THE FILM CORNER CANADIAN FILM AWARDS 2014 - The very best in Canadian Cinema - 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

Greg Klymkiw, presents the The Film Corner Awards (TFCA) in this the year of Our Lord 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

THE FILM CORNER AWARDS (TFCA) 2014, 
AS SELECTED BY THE REV. GREG KLYMKIW

This will be the first in a series of year-end Film Corner round-ups of cinema in 2014. Below, you will find the citations of excellence from me, Greg Klymkiw, in the form of my annual The Film Corner Awards (TFCA) for 2014. The most interesting observation is that ALL of these films were first screened within the context of major international film festivals which is further proof of their importance in presenting audiences with the very best that cinema has to offer whilst most mainstream exhibition chains are more interested in presenting refuse on multi-screens of the most ephemeral kind. All the citations here came from films unleashed at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014), the Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF 2014), Hot Docs 2014, Montreal's 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival and the 2014 Montreal Nouveau Cinema Festival (FNC 2014). In Canada, only two of the films cited have been released theatrically within the hardly-visionary, downright lazy mega-plex chain Cineplex Entertainment and even those films are being allowed to play on a limited number of screens in an even-more limited number of cities while ludicrous numbers of awful movies are draining screen time at the aforementioned chain's big boxes. It's not as if all the films the chain allows to hog screens are doing numbers to justify this combination of piggishness and laziness. Keep your eyes open, though. The films cited here are all astounding BIG-SCREEN experiences, which will hopefully find BIG-SCREEN exhibition before being relegated to less-than-ideal home entertainment venues. And now, here goes, The Film Corner Awards (TFCA 2014) as selected by your most Reverend Greg Klymkiw. Included are brief quotes from my original reviews  and links to the full-length reviews from the past year (just click on the title).

American cinema, more than anything, has always exemplified the American Dream. Almost in response to this, director David Zellner with his co-writer brother Nathan, have created Kumiko The Treasure Hunter, one of the most haunting, tragic and profoundly moving explorations of mental illness within the context of dashed hopes and dreams offered by the magic of movies and the wide-open expanse of a country teeming with opportunity and riches.

Best Feature Film
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter

MONSTERZ - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ringu director Hideo Nakata explores mind control @FantAsia2014

Mind Control is not without merit when you're a monster.

Monsterz (2014)
Dir. Hideo Nakata
Starring: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Takayuki Yamada, Satomi Ishihara, Tomorowo Taguchi, Motoki Ochiai

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A young boy discovers he can telepathically control the minds of others. This comes in mighty handy when he manages to force his abusive father to snap his own neck. When the child reaches adulthood, he has the power to control anyone's mind and can even force large swaths of people in his purview to enter a state of suspended animation. This comes in especially handy when he wants to rob banks - mostly for fun. When he meets another young man with similar powers, all hell breaks loose.

Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Dark Water) is one of Japan's finest directors of horror and here he chooses to remake Haunters, a 2010 Korean film and even manages to trump the original. That the original is not especially good, is wherein the fault lies.

Nakata certainly creates a few creepy and fun set pieces and cannot be denied his natural virtuosity. That said, the film feels like a J-Horror version of such teen-oriented American franchise items like the Twilight and Hunger Games series. When the young man is wreaking havoc, all's well, but as it becomes more mano a mano rivalry gymnastics, not even Nakata's great style can breathe much life into this hoary horror of ponderous been-there-done-that.

THE FILM CORNER Rating **½

Monsterz had its Canadian Premiere at FantAsia2014 in Montreal.

THE DESERT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Argentinian 4-hander w/ 2 hunks, 1 babe and zombies @FantAsia2014

A hot babe w/ a gun & 2 hot hunks - always a bonus during the apocalypse!

Hot Babe gets porked, Hot Hunk gets pricked. Good deal.

The Desert aka El Desierto (2013)
Dir. Christoph Behl
Starring: Victoria Almeida, William Prociuk, Lautaro Delgado, Lucas Lagré

Review By Greg Klymkiw

As per usual, I'm always delighted when filmmakers expand the boundaries of genre filmmaking with new and original takes on the tropes. This is why I endured The Desert, a well-acted and intelligent Argentinian picture which eventually suffers from a detrimental reliance upon one well-intentioned arty-farty longueur after another. (I don't even mind the arty, it's the farty that drives me bonkers.)

A trio of attractive Argentinians have been holed up in a fortified apartment - long enough to have established some reasonable ground rules to approximate a normal life within extraordinary circumstances, a garden-variety post-apocalyptic world with zombies roaming about in search of human flesh. Ana (Victoria Almeida) is in a relationship with Jonathan (William Prociuk). Axel (Lautaro Delgado), understandably obsesses over her lithe form when she's sleeping and possesses himself equally with tattooing flies upon his body.

These, at least from my twisted perspective, both seem like reasonable-enough fetishes, especially given how this odd family unit appears to live. Considering the dire situation they're in, they seem to live reasonably well. Their rules to live by are both lifestyle and safety driven. All decisions must be made collectively and like a jury, they need to be unanimous. Games of the "Truth or Dare" or backgammon variety must be played if even one person wants to play and the others don't. When venturing into the outside world, two people must go - no solo efforts allowed. There are fucking zombies out there, yes? As for expressing themselves privately, given the claustrophobic nature of their existence, they have devoted one room where each can record their own video diary. They then deposit their tapes through a slot into a locked chest.

Given the lack of traditional power and water, they patch into a small generator for electricity and use rain barrels on their roof. Food is of the canned and dry goods variety. Hell, if they weren't mostly relegated to this one ground floor suite, it could, in fact, be a paradise. Alas, like the metaphorical title suggests, there is no oasis - the outside world is as much a desert-like environment as is their inside world. Emptiness is all-pervasive.

Luckily, for the audience, we catch these characters on the precipice of going a bit stir crazy, if not borderline bonkers. The biggest tension is between Axel and Ana. Axel wants some nookie and given that Ana's a sultry bit o' Chocotorta, one can't blame him. She knows he's been staring at her while she sleeps and even finds out he's been breaking the rules and sneaking her tapes out of the chest to watch. There's some discussion and consideration given to the idea of sharing her, but this creates added tension. At one point, during a game of Truth or Dare, certain confessions rear their ugly heads and even worse, one of the dares involves capturing and tattooing a zombie.

Ana has been keeping a memorial to every zombie they're forced to kill by giving each one a Greek name and etching it upon a wall. When the men drag home a live zombie for the tattooing dare, he's securely chained and Ana soon gives him the name Pythagoras (Lucas Lagré). He becomes a surrogate pet to her and she spends hours staring at it, attempting to communicate with the woeful wretch and even decorating his face with spray paint.

Here's the deal. There's nothing wrong with the story, nor is there anything wrong with the deliberate pace used to recreate a sense of both claustrophobia and tedium, but there are eventually far too many moments where the tedium forces your mind to wander and it's here where you're not only taken out of the story, but forced to mull over several unanswered questions and/or holes in the plot. While one is watching a movie is not the right time to be thinking about such matters and this results in an overall experience wherein a good many of the picture's parts are excellent, but the whole leaves a bit to be desired. (Sorry for butchering Aristotle here, but given the Greek names Ana's obsessed with, it seemed appropriate.)

