent horror film that channels the energies and artistry of RKO's master of atmospheric chills Val Lewton (The Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, The Seventh Victim, The Body Snatcher).

If anything, the Lewton picture The Crescent most resembles in terms of both horror and deep emotional resonance is the Robert Wise-Gunther von Fritsch collaboration The Curse of the Cat People. Sometimes there's just nothing scarier and more disturbing than a child's loneliness and grief. And, of course, a Mother's. Lewton knew and pioneered the notion that horror was what we all faced in our daily lives. The Crescent picks up this torch very nicely indeed. Darcy Spidle and Smith generate a terrific screenplay. Writing "visually" is the greatest challenge contemporary scripts face and it's a joy to experience such purely cinematic writing that adheres to the needs of narrative beats and character, but does so with a kino-eye.

The performances in the film are all blessed with the kind of naturalism that is refreshing (artist Vandersteen in her motion picture debut is radiant, the camera loves her), but in particular, toddler Groves steals the show with a child performance to rival that of the extraordinary Victoire Thivisol in Jacques Doillon's Ponette and the astonishing Brigitte Fossey in René Clément's Jeux Interdits, both classic films dealing with childhood perspectives upon grief, to which The Crescent can proudly keep company with, but with, blood - and when it comes, plenty o' crimson ooze.

THE FILM CORNER REVIEW: **** Four Stars

The Crescent screens at TIFF 2017. If this film is any indication of what we can expect from new TIFF Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky in this, his inaugural solo year, I suspect we have a very worthy successor to former longtime MM toppers Colin Geddes and Noah Cowan.

THERE IS A HOUSE HERE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Zweig @TIFF2017, another masterpiece

"You look different."
"So do you."
"No, you look beautiful right now. Really."

There is a House Here (2017)
Dir. Alan Zweig
Starring: Tatanniq (Lucie) Idlout

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Great. Another fucking masterpiece of filmmaking. When will Canadian filmmaker Alan (When Jews Were Funny, Hurt) Zweig do wrong? When will the runner stumble? Or will he continue to feed the soul of the world with one great picture after another? Well, if his new feature There is a House Here is any indication, the dude just keeps grinding them out and there's no stopping him.

The picture wears its heart, theme and narrative on its sleeve, right from the get-go. We follow a burly dude in a grey toque, red parka and baggy jeans from behind as he descends from an airplane onto the frozen tarmac of an airport in Iqualit, Nunavut. Inside, a young, raven-haired babe in a white animal-fur coat waits patiently with a smile of expectation upon her face. Soon the pair are striding towards an awaiting vehicle and a title card announces that it's "winter". Yeah, I buy that. It's winter alright. The breath forming in clouds announces this in spades, but that's okay, it's the seasons that count. They change and shift and just like in life, they prove to be major cornerstones.

Once in the car, the beautiful woman gently chides the burly figure in the backseat over his choice of parka colour. "You look like such a fuckin' tourist," she declares.

Oh, and it's dark outside. It's only 3:00 PM and we learn that it's going to get darker. Well, it's not just the light in the sky that's going to get darker. But no matter, it's an Alan Zweig picture and darkness is a prerequisite to find the light.

The hidden figure remarks how odd it is that after five years of being pals long distance via phone and email, he and the woman aren't having a decent face-to-face reunion and are already driving from the airport to a nearby destination to begin shooting the picture proper. They're going to meet the woman's uncle in his home. Many years ago he "found Jesus" and became the first Inuk Bishop in the Anglican Church - ever.

As they enter the old Bishop's home, the woman asks the hidden figure to explain what the film is about to her uncle. "Really?" he asks, almost incredulous. "I just got here. I don't even know what the film's going to be about yet."

It's this delectable, if not indelicate truth that proves to be the thing that drives the picture - a filmmaker who has no idea what his film is going to be. What we learn on the journey about the film's subjects is that first and foremost, this is a film about seeking answers, about learning something its filmmaker wants to know, and in so doing, casting the glow of illumination upon us all - forcing us to confront how little we know about anything and how life (and filmmaking/art), should indeed always be about exploration.

And yes, no matter what the movie's about, great pictures ultimately reflect the filmmaker.

