BEST OF ENEMIES / HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - 2 Must-See Documentaries @ the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival

Best of Enemies (2014)
Dir. Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon
Starring: Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley Jr.

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is a documentary that brilliantly fulfills some mighty pre-requisites: Important subject matter that needed, after so many decades have passed, to be presented in as blisteringly entertaining and deeply incisive a manner as possible. As such, Best of Enemies is a great story and superb filmmaking.

In 1968, America changed forever - in many ways. First of all, during the Republican and Democratic conventions, the country was in post-JFK-assassination ennui, the height of Vietnam, civil rights clashes, endless protests and yearning for some kind of defining change. Ever more jaw-dropping was that Television News at the network level was still infused with passion, journalistic excellence and thorough, balanced coverage. These days, it's little more than exploitative sound bites and out and out propaganda.

Of the three networks, ABC's national news was strictly a cellar-dweller affair with such abysmal ratings, it would not have been an exaggeration to count its viewers, sardonically of course, on two hands. ABC knew something had to turn this around. Eschewing traditional coverage of the conventions, ABC instead presented a live debate/commentary on these events by none other than the ultra-conservative William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal, the left-leaning best selling writer of controversial works like Myra Breckenridge.

This format of vicious jugular-slashing debate had never before been used in so effective a fashion. In fact, it was so unique, so compelling and so much a reflection of America's split-down-the-middle sensibilities, that ABC's ratings skyrocketed to epic levels. Using actual footage with the debates and supplementing it with contemporary interviews, a bottomless pit of additional archival footage, contemporary interviews with those still alive to offer vivid, candid reflections and off-screen readings of Buckley and Vidal's prose by John Lithgow and Kelsey Grammar, directors Neville and Gordon have us on the edge of our seats.

It's razzle-dazzle filmmaking at its best. Most telling, in spite of some rather shocking LIVE (and then, unheard of) name-calling twixt the two pundits, is that America sat down and absorbed, in the millions, two dynamic, intelligent men, duking it out with equally intelligent discourse. What Vidal and Buckley achieved set the trend for TV broadcasting to follow, so much so, that today, point-counter-point duels are a matter of course. The difference between then and now, however, is the high degree of intellectual political discourse between the two men - a far cry from the cacophonous scream-fests so prevalent on television ever since.

We get biographical details on both men in order to set the stage for the astonishing footage, allowing us the opportunity to know them as intimately as possible within the context of such a film and reflecting all the events of interest in America AS THEY HAPPENED. One of the more chilling sequences involves Mayor Robert Daley of Chicago turning his city into a veritable police state during the Democratic Convention (captured at the time, brilliantly and shockingly by cinematographer Haskell Wexler with his feature length directorial debut Medium Cool).

As thrilling as the film is, we also experience a considerable degree of melancholy. By witnessing such intelligent and exciting debates in raw, unexpurgated form, there's a sinking feeling that overwhelms us as we realize how this landmark event eventually denigrated into what we now know today.

The experience of seeing this film is the best anyone's going to have to actually experiencing this event as it happened. This is great documentary filmmaking as it should really be - namely, great filmmaking period.

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

Best of Enemies plays at the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, dates and venues, visit the NIFF website by clicking HERE.

How To Change The World (2015)
Dir. Jerry Rothwell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"If we wait for the meek to inherit the earth, there won't be anything left to inherit" - Robert Hunter

Robert (Bob) Hunter was many things. Mostly, I just always thought he was cool. And well, you'd kind of have to be that to have accomplished so much in so short a time (he died of cancer at age 63). A committed veteran journalist, broadcaster and the founder of Greenpeace, Hunter is clearly the hero of this film, but director Jerry Rothwell leaves no stone unturned to tell as much of this extraordinary story as possible. Rothwell poured over hundreds of 16mm rolls of film that had been canned and unopened since the 1970s. Seeing, pretty much before his very eyes, the visual history of the Greenpeace organization, the filmmaker consulted with Hunter's colleagues and foes, conducted fresh interviews with all of them, then blended his Herculean research to expertly select and edit footage from the Greenpeace Archives. The result is a documentary which paints a portrait of environmental activism which comes across as thrilling as Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin "Master and Commander" high-seas swashbucklers. FULL REVIEW from Hot Docs 2015 HERE.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

How To Change The World plays at the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, dates and venues, visit the NIFF website by clicking HERE.