The performances director Behl elicits from the cast are, as mentioned, superb. The triangle of friends/lovers feel like a genuine unit, albeit a frayed one. Almeida's Ana is a lovely mix of sexy, smart, cheeky and resourceful, but beneath the spitfire, she evokes, especially in her soulful eyes, a sense of sadness which plays beautifully with her overall journey as a character. Lucas Lagré is astonishing as the zombie - his remote, blank qualities conjure a sense of tragedy and empathy, except during occasionally shocking bursts of ferocity. Delgado's Axel is ruggedly handsome with an offbeat quality which he uses to superb effect - whether he's leering or obsessively fetishizing certain aspects of this life in hiding. Sanitation, or lack thereof, is certainly an issue and given the number of disgusting little bastards of the insect family Diptera (to carry the Greek metaphor to a pretentious, on my part, extreme), his need to tattoo flies on his body makes perfect sense, especially since one can only spend so much time under bug netting. Prociuk is an appropriately handsome and stalwart Jonathan - his intense Slavic features (forgive me, I'm an inveterate Ukrainian-spotter) are used to their fullest effect. He evokes an odd sense of emptiness and a kind of working-class roughness which ties in with Ana's own doubts about her love for him.

Behl's direction is, overall, superb - the blocking, sense of composition and the overall mise-en-scène of this world is clearly the work of a gifted filmmaker, as is his finely-tuned feel for observation. Alas, I do wish he'd have occasionally picked up the pace to avoid those stretches where we have too much time on our minds to think about some of the aforementioned plot-holes, most of which are niggling questions about the outside world, but annoying enough to rip us out of the drama. He's clearly a director to watch and if you have a hankering for some existentialist genre-bending and some patience (a definite must here), The Desert will offer you rewards not usually found in post-apocalyptic horror.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

The Desert enjoyed its Canadian Premiere at the 2014 edition of the FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal.

REAL (aka "Riaru") - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Kiyoshi Kurosawa visits a subconscious ghosts @FantAsia2014

A fleeting childhood memory permeates a subconscious world
of love, loss and ghost-like shadows of a life once lived.

Real (aka "Riaru") (2013)
dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Takeru Sato, Haruka Ayase, Joe Odagiri, Miki Natakani

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure, Charisma) is nothing if not ambitious. His latest film Real is set in a future not too removed from our own in which it's possible to scan the subconscious of those we love who are deep in a coma.

Here, a young couple face their greatest challenge when a wife attempts suicide and her husband is wired to her mind as she lays dead to the living world. Here they are able to communicate in a strange living purgatory of ghosts, shadows and zombie-like replicas of life itself. The couple faces the challenge of solving a mystery which might be able to revive the wife, or at least provide some spiritual solace to her tragic decision. It involves a drawing of a plesiosaur which she gifted to her husband in their childhood and that he's misplaced.

To say more is to upset the delicate intricacies of this haunting and deeply moving tale of love and loss. Kurosawa's deliberate pacing is, as always, infectious and though he's lest interested in evoking terror, he does manage to give us the creeps.

Though the film overstays its welcome whilst watching it, you can't get the damn thing out of your head afterwards. As always, it's the mark of a genuine artist.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

Real enjoyed its Quebec Premiere at the FantAsia 2014 Film Festival.

EJECTA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Solid script anchors alien thriller premiering @FantAsiaFilmFestival2014

It's time to make room for some visitors.

IF YOU DARE DOUBT,
YOU'RE A FOOL!

Ejecta (2014) dir. Dir. Chad Archibald, Matt Wiele
Screenplay: Tony Burgess
Starring: Julian Richings, Lisa Houle, Adam Seybold

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In a world replete with eyewitness accounts detailing UFO sightings and contact with extraterrestrial (or at least, unidentified) life forms, all the stuff so many individuals and groups have testified to seeing and/or feeling, are those which tend to be discounted by ascribing said testimonials to mental illness. Though I have no doubt that many such experiences are indeed the bi-products of more than a few of the aforementioned folks being completely out of their respective (or collective) gourds, I still get the willies when I realize that some of them are most probably not crazy, that they've seen and experienced things I hope to never be unlucky enough to witness and/or feel.

Furthermore, I genuinely believe there's stuff out there that can never be adequately explained and probably won't be since an elite exists that's all too aware of certain realities, but keeps them veiled in secrecy for a variety of social, cultural, religious, political and economic reasons. The only people who would tend to dispute this, to doubt it beyond all that is reasonable, are those who would be quick to dismiss such notions, both genuinely and surreptitiously.

My own beliefs on this matter are not, I suspect, only due to years of tuning into very some very strange stuff on shortwave radio, eons of listening to Art Bell and George Noory on late-night talk radio and poring over as many books, articles and internet blogs on the matter as I've been able to pore over. Nay, I accept without question that some truly weird shit's going on out there (or, at the very least, I take it seriously enough to question it).

As for the poor souls who've become targets of derision for experiencing the unexplainable, it's clear they've been through something that's so cerebellum-brandingly real, so horrific, so indescribable and so nerve-shreddingly painful that they can only respond in ways that some would term as insanity. I have no doubt, however, that a goodly number of these people are not bonkers. In fact, those who absolutely refuse to believe are more likely to be the crazy ones.

Oh, and in case you're convinced that I am a few bricks short of a load on this, allow me to reveal, in defence of my sanity, that I've been mulling over the Drake Equation for several years (which, for some, might well be proof of my potentially schizophrenic nature). In any event, the equation provides an excellent basis for thought and discussion on the possibility of life existing beyond Earth and within our very own Milky Way and as such, has its fair share of champions in the scientific community. Radio Astronomer Frank Drake first came up with it in the early 60s and while it's impossible to use as a purely mathematical equation due to several unknown variables, it's still quite a brilliant series of questions to consider when searching for signs of extraterrestrial life. In fact, the Drake Equation is indeed the very foundation upon which the science of astrobiology was founded. (Feel free to do your own research on this, there's plenty of great stuff out there for further illumination.)

As well, we would be fools to ignore the wealth of historical artifacts, etchings and fossils that can certainly provide a solid bedrock to allow for a huge degree of healthy speculation that we, are not, alone, or, as expressed by the central character in the terrific film Ejecta:

"We were never alone."

All the aforementioned conundrums I've expressed tie directly and indeed form a great deal of the content of this extraordinary feature film triumph from the visionary Collingwood Crazies known to genre fans as Foresight Features. Ejecta is, without a doubt, one of the scariest science fiction horror films you're likely to see this year.

Buoyed by intense, intelligent writing from Tony Burgess (Pontypool, Septic Man) in a screenplay that induces fingernail-ripping-and-plucking (biting nails to the quick is "pussy", anyway), plus an astonishingly riveting performance by one of Canada's greatest actors Julian (Hard Core Logo, Cube, Man of Steel) Richings, Ejecta is a movie that plunges you into the terror of one utterly horrendous night in the lives of those who make contact with aliens. All of them experience a series of close encounters of the third kind, though be warned, they're as far removed from the benevolence and joy expressed in Spielberg's grandaddy classic of the genre.

