Greg Klymkiw's SAVAGE 7 - THE BEST HORROR, SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASY FILMS of 2012 (in glorious alphabetical order)

Greg Klymkiw's SAVAGE 7 - THE BEST HORROR, SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASY FILMS of 2012 (in glorious alphabetical order)

American Mary **** (2012)
dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska
American Mary is a dazzlingly audacious sophomore effort from the Vancouver-based twisted twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska. It's essentially a rape-revenge fantasy involving a young surgeon who becomes involved in the dark underground world of body modification. As her butchery improves with each subject, she is eventually ready to ply her skill upon her abuser, a senior surgeon whose air of respectability as a healer and academic is the weapon he uses to commit sexual violence. Watch out! Someone's gonna pay. Big time. It's Tod Browning meets early David Cronenberg with a decidedly feminist and feminine slant, as well as a genuine respect, understanding and compassion for those who MUST be different.

Beyond The Black Rainbow (2012) **** dir. Panos Cosmatos
Beyond The Black Rainbow is a 70s/80s-style "head" film that has "cult" emblazoned upon its celluloid forehead. Blessed with a cool score/soundscape as well as an imaginative production design, the movie is replete with a delicious combination of creepy psychiatric experimentation sequences, dollops of shockingly grotesque bloodletting and several dreamscape montages that are trippy to say the least. For me, I got way more bang for my buck out of this modestly budgeted SF-Horror whacko-fest than Sir Ridley's plodding mess Prometheus. I suspect, that like most cult items, Cosmatos's juicy mind-fuck might take some shelf life for the devotion his movie deserves to be fully discovered. In the meantime, fire up a fat doobie and enjoy!

The Chernobyl Diaries (2012) dir. Bradley Parker ***
Young Americans in Ukraine indulge themselves in a bit of extreme tourism and visit the abandoned city overlooking the site of the tragic Chornobyl nuclear meltdown. Things get a bit more extreme than anyone bargained for. Wandering through the deserted disaster area, weird noises puncture the eerie silence and eventually La Turistas are besieged by hungry, radiation-crazed bears, dogs, wolves and ceolocanth-piranha-like fish. When their tour guide's van won't start, darkness descends upon the city. It appears there are other creatures to contend with. As they must, and because it's a horror film, our motley crew ventures into the darkness of the city. Where there is radiation, there will be MUTANTS!!! Where there are mutants, carnage will follow.

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) dir. Drew Goddard ***1/2
The Cabin in the Woods is a genre-geek's wet-dream, so set a spell, take a load off and leave your brain home. You won't need any grey matter for The Cabin in the Woods anyway. As moronic, derivative and plot-hole-ridden as the picture is, there are enough genuine surprises and a couple of truly breathtakingly inventive horror set pieces, that by the end, you'll be giddily satisfied. Five college kids - two hunks, two babes and one doper dweeb - hop into an RV and head into back country. Upon reaching their destination, they engage in the usual shenanigans that Hollywood-types assume young people do and before you can say: "Sam Raimi", a whole mess of slavering, rotting, bloodthirsty undead come crawling out of the soil. Thankfully what awaits is a whole lot more horrifying.

Citadel (2012) ****
dir. Ciaran Foy
Citadel is, first and foremost, a film about crashing, numbing, unrelenting fear. It is a palpable fear that's brought on when the film's young protagonist watches - not once, but twice - as those he loves are brutalized and/or snatched away from him. His fear intensifies so unremittingly, with such grim realism, that we're placed directly in the eye of the storm that is his constant state of terror. Even scarier is his struggle to instil enough courage to face the evil. Director Foy jangles our nerves with the panache of a master. His movie will scare the living bejesus out of you. The mise-en-scene is dazzling and the tale is rooted in both a humanity and reality that will smack close to home for many. Its dystopian world of fear, crime, poverty, filth and despair are enough to chill you to the bone, but we're not let off that easy. There is, you see, an infection. Oh yes, an infection, and one that leads to a heart-stopping, scream-inducing, drawer-filling and flat-out dizzying, jack-hammeringly appalling climax of pure, sickening, unadulterated terror.

John Carter (2012) dir. Andrew Stanton ***1/2
When I do the math that counts, I add up the following John Carter attributes:
A handsome, stalwart hunk hero. A major league babe. Noble allies for the hunkster and babe to right wrongs. Great villains. An overall mise-en-scene that captures the SPIRIT of the late, great, original author Edgar Rice Burroughs ("Tarzan of the Apes") whose book ("Princess of Mars") the film is based upon. Eye-popping special effects (that work just as well in 2-D as they do in 3-D, the latter process being one I normally can't stand). Cool aliens. Cool sets. Cool spaceships. Monsters. Yes, monsters. Cool monsters, at that. An astounding slaves-in-an-arena-fighting-aforementioned-monsters scene. A rip-snorting battle sequence. Have I mentioned the babe, yet? The sum total of the above is that director Andrew (Finding Nemo, WALL-E) Stanton's big screen version of Burroughs's first John Carter novel is a total blast.

