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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SIMON HOUPT in the Toronto GLOBE & MAIL shills Gross Canadian FLOP "Hyena Road", one day before the same newspaper issues their immortal endorsement of Canada's Conservative Party to win another mandate, creating history by issuing the most moronic editorial ever written in Canada - Commentary and Report By Greg Klymkiw

THE REAL CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES:
Globe and Mail SHILLS Gross FLOP Hyena Road

Commentary and Report By Greg Klymkiw

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift in "Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting"

You would think Jonathan Swift might well have penned the aforementioned words as a kind of prescient reference to Canadian "filmmaker" Paul Gross, whose grotesquely bloated Afghanistan war picture Hyena Road enjoyed a World Premiere Gala at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2015). Opening theatrically soon after, with an unprecedented amount of publicity courtesy of Cineplex Entertainment, various levels of provincial and federal marketing assistance (the Canadian taxpayer) and the film's Canadian distributor Elevation Pictures, the film was a resounding FLOP!!!

One would assume this latest effort by Mr. Gross, known the world over as Constable Benton Fraser, the scarlet-uniform-adorned Mountie in the inexplicably long-running TV series Due South, would have been assailed by a Swiftian Confederacy of Dunces; but no, Mr. Gross was instead hailed by a decidedly non-Swiftian Confederacy of Dunces in the form of virtually every member of the Canadian media and critical establishment.

One can forgive the professional shilling of supposed entertainment "journalists" in print and broadcast media, since that is what arts reportage has been reduced to in these Dark Ages. One might even be tempted to forgive the ludicrous number of positive notices the movie received from Canadian film critics, since many of them could care less about the genuinely great Canadian cinema that takes the world by storm and long to accept something vaguely commercial. That said, there's virtually nothing commercial about Hyena Road, save for its dull levels of borderline competence. Essentially, the picture is bargain basement war-pornography extolling the virtues of all the Canadian soldiers whose lives were wasted in a completely unnecessary war and certainly one in which Canada should never have succumbed to participating in.

Is there, then, anyone we should not forgive? Of course. Canada's purported "newspaper of record", the Toronto Globe and Mail has been part of an obvious shill effort to canonize Paul Gross and his dreadful film(s) and career for some time now. The most egregious act of shilling occurred in the Globe courtesy of "reporter" Simon Houpt in the article headlined: "Hyena Road’s battle at the box office brings in $486,000", followed by the puffery of a ludicrous lead which reads: "Hyena Road, the new Canadians-in-Afghanistan war drama, scored the biggest opening of any Canadian film of the year last weekend, bringing in $486,000 at the box office."

This is all well and good, but he merely swallows this dubious honour based upon the bumph supplied to him by the Canadian distributor Elevation Films who are quick to point out how well the film did in Western Canada (where the deservedly-trounced Conservative party remained the strongest after the recent election to become the Official Opposition to Justin Trudeau's new majority government of Liberals).

Though Houpt hammers home the historic grosses of this $12.5 million effort (a nice chunk of which was borne by Canadian taxpayers), he also benevolently allows the distribution company to make excuses for the film's performance by suggesting that Canadian grosses for all films were down right across the board for the entire Thanksgiving weekend due to the Toronto Blue Jays and their playoff bid. We furthermore find out that there was, in fact, only a small drop in the grosses twixt the holiday Monday and Tuesday which, according to Houpt, "may augur well for sustained business."

Alas, as the numbers played out, it did not auger well, but Houpt is forgiven for not being clairvoyant. He does, of course, include the ludicrous comment from Elevation Pictures that this drop in box-office “goes to show that people wanted to see the film, but they weren’t rushing out.”

"Not rushing out" seems a whopper of an understatement.

The film's second weekend turned out to be even MORE dismal.