There are no happy-faced hairless alien midgets gesticulating Zoltán Kodály Hand Signals whilst smiling at a beaming Francois Truffaut in Ejecta. No-siree-Spielberg, these mo-fos are super-ugly and their presence induces the sheer horror that inspires drawer-filling of the highest order. That said, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is worth noting here, because Ejecta shares one very important element with Spielberg's bonafide masterpiece.

Obsession.

Close Encounters took its title and three-act structure from a system of extraterrestrial classification as posited by the late astronomer Dr. Josef Allen Hynek – the close encounter. According to Hynek, a close encounter of the first kind is seeing unexplained phenomena, while the second kind involves hard proof of some sort of physical manifestation from what was originally witnessed and, finally, the close encounter of the third kind being contact. I'd argue that experiencing even one of these encounters would be enough to drive someone obsessively to seek subsequent levels of encounter or, in the case of Ejecta, we have three characters equally fraught with obsession. One seeks answers to stopping his pain, another will inflict pain to secure answers, while yet another brings the obsession of an artist seeking answers in his subject. And forgive me if I get all eggheaded on you here, but there is a sense of Trinity that Ejecta shares with Close Encounters - both pictures have a kind of Father, Son and Holy Spirit manifestation coursing through them and it's this level of spirituality and obsession that bind the pictures.

Close Encounters, of course, charts the journey of everyman Richard Dreyfuss who experiences the unexplained appearance of something other-worldly and abandons his life, his job, his family – everything he holds dear – to obsessively track down the meaning behind this occurrence. In a tale steeped in Judeo-Christian resonance – from Moses to Christ – Roy makes a perilous journey, climbs Devil’s Tower and comes face-to-face with the answer to his visions until he, along with twelve (trinity existing within the square root) apostolic “pilgrims” ascend to the Heavens, arms outstretched in what is surely the most benign crucifixion-image (trinity) imaginable.

This sense of spirituality is almost divine in nature and makes perfect sense considering the aforementioned Hynek’s own belief in the notion that a technology must exist which blends both the physical and psychic. Furthermore, it's important to note that Paul Schrader wrote the first pass of Close Encounters and though he didn't take a story credit (something he regretted almost as quickly as he agreed to it and more so in the years to follow), Spielberg's film feels, deep-down, like a Schrader narrative - especially the combination of obsession and spirituality.

This is an unbeatable combination that Ejecta flirts with at every turn.

The journey Burgess's screenplay takes us on begins quite evocatively with some cold, impersonal Ascii-text being typed onto a hazy computer monitor:

Tonight the universe is no bigger than my head.
It's time to make room for some visitors.

Yes, visitors indeed. William Cassidy (Julian Richings), a conspiracy theorist living off the grid in the middle of some godforsaken Ontario hinterland is inundated with unwelcome guests - a filmmaker, an interrogator and a mean-ass alien.

Joe (Adam Seybold) is the most benevolent of the three visitors Cassidy receives. This ultra-indie one-man-show documentary filmmaker believes he's been invited by Cassidy to engage in an interview. When he gets confirmation that he'll be granted an audience, he's ecstatic since Cassidy is considered the "Holy Grail" of UFO experts. Upon arriving, Cassidy seems confused as to why Joe is even there, but as things progress, we understand all too well why the wiry, jittery recluse is occasionally addled. Unlike the Richard Dreyfuss character in Close Encounters, most of Cassidy's adult life has been fraught with the obsession an alien encounter instigates. At least Dreyfuss had tangible things to lose, but poor Cassidy appears to have lost everything before he could even get a chance to amass it. What he's amassed is a life of questions, pain and endless, seemingly futile attempts to let the world know about his experience. He's lost a life he could have had. That's scary enough, but happily, the movie delivers its share of visceral chills to complement those of the philosophical variety.

We are privy to some of Joe's interview footage which reveals Cassidy's credentials in the UFO field. At first, Joe makes the mistake of referring to the alien abduction Cassidy suffered almost forty years ago, but is sternly corrected that it was not an abduction. The aliens came to Cassidy:

"They met inside my mind. I could feel them, I could hear them inside. They pretty much ignored me, but they had this meeting and then they left. They left something behind, something inside of me, and it's been there ever since. When I'm awake it hurts, but when I'm not, it floods me with these nightmares. No, no, it's not nightmares, it's not a thing, it's a feeling, it's not pain, it's not fear, it's something else, something much, much worse."

And damned if we don't believe him. This, of course, is one of the scariest things about the film. Burgess has written a character that allows Richings to invest with such intensity, that many of the creeps and shudders we get come directly from Cassidy's brilliantly scribed (via Burgess) and executed (via Richings) dialogue.

It's often been erroneously suggested in a kind of knee-jerk screenwriting 101 fashion that it's always better to show in movies than tell and those who ascribe to this strictly are too quick to dismiss the cinematic power of telling. In the case of Ejecta, so much of the film's power is in the showing of the telling and believe you me, the telling via the words Burgess provides to Richings borders on the poetic and it's these flights of fancy rooted in the unknown that not only wrench the bloody bejesus out of you but are one of the contributing factors to the film's overall achievement as a genre film that utilizes the tropes it must, but does so with the oft-neglected poetry inherent in cinema itself.

When Cassidy explains the feelings he has because of the intrusive alien presence within him, he notes in desperation, that it's "the fear of the anticipation of this feeling [which] eats away at my life." Well, Jesus H. Christ, Almighty! Hand me an extra large pair of Depends Adult Diapers because this statement and the chilling manner of its delivered was easily just as shit-my-drawers scary as a beautifully directed set piece which happens at another juncture in the film where Cassidy and Joe hide in the shed from the alien that prowls malevolently just outside.

Structurally, the film benefits from yet another trinity in the three-pronged approach to capturing the narrative of this night of horror. Firstly, there's Joe's documentary footage, then there's the perspective of the military through various helmet-cams and finally, the present-tense unfolding of Cassidy's interrogation at the hands of the malevolent Dr. Tobin (Lisa Houle). The movie skilfully bounces us throughout these perspectives, yet we seldom feel lost in the proceedings beyond the manner in which the characters themselves feel lost.

The film is co-directed by Matt Wiele and Chad Archibald and while it's difficult to ascertain the nature of the collaboration from the finished product, the bottom line is that there's a consistency to the film's overall snap, crackle and pop which renders a picture that almost always grabs you by the balls (or, if you will, vulva), squeezing, scratching, scrunching and twisting until you feel you can bear no more.

My only quibble is with certain elements of the interrogation scenes. There's an automaton quality to the military personnel which is no doubt intentional, but often feels too "play-acted" to gel with the elements in the film which seem rooted in docudrama-like reality. I was also mixed on how the blocking played out during these scenes as they seemed almost by-the-numbers plotted-out, not unlike that of series television.

Lisa Houle's performance, however, is one of the weirdest I've seen on film in a long time and that's quite a statement considering that she plays opposite Julian Richings who is eccentricity-incarnate. At first, I was not sure of her performance and thought I'd have to repress it in order to enjoy everything I loved about the picture, but it eventually grew on me because it really is so out-to-lunch. Houle delivers many of her lines with a kind of sing-song quality and at times she came across like some genetically mutated pollination twixt a happy host on children's educational programming and Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is an achievement. My hat is off to her.