STRANGER / MADE IN BALI - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - 2 Terrific Short Films @ NIFF 2015

PREFACE: THE HOLY GRAPE?
OR ASBESTOS IN THE DRINKING WATER?

My journeys to the cinema have recently been blessed with the joys inherent in truly independent, indigenous, regional cinema - everyone from the Soska Sisters (Coquitlam, B.C.) to Alex Orr (Atlanta, Georgia) to Károly Ujj Mészáros (Budapest, Hungary) - it's truly been a pleasure to partake of stories and filmmaking which eschews the mind-numbingly machine-tooled crap from Hollywood (excepting Mad Max Fury Road and Spy, of course).

One of the hottest new regions for indigenous indie films seems to be the Niagara area of Southern Ontario wine country. Are these people imbibing too much of The Holy Grape? God knows, the oddities from the Winnipeg film scene can be traced back to asbestos in the waterworks which has contaminated tap water for many decades, so anything's possible. Though my personal preference leans more towards asbestos in the pipes, I'm more than delighted to equally acknowledge that many would, indeed, choose The Holy Grape.

There are plenty of short films on view amongst the myriad of feature films at the 2015 edition of (the legendary) Bill Marshall's Niagara Integrated Film Festival (NIFF 15). Two of them are exceptional. They're amongst the best of the best - not just at NIFF, not just from Niagara, but from Canada. Oh Hell, let's just place this in an international context - the world, already.

One will give you the willies.

The other will wrench geysers of tears from thine ocular orbs.

Both are truly terrific.

Stranger (2015)
Dir. Jason Lupish
Starring: Erica Sherwood, Ralph DeGroot, Jason Zones

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I get the willies when I see closed doors. - Joseph Heller, Something Happened

There are plenty of closed doors in this creepy little thriller which is disturbing, unnerving and almost quietly hilarious (you know the kind, like those moments in Carl Dreyer movies when, say, an old woman takes forever to cross a room, from one side of the frame to the other). The closed doors here, are, of course, not literal, but share the kind of nasty paranoia and fetishistic qualities of Joseph Heller's greatest book (from which the aforementioned quotation comes from - the book's first sentence, no less).

Writer-Director Jason Lupish (who gave us the insanely oft-kilter feature length dark comedy A Kind of Wonderful Thing) stuffs this chillingly demented picture with all manner of closed doors - not necessarily of the literal persuasion, but the super-scary kind. The doors that shut on secrets, mental illness and, of course, murder most foul.

Hannah (Erica Sherwood) keeps peeping through the venetian blinds. It's dark and there's a guy standing across the street, immobile and seemingly staring - the kind that drills holes into you. The pitch black of night-shadows masque his upper torso and face, the murky street lights illuminate his legs which, are rooted firmly on the sidewalk, poised perfectly for stalking.

Hubby David (Ralph DeGroot) gets home late from work. The place is unkempt, uneaten dinner beckons his finger to dip into the gravy and pilfer a taste. Hannah is glued to her venetians. She informs David what's out there. He sees the same figure, but appears somewhat lackadaisical about doing anything about it.

Clearly, this marriage is under duress.

The next day, a detective (Jason Zones) shows up after David's grudgingly called the cop-shop. Unfortunately, the line of questioning is such, that a deep, hurtful secret is revealed. Pretending doors are closed yields what was behind them in the first place and leads to even more creepy events than anyone watching would want to bargain for. Suffice it to say, they're not only bone-chilling, but infused with a kind of Von Trier-like fetishistic quality which allows them to also be grotesquely sexy.

Lupish handles the proceedings like a burgeoning master of suspense. The performances of the trio of actors are first-rate. In particular, leading lady Erica Sherwood is loved by the camera in ways which suggest she's got star-in-the-making qualities.

Prepare for doors to opened, which ultimately reveal more closed doors and more things to get the willies over.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Stranger is part of the "Niagara Rises" short film program at the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, dates and venues, visit the NIFF website by clicking HERE.

Made in Bali (2014)
Dir. Michael Pohorly
Starring: Mike Lewis, Slamet Rahardjo

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Make sure you're armed with a few Kleenex tissues for this one. Michael Pohorly's tender, sensitive drama, shot gorgeously against the beauty of Bali, packs more than a few emotional wallops from within its delicate frames.