What Houpt fails to point out in his obvious shill piece is what any reporter worth their salt might have noted. In his box-office report for Movie City News, veteran film critic and film industry reporter Len Klady notes: "In Canada Afghan war saga Hyena Road was unenthusiastically received with a $337,000 gross." Granted, Klady is referring to the three-day weekend and not Houpt's four-day long weekend numbers, but Klady, instead of slanting a shill in favour of Hyena Road presents his comments, not on the misleading cumulative grosses, but on what (I reiterate) ANY REPORTER WORTH THEIR SALT would have noted:

The per-screen average of Hyena Road was dismal. Even going by Houpt's numbers, a cumulative gross of $486,000 and a screen count of 184, tells a much different story than Houpt's shill-prose: The film grossed an average of $2600 PER SCREEN. Let's be generous here and say that the average ticket price is $10 (quite conservative, but we'll use it). This means that Gross's film's grosses were so pathetic that a grand total of 260 people went to see the film in each cinema over FOUR DAYS, FOUR SHOWS PER DAY!!! Doing the math even further, an average of sixty-five (65) people saw the film on each screen over the same period - PER DAY!!! Let's do the math even further: Sixteen (16.25 to be precise) people saw the movie each show over the same period. I won't even bother doing the math on how many people saw the movie per show, per day - that would be cruel.

These, of course, are averages. Granted. They especially do not accurately represent the numbers in cinemas located in the redneck Conservative enclaves of Western Canada, but even those numbers could not have been that much higher than the rest of the country. The fact remains that the film's distributor, its exhibitor (primarily the monopoly known as Cineplex Entertainment) and the Canadian Taxpayer forked out a whopping amount of dough, not to mention effort, for a promotional budget which was up there with any major release (at least in Canadian terms).

The film's second weekend per-screen average was a mere pubic hair over $1000. As for its third weekend, I didn't even bother looking for grosses, but I couldn't help but notice that many screens had already dropped the film entirely or reduced its daily runs to two shows a day.

In spite of the movie flopping so obviously on its opening weekend, it's a bit distasteful to see that Houpt, not only shills, but turns himself into an apologist for Gross, the film, its distributor and all those who backed this spindly Thanksgiving Turkey when he writes:

"...the strong theatrical opening positions Hyena Road well for a video-on-demand run, and would likely increase viewership when it appears on the pay-TV channels TMN and Movie Central. The film has also been sold to CBC-TV.

'This is a Canadian film that now has huge awareness, which will play out for the life of the film,' he [the film's Canadian distributor] said."

Great! The movie will play on TV. We might even see DVDs and Blu-Rays in the Wal-Mart $5.00 bargain bins across the country. In spite of crappy box-office grosses, there is a "huge awareness". Really? Huge?

And why, oh why, does Simon Houpt's Globe article accept what the film's Canadian distributor says at face value? Had this reporter never thought about scouring the trades outside of Canada? Or taking a look at the numbers via Rentrak Corp., the world's most prestigious viewership data and analysis companies? Was there any thought at all to perhaps getting a quotation from either the industry scribe Klady or, for that matter, RentTrack's topper Paul Dergarabdian who offers opinions/analysis to virtually any outlet that asks him for it?

I can only assume that Houpt chose not to do any of the aforementioned because he is a shill and/or not an especially good reporter.

However, let's not blame the messenger 100%. Surely Houpt's editors at the Globe had something to do with this. They're either shills themselves or don't care or worse, are part of the Moron Club at the Globe who green-lit the most idiotic editorial in the history of journalism in Canada. One day after Houpt's shill for Hyena Road appeared, the Globe urged all Canadians to give the fascist Conservative party another mandate to govern. This would be bad enough, but that the Globe would idiotically suggest Canadians vote the Conservatives to a majority and in the same breath call for ex-Prime Minister Stephen Harper's resignation is tantamount to gross stupidity.

Yeah, right! If the Conservatives had won, Herr Harper would have listened to the Globe editors and resigned - NOT! Love him or hate him, Stephen Harper is/was the Conservative Party of Canada. He's also more intelligent than all the knot-heads who make up the rest of the party combined.

The election is over. The Conservatives have been defeated. Harper has resigned as party leader. BUT NOT because of the Globe.

And Hyena Road is the stinking flop nobody wants to admit to.