Then again, my hat is off to the entire Foresight Features team. They keep delivering the goods and Ejecta is as strange, perverse, thoughtful, scary and darkly funny as their best work has proven to be. The film also gives new meaning to the old movie tagline "Watch the Skies" because here, it's not the skies you need to watch, it's the universe implanted in your brain and goddamn, it hurts. And worst of all, you can't necessarily see it. Short of sawing the top of your skull off and gazing at your glistening brain in one of those cooking show mirrors, there's nothing to "watch".

Everything is feeling. And that, is really fucking scary.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Ejecta had its world premiere, presented by Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada, at the 2014 edition of the FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal.

THE DROWNSMAN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Canuck Babes slaughtered by maniac ghost @FantasiaFest2014

As you can clearly see,
perfectly normal receptacles for water
can mean death to babes in The Drownsman.
Sadly, none of the babes is sucked into a toilet.

The Drownsman (2014)
Dir. Chad Archibald
Script. Archibald & Cody Calahan
Starring: Michelle Mylett, Caroline Korycki, Gemma Bird Matheson, Sydney Kondruss, Clare Bastable, Ry Barrett, JoAnn Nordstrom, Breanne TeBoekhorst

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This kinder, gentler, stupider Canadian horror film features a psycho killer who has no interest in slashing his babe victims. His more interested in drowning them.

Like the old "Red Rose Tea" slogan used to go: "Only in Canada, you say? A pity."

Or not.

In the space of about 15 minutes, The Drownsman takes us through a couple of decades of activity. We begin with the title psycho attempting to drown a babe until she begs to be raped in order to grab a few spare minutes of life. When the nasty fellow climaxes, she manages to turn the tables and drown him instead. About 20-years later, we're at a party in cottage country and the hostess (Caroline Korycki) asks her BFF (Michelle Mylett) to be Maid of Honour at her impending nuptials.

When the bride-to-be skitters off to take a slash, her BFF stumbles into the cold, Canadian water whereupon she meets the title character - only now, he's a rotting-corpse-ghost. Luckily, she's rescued in time by her gal friends.

THEN, a year later, she's been so traumatized by her scare, she misses her pal's wedding and soon, all her girlfriends who try to cure her of her basket case hydrophobia, end up being victims of the waterlogged ghost with the drowning fetish. He politely, being Canadian, you see, sucks them down whatever drain pipe is convenient so he can drown them.

Are you laughing yet? You should be, but alas, none of this is done with even a smidgen of humour and finds itself bereft of brain. There's a certain competence and technical proficiency to the whole affair, but this does not a good horror movie make.

And you know, isn't it egregious when you deliver a no-to-low-budget horror movie replete with babes and none of them are naked - or hell, even attired more aggressively in their undies? Oh, and get this nadir of stupidity, a psycho ghost who simply desires to drown his victims? Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

You know, call me jaded, but this really doesn't seem like a good idea for a movie.

THE FILM CORNER RATING:

*½ One-and-a-half-stars.

The Drownsman had its World Premiere at the 2014 edition of the FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal.

THE SATELLITE GIRL AND MILK COW (AKA "Wuribyeol Ilhowa Eollukso") - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lovely Anime from Korea @FantAsia2014 - Treat for kids, adults alike. Moving & imaginative tale of love. A new IRON GIANT.

A girl loves her milk cow. Only in Korea!

The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow (2013)
Dir. Chang Hyung-yun
Starring: Jung Yu-mi, Yoo Ah-in

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I detest most contemporary American animated features. They're annoyingly all the same twaddle, with identical/interchangeable characters, similar thematic elements, way too many dumb, ephemeral AMERICAN pop-culture references and -ugh!- lessons learned. I wonder if any American animated features and the pathetic, desperate, moronic children, plus their idiot parents would ever, respectively, showcase and accept, a love story between a girl and a cow? Not just any girl, mind you, and not just any cow.

Writer-director Chang Hyung-yun takes a well-worn Asian tale (completely mismatched lovers against a fantastical backdrop) and, unlike most American animators with their own stock ideas, shakes it completely upside down and creates a movie that's as original in Asian culture as it will most certainly be to any viewers in the Occident. The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow is a thorough delight and comes across as a Korean answer to crossing Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) with Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles). If you don't believe me, get this:

A forlorn Korean satellite is about to be replaced with new-fangled machinery and faces an eternity of sad, lonely obsolescence until "she" hears a lovely, heart-rending tune from Earth. This transforms her into a teenage girl robot called Il-Ho. Powered with jets in her feet (not unlike Astro Boy's), she travels to our green planet in search of the melody's source. The music, comes from Kyung-chun, a hapless, struggling composer and musician whose longtime girlfriend has dumped him.

His broken heart transforms him into a milk cow and his life is in danger from two horrible foes. First off, there's a nasty teleporting slime bag with a magical bathroom plunger that removes organs from the bodies of brokenhearted humans turned into animals that he sells to a black market dealer. Secondly, and perhaps even scarier, is a horrifying monster called the Incinerator who trolls the streets of Seoul looking for broken-hearted humans transformed into animals so it can plunge them into his fiery, gluttonous mouth, devouring them in flames.

Thankfully, our Milk Cow is befriended by a roll of toilet paper who is, in actuality, the haplessly-transformed Merlin the Wizard and, of course, the kind, friendly and lovely Il-Ho, the satellite who just wants to be a real girl and most of all, to love and be loved by Kyung-chun who could be transformed from his milk cow state if he could just fall in love with her.

Now how's that for a great story? It's certainly the sort of thing we don't get to see in our soul-bereft North American multiplexes. It's a gem of a movie, however, and I urge all parents and kids to seek it out. They won't quite know what hit them, but when it does, they'll know they want it a lot more than Madagascar 3. That's a guarantee.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow enjoyed its international premiere at the 2014 edition of the magnificent FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal. In the meantime, feel free to order any of the following animated titles directly from the Amazon links below and in so doing, supporting the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

July 30, 2014 - History in the making at the 2014 edition of the FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal. Legendary director Tobe Hooper will be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award followed by a screening of the Dark Sky 40th Anniversary Restoration of Hooper's Masterpiece, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. As if that's not enough, you'll have to choose between that and a screening of the terrific South African Crime Thriller FOUR CORNERS - BOTH TONIGHT AT #FANTASIA2014 - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw

Original 1974 Poster

La Belle Province is the place to be today, so head on down to the true capital of Quebec (and Canada), Montreal, la ville aux cent clochers.

History is in the making today. It will rival that of the Seven Years' War, the moronic Tory-led burning of the Parliament Buildings, Mayor Camillien Houde's brave protest against Anglo-enforced conscription, the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway and, of course, Expo 67.