The hidden figure isn't hidden for long. Sitting in the home of the Old Uncle, director Alan Zweig doffs his ugly red tourist parka and adorned in a gray plaid hoser sweater, he attempts to explain what his movie is about. The gorgeous, impossibly-stylishly dressed woman, the retired Bishop's niece who insists Alan explain, is none other than Zweig's friend Tatanniq Idlout (Inuk rock star Lucie Idlout).

"After all the shit you told me over the years, I had to come see for myself," Zweig blurts out in his gravel-tinged Eeyore-like voice. He looks to the Old Uncle. "So one time I was talking to your niece on the phone and she said, 'It's the Third World up here, motherfucker.' And I thought, why is it the third world in my country, why is part of my country the third world?"

If anything, Zweig knows all too well what his movie is going to be about, even if he didn't know it at the time, or at least couldn't articulate it. For someone who went into this film purportedly not knowing what it was about, the footage has been expertly assembled into a stirring, moving and provocative story.

That all said, it does indeed turn out that Tatanniq's Uncle is not comfortable about being interviewed by Zweig, and so, they leave.

"He didn't like me," says Zweig. "I think he's anti-Semitic."

Tatanniq fires back: "You fucking jerk."

Their quips are tinged with mordant wit. If this wasn't a Canadian documentary, you'd think you were watching a Howard Hawks romantic comedy with a jowly schlubby Cary Grant and a wiseacre Rosalind Russell in Nunavut garb. Yeah, and if on the surface the movie is about a filmmaker's exploration of a world he wants to know more about, it is, if anything - deep down - the story of a friendship; one that deepens and grows as he makes his film.

Zweig's the searcher. Tatanniq's the guide. Hell, if it was a western, one might even mistake their partnership in the colonial trappings of a genre that so often found itself mired in cultural stereotypes. We're not talking The Lone Ranger and Tonto here, but the thought can't help cross our minds. (Zweig is no Armie Hammer and, thank God, Idlout is no Johnny Depp.)

After Zweig's turfed from the Old Uncle's house, the bantering pair are driving to another interview prospect. "So these next people that are gonna fucking kick me out," he inquires, "What's their names?"

As Zweig blows into the house, the new subject asks: "Why are you here? What do you want to learn?"

"How can we make things better for you up here?" says Zweig.

"Do you believe in Satan? Do you believe in God? If you don't, then there's no way you can save us or help us," is the response.

Zweig admits he believes in neither.

He's kicked out.

But it doesn't stay this way. As Zweig spends more time in this world, as he discovers his film, the doors, a seeming eternity above the tree-line, keep opening. He slowly finds his sea legs. Not that the doors wouldn't open. As one of the subjects states: "You never refuse anyone entry into your house in the Arctic. They could be frozen. Even if they have a knife in their hand, you let them in."

Having Zweig in the film is a welcome treat. In his first few documentary features (Vinyl, I, Curmudgeon, Lovable) he always put himself front and centre, but as his evolution as a filmmaker continued, we'd see less and less of him on-camera, though his distinctive voice and line of questioning was always present. In There is a House Here, Zweig allows - nay, demands - that the lens be on him as well as his subjects.

The camera also trains itself poetically, often with the underlay of a gorgeous, soulful heartbreaking score, focusing upon astonishing vistas and life as it unfolds in the cities of the Arctic. Kids play hockey in the streets, ATVs, snowmobiles and half-tons blast along the snow-packed roads, even Bingo is played (albeit via radio broadcast into peoples' homes).

And most of all, there's Alan and Tatanniq, this "odd couple" wending their way through a world Zweig wants to learn about and one in which Idlout, through the process of the film, might also be seeing in a whole new light. Though he's come to know his friend via years of correspondence, he trains his camera upon her to speak about herself, if only "for the record" and to place her participation within the film in "context".

After flying to Iglulik, he asks her point blank why she's given up on being a rock star. Ah, directly indelicate as always. It's what friends are for, right? Tatanniq let's him know that she hasn't really given it up even though she's moved back up north. After recording several albums, writing a whole whack of singles and composing film soundtracks, she found herself drawn away from what she calls "a rock 'n' roll lifestyle" that she led living in Toronto. She declares: "It was not fulfilling to me. I had an active social life and a beautiful apartment I loved very much, but there was something missing." She also admits she just didn't like "the touring life of a rockstar".