Oddly, I feel like the Swiftian Confederacy of Dunces. I have dared to piss on the genius that is Paul Gross as well as the utter failure of his film at the box-office. It seems, publicly, that I am a Confederacy of one on this front.

That said, I offer the following by asking: Who comprises the genuine, non-Swiftian Confederacy of Dunces?

I think we all know the answer to that one.

My review of Hyena Road is HERE.

My review of Guy Maddin's Hyena Road "making of", Bring Me The Head of Tim Horton is HERE.

My review of Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room which was partially finished by monies funnelled to Maddin for his Hyena Road "making of" is HERE.

My editorial commentary "The Unbearable Promotion of War: Buying Grosses for Wasteful Gross Film" is HERE.

My editorial commentary "Maddin Fêted in New York with Fine Single-Screen Opening Weekend Numbers While Gross Multimillion Dollar Canadian Pro-War Film a FLOP with Paltry Per-Screen Average" is HERE.

My review of Paul Gross's execrable Passchendaele is HERE.

Simon Houpt's article in the Globe and Mail is HERE.

The Globe and Mail's moronic editorial endorsement of the Conservatives is HERE.

SCREEN LEGEND TAB HUNTER watches new film by Canuck Guy Maddin! Grossmultimillion dollar PRO-WAR Canadian film BOX-OFFICE FLOP. HYENA ROAD'sper-screen average decimated by opening numbers of brilliant,imaginative and LOW-BUDGET Guy Maddin film THE FORBIDDEN ROOM -Report/Commentary by Greg Klymkiw

GUY MADDIN with delighted FORBIDDEN ROOM
New York audience member, screen legend TAB HUNTER.
In other news, Paul Gross abomination HYENA ROAD is a
BIG FAT FLOP

Maddin Fêted in New York
with Fine Single-Screen Opening Weekend Numbers

Gross Multimillion Dollar Canadian Pro-War Film a FLOP
with Paltry Per-Screen Average

Report and Commentary By Greg Klymkiw

Millions upon millions of dollars towards the production and extensive marketing budget of the Paul Gross propaganda war film Hyena Road, much of it plucked from the purse-strings of Canadian taxpayers, opened this past long weekend on 174 screens across the Land of Beavers and Maple Syrup. Meanwhile, Guy Maddin's insane, brilliant, meagrely budgeted avant-garde contemporary classic The Forbidden Room, garnered numbers at the ticket-wicket to put its trough-gobbling Canuck big brother straight into a hand-shoveled latrine in Afghanistan.

On one screen in New York City, Maddin's movie collected an impressive 4-day long weekend tally of $7000 whilst Gross's Folly struggled to garner a mere $2500 per screen average during the same period. If one includes the admittedly soft Toronto numbers, Maddin's per-screen average grosses over the same period come out to $4200, still besting the gross-per-screeners of Hyena Road's $2500.

The bottom line is this, even if Hyena Road holds steady in Canada at these numbers, it will do so through the sheer force of will of all those responsible for backing this lame pony - more money in marketing, perchance, added screens, uh, more money - but given that the picture is a style-bereft slab of pro-war propaganda, mediocre to the max and an already out-of-date Middle-Eastern sand-and-turban slaughter-fest, one cannot see its theatrical life outside of Canada being all that impressive. Its home video prospects might prove somewhat better, but the reality is that this is the kind of ephemera which will have virtually no shelf-life where it counts - as a work of art, and certainly not even in a commercial sense.

For my fuller commentary about the moronic waste of promotional resources on Hyena Road entitled "The Unbearable Promotion of War: Buying Grosses for Wasteful Gross Film", click HERE.

In many ways, the best bet when it comes to taxpayer-supported culture in Canada (particularly English-Canada) is work like Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room. His fans at the box-office (and critically) will always be there for his work and will usually not be too disappointed (save perhaps for the ambitious, but clunky Twilight of the Ice Nymphs). Given the sheer madness (or if you will, "Maddin-ness") of this latest fest-o-fetishes, I'm especially delighted how crazed the American critical scribes have been (even the normally staid New York Times had to succumb). Its shelf-life will last long beyond the traditional windows of exploitation.