Tonight, July 30, 2014, you will be forced to CHOOSE between TWO great EVENTS happening AT THE SAME TIME during the 2014 edition of the FantAsia International Film Festivals. At 9:40 PM in the DB Clarke Theatre, you can see the terrific South African crime thriller by Ian Gabriel entitled Four Corners and FIVE FUCKING MINUTES LATER at 9:45 PM in the Concordia Hall Theatre, the legendary filmmaker Tobe Hooper will be on hand IN THE FLESH to received FantAsia's Life Achievement Award, which will then be followed by a screening of Dark Sky Films' astonishing 40th Anniversary Restoration (from the original 16mm reversal negative) of Hooper's masterpiece The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Below you will find capsule reviews (with links to the full reviews) of Four Corners and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Read 'em and weep. If you can't be in Montreal tonight, just weep, sucker!

A tattooed prison lifer knows all,
because he's seen all and stays alive
with his constant hawk-like gaze.

Four Corners (2013) ***½
Dir. Ian Gabriel
Starring: Brendon Daniels, Jezriel Skei, Abduragman Adams, Irshaad Ally, Lindiwe Matshikiza,

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Four Corners (as harsh and brutal as much of it is) compares to being a kinder, gentler and more straightforward South African version of Amores perros by Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu, though it never feels like homage, nor is it derivative. Ian Gabriel's finely crafted film focuses on a handful of inter-connected characters as we follow the amalgamation of their individual stories into each other. There's a sense of melancholy and tragedy running through this beautifully acted film, but there are also touches of an eventual new world for all the characters and a strong sense that perhaps their children and their children's children will be the ultimate beneficiaries of their pain, struggles and sacrifices in a country still hurting from the hideous legislation of segregation and racism. READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE.

It's ALWAYS about the MEAT!!!

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) Dir. Tobe Hooper *****
Starring: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, John Dugan, William Vail, Teri McMinn, Robert Courtin, John Henry Faulk, John Larroquette

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"There are moments when we cannot believe that what is happening is really true. Pinch yourself and you may find out that it is." - A horoscope read aloud during The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

What hit me when I first saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is how brilliantly the movie is sectioned into two separate, yet inextricably linked halves, the first being a simple narrative set-up for its especially harrowing second half. Creepily building during the first 40 minutes, with occasional exclamatory jolts of violence, the picture delivers a solid bedrock from which it plunges you headlong into the second 40 minutes, a relentless nightmare on film. This is not a passive experience - you're slammed deep into the maw of pure, sheer, unrelenting terror.

Beg all you like. The nightmare never seems to end. When it finally does, the utter dread and revulsion generated by the whole experience stays with you forever. This, of course, is not because of the gore, or the extremity of the violence, but rather because the tone of the movie is so unlike anything you will have experienced. Even with all the slasher films, torture porn and moronically graphic remakes that have assailed contemporary audiences over the past decade, none of them come close to the disquieting power and intelligence with which The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is so astonishingly infused with. As they say, this one's for the ages. READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE.

BOSS NIGGER aka "Boss", "The Boss", "The Black Bounty Killer" - Review By Greg Klymkiw @FantasiaFest2014

Play the theme song from BOSS NIGGER sung by Terrible Tom while you read the review:

"Look Mayor, you've been hunting black folks for so long,
we just wanted to see what it'd be like to hunt white folks."

Boss Nigger (1974) ****
aka Boss, The Boss, The Black Bounty Killer
dir. Jack Arnold
Starring: Fred Williamson, D'Urville Martin, R.G. Armstrong, William Smith, Carmen Hayworth, Barbara Leigh

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Boss (Fred Williamson), a tough, tall and lean African-American cowboy, counts his reward money, pockets it obligingly, then flashes a big smile at the racist lawman who grudgingly had to pay it out. "I wants to thank ya, Sheriff," says our title character. "Sorry, we ain't got time to stay for supper, but we got us more whities to catch."

And so begins Boss Nigger, one of the best westerns of the 70s. Boss and his trusty, wiseacre sidekick Amos (D'Urville Martin) ride off into the picturesque natural beauty of New Mexico in search of their next easy kill - always wanted, dead or alive and yes, always of the White Trash Caucasian Persuasion.

Now if you saw Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained and thought the idea of an African-American bounty hunter was original, just remind yourself that QT's entire output has been steeped in ripping off, or rather, referencing the works of older films he revered as being cooler than cool.

And don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the Jamie Foxx/Christoph Waltz western bloodbath, but Boss Nigger is the real thing.

JED: Go ahead and kill me, Nigger!
BOSS: That's "Mr. Nigger" to you!
JED: Then go to Hell, Mr. Nigger!
BOSS: To Hell is where you're going!

Made almost forty years ago, it's way ahead of its time and proves to be more cutting edge revisionist than Tarantino's. Written and produced by the former football champ turned superstar and directed by the legendary Jack Arnold (The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mouse That Roared), this terrific duster blends old fashioned western tropes with the very best elements of Blaxsploitation. Don't forget that Django needed to be rescued and taught the trade by a White Man, but Boss Nigger and Amos are former slaves who broke free all on their own and carved a path of destruction to emancipate their fellow brothers in the legendary Nigger Charley series (not to mention that Django is single-minded in the pursuit of securing his wife's freedom at the expanse of anyone, whereas Williamson's character is all about making America a better place for all oppressed people of colour).

How can anyone not like a film wherein
Fred Williamson goes at it with William Smith? 

And so it is that Boss and Amos are on their way to a wild, wooly tank town bereft of a sheriff in order to track down Jed Clayton (William Smith), the meanest, orneriest criminal psychopath this side of Hell and his gang of bloodthirsty, shoot 'em up, rotgut-guzzling and female-violating redneck racists. The pair rescue the beautiful Clara Mae (Carmen Hayworth) from gang rape at the hands of some Clayton cowpokes, deposit her in the care of some kind Mexican-Americans on the outskirts of town, then proceed to nominate themselves as Sheriff and Deputy of a town so corrupt that its Mayor (R.G. Armstrong) is secretly in cahoots with Clayton.

Boss and Amos waste no time in posting the new laws of the town which all include hefty fines for spitting, cussing, shooting and worst of all, using the word "nigger". Many townspeople are shocked by this and would just as soon put up with the Status Quo, but some, like the sexy schoolteacher Miss Pruitt (Barbara Leigh) are relieved that law has come to their town. She even develops a mad crush on the muscular, leather-adorned Boss Nigger.

In addition to their shenanigans in town, the Boss and Amos wreak havoc upon the huge gang of cutthroats and Boss Nigger reigns solidly as a violent, action-packed western of the highest order.

Jack Arnold's helmsmanship is first-rate, the fisticuffs, shootouts and explosions are taut and engaging and Fred Williamson's writing equally so.

The dialogue is especially ripe and you'll feel like delivering a standing ovation when the prim, proper schoolmarm Miss Pruitt begs Boss to take her along when he leaves town after tidying up his business. Williamson, always the King of Cool, writes himself one of the best lines in movie history. Bidding the sexy schoolteacher farewell, he says:

"Lady, a Black Man's got enough trouble in this world without a White woman following him around."

Enough trouble, indeed!

Boss Nigger (with the title Boss) is playing at the 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal.