Once back up north, darkness reared its head. At least that's how Zweig perceives it, as do we. He makes the observation that her return was to a world of violence. She wryly yanks his chain: "I can show you some violence if you like."

She does reveal, however, the very real violence that she faced. "I don't have any kids living in my house and I don't have a man living in my house, so people just come because it's an easy place for them to do their misbehavings and I let them in."

Still, she boils it down to two words: "Shit happens." Indeed it does. She elaborates: "Even the worst experiences up here seem matter of fact. I got raped, I got beat up, the RCMP abused me… I'm certainly not saying it's no big deal, but it happens and people up here are more honest about what they're willing to talk about."

Honesty, of course, runs rampant throughout the film. At times it feels like a litany of stories involving alcohol abuse and horrendous reminiscences of residential schools in which the Government of Canada uprooted thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal children from their homes to strip them of their culture and assimilate them into "White" society. And, of course, most of these schools were presided over by sadistic perverts of the cloth. Nuns and priests alike took delight in wielding their power over these children, physically, psychologically and sexually abusing them. When children are caught speaking in their own language (and not English), they're shoved into corners and forced to wear dunce caps. These children and their children's children face poverty and neglect of a magnitude that's as appalling as any apartheid in any country at any time.

If there's a "third-world" in Canada, we learn quickly and heartbreakingly that it was created by the colonialist evil, but that its clutches continue even today. The housing crisis in these northern communities is appalling. Often 10 or more people are crammed into tiny houses while huge residences created for Government of Canada employees stand empty. Young people seek out remote garbage dumps to booze it up in peace. Kids are constantly orphaned and/or snatched from their biological parents by overzealous "liberal" social workers - adoption amongst the Northern residents is as common as breathing air.

Yes, many of us know this or have at least heard about it, but Zweig's film is an important window upon this as he, as a filmmaker, is our surrogate explorer. As he discovers things first-hand, so too do we.

And most horrific of all are the seemingly endless tales of suicide - people living for no other reason than to die, and in many cases, to die by their own hand. Tatanniq's grandfather drove his truck off a cliff. He was a good driver. He knew the land. He knew there was a cliff there. This was no "accident", no matter how much the government bean-counters might prefer it to be. And even Idlout experienced something akin to residential schools when she was separated from her mother and shoved into foster homes where she wasn't allowed to speak on the telephone to her mother in their native tongue. It always had to be in English. And most idiotic of all is when she describes how her foster parents would never allow her to place her hands beneath the dinner table for fear that it would look like she was trying to masturbate.

Uh, who the fuck is going to be diddling themselves with a plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding before them? (Well, I suppose I can think of a few reprobates who might harbour this fetish, but none of them are orphan girls in foster care.)

But throughout the darkness, Zweig's film discovers plenty of light. A young boy talks about bagging a polar bear at the age of 13 - a feat not even his grandfather, an expert hunter has ever done. An elder, still an avid hunter, displays the implements of his trade in a living room and demonstrates the art of stalking a seal. And there is, yes, a glorious seal hunt out on the ice of the great North and under the big sky. During this sequence there's a dazzlingly beautiful, almost wildly romantic moment when Tatanniq saunters towards the camera and the off-camera Zweig notes how beautiful she looks. As she gazes across the vista before her, he adds, "Your eyes look clearer." She nods and declares: "My mind feels clearer."

And then there's the culture, the heritage, the tradition. Zweig admits to one of his subjects that "The culture I live in doesn't mean that much to me, but I'm very affected by listening to you talk about your culture."

Finally, through the darkness and light, what remains, so delicately and compellingly is the friendship between the filmmaker and his guide. It takes your breath away. There are moments, especially towards the end, of such tenderness, but there's also a moment where the curmudgeonly Zweig hits one lollapalooza of a wrong button. Idlout's response is perfectly appropriate - both emotionally and yes, culturally. As Zweig's film proves: What good is friendship when those we love and respect can't tell us to fuck right off and we, in turn, accept it. And understand.

Ultimately, it's the alternately dolorous and hopeful humanity of this film that winds us and if anything, There is a House Here is a journey, an exploration of deep understanding. The world will be a better place because of it.

When Tatanniq looks to the ice, snow and sky, she admits: "I wanna go be a part of the beauty."

Who in their right mind wouldn't?