Maddin's earliest work is well over one-quarter-of-a-century old and still shows no sign of abatement in terms of its long-time admirers who've become even more slavish in their devotion. Even now, the work is harvesting huge swaths of new fans every year. Maddin's art is celebrated and written about in a seemingly infinite number of prestigious books, magazines and journals.  On that front, the accolades and scholarship for his films show no sign of ever easing up..

If a government is going to back film culture, especially film culture, shelf-life is everything. Immortality should be the goal. Art, TRUE art, delivers a much better bang for the buck. There are audiences out there for it too. Alas, our domestic exhibitors (not indies, but major chains, of which there is really only one, a monopoly allowed by the current Harper Conservative government), have the strength to show a real corporate responsibility to committing themselves to genuine Canadian culture of a lasting quality. To date, this has not happened in any significant manner.

The bottom line, is that the players who invested their time, money and elbow grease in films like Guy Maddin's (or Atom Egoyan's or Peter Mettler's or Albert Shin's or Igor Drljača's or Ingrid Veninger's or David Cronenberg's or . . . the list goes on and on) - these are the players who are investing in our cinematic equivalents to Da Vinci, Turner, Modigliani, Picasso and . . . the list goes on and on. The players investing in the likes of filmmakers like Paul Gross are doing little more than investing in the cinematic equivalents to velvet paintings.

The one good thing about Hyena Road is that it is responsible for apportioning a sliver of its grotesquely huge budget on the commissioned "making of" documentary by Guy Maddin and his collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson. Bring Me The Head of Tim Horton is not only a bonafide masterwork, it's probably one of the few, if not only "Making Of" doc that far exceeds its subject in terms of quality and lasting value. Feel free to read my review of Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton HERE. If you want to know why The Forbidden Room is a contemporary masterwork, read my review HERE.

If, you need to read about wise decisions to finance Canadian cinema during the past year, feel free to read my review of Hurt HERE, my review of of The Waiting Room HERE, my review of Sleeping Giant HERE, my review of The Rainbow Kid HERE, my review of Fire Song HERE and the list, go on, and on, and on.

If you want to read about the kind of overpriced, empty, overblown crap that should never be made in Canada (unless completely financed by the marketplace), feel free to read my review of Hyena Road HERE.

And I reiterate, TAB HUNTER, for God's Sake, came to see The Forbidden Room. Paul Gross can eat his heart out.

Hyena Road is playing on 174 screens across Canada. The Forbidden Room is playing at the Film Forum in New York and the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.

Wanna see something really GROSS? Here are just a few of the disgusting items on the Cineplex Entertainment website wildly promoting the crummy Paul Gross pro-war film HYENA ROAD + links to Greg Klymkiw's reviews of HYENA ROAD and the brilliant "Making of" Documentary by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson which is light-years better than Paul Gross's film itself. Enjoy!

Here's something GROSS!
Win a Trip to Ottawa in honour of
the pro-war film HYENA ROAD
Visit the Nation's Capital
Governed by RACIST FASCISTS
You paid for a good chunk of this
with your tax dollars under the aegis
of the aforementioned RACIST FASCIST
government, so ENJOY!!!

The Unbearable Promotion of War:
Buying Grosses for Wasteful Gross Film

Editorial Commentary By Greg Klymkiw

The new Canadian war film Hyena Road tries to mask itself as anything but a pro-war film, but as it extols the virtues of Canada's involvement in a war which killed, maimed and shell-shocked too many of our nation's soldiers for reasons that had everything to do with buttressing the financial goals of corporate pigs, it's clearly one of the most foul pieces of garbage foisted upon us courtesy of several million Canadian taxpayer dollars.

When writer-producer-director Paul Gross sallied over to Afghanistan for a morale-boosting "meet and greet" with our fighting men and women a few years ago, he realized it was necessary to make a film about Canadians and for Canadians. Rather than focusing upon the war machine and America's perverted desires to lie to its people about extremist Muslims being the real threat, he chose instead to give us some good, old rah-rah with oodles of war pornography.