DEALER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Grim, Grimy, Violent French Crime Drama Delivers Goods @FantAsia2014

Dealer (2014) Dir. Jean Luc Herbulot
Screenplay: Samy Baaroun, Herbulot
Starring: Dan Bronchinson, Elsa Madeleine, Salem Kali, Bruno Henry

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Dan (Dan Bronchinson) is a caring, loving single Dad living in Paris. He dreams of moving to Australia and start life anew. He also happens to be a criminal scumbag, pimp and drug dealer; a lifestyle that's now starting to wear him down and forced his wife to move out with their daughter in tow. Though he's wisely avoided selling any hard drugs, especially cocaine, an opportunity presents itself when one of his regulars is in desperate need of one kilo of the death powder and willing to pay retail for it. In one single afternoon, Dan can make enough to completely change his life and that of his family's.

Throwing his better judgement to the wind, Dan reconnects with a dangerous cartel from his younger days and in the flurry of activity (including some cops looking for him), he hides the goods in his hooker's lair. When it goes missing, his life is turned topsy turvy and he's plunged into an adrenalin charged race against time - one in which he's faced with:

-trolling the deepest, darkest Parisian shitholes,

-engaging in several breathtaking chases,

-mixing it up in several brutal displays of fisticuffs,

-leaving a trail of corpses as long as his decades-long rap sheet,

-and rescuing his wife and child from the clutches of some criminal psychos holding them ransom until he delivers.

Dealer is one thrilling, shocking and edge-of-the-seat-suspenseful crime picture. Some might make an obvious comparison to the work of Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive), but that would be a slap in the face to co-writer and director Herbulot who offers up a movie that's anything but the pretentious, sickeningly cerebral and wildly overrated pictures of Refn. Herbulot's film is as striking a debut as such first-feature/sophomore classics of the genre as Nick Gomez's Laws of Gravity, the Hughes Brothers' Menace II Society, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine and even Martin Scorsese's Who's That Knocking At My Door and Mean Streets. It's a movie so rooted in streets, cheap rooms, dives and gutters that it practically stinks of sweat, blood, piss, dog shit and cum.

Stunningly shot and cut in the kind of herky-jerky that's more in line with masters like Paul Greengrass, who actually know how to compose shots as opposed to all the big-budget poseurs who shoot their action and suspense in this manner because they aren't real filmmakers, Herbulot is the real thing and then some.

I can hardly wait to see his next picture. If it's even half-as-good as Dealer, it's going to be damn amazing.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Dealer enjoyed its world premiere at the 2014 edition of the FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal.

TIME LAPSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Science Fiction Meets Crime Thriller @FantAsia2014

If you're a scumbag mob bookie - knowing the future could come in handy.

Time Lapse (2014)
Dir. Bradley King
Writers: King and B.P. Cooper
Starring: Danielle Panabaker, Matt O'Leary, George Finn, Amin Joseph, Jason Spisak, John Rhys-Davies

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Originality rules this day in this cool science fiction outing about a Fine Arts grad (Matt O'Leary), his girlfriend (Danielle Panabaker) and best friend (George Finn) who happen upon a mysterious camera that seems to have the power to capture images from the future.

Coming up with the mad plan to use their secret discovery to score big at the dog races seems like a good idea, but in Twilight Zone fashion, all does not go according to plan and horror awaits.

The superbly written, directed and acted Time Lapse is as good, if not better than most studio pictures that might have attempted similar high concept approaches. Unlike most studio efforts, the accent on atmosphere and interesting issues of friendship and morality would have given way, no doubt, to empty bombast.

Thankfully, true independence has yielded a terrific little picture that proves how talented mavericks can move a mountain. Time Lapse manages to move not one mere mountain, but several mighty ranges to yield a killer thriller.

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

Time Lapse enjoyed its Canadian Premiere at the 2014 edition of the FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal.

THE MAN IN THE ORANGE JACKET - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Latvia Yields Sickness @FantAsia 2014 in Montreal

Proletarian banality in Latvia.

The Man in the Orange Jacket (2014)
Dir. Aik Karapetian
Starring: Maxim Lazarev, Aris Rozentals, Anta Aizupe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This might be one of the most vile movies I've seen in quite awhile. I suspect most audiences will find it either reprehensible or boring (or both), but ultimately, I think it signals the arrival of an especially gifted filmmaker. Aik Karapetian is Armenian and the movie is a co-production between Latvia and Estonia. Given that this is a brutal, nasty-humoured psychological horror film, its peculiar ethnographical pedigree seems to almost guarantee that we're going to see something that's as shocking as it's off the well-worn path.

While it shares similarities to Roman Polanksi's The Tenant and Repulsion. it just as easily conjures up comparison points to John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, David Fincher's Se7en and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (with generous dollops of Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke). Finally though, The Man in the Orange Jacket is all its own movie - a truly sickening and starkly original piece of work. After seeing it, nobody will accuse it of being in the domain of been-there-done-that.

When a whole whack of dock workers are laid-off, one of them decides he's had enough of his lot in life as a labourer within the "new" capitalism of Eastern Europe. He wants a taste of what the 1% have and nothing's going to stop him from getting it. He targets the scumbag corporate CEO (Aris Rozentals) who's responsible for his predicament of unemployment, shows up at the richie-rich's sprawling, isolated country mansion, murders the CEO and his gorgeous young wife (Anta Azupe), tosses their bodies into the basement and proceeds to live a life of leisure in the upscale, though oddly antiseptic abode. There's a bit of perverse fun to be had watching our boy lounging about in expensive clothing, eating gourmet meals, drinking fine wine, sitting in different comfy chairs and "admiring" the works of art on the walls, but it's clear that what he desires is not attainable since he's essentially a proletarian numbskull - albeit of the psychopathic variety. Curiously, what little we find out about the CEO suggests that in his own way, he's as hollow a shell as our working class hero. As for our rich man wanna-be, Karapetian makes no attempt to add any more shading that what little we see.

Thankfully the movie doesn't provide us any excuses or reasons for the psycho's behaviour, beyond the banal desire to have what can never truly be his. Some, I suspect, might dump on this as a major flaw, but any attempts to fill in the blanks would simply have been disingenuous. This is, ultimately, the story of one big fat nothing and as such, it's a damn effective one. Replete with astonishing visual flourishes and a creepy-crawly methodical pace of the most unbearably compelling kind, The Man in the Orange Jacket is as sterling a sophomore effort as we're likely to experience this year.

At a certain point, early on, it's quite obvious that we're not going to get even a smidgen of empathy in this character. As his isolated indulgence progresses, he becomes increasingly bored and we're then privy to a series of harrowing incidents which suggest the house itself is haunted or that he's even more off his rocker than we suspected. When he summons two gorgeous twin escorts to "his" home, he's such an empty vessel that the most "creative" sexual shenanigans he can muster is to piss into the swimming pool and force the hookers to stay in the water.

We should all be so lucky.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

The Man in the Orange Jacket enjoyed its International Premiere at the 2014 edition of the FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal and has been selected to unspool at the prestigious Fantastic Fest at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas.

DOCTOR PROCTOR'S FART POWDER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Fabulous Family Fart Fun @FantasiaFest2014

These happy kids investigate a hole in the wall blown open by a FART.