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

There is a House Here plays at TIFF 2017.

homer_b - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Scary Creepy Springfield via Winnipeg at TIFF 2017

There is someone in Homer's house in Winnipeg.

homer_b (2017)
Dir. Milos Mitrovic, Conor Sweeney

Review By Greg Klymkiw

At the best of times, three-quarter-inch videotape on U-Matic playback machines seemed degraded, especially when constantly rotating, whirring drumheads would connect with the tape in pause-mode and render all manner of glitches. Even more problematic was an editing process that required constant duping in order to create desired cuts and resulted in further image degeneration.

At the time, watching community cable programs in the 80s, using already-retro equipment (though not that much worse than the "advancements" made in commercial mainstream video broadcasting at the time), felt positively otherworldly. Seeing said tapes some 30+ years later, especially if they'd been duped to straight VHS and simply captured decades later on a digital format without any remastering results in images that have been dredged from the pits of some analogue septic tank Hell.

It's scary stuff. So too is the astonishingly creepy, disturbing and funny film homer_b by contemporary Winnipeg filmmakers Milos Mitrovic and Conor Sweeney (one of the founders of the visionary Astron-6 collective). Gorgeously recreating the aforementioned look of ancient technology, this is one fine addition to the tradition first coined by film critic Geoff Pevere as "prairie post-modernism".

Feeling and looking like the work of a Matt Groening doppelgänger, or more likely, a Winnipeg community cable Matt Groening wannabe, we're greeted with a series of simple, decrepit opening images: a flash of pre-roll video noise, a screen of piss-pale yellow and a quick, crude fade-up of an ugly title treatment over a faded green star, bold-capped typeface in purple and dark yellow with a shimmering slightly askew shadow drop and then, an inelegant cut to black video noise, followed by an even-more graceless cut to a ruffled, white-tea-dyed curtain and a lone standup microphone in the foreground. Organ music on the soundtrack that makes David Lynch's use of Fats Waller sounding positively chipper, accompanies the chilling fade-up on a live action figure approaching the mic wearing a horrifying Krusty the Clown mask.

Things are not right in Springfield, or rather, uh, Winnipeg. If independent cinema from that midwestern Canadian city is to be believed (and why not?), the likes of Guy Maddin, John Paizs, et al, painted a myriad of cinematic treasures that would lead one to believe that nothing, absolutely nothing, was ever right in Winnipeg. (God knows David Lynch himself was happy to utilize his unacknowledged John [Springtime in Greenland] Paizs influences in his depiction of Lumberton in Blue Velvet.)

As the masked Krusty approaches, his voice queerly distorted in the Lynchian Twin Peaks backward-enunciation-played-forward reverberations, relates a childhood memory that most of us would rather forget, the tale of a boy, a pig and vomit. A masked intruder into this scene, making the testicle-cheeked Lady-in-the-Radiator from Eraserhead seem perfectly normal, manages to perk up the creepy quotient, as if it wasn't high already.

We're then treated to a disturbing "commercial" break segment involving masked Homer and Bart Simpsons in a grubby basement. When the "message" is over, we return to Krusty.

He has a warning.

It is one we must all heed.

Someone is in the house.

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

homer_b enjoys its World Premiere at TIFF 2017.

THREADS, CHARLES - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - NFB at TIFF 2017 soars with joy and sadness

Life leads us from the frogs.

Charles (2017)
Dir. Dominic Etienne Simard

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In a mostly monochrome world, doughy lad Charles tends to his gargantuan lolly-gagging mother in a squalid flat. There are simple joys, of course, his beloved frogs, school and dips in the nearby lake. Dollops of colour, albeit pale and/or muted keep threatening to bring joy and solace, but they are fleeting.

Colour eventually explodes in the form of rising blue waters threatening to drown him. Will he be rescued? And whom or what will rescue him? Will it indeed be life itself? And oh, when it rains, what will rain down? Frogs? Kitty cats? Doggies? Big pudgy baby bears?

And will he find happiness?

Or is it, ultimately, imagination that will provide the ultimate freedom?

In Dominic Etienne Simard's Charles (a National Film Board of Canada co-production with France), it is the waters of time and the long, slow march to adulthood and freedom that await. The journey will, like so much of our lives, prove to be bittersweet. The film's gorgeous expressive visuals fill in all the blanks and finally, we're left with a work that soars with a great, though sometimes terrible beauty.