He decided to tell of a joint Canadian-American initiative to build a road through hostile territory to ensure safe back-and-forth passage through hostile "enemy" territory. Make no mistake, Canada was the enemy in Afghanistan. Gross, however, clearly had no interest in the agendas of the New World Order, the 1% of the wealthiest, who used terrorism as the excuse to murder its own soldiers and Afghans.

According to a sampling of the reams of promotional bumph on the Cineplex Entertainment website:

"...Gross felt a calling to present a very real slice of the Canadian military’s efforts in Afghanistan. This wasn't just to use film as a means of educating those who don’t really understand Canada’s role in the war. [Our role was a spurious one, but Gross has no interest in this.] It was also to give a voice, and humanity, [Humanity! Hah!] to not only the soldiers risking their lives every day to protect the sanctity of freedom [Sanctity of FREEDOM! Who the fuck are they trying to kid?], but the Afghan warriors typically villainized. [Another yeah right! The film shows one "good" Afhghan warrior and most of the rest are the typical Snidely Whiplash villains, especially a sleazy two-faced Afghan villain.]

Here's the real GROSS part to all this. The amount of promotional support for this film on the Cineplex website and in its theatre lobbies and on its screens is huge. On top of this are all the millions of dollars from Federal and Provincial coffers to produce, market and distribute this film. I have no problem with Canadian films receiving this - not even Hyena Road. However, how many Canadian films get this kind of promotional support? Not many. How many Canadian films are supported to such a degree by Cineplex Entertainment? Not many. In fact, how many Canadian films does Cineplex Entertainment bother to even show? Not many and it's getting worse, not better.

Enjoy 300 SCENE Loyalty Points from
Cineplex Entertainment when buying
a ticket to the Canadian War Pornography
HYENA ROAD during its first week!!!

What's essentially happening with Hyena Road and a handful of other "anointed" Canadian films is that both the government and corporations like Cineplex Entertainment are buying grosses to put bums in seats. This allows everyone to pat themselves on the back, publicize big grosses (which usually aren't that big to begin with) so that a whole whack of folks can save face by backing these few horses. And then, based on these spurious numbers, the producers of said pieces of garbage are giving green lights to keep gobbling from the troughs and make more shitty movies.

In addition to the hilariously pathetic Cineplex Entertainment contest to send two - count 'em - two lucky people to Ottawa, they're also offering Scene loyalty card bonus points if people see Hyena Road during the first week. 300 points to be exact. This represents almost one third of an eventual free ticket to see a movie. Again, I have no problem with this. It offers a decent promotional incentive to patrons and if it works, it assists in top-loading the first week of release with more paying viewers. However, how many Canadian films are afforded this great promotion? Uh, not too many.

The amount of promo material for Hyena Road on the Cineplex Entertainment website is staggering. Just for fun, here is another ludicrous quotation taken directly from Cineplex.com:

These are stories that are often overlooked, as Canada’s participation in the war is not something that is often depicted on film. The cast discuss their respect for Gross, who is telling important historical stories that our nation deserves to have heard.

Excuse me, did I just read that correctly? The cast of Hyena Road "discuss" on the Cineplex Entertainment website "their respect for [Paul] Gross"? Why, pray tell? For "telling important historical stories that our nation deserves to have heard."

You know, what our nation deserved to hear is not the war porn bunkum Gross craps onto the screen. We don't need this propaganda. We need to know the truth behind what our veterans from Afghanistan and every other war have had to suffer because they were duped into fighting for freedom.

If Paul Gross had any concern at all about the bravery of Canada's armed forces, he might have thought to tell the stories of how our fighting men and women have been treated like shit by our own government. How about stories of Canadian soldiers and their applications for assistance to the Department of Veterans Affairs taking 5 years or more? How about stories of same said veterans being denied assistance after waiting for so many years? How about the fact that this mean-spirited incompetence directed at these members of our armed forces are a result of the Canadian Fuhrer closing nine Veterans Affairs offices across the country, firing 900 Veterans Affairs staff members, not using one billion dollars earmarked for veterans' assistance, ignoring a detailed and damning Auditor General report condemning the Harper Reichstag for doing virtually nothing to help our veterans?