DOCTOR PROCTOR - Inventor

Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder
aka "Doktor Proktors prompepulver" (2014) ***½
Dir. Arild Fröhlich
Script: Johan Bogaeus, Based on Jo Nesbø's Book
Starring: Kristoffer Joner, Atle Antonsen, Emily Glaister, Eilif Hellum, Arve Guddingsmo Bjørn, Even Guddingsmo Bjørn

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who in their right mind doesn't appreciate a good, rip-snorting fart? I know I do and I'm sure you do too, so pull my finger and I'll emit the following review.

If you're sick of the same old crap Hollywood keeps foisting upon your kids, reject the empty-headed faecal matter and embrace farts instead. The Land of Fjords has delivered one of the best family films in years, the cool and funny adaptation of Jo Nesbø's terrific book Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder.

Set in a seeming never-never land of an Oslo that must surely exist, two inventors, the kind, benevolent, scatterbrained and poor Doctor Proctor (Kristoffer Joner) and the evil, greedy and disgustingly corpulent Mister Thane (Atle Antonsen), live within a stone's throw of each pother in the same neighbourhood of manicured lawns and fluorescent-colored interiors ripped from the world of a Pee Wee Herman-like playhouse.

Two lonely, parentally-neglected kids, sweet, blonde Lisa (Emily Glaister) and the goofy, grinning carrot-top pompadoured Nilly (Eilif Hellu) discover that Doctor Proctor just created a fart powder that emits gaseous excretions that are both odourless and so powerful they can blow holes through brick walls and most importantly, so propulsive they can allow those who use them properly to fly.

Rival inventor Thane, steels the formula and claims it as his own. It's up to the wily kids to save the day, but they face formidable odds when they tussle with Thane's repulsively brutish twin sons (Arve Guddingsmo Bjørn, Even Guddingsmo Bjørn).

Alas, this is Doctor Proctor's only chance to finally hit it big and allow him to claim his rightful place amongst the world's greatest inventors. Most importantly, Doctor Proctor will never be able to claim betrothal to his one and true love unless he can amass a big enough fortune to satisfy the father of the woman he adores. Fart Glory is just around the corner - especially since NASA has shown keen interest in the Fart Powder for their Space Program.

Will justice be done?

Will our heroes save the day?

Will farts bring lovers together?

For a movie about flatulence, this is one sweet and lovely little film. It's original, funny and decidedly explosive. Pitting underdogs against the Status Quo is tried and true stuff, but add farts to the mix and you've got full-on, full-bodied happy-faced shenanigans to melt the hearts of even the most stone cold grumpy-pants.

I don't know about you, but I'll take farty-pants over grumpy-pants anytime.

Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder had its international premiere at the 2014 FantAsia Film Festival in Montreal.

COLD IN JULY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Jim Mickle Delivers the Goods (Again), Rocks @FantasiaFest 2014

Sam Shepard, Michael C. Hall & Don Johnson - Vigilantes? Executioners!

Jim Mickle's COLD IN JULY

Cold in July (2014) ****
Dir. Jim Mickle / Script: Nick Damici & Mickle
Starring: Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, Don Johnson, Vinessa Shaw, Nick Damici

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Dane (Michael C. Hall) is late for the interment ceremony. A preacher has just finished reading words over the body in a cheap wooden box and two gravediggers are already piling dirt into the maw of the six-foot-deep open cavity in the earth where the young man Dane has killed will lay for eternity. The Sheriff (co-writer Nick Damici) has assured Dane that all is well - it's an open and shut case of self-defence. After all, we're in the great state of Texas, where a man's home is his castle, where he shall protect it and his family against anyone who dares creep into his sleepy suburban abode in the middle of the night. Still, Dane feels the weight of his actions. While his little boy slept soundly and his wife silently padded into the living room, Dane squeezed off one well placed shot into an intruder's skull, spraying globs of brain and geysers of blood all over the wall and chesterfield. Still haunted by images of cleaning the remnants of someone who was once a living, breathing human being and now reduced to a squeegee sponge of blood and gooey pulp being squirted and splashed into the toilet bowl, guilt has sunk its teeth into Dane's very soul, like some pit bull from the depths of hell, with jaws to match. He knows now his life has changed forever.

Dane hasn't even had time to get out of his station wagon when he arrives at the cemetery. Then again, nobody would ever know he's been the lone witness to the tail-end of the burial. No one, that is, save for Russell (Sam Shepard), the lanky, grizzled and grimacing old man with a grey buzz cut atop his dome and a pair of shades he's removed to reveal his piercing eyes. The old man, seemingly appearing from nowhere, towers above Dane, dwarfed only by the big, old Texas sky. He leans into the open window, burning holes into the killer of his only son.

"Come to watch the shit go into the hole, huh?" quips Russell with a half smile. "Mighty Christian of you."

Dane struggles for words, knowing that whatever he says won't make the old man feel any better.

"That sure was a nice picture of your family in the newspaper," says Russell with a smile so warm, it's sinister. He dons his shades again. That huge orb of Texas sunshine's mighty powerful. "Your little boy," he continues, "He sure looks a lot like you."

Dane's face is frozen.

"Y'all have a nice day, now." And the old man strides away, old, but resolute and powerful.

We've all seen J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear and while Sam Shepard is no Robert Mitchum (who in Hell could be?), one surely wouldn't want to be on this sonofabitch's shit list, either. As Russell, Sam Shepard is plenty scary.

Cold in July plays out in a tense, low key manner that at first seems similar to the classic 1962 revenge thriller, albeit with a dose or two of lithium, but all comparisons to Thompson's picture soon flake off like so much old paint on an abandoned farmhouse in some Texas dustbowl. The narrative transformation is, of course rooted in the striking screenplay adaptation of Joe R. Lonsdale's 80s pulp novel. Written by longtime creative partners Jim Mickle (the film's director) and Nick Damici (brilliantly playing the smarmy, corrupt local sheriff), the gorgeously crafted script takes us on a tortuously serpentine path of shocks and ever-mounting blasts of violence that keep our tiny hairs bristled, our mouths ever-agape and our jaws thudding ever-lower to the floor. And don't be fooled by the few loose ends that might plague you, but only after you've finished watching the film - they're as much a part of the intentional dives into straight-faced ambiguity as they are part of the strange social, political and cultural backdrop.

Lansdale's novel was borne out of the raging Rompin' Ronnie Reagan-omics. Add to this the Texas setting, a state overflowing with massive longhorn cattle, big old American gas-pig Mustangs, station wagons, mighty half-tons plus a gun culture wherein the right to bear arms was lightyears ahead of states that already had extremely liberal National Rifle Association (NRA)-approved attitudes to brandishing such weaponry to begin with. Here, we just plain gots are-seffs sum purty choice material ripe for Mickle-Damici's cinematic ropin' and'a ridin'. Their film is savagely funny, full of surprises and yup, just plain savage.

Shepard isn't the only scary-ass dude in this movie. Don Johnson as, get this, Jim-Bob, gets to yuck it up as a good ol' boy galut. He's a part-time pig farmer with the most behemoth-like porkers this side of Hog Heaven (and generous slabs of superbly white-fat-marbled bacon in his breakfast frying pan) and a part-time private dick with the shadiest connections imaginable. Jim-Bob boasts an arsenal of truly magnificent weaponry, a killer instinct to go along with his killer smile and one knee-slappin' sense of gallows humour. Plus, he's what you might call, in the parlance of white trash everywhere, good people.