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

Charles plays at TIFF 2017.

The ties that bind hang by a thread.

Threads (2017)
Dir. Torill Kove

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To hang by a thread usually suggests imminent danger, something unstable and/or doomed to failure. In Oscar-Winner Torill Kove's lovely and simple animated short (a National Film Board of Canada co-production with Norway), it's the ties that bind which hang by a thread; a slender thread indeed.

This delicate and moving work details the life of a young woman who grabs a thread dangling from the heavens and allows it to hoist her upwards on a journey we come to recognize as life.

When she finds another thread, it's attached to an infant. She and the little girl are inseparable. Though the child grows incrementally into adulthood, they're bound together by that mysterious thread. Even when the thread leads the child to peers on a playground and, for a time, completely out of the mother's purview, the thread remains.

But the day comes, one we all dread I think, when when her daughter must sever the tie that binds to jump up to the heavens, to clutch her own thread.

As a single Dad to a teenage daughter the film inspired so many personal memories of past and present. It provided both solace and melancholy as I, like the mother in the film, face the imminent severing of my own thread to my own child. Yes, we dread the severance, but we also accept it. Life must go on and for those we love the dearest, our children, it must move forward.

There might not be anything new revealed in the sentiments and story revealed in the film, but its visual metaphor is one I welcomed, understood and responded to on a deep emotional level.

I suspect I'll not be alone in this.

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

Threads plays at TIFF 2017.

POOR AGNES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Fantasia 2017 presents gender-reversed serial killer

Serial killer in the birthplace of Paul Shaffer.

Poor Agnes (2017)
Dir. Navin Ramaswaran
Scr. James Gordon Ross
Starring: Lora Burke, Robert Notman, Will Conlon

Review By Greg Klymkiw

These days, when the first image in a movie is an aerial shot of a lone house in the deep woods, the heart usually sinks because it signals the inevitability that we're probably going to be spending most of the remaining running time at that location in a picture of the no-to-low-budget variety. This doesn't have to be a bad thing if the content is worthy, but Poor Agnes gets off to a very wrong start with the opening voiceover accompanying this familiar image as the title character intones:

"Men murder whores. Women murder their babies. What does that make me?"

Uh, I don't know. A whore, perchance? Maybe. But, you see, Agnes (Lora Burke) is clearly alive and continues to utter some pseudo-poetic nonsense from her bed with a heavy tone of portent. She's not dead and as such, not a whore murdered by a man.

We follow her into the basement as she opens a freezer full of meat to select a little something for dinner. She considers the array of comestibles, selects decidedly, but before slamming the lid shut, our ruminating lassie glances over to the back corner of the freezer and regards the frozen head of a grown man, his face locked into a ghoulish death grimace.

Phew!

She is not a woman who's murdered her baby nor a whore murdered by a man. Agnes is, however, a killer. If she isn't, how did that frozen head get there? In any event, we are grateful, since she gets an answer to her vaguely rhetorical, if not downright existential question.

And so it is that Agnes has lived for over a decade in this beautiful old country house in Thunder Bay, Ontario (birthplace of longtime David Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer) with no visible means of support. At one point she reveals that her now-dead parents left her quite a sizeable estate, but she proves, time and time again, to be such an inveterate liar that it's impossible to believe this or anything else she says. Given that the script is littered with bonbons that strain credulity, it feels like something shoehorned in to explain her lack of anything resembling a livelihood (save for killing a parade of men and occasionally pawning their belongings).

When a private detective (Robert Notman) shows up to question her about an old boyfriend who's been missing for ten years, sparks fly twixt the two. We get plenty of provocative quipping a la Billy (Double Indemnity) Wilder (though in reality, the repartee comes closer to approximating the already-derivative banter Lawrence Kasdan belched out in Body Heat). Well, before you can spit out the title of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, the couple are grappling amorously with each on the kitchen counters and floors. No coitus interruptus, either. Our dick-for-hire finishes bareback inside of her and in no time, she trains a double-barrelled shotgun in his direction, plunges a hypodermic needle into his arm, renders him unconscious, chains him up, tortures him and slowly employs Stockholm Syndrome techniques to turn him into her acquiescent boy-toy.

Agnes is a firm believer in the spice of life that is variety and soon kidnaps another hapless fella. Now she's got our submissive detective to become a willing participant in torturing her new victim and, it seems, possibly killing him.