How about Der Fuhrer Stephen Harper removing the right of a maimed, injured, shell-shocked veteran to a lifetime pension?

These are the real Canadian stories of war that have been swept under the rug by our government and even the media to a large degree. What the fuck is Paul Gross, Cineplex Entertainment and various levels of the Canadian government doing making propaganda and ignoring the war stories that really matter?

Sadly, for Canada, not even American filmmakers have ignored the maimed, the mad and the disenfranchised thanks to Oliver Stone (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July), Francis Coppola (Apocalypse Now). Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter), Samuel Fuller (Steel Helmet, The Big Red One) and, well, I could grind out a few thousand words just listing them. Even worse, for Canada, is that Gross has, with two pictures, burned through millions upon millions of dollars to make films that not only have much to say, but range from incompetence to borderline incompetence.

So go. See the movie this week. You'll get loyalty card points and contribute to supporting lacklustre filmmaking and lies. I hope Gross and anyone responsible at any level for this wad of nothingness are proud of themselves.

We can all feel proud. Hyena Road is what "we stand on guard for thee" for.

Lies, lies and more lies. And cruddy filmmaking also.

The link to my review of Hyena Road is HERE.

The link to my review of Bring Me The Head of Tim Horton, The Making of Hyena Road is HERE.

"Stay tuned. We're going to go beyond the scenes."
- Michael Kennedy, Executive Vice-President,
CINEPLEX ENTERTAINMENT

HYENA ROAD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2015 - Yet another Gross Canadian movie

This is not a scene from HYENA ROAD.
It is a scene from the genuinely brilliant
BRING ME THE HEAD OF TIM HORTON:
The Making of "Hyena Road"

Hyena Road (2015)
Dir. Paul Gross
Starring: Paul Gross, Rossif Sutherland, Christine Horne, Niamatullah Arghandabi

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Even though the word "Hyena" is in the title, try not to confuse the abomination that is Hyena Road with the superb 2014 Hyena. The former is yet another dreadful Paul Gross war film, the latter a grim, gritty UK crime picture about police corruption and the Albanian Mob in contemporary London. The former will be released wide across Canadian screens later this year, whilst the latter has disappeared without a trace. Both films, however, played at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The former this year, the latter last year.

Canadians have a real treat in store for them. They will not see Hyena. They will, however, see Hyena Road. This is primarily thanks to the largesse of the Canadian taxpayers themselves, who forked over a good chunk of the $12.5 million needed to put this rah-rah slice of propagandistic pro-war excrement on the screen and, of course, the ever - ahem - visionary Cineplex Entertainment theatre chain (monopoly) which would prefer to exhibit endless prints of awful studio pictures and, naturally, Paul Gross movies, rather than genuinely great Canadian films (or, for that matter, the very best indie foreign films).

Hyena Road has one thing going for it, though. While it's genuinely awful, it's not quite as laughably horrendous as Gross's previous war picture Passchendaele. That said, it might even be worse - not in terms of craft - but the fact that it extols the virtues of Canada's role in a war the country should never have become a part of. There isn't a single war in the Middle East which should have happened, never mind with the assistance of Canada's Armed Forces, but happen they did AND with Canada's help (not to mention the senseless deaths of our soldiers and those of innocent Afghanis and Iraquis).

So, what does the director of Men With Brooms (a witless purported comedy about the sport of curling) do? As he proved successful enough with Passchendaele, his WWI anti-war effort (a film which had its box-office grosses in Canada bought and paid for with oodles of marketing assistance from the Canadian taxpayer and the screen-count-largesse of the - ahem - visionary Cineplex Entertainment), Gross scratched his noggin and crapped out the fine idea of a pro-war propaganda film in Afghanistan.

Oh Canada. We stand on guard for thee by wiping out Afghani villages to ensure the safety of the American armed forces.