The performance that never ceases to take one by surprise is Dexter-star Michael C. Hall. Shucking his persona from that annoyingly overrated series, Hall looks super-sexy-ugly, complete with a horrendous mullet and thick cop-moustache, Hall renders the mild-mannered picture-framing small business owner with a brilliant, underplayed hand which slowly and creepily mounts into that of a hardened killer - on the right side of the law, that is = or rather, whatever side of the law in the pulpy amoral world the film inhabits, that's less wrong than the other.

The trio of Shepard, Hall and Johnson become a perverse Texas version of The Three Musketeers fighting for love and country (in the sickest manner imaginable). At one point, the recently-released jailbird's son is disparagingly identified as "shit that don't fall too far from the tree", but as the lad has gone so far beyond even Dad's pale, Shepard himself remarks: "Whaddya do with a dog that keeps biting people? You either keep it on a chain or shoot it."

Shepard and Johnson play old buddies from Korea and they're both enveloped with a post-war ennui that lead them to take very different roads, at least on the surface. Deep down, though, it's a well-worn path they both share. Hall, of course, is mild mannered, but he is a product of gun culture and the almost-separatist Lone Star State DNA-hard-wiring of individualism that firmly delivers a sense of what's right, what's wrong and as such, doing right at all costs. It's the fluid of life-force that courses through his veins like a river wild. Though his character would have been too young to serve in Vietnam, he'd have grown up believing that it was a just and noble war. Add post-Cold War and Reagan-omics to his persona and he's prime material for bloodlust. Even though his first taste of blood renders him virtually immobile, it's ultimately the thing that leads his need, like a carrot on a stick, to see justice through - Texas-style, of course.

A warning: PLEASE be careful not to read much more than this about the movie before you see it. After my first helping, I scoured a variety of items and discovered WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!! What in the hell is wrong with critics, puff-piece-scribes and flacks? Are they completely out to fucking lunch? Well, for my part, I saw the movie in a plumb virginal state - I even picked up a copy of the book, but didn't read it until afterwards. With that in mind, it would be unfair to reveal too many of the eye-popping, though perfectly natural twists in the story, but let's just say that the criminal element revealed is so appalling that we need to pinch ourselves to assure us we're not dreaming. One of the more grotesque elements that's revealed is the whole notion of organized crime in Texas. Johnson refers to it as "Dixie Mafia. Put "Dixie" and "Mafia" together in the same breath and you've got more scary-ass shit than you've bargained for. Even worse, however, are some of the activities the trio discover on a videocassette labelled "Batting Practice". Believe me, you just don't want to know. Well, at least until you see it to believe it and then, you really don't want to know.

Jim Mickle is a director who continues to dazzle. I hope he keeps making films with the same intelligence, prowess and independent spirit he's brought to bear on this film as well as his previously fine work Mulberry Street, Stake Land and We Are What We Are. I can't imagine the studios not wanting Mickle, nor can I imagine he doesn't want to make studio pictures either. He would benefit from their resources and we'd all benefit from his being able to keep growing, but he needs to remain resolutely his own man - so here's to the system not fucking him with an unwanted kiester-slam.

Cold in July is pure, deliciously vicious pulp fiction. It's as compulsive and propulsive as storytelling at its finest should be and it's marked with a tone and style that bears a unique, individual voice. There's no tongue-in-cheek, no cinema-referential indulgences and best of all, it remains true to its foul roots. There's a purity and cleanliness here that is absolutely and marvellously mired in filth, and we're all the better for it.

Cold in July played at the 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival, It's been released by IFC in the USA and by Mongrel Media in Canada.

COLD EYES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stunning Korean remake of Johnnie To HK cop hit @FantAsia2014

"Mmmm. I want whatever that gentleman has in his mouth in my mouth."

All Cops in Korea are Ultra-Babe-O-Licious!

Cold Eyes (2013) ****
Dir. Jo Ui-seok, Kim Byung-seo
Starring: Sol Kyung-gu, Jung Woo-sung, Han Hyo-joo, Jin Kyung, Lee Junho, Kim Byung-ok

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Whenever I see a slam-bang, supremely stylish and rock-solid Asian action thriller like Cold Eyes, I always shake my head and wonder why so many ludicrously-budgeted American studio pictures of a similar ilk are poorly directed and stupid? Who are the morons? The filmmakers or the audiences? I suspect both are equally deficient. The American directors have no real filmmaking talent and American audiences are bereft of brain. Since Americans are too stupid to watch anything in a language other than their own, the prospect of an American remake seems even more idiotic since they'd manage to take a terse, simple and intelligent script and just make it lugubrious, unnecessarily complicated (not complex, either - that word isn't in the American vocabulary) and just flat-out dumb. Astoundingly, Cold Eyes IS a remake of Johnnie To's solid meat-and-potatoes (or, if you will, BBQ pork and white rice) 2007 Hong Kong thriller Eye in the Sky. Given that To is no slouch, it's especially cool that co-directors Jo Ui-seok and Kim Byung-seo deliver a picture that blows his off the map (and most every American cop thriller from the past twenty-or-so years).

There are elements of Cold Eyes that are tried and true - a young cop (and, happily, a major BABE), has a lot to learn, but is still hand-picked by a tough-as-nails senior detective who knows that the "heart" is there in spades. After all, having the right stuff - in his books - trumps by-rote technical proficiency in the field. When she joins the team of high-tech surveillance detectives, a vicious and heretofore unidentified group of bank robbers led by a high-tech criminal mastermind, have successfully committed one similarly-styled job too many and the team is pumped to take the filth down.

Set against the energy-charged labyrinth that is Séoul, Cold Eyes is a tense, edge-of-the-seat cat and mouse action thriller that's replete with astonishing chases on foot and in moving vehicles, daring stunts, superb hand-to-hand fight scenes, shockingly blood thirsty violence and all the requisite and compelling cop/criminal dualities that any action aficionado will enjoy. The "cold eyes" of the title is an especially rich visual and emotional motif and refers to the ability to see everything in such detached detail on surveillance missions (and in the case of the villain. on a major heist), that one's mind becomes a sort of picture-perfect databank to supplement the gadgetry with the human element.

The surveillance sequences themselves have the kind of William Friedkin French Connection-styled doggedness that lets you see and feel the pulse of the streets and the monotony (without being a dull watch) of the days, weeks and even months of eyeballing as the most effective form of detective work. Much of the film is charged with the kind of short shots, quick cutting and hand-held work that just seems sloppy and noisy in virtually all contemporary American films and here demonstrates the genuine artistry of its filmmakers since there is never an unnecessary shot, virtuoso compositions and cuts driven by dramatic thrust as opposed to pure visceral propulsion.

Cold Eyes makes for a glorious big-screen experience and I'd urge viewers to do what they can to enjoy the movie that way. If not, try to watch it at home on high-def Blu-Ray (fuck streaming, digital downloads and DVD).

Cold Eyes recently screened at the 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival following a premiere at TIFF 2013.