I, OLGA HEPNAROVA ***** 5-Star Contemporary Masterpiece - Revised Fantasia 2016 Review By Greg Klymkiw at Electric Sheep Magazine

The astonishing young actress Michalina Olzanska delivers one of the great screen performances of the new millennium.

I, OLGA HEPNAROVA
Dir. Petr Kazda, Tomas Weinreb
Starring: Michalina Olszanska

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A grim, superbly realized feature-length dramatic biography about the last person ever executed in Czechoslovakia. Writer-directors Petr Kazda and Tomas Weinreb have crafted a compulsive, moving and shocking film about mental illness as a genuine affliction. It can result in evil actions, but the perpetrators are, more often than not, sick in mind, body and soul. Healing and caring has escaped them. I, Olga Hepnarová speaks not just for one, but all of them.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *****

Read the full review at Electric Sheep HERE.

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

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

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

Read the full expanded review HERE.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ****

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

Greg Klymkiw and CFC Media Lab's Ana Serrano flap jaws on VR in Montreal - Virtual Reality at Fantasia 2016 - Includes Magic LINK to Interview by Greg Klymkiw at CFC website

Montreal = FANTASIA, MEAT & VR

CFC MEDIA LAB - VR @ Fantasia 2016

By Greg Klymkiw
With the assistance, sponsorship and programming expertise of the CFC Media Lab at Uncle Norman (In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck) Jewison's Canadian Film Centre, the 2016 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal hosted The Samsung Fantasia Virtual Reality Experience.

Several of the films in the series proved to be first-rate stand-alone pieces: Remember by Australia’s George Kacevski was a chilling experiential piece involving a woman’s conversation with a computer that is erasing all her memories; Anthony C. Ferrante, famed director of Sharknado 1, 2, 3 and 4 delivered the best of the VR pieces - Killer Deal, a grimly hilarious bloodbath set in a hotel room during a machete salesman convention; and Australia’s Nathan Anderson gave us the wholly immersive and interactive reinvention of the great genre of the 40s and 50s with the post-modern VR NOIR. The Samsung Fantasia Virtual Reality Experience also featured two terrific new productions from the CFC Media Lab: Body Mind Change Redux Teaser and The Closet (both produced by CFC Media Lab Topper Ana Serrano).

As cool as VR is, the technology to deliver the product to its viewers, still needs some modification. The Samsung headsets are comfortable enough, but they are not especially conducive to people who wear glasses, nor are they ideal for those (like me) who sweat like pigs. To the former, I chucked my eyeglasses and used the headset focus to bring the picture into view. This seemed to work fine, only I was seeing a strange mesh-like backdrop which I assume was there because I couldn’t focus to my ideal vision.

To the latter, I was often sweating under the headset and this caused fogging.

Needless to say, this was a tad annoying, especially when immersive interaction was required. The fogging issue is not the end of the world, though. I suggest Samsung build in a de-fogger/defrost system within the viewers. Gentle cold air pumping in would not only clear the screen, but provide a sensual experience for the viewer. This would also add a fetishistic element for those so inclined. After all, who doesn’t enjoy having their eyelids caressed by someone gently blowing upon them?

Ah, but this is mere technology and I suspect the bugs will be worked out (if they haven’t already been). VR is the future and then some. To say the experience was inspirational, wildly entertaining and at times, almost heart stopping, would be an understatement. Participation in the films was to participate on the ground floor of the future and I was mega excited to discuss VR in all its glory with Serrano.

My interview with her can be found on the CFC website HERE.

It makes sense that the GREAT city of Montreal hosts the FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. Find the MAGIC LINK to Greg Klymkiw's Fantasia 2016 Reviews of KILLER DEAL, THE UNSEEN, KIDNAP CAPITAL and more at the CFC website.

MONTREAL + MEAT + MAYHEM + MASSAGES + MITCH =
FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2016
JE ME SOUVIENS!!!

The Joys of Montreal and Fantasia 2016

By Greg Klymkiw

Montreal is the perfect setting for Fantasia. Just down the street from the festival's de Maisonneuve headquarters at Concordia University, one will often stumble into the Irish Embassy, the fest's main post-screening hangout on Rue Bishop.

Eventually, when one is in search of late-night comestibles to soak up all the Celtic Brew, what, pray tell, do cinephiles encounter on Rue Metcalfe? Two blazing blood-red signs, which share the same towering, grey wall. 

One announces the availability of "Dunn's Famous Smoked Meat". 

The other, ever-so quaintly beckons with the simple word "Massage".

This is Montreal.

This is Fantasia.