Yup, this is what we get with Hyena Road:

Pete Mitchell (Paul Gross) is the Canuck in charge of safely building a road through Taliban territory to allow for the safer passage of coalition forces (America, really). Mitchell, however, is no mere lean, mean, fighting machine, he's a military intelligence (a bit of an oxymoron, mais non?) officer. His real goal is to ferret out The Ghost (Niamatullah Arghandabi), a mujahideen who could prove to be an excellent ally. To this end, Mitchell puts the brave sniper (a bit of an oxymoron, mais non?) in the role of front man for this operation.

Ryan Sanders (Rossif Sutherland) has scruples, however. He doesn't like being manipulated and he refuses to kill children. Isn't that special? Good thing too, since he's been boinking Jennifer Bowman (Christine Horne), the film's token female window dressing who runs the command centre (and also appears afflicted with - horrors - morning sickness). It sure would be Gross if he killed kids whilst his girlie-pie is carrying his eventual progeny (to no doubt grow up to kill more people in battle during the next senseless war).

Amidst the simplistic military maneuvers and soap suds outlined above, Gross stages several big violent action set pieces with both Jordan and Manitoba's Carberry Desert nicely standing in for Afghanistan. Here is one aspect that the film modestly excels at. Gross wisely crews up with artists who've plied their trade on good, if not great Canadian films.

Thanks to one of Canada's most gifted cinematographers Karim Hussain (We Are Still Here, Hobo With A Shotgun), and the equally gifted Canuck editor David Wharnsby (Guy Maddin's Saddest Music in the World and Sarah Polley's Away From Her), the action more-than-ably rip-snorts along, providing superb war-porn for action aficionados.

Where these sequences fail, however, is Gross's awful screenplay which puts dull dialogue in the mouths of the characters - if one can even call them characters as opposed to simple types - and, of course, unlike genuinely great (if not even good war pictures) we have no human being to hang our hopes and dreams upon as they march forward into the carnage of battle.

Though Hyena Road is a disgrace and has no business receiving taxpayer financing and even less business being featured as a Gala Presentation during TIFF, one of the world's most prestigious film festivals, its real problem lies in the fact that the movie is just plain bad as opposed to being the unmitigated stinker Passchendaele was.

That film was so awful I blessed it with my lowest Film Corner rating imaginable: THE TURD FOUND BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL GRILL & DINING LOUNGE. But WOE! I could not even bring myself to affix my second-lowest Film Corner Rating to Hyena Road, the ever-famous, ONE PUBIC HAIR (which I proudly bestowed upon Sharknado).

Nope. Hyena Road belongs to a special class of bad movies - a picture so dull and mediocre it rates the most dull and mediocre of all the Film Corner Ratings.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Hyena Road enjoys its World Premiere as a GALA at TIFF 2015. For further info visit the TIFF website HERE. It will be seen all across Canada via Elevation Pictures.

ROOM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - FRANK director delivers another winner - TIFF 2016

Room (2016)
Dir. Lenny Abrahamson
Scr. Emma Donoghue
Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Tom McCamus, William H. Macy, Sean Bridgers, Wendy Crewson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Lenny Abrahamson turned out to be the best director imaginable for this screen rendering of Emma Donoghue's novel of the same name. His last film Frank, created a wondrous, expansive world within the isolated confines of the country cottage wherein the title character's band creates music for a new album. Abrahamson then shifted us, ever-so deftly to a constrained, insular and painful emotional domain once Frank and company attend the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas. Finally, we were plopped, alongside the film's characters onto the flat, open, limitless landscape under a big American sky, dwarfing, as it always does, everything and everyone.

Room shares a similar story structure to the aforementioned gem of a film. Like Donoghue's book, the first half of Abrahamson's new picture confines us to the tiny space that Ma (Brie Larson) and her 5-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) live in. Having been kidnapped and held hostage by Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), a sexual predator who has repeatedly raped Ma until she became pregnant with Jack, the isolated room of the title has been turned into a wide open world by Ma to keep her sanity, as well as that of her child.

Ma has used what meagre means she has at her disposal to educate her child. For example, every item in the room is ascribed qualities akin to humanity which not only describe said items, but allows Jack to offer salutations upon first laying eyes upon them every morning. Personification in fiction is one thing, but in real life, it's clearly quite another.