Skip (Mike Lewis) a young man of mixed race travels from Canada to the holiday Mecca of Indonesia. This island paradise seems far removed from the horrors of the anti-Communist death squads displayed in Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing. Located twixt Java and Lombok, home to Indonesia's largest population of Hindus, the film very quickly establishes an evocation of cultural peace, contentment and natural beauty.

We see the world through rose-petaled shades. Remove the shades and the rose petals remain. It's gorgeous, dazzlingly seductive and romantic (a definite contrast to Oppenheimer's overwhelming depiction of cruelty in Indonesia's primarily Military-ruled Muslim State of North Sumatra).

For a day, Skip hires Made (Slamet Rahardjo), a cheerful local who runs "Made in Bali", a tourist guide service amusingly punning upon his name. He takes the strangely dour twenty-something to some of the most eye-popping locales imaginable. Skip seems oddly unmoved by what he sees and is distracted to a fault. Something is clearly not right in the Province of Bali.

There are secrets.

It's the secrets which provide the film's narrative with its power. Pohorly yields a pair of exquisite performances from both actors and handles the reveals, not as shockers, but the sort of gentle revelations that life offers to all of us. In this case, what it offers up is infused with a sense of loss, regret and dashed hopes. It also offers dreams, and sometimes, they even come true.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Made in Bali is part of the "Niagara Rises" short film program at the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, dates and venues, visit the NIFF website by clicking HERE.

Full Disclosure on Stranger. Though I have nothing to do with the production of this film in any, way, shape or form, I receive a Thank You credit during the closing titles, presumably acknowledging my positive review of the director's feature film from last year.

THE QUIET HOUR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - NIFF 2015 - Low-Key Post-Apocalypse

The Quiet Hour (2014)
Dir. Stéphanie Joalland
Starring: Dakota Blue Richards, Karl Davies, Brigitte Millar, Jack McMullen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

After the Apocalypse, it's going to be very quiet.

At least that's the way it's got to be in Stéphanie Joalland's first feature film The Quiet Hour. The end of the world as we know it in the universe of the film is an alien invasion in which the unseen extraterrestrial critters (save for their hovering spaceship and mini-patrol-jets) are wiping out as many humans as possible and stripping the Earth of its natural resources.

Humanity has about two one-hour periods a day (hence the title) to wander about outdoors without getting zapped. The rest of the time, mankind needs to hunker down, ever-so quietly, lest they give their position away to the merciless space invaders.

Perhaps the most merciless creature on God's soon-to-NOT-be-green Earth is man. Food is scarce, so many marauders have turned to cannibalism. (This flesh munching is all handled a bit too discretely for my bloodthirsty tastes).

Safe havens are also in short supply, so if you've got one, it's eventually going to be under siege.

Placing a whopping emphasis upon character over action and suspense is probably not a bad thing to do, but every so often, it reminds the viewer that we're dealing with what is probably a very minuscule budget - hence: no onscreen aliens, only a handful of visible humans and most of the action confined to an isolated old farm house.

No matter. It's what happens inside the farmhouse that's important and writer-director Joalland acquits herself very well in this respect. Sarah (Dakota Blue Richards) is a hot babe (Thank Christ!), holed up in the stately country house with Tom (Jack McMullen), her blind younger brother. When Jude (Karl Davies), an army-fatigue-adorned young hunk shows up with a bullet wound in his leg, he's allowed, grudgingly, to stay and get patched up. The wounded lad claims to be a young father whose wife and child have been killed by marauders.

The plot thickens when a group of armed inbreds show up and demand Jude be turned over to them.

Hmmm. Why? Is he really who or what he says he is? Is he a killer? A scavenger lying in wait to decimate our plucky bro and sis? The reality, however, is that even if they acquiesce to the demands to give him up, the sibs risk losing an ally against a passel of dangerous scumbags.

Suspense and violence follow.

Very quietly, mind you.

The accent is on the relationships between these people in a world on the brink of disaster and much of the film involves three-hander interplay between them. Joalland's script is nicely written with an accent on character development and realistic dialogue. The performances are solid and as a director, her mise-en-scene deftly juggles the demands of making this claustrophobic setting work dramatically and cinematically.