If it wasn't for the brave star-making performance of leading lady Lora Burke (she fires out her lines with the straight-faced panache of Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell and even Jean Arthur - pretty amazing that she's playing a serial killer), it would be near impossible to swallow any of the film's proceedings. Though screenwriter James Gordon Ross has clearly done his homework on the machinations of Stockholm Syndrome, it's simply not enough to buy all the opportunities the kidnapped dick has to escape and/or fight back. His character is weirdly underwritten. Though at one point, when a grocery cashier notices his wrist bruises and happily chirps, "You're a sub!", these "qualities" in his character are merely trotted out as a script convenience rather than being skilfully woven into the narrative.

One of the stupidest (and jaw-drippongly WTF) moments actually occurs when another private detective shows up at Le Maison de Agnes to ask questions about the missing dick. He reveals that the character has a reputation for "hanging around in low social circles" (more convenient character shoehorning) and even more ridiculous is when he says to Agnes, "Don't take it personally, but, are you a prostitute?" I'm sorry. What experienced detective, or anyone for that matter, would ask a question like this? It's an idiotically offensive question and in fairness to the script, Agnes reacts appropriately to it, BUT what is this line of dialogue doing there in the first place? Yes, it might be intentional on the part of the filmmakers to add a dollop of the kind of patriarchy women must put up with, but the delivery of the line is so absurdly chipper and oh-so polite that it's not only unintentionally funny, but brings into question the intentions of the film, submerged or otherwise.

Poor Agnes often feels vaguely misogynistic. While I'm grateful to the filmmakers that they provide no real reason/explanation for Agnes's psychopathic tendencies, what feels horrendously machine-tooled is the idea of taking a typical serial killer story (which always involves men kidnapping, torturing and killing women) and reversing the gender roles, for no other reason than this - they can! They seem to think (at worst) it's "cool" and at best (if we can call it that), that they're making some sort of point about sociopathic tendencies in women (and by extension, how they are treated and/or ignored in the movies). Either way, this is not good enough. The whole thing feels rotten to the core. It's too bad. The director clearly has some talent for more-than-adequately capturing the visceral elements of suspense and the leading lady serves up one of the best performances I've seen in a long time, but neither of these things are enough to wash out the foul taste the picture leaves in one's mouth.

The movie just doesn't add up. It's impossible to buy that Agnes has been doing this for years and has never been caught, especially considering some of the mistakes she makes during the final third of the film which seem to conveniently ignore how meticulous her murderous machinations have been. I usually try to avoid writing about independent films that are this mediocre, but the combination of the moral repugnancy of the whole movie with its considerable flaws, forces me to do so. Too many "critics" and even those who should know better, might potentially fall for the picture's trick-pony styling and sometimes it's important to not just point fingers at the myriad of studio pictures sharing these woeful attributes.

I was also tempted not to mention the boneheaded scene wherein Agnes wanders through the empty hallways of a school, the walls adorned with children's artwork and comes upon a sign that reads: "Torture Survivor Meetup". (Yup, she attends to get torture ideas.) I cannot help myself. This bears mentioning. Sorry, most self-help group meetings avoid such signage, but even if they didn't, the timing of the cut to the shot of the sign inspires unintentional howls of laughter. And, MEETUP? What is this? A kaffeeklatsch for victims of torture?

No surprise. There's far too much in this movie that feels unintentional and its intentions feel wrongheaded.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **

Poor Agnes enjoyed its World Premiere at Fantasia 2017.

ANOTHER WOLFCOP - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Glorious Hoser-Horror-Comedy at Fantasia

All-Canadian Lycanthropic Crime Fighter

Another WolfCop (2017)
Dir. Lowell Dean
Starring: Leo Fafard, Amy Matysio, Jonathan Cherry, Yannick Bisson, Devery Jacobs

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Beer guzzling small-town cop Lou Garou (Leo Fafard) is back in action in this sequel to the promising, but flawed WolfCop. Imagine, if you will, a horror-comedy franchise involving a crime-fighting werewolf? Great idea! Happily, this is a sequel that outdoes its predecessor a thousand-fold and rights many of the original's wrongs - and then some. Another WolfCop (not sure I'm crazy about this dullsville title) opens with an amazing action set piece - beautifully realized on every level - in which Lou is chasing down a truckload of heavily armed bank robber types (played by members of the Astron-6 filmmaking collective). Tires screeching, guns a-blazing and eventually, some delectable gore inflicted upon the bad guys by our lycanthropic hero, set the stage for one of the most giddily infectious combinations of gloriously crude Canadian Hoser Humour and plenty of horror movie tropes (and homages-galore, of course).