THIS IS Genre Cinema which smacks you in the face with a two-by-four of brilliance, all manner of brew to consider said cinema over, peppercorn-and‐fatdrenched slabs of meat (for sobering thoughts) whence one discusses tres cinema guignol with Fest Co-Topper Mitch Davis and for dessert, the tender touch of a masseuse (who may or may not offer added, shall we say, services).

The Film Corner's Greg Klymkiw recently sallied forth across Cyberland Street to the Canadian Film Centre (CFC) website where he reviewed a whack of celluloid delights from this year's edition of FANTASIA.

You can read them by clicking HERE!

WHITE COFFIN - Fantasia 2016 Review By Greg Klymkiw at Electric Sheep Magazine

Argentinian Shocker with babes and blood.

White Coffin (2016)
Dir. Daniel de la Vega
Scr. Bogliano Brothers
Starring: Julieta Cardinali, Rafa Ferro,
Fiorela Duranda, Damián Dreizik, Veronica Intile

Review By Greg Klymkiw at Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema

Imagine a strangely perverse reworking of George Sluizer's classic 1988 shocker The Vanishing, wherein a smelly guy searching for his mysteriously missing girlfriend is substituted with a mega-hot babe searching for her sweet little girl amongst a sect of evil-infused torture-hounds. Add plenty of supernatural frissons, a wham-bam no-nonsense 70-minute running time and some to-die-for action and you get the rich cocktail of powerful 100-proof homebrew that is White Coffin.

READ KLYMKIW'S FULL REVIEW HERE.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

White Coffin enjoyed its world premiere at Fantasia 2016.

LA RAGE DU DEMON - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Evil Méliès Possessed?

La Rage du Démon (2016)
Dir. Fabien Delage
Starring: Christophe Gans, Alexandre Aja, Philippe Rouyer, Jean-Jacques Bernard, Christophe Lemaire

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It is said that in 1897, famed magician and father of fantastical cinema Georges Méliès (legendary director of A Trip to the Moon and dramatized in Martin Scorsese's Hugo), directed a film so horrifying and powerful that some believed it to be possessed by a demonic force so abominable that it forced audiences into rages of an unholy nature. Thought to have be lost, if not outright destroyed, a print of the film surfaced in 2012. Screened for a select audience, the film inspired similar violent outbursts.

A group of contemporary filmmakers and cineastes were assembled to provide their feedback for La Rage du Démon. Alas, it turns out to be much ado about nothing. The film is such a lame mockumentary, that most of the interviewed subjects aren't able to pull off the charade with anything resembling believability. Worse yet, the mostly dull talking heads affair reveals not much of anything. There are several Méliès clips used with some perfunctory archival footage, but we never buy any of it for a second.

There's never an attempt to provide clips from the abomination itself, presumably because they're too horrifying, but mostly because this woeful low budget affair would not have been able to afford such recreations.

What we're left with is the promise of what might have been a great horror film - a pure shuddery fiction a la Hugo, but sans anything resembling "feel good". This poor, pointless mockumentary leaves us wondering if there ever will be a great picture made within the premise of a long-dead genius having made a deal with Satan, thus delivering a film so infused with evil that its audiences become minions of the diseased pieces of light flickered upon the screen.

La Rage du Démon is not it, but we're allowed to dream about it. Maybe one of the great filmmakers forced into the mock interviews here will deliver the goods.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

La Rage du Démon enjoys its North American premiere at Fantasia 2016

DEMON - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Polish Dybbuk Terrorizes Montreal

Demon (2015)
Dir. Marcin Wrona
Starring: Itay Tiran, Agnieszka Żulewska

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The dybbuk has always been one of the most bloodcurdling supernatural creatures, yet its presence in contemporary horror films has, for the most part, been surprisingly absent. Rooted in Jewish mythology, it is the spirit of someone who has suffered a great indignity just before death and seeks to adhere itself to the soul of a living person in order to end its own purgatorial suffering. Alas, it causes as much nerve-shredding pain to the spirit as it does to the body of the one who is possessed. Invading the physical vessel in which a fully formed spirit already resides is no easy task and can result in a battle of wills, which not only implodes within, but tends to explode into the material world with a vengeance.

Demon successfully and chillingly brings this nasty, unholy terror to where it belongs, upon the silver screen, as opposed to the natural world. The late Polish filmmaker Marcin Wrona (who died suddenly and mysteriously at age 42, just one week after the film’s world premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival) hooks us immediately and reels us in with an almost sadistically gleeful use of cinema’s power to assail us with suspense of the highest order.