At the midway point of the picture, a harrowing escape delivers us into the world outside the room and in spite of the new expanse, Ma especially suffers as a free woman - her incarceration and the repeated sexual abuse (not to mention relentless media attention) has somehow dwarfed everything that could be seen as healthy and positive to her.

The two halves of the film are rendered with an astonishingly brilliant mise en scène, which indeed creates expanse in isolation and isolation in expanse. The first half, in spite of the one "room" setting, never really seems claustrophobic as the film roots the mother and son's relationship in a limitless love and deep imagination. Conversely (and not unlike Frank), freedom takes us to drearily grey exteriors and "normal" interiors that bear so much in common with everything that is so unbearably "normal" to anyone with huge imaginations (like Ma and Jacob).

Luckily, Abrahamson has the source material of Donoghue's novel to draw upon, as well as her screenplay adaptation. Oddly, Donoghue's screenwriting mostly eschews the novel's great "voice" (the story in the book is told by the five-year-old Jack) and Abrahamson must render it visually, without relying upon Jack's "voice" (except in tiny dollops). The lighting utilized in the room is especially evocative during daytime wherein the lone glimpse Ma and Jack have at the outside world is a small, dirty and unreachable skylight, casting a variety of eerie glows upon the proceedings. This genuinely great filmmaker pulls off the first half of the picture with flying colours, especially in the manner he blocks the movement within the interior of the "room", then eventually, outside of it - maintaining superb compositions to tell the story by cinematically capturing the evocative "voice" of the novel.

One other aspect which plays beautifully in the film is how it actually downplays the book's rather obvious allusions to the legend of Perseus. Donoghue makes use of an evocative epigraph of Simonides's (c. 556-468 BCE) poem "Lamentation of Danaë" which does help set the overall tone:

My child
Such trouble I have
And you sleep, your heart is placid;
you dream in the joyless wood;
in the night nailed in bronze,
in the blue dark you lie still and shine.

Alas, perhaps it sets the tone too well.

It's difficult to read Donoghue's book without thinking heavily about the woman in the Simonides poem being both confined to a tiny space and unmoored upon unfamiliar waters, and, of course, Jack's brave actions during a harrowing escape sequence wherein, like Perseus, he essentially slays the gorgon Medusa - or rather, is responsible for the undoing of Old Nick. (In spite of the character's inherent evil, Abrahamson manages to do a great job of extracting a great performance from Bridgers which, in turn, adds a layer of humanity that far exceeds that of the book.)

Luckily for most audiences, the film subtly mutes Simonides. It's there if we want it, but I trust most eggheads will repress its use in the book once seeing the movie. And speaking of repression, one of the most moving aspects of the film is how Ma represses her pain rather than facing it. This is in direct contrast to her son Jack, whom she's sheltered from as much pain as possible so that he can hoover up every aspect of the great wide world. Ma's sacrifices and both Jack's support for his mother and his unyielding quest for knowledge are guaranteed to extract copious tears from even the most blinkered eyes.

Room is deeply moving, thanks to its evocative source material, an odd, but effective screenplay adaption by the novel's original author, to-die-for performances (especially Brie Larson as Ma) and Lenny Abrahamson's delicate direction. He's the real thing and then some. I suspect we're going to see many genuine masterpieces from Lenny Abrahamson over the next decade (or two, or three, or four, etc.).

Well, here's hoping, anyway.

Room is a Special Presentation at TIFF 2014 and is the lucky recipient of thr Grolsch People's Choice Award, and as such, will screen for free.

Greg Klymkiw's 10 BEST HORROR/SCI-FI/FANTASY/ACTION FILMS of 2014 - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

Berkshire County
Dir. Audrey Cummings, Scr. Chris Gamble, Prod. A71 Productions, High Star Entertainment, Narrow Edge Productions
Pigs, you see, are lurking in the woods. Not just any pigs, mind you, but a family of travelling serial killers adorned in horrifying pig masks. And these sick fuckers mean business.