This new film offers up a delightful antagonist in the form of Swallows (Yannick Bisson), an industrialist planning to open a brewery and launch a new hockey team in the economically challenged town of Woodhaven, Saskatchewan. On the surface, this all seems mighty positive, but his real plans are (of course) nefarious. It's up to WolfCop, the babe-o-licious Chief Tina (Amy Matysio) and conspiracy-theory buddy Willie (Jonathan Cherry) to save the day.

The ribald rural humour is of the highest order - it's laugh-out-loud funny and certainly gives the classic SCTV Bob and Doug McKenzie a decent run for their money. It also has the funniest alien anal intrusion line I've ever heard: "They fuckin' violated me!" The magnificent delivery of it is thanks to the comic genius of actor Jonathan Cherry.

His is not the only first-rate piece of acting on display. Yannick Bisson, who stars in the utterly intolerable TV series "Murdoch's Mysteries", gives his staid, pole-up-the-butt Canuck detective persona a wonderful makeover as one of the scuzziest (and funniest) villains I've seen in some time. It's also great seeing Matysio back in action also - with a job promotion no less. Her straight-up line readings with no-tongue-in-cheek offer comedy (and heroism) in spades. Devery Jacobs offers babe-cop support with her lovely turn as Daisy. Chicks with guns are super-sexy. Then again, so are mixed martial artist lingerie fighting champs, and there's a wonderfully smarmy (albeit boner-inducing) turn from Kris "The Raven" Blackwell as Bisson's evil moll. (We even get a dollop of catfight action twixt Blackwell and Matysio, but it's sadly truncated by a "rescue".)

There are a few spanners in the casting works. Sara Miller plays Willie's sister, a female werewolf for Lou Garou to boink, but the role seems underwritten and Miller's performance seems wooden, as opposed to merely "straight-up". The role could have used a strange combination of warmth and danger, but as served up, she seems little more than eye candy. Not that I have a problem with eye-candy, mind you - it's just that all the female roles in the movie offer so much more. There's a slightly annoying monster android character called Frank played by Alden Adair and even more annoying is a cameo from filmmaker Kevin Smith as a sleazy town official.

What's wonderful is that the movie, unlike the first instalment, is clearly and resolutely set in Canada. No ugly American flags flying here - just plenty of Maple Leafs on display. Dean's direction of the action scenes is first-rate: lots of solid variation in shot composition, all of it delivering dramatic resonance and not just for simple visceral wham-bam, and most importantly, his sense of spatial geography is spot-on (in marked contrast to the all-over-the-place "qualities" during the big climactic moments in the original film). And of course, there's the brilliant work from F/X genius Emersen Ziffle - the film is replete with magnificent makeup and prosthetics and eschewing the cold, lifeless qualities inherent in digital effects.

And what Canuck movie would be complete without heavy metal, plenty of beer-guzzling and violent hockey goonery? There's plenty of all the aforementioned on display here, but given that it's a horror movie (albeit with a funny bone), the picture brings new meaning to the expression "blood on the ice"!

More Wolfcops are promised from creator Lowell Dean, whose continued above-the-line writing-directing talent will be imperative if the quality-level is to continue onwards and upwards. (One also hopes this gets a better marketing push and theatrical release than the perfunctory lame-ass treatment the first picture got via Cineplex Entertainment. The picture needs a kick-ass trailer on as many screens as possible, well in advance of the film's opening - which will hopefully be on at least 100+ screens and even better, just before Christmas - Yes! The movie has a Christmas setting!)

Another WolfCop is such a marked improvement and fulfills the initial promise of both the franchise and the filmmaker. This film superbly builds on the "universe" he laid out and takes it up several notches. With Dean's continued creative involvement, it's going to be onwards and upwards. And speaking of onwards and upwards, yes, we get a Mt. Everest-calibre shot of wolf dick. Welcome to Canada!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

Another WolfCop enjoys its Canadian Premiere at Fantasia 2017