On the eve of his wedding to the beautiful Zaneta (Agnieszka Żulewska), the handsome young groom Peter (Itay Tiran) discovers the remains of a long-dead corpse in an open grave on the grounds of his father-in-law’s sprawling country estate. He becomes obsessed with this ghoulish treasure lying within the unconsecrated earth of a property bestowed upon the couple as a wedding gift. Not only will the nuptials be performed and celebrated here, but the happy twosome have been blessed with this gorgeous old house and lands as their future home.

Much of the film’s stylishly creepy events take place over the course of the wedding day. Wrona juggles a sardonic perspective with outright shuddersome horror during the mounting drunken celebrations at this extremely traditional Polish wedding. As the band plays, the guests dance between healthy guzzles of vodka, whilst the dybbuk clings to the poor groom, his body and soul wracked with pain.

When Peter begins to convulse violently, the lone Jewish guest at the Roman Catholic wedding, an elderly academic, is the one person who correctly identifies the problem.

Wrona’s camera dips, twirls and swirls with abandon as the celebratory affair becomes increasingly fraught with a strange desperation. Are the guests merely addled with booze, or is the estate a huge graveyard of Jews murdered during the Holocaust?

Is it possible that an army of dybbuks is seeking an end to their lonely, painful purgatory?

Demon raises many questions, but supplies no easy answers. What it delivers, however, is one of the scariest, most sickeningly creepy horror films of the year. If anything, the dybbuk has finally found a home in the movies, and we’re the beneficiaries of Wrona’s natural gifts as a filmmaker, as well as the largesse of this ancient supernatural entity, which so happily enters our own collective consciousness as we experience its nail-biting havoc over a not-so-holy matrimonial union.

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

DEMON enjoys its Montreal premiere at Fantasia 2016 in Montreal. This review was first published at Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema.

THE LOVE WITCH - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Witchy Carnal Gymnastics

The Love Witch (2016)
Dir. Anna Biller
Starring: Samantha Robinson, Gian Keys,
Laura Waddell, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, Robert Seeley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Babes, witches, devil worship, black magic and sex, sex and more sex were the mainstay of a lovely sub-genre of 70s Euro-Horror that nobody in their right mind could outright dismiss. American counterparts amongst these garishly-coloured bonbons never quite lived up to the titillation quotient of Euro sleaze masters like Jean Rollin, Jesus Franco, et al, but no matter, director Anna Biller more than makes up for Uncle Sam's lack of quality output with her very own contemporary masterwork of delectably naughty feculence.

Mega-babe Elaine (Samantha Robinson) has left San Francisco and a mysteriously malevolent past behind her. Resettling in a small town in Redwood country at the behest of some "white" witches, Elaine soon unleashes her genuine powers of "black" magic upon a variety of studs. Plenty of carnal gymnastics, nudity and murder follow. We should all be lucky enough to have someone like Elaine to love us to death.

Biller creates a sumptuous, sex-drenched tale, shot in gloriously garish colour (in 35mm no less), parading ritual and rapture in equal measure. Those acquainted with the cinematic world she recreates (with a few new frissons) will have nothing to complain about. Those who aren't quite as abreast of it, might still derive pleasure from this diverting carnal romp. The rest can go to church.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

The Love Witch is an Oscilloscope Release enjoying its Canadian Premiere at Fantasia 2016.

THE EYES OF MY MOTHER - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Slaughter Slog

The worst exploitation pretends to be art.

The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Dir. Nicolas Pesce
Starring: Kika Magalhães, Will Brill, Paul Nazak, Flora Diaz, Clara Wong

Review By Greg Klymkiw

At only 77 minutes, The Eyes of My Mother feels like it's never going to end. It's one of the more disagreeable pictures I've recently had the displeasure to experience. Offensively boring (and just plain boringly offensive), it's a pretentious, nasty and misogynistic art-house-horror slug of the lowest order. What we're essentially dealing with here is a bottom feeder hoisted to heavenly heights by its makers to bamboozle audiences into thinking they're watching something lofty. Worse yet, its makers even think they've created something high-toned, but have, in fact, generated a movie squarely aimed at pseuds who will laud its affectations rhapsodically.

Director Nicolas Pesce is obviously not a nincompoop. He's put his thinking cap on for this one and he's also gifted visually, creating dense monochromatic images guaranteed to stay with you. You won't really want them cluttering your cerebral cortex, but they'll adhere to it anyway, like globs of agglutinative faecal matter tossed against a wall to see if they'll stick.