I appreciated the muted quality of the film, but after awhile, I did expect a good, old fashioned Straw Dogs-like orgy of violence. There is violence, but it continues to play out in the muted realism of the rest of the movie. This, of course, is the noble way to play things out, but I do fear that many (including myself) will be a tad letdown by the lack of a truly, madly, deeply inspired donnybrook with geysers of blood-letting.

We deserve it. We've paid attention, justifiably so, to the good writing and fine acting and stately pace. Lacking a climactic dust-up seems a bit of a cop-out, taking things far too preciously for comfort. Still, it's an intelligent, considered work and one can't complain too much about that.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

The Quiet Hour enjoys its Canadian Premiere at the Niagara Integrated Film Festival (NIFF 2015). For tix, times and venues, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

LIZA THE FOX-FAIRY (Liza a Rókatündér) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - NIFF 2015 MUST-SEE Wacko Winner from Hungary gets Canadian Premiere during the legendary Bill Marshall's 2nd Annual Niagara Integrated Film Festival in Southern Ontario Wine Country

Liza The Fox-Fairy aka Liza a Rókatündér (2015)
Dir. Károly Ujj Mészáros
Starring: Mónika Balsai, Szabolcs Fazekas, David Sakurai

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Watching Liza The Fox-Fairy, I felt like I had died and sailed up to Heaven. It's also proof-positive how great publicists genuinely understand the writers they work with. I didn't even bother including this title on my list of films I'd requested to screen in advance of the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival and the gentle words of the veteran flack handling NIFF's press relations, "I think you might want to see this one, too," led me to this terrific motion picture (at first, wearily, in spite of not ever really being led astray by said flack's almost placid urging), which not only appealed to my taste, but did so with the kind of artistry and imagination I continually long for in the movies.

This magnificently mordant fantasy is also a deeply black comedy, an utterly insane musical and perhaps one of the most unexpectedly sweet and melancholy love stories I've seen in quite some time. That it also blends an old-style Eastern European sense of realism, an occasional use of a fluorescent-dappled post-modernist visual palette and that this Budapest-back-dropped ode to ghostly apparitions, murder and Japanese culture oddly joins a splendid cinematic coterie that includes Canada's brilliant Winnipeg-infused, Hungarian-heritaged John (Crime Wave) Paizs and the Colorado=spawned Zellner (Kumiko The Treasure Hunter) Brothers (with dashes of Otto Preminger's Laura), all yielding globs of rich icing on this delicious cake of celluloid dreaming.

Liza (Mónika Balsai) has toiled for twelve long years as a personal slave/caretaker to a morbidly obese old lady in Hungary who once lived with her deceased husband, a consular official, in Japan. She not only teaches Liza Japanese in their endless days, weeks, months and aeons together, but insists her jane-of-all-trades endlessly spin tunes by the old gal's favourite Nippon pop star Tomy Tani (David Sakurai). Frumpy Liza, having never known true love, magically becomes the recipient of numerous visitations by the ghost of Tomy who croons and converses endlessly with her. Some might call him an imaginary friend, but he is, ultimately, an all-too-real a presence in Liza's life.

On Liza's 30th birthday, everything changes. Whilst enjoying a celebratory greasy burger and fries at the grim Hungarian fast food eatery, MEKK BURGER, the old lady dies and in her will, leaves the loyal, dowdy au pair her apartment and a small amount of money. Liza immediately becomes a beacon for male suitors. Alas, one-by-one, the men begin to die "accidentally" in Liza's presence. Though each death is clearly accidental, the Budapest Homicide Department smells something fishy and assigns Detective Zoltán Zászlós (Szabolcs Fazekas) to stakeout her comings and goings.

Zoltán slowly falls for Liza in a big way, even though men are dropping like flies around her. Melancholy Liza, who transforms herself into a Cosmopolitan Magazine babe, feels like she's become the reincarnated Japanese "Fox-Lady" whom, a legend has it, could never know true love as all men who courted her died horrible deaths. As Liza's apartment becomes insanely plastered with crime scene tape body outlines, the jealous ghost of Tomy appears to be the real culprit.

He loves Liza and wants her all to himself.

For eternity.

What's a girl to do?

To find out, head down to St. Catharines and surrounding environs to see Liza The Fox-Fairy at the Niagara Integrated Film Festival. Who knows when you'll have a chance to see this thoroughly delightful picture on a big screen with an audience.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Liza The Fox-Fairy enjoys its Canadian Premiere at NIFF 2015. For info, dates and tickets, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.