This sordid slice of rural Americana begins with a mother of Portuguese descent dissecting the head of a cow for her daughter Francisca and removing the eyeballs to teach her little lassie about the wonderful world of vision. (Oooohhhh, this is getting heady already, mais non?) As bad luck would have it, Mom allows a serial killer into the house and when Dad gets home, he discovers Francisca sitting in the kitchen whilst his wife is being hacked and bludgeoned in the bathtub.

No matter. Dad subdues the serial killer and chains him in the barn - still alive, naturally. With Francisca's help, he hauls his wife's body into the woods and buries it.

Wouldn't you?

Mother teaches daughter facts of life:
How to best remove eyeballs.

We flash forward a few years later and Francisca has blossomed into a fully grown babe (rendered in stultifying monotone by actress Kika Magalhães). Dad is constantly morose. One might think it's because he misses his wife, but since he's always watching "Bonanza" on TV, we naturally assume a steady diet of the Cartwright family is contributing to his ennui.

Francisca seems a tiny bit happier. She's surgically removed the serial killer's eyeballs and spends her days torturing and humiliating him. Eventually, when Dad dies and she tires of bathing, then sleeping with his smelly corpse, she gets a might horny and begins to seek ways to satisfy her natural urges.

This leads to her own serial killer-like tendencies coming to full fruition.

Lacking the razzle-dazzle and dark humour of something like Lucky McKee's The Woman (which it bears a few similarities to) and fraught with far too many dull Terrence Malick-like stretches, The Eyes of My Mother is little more than a wank-fest for its director and an even bigger masturbation-o-rama for the aforementioned pseuds amongst both paying audiences and film critics, all of whom want to impress each other with their nonsense-infused justifications for the sheer, nasty, empty malevolence of this horrendous picture.

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
TURD DISCOVERED
BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE
Lowest Film Corner Rating.
For elaboration on its history, usage and full meaning,
please visit HERE.

The Eyes of My Mother is an Unobstructed View release enjoying its Canadian premiere at Fantasia 2016

IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ti West Goes West

Ti West serves up Sweet Revenge in Texas.

In a Valley of Violence (2016)
Dir. Ti West
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Taissa Farmiga, John Travolta,
Jason Ransone, Karen Gillan, Larry Fessenden

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who doesn't like a good western? Aside from a few knobs, pretty much everyone likes one. Writer-director Ti West (The Sacrament, The Innkeepers, You're Next) clearly enjoys westerns so much that he strapped six-shooters upon his cinematic mojo and damn well just made one.

And you know what? In a Valley of Violence is a darn tootin' good oater. Mildly revisionist, but mostly straight-up, the picture is replete with nods to Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, Sergio Leone and Budd Boetticher whilst holding its own as a solid cowpoke revenge programmer.

Paul (Ethan Hawke), a former soldier with a mysterious past, stops in the one-horse Denton, Texas to replenish supplies. Accompanied by his beloved dog, he becomes acquainted with the spunky, sexy Mary-Anne (Taissa Farmiga), the restless little sister of hotel keeper Ellen (Karen Gillan). Local baddie Gilly Martin (James Ransone) moronically picks a fight with Paul and is soundly thrashed by our hero.

As these things must go, Gilly exacts revenge upon Paul, leaving him (and dog) for dead in the desert.

Bad idea.

Paul comes back to town, driven by hate.

The inevitable killing spree ensues.

Travolta's biggest challenge: Idiot Progeny!

West's script is lean, mean and sprinkled with plenty of witty dialogue. As per usual, he displays a first-rate eye for action, editing the picture with hard-driving aplomb and garnering solid performances from his all-star cast. Hawke makes for a stellar and stalwart cowpoke hero, the villains (especially Ransome and Larry Fessenden) ooze the proper amount of nasty Peckinpah-like scum-baggery and the camera utterly adores the spunky Ukrainian-American Princess Farmiga (Vera's lil sissy) who spits her lines out like some perverse cross twixt Maddie Ross and Addie Pray.

The real fun is seeing John Travolta as the town marshall, a beleaguered father to a moron son. Dad doesn't want to kill, but he will if he has to defend the rotting fruit sired from his seed.

In a Valley of Violence might not be the most wildly original western ever made, but it is a damn solid one and offers considerable entertainment value from a filmmaker who is fast becoming one of the most reliable and talented young directors in America.

Finally, no summation of this picture's virtues would be complete without a special nod to Abbie the dog, a sweet animal who delivers a lovely performance. What happens to the dog shouldn't happen to a dog, but no matter. You will rejoice in the sweet revenge on the animal's behalf. It's a bloody beautiful thing.

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

In a Valley of Violence enjoys its Canadian Premiere at Fantasia 2016.

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

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

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

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

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

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

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

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two Stars

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