[REC]3: Genesis (2012) dir. Paco Plaza ***1/2
Buoyed by a clutch of terrific acting, superb effects and some delicious shocks, [Rec3] delivers the goods and then some. Most of all, though, what sells [Rec]3 is the notion that Hell hath no fury like a woman whose fairy-tale wedding is transformed into a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. Her white dress spattered with blood, her gamin visage transformed from joy to almost malevolent strictures, her train torn away to reveal her hot gams and armed with one motherfucker of a chainsaw, one only wonders who in their right mind would not be thrilled at the site of this sexy senorita cutting, slashing and maiming her way through one living dead wedding guest after another?

Greg Klymkiw's TOP TEN CANADIAN FILMS of 2012

GREG KLYMKIW'S TOP TEN CANADIAN FILMS OF 2012

By Greg Klymkiw

Tonight (December 4, 2012), The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) will be unveiling their choices for both the Top Ten Features and Top Ten Shorts (TIFF CTT 2012). I'm certainly looking forward to the announcements this evening. I'm especially looking forward to the free drinks and food, but this year, I might actually restrain myself from bringing a doggy-bag.

So, until TIFF reveals their own selections at 6:45pm (ET), here are my own choices for Canada's Top Ten. In ALPHABETICAL ORDER, here's the GK CTT 2012 - The Greg Klymkiw Canadian Top Ten:

AMERICAN MARY dir. Jen and Sylvia Soska
American Mary is a dazzlingly audacious sophomore effort from the Vancouver-based twisted twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska. With this new picture, the sisters are on (at least for some) shaky moral ground (and/or crack), but happily, they maintain the courage of their convictions and do not tread lightly upon it. This movie is some mighty nasty stuff - replete with elements of slashing satire that hack away and eventually tear open "normally" accepted versions of right and wrong whilst grasping the exposed nerve endings of morality, holding them taught and playing the jangling buggers like violin strings. The picture will provoke, anger, disgust, horrify and scandalize a multitude of audiences - it's one grim, horrific and darkly hilarious fairy tale. On its surface, the picture is a rape revenge fantasy set against the backdrop of body modification, but deep below, it roils with the sort of subversion Canadian filmmakers have become famous for all over the world.

BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW dir. Panos Cosmatos
Beyond The Black Rainbow features one of the most thrilling directorial debuts in years. Panos Cosmatos, who both wrote and directed this supremely enjoyable first-feature - a 70s/80s-style "head" film that has "cult" emblazoned upon its celluloid forehead. Gorgeously shot, vigorously edited, blessed with a cool score/soundscape as well as an imaginative production design, the movie is replete with a delicious combination of creepy psychiatric experimentation sequences, dollops of shockingly grotesque bloodletting and several dreamscape montages that are pretty trippy all by their lonesome. If truth be told, the movie can work quite nicely without added stimulants, but far be it from me to deter anyone from enjoying the movie with a massive ingestion of some fine west coast weed. So settle back, folks. Fire up a fat doobie and enjoy!

CLOUDBURST dir. Thom Fitzgerald
The Hanging Garden director delivers a beautifully written ode to love on the run - replete with k.d. lang music, pickup trucks, roadside cafes, Olympia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker and a Nova Scotia that's never looked more heart-achingly beautiful. Fitzgerald's tale is a sort of gentle retirement-age Thelma and Louise. He wisely and bravely delivered a story that's as mature as it's downright universal. Love should have no boundaries and his direction indelibly captures a love story that's familiar, but bolstered by such genuine compassion, that I frankly can't imagine any audience not succumbing to its considerable charms.

THE END OF TIME dir. Peter Mettler
Nobody makes movies like Peter Mettler, so it stands to reason that when Peter Mettler makes documentaries, you're in for an experience like no other you've ever seen before. This hypnotic, riveting, provocative and profoundly moving exploration of time is one of the most original films of the new decade. And yes, time! TIME, for Christ's sake! Of all the journeys a filmmaker could take us on, only Mettler would have the almost-gentle Canadian audacity to explore the notion of time. And damned if Mettler doesn't plunge you into an experiential mind-fuck that both informs and dazzles. Lava flows both scarily and beautifully in Hawaii, Switzerland's particle accelerator seeks answers to the questions of creation, the place of Buddha's enlightenment reveals that the end of time, might just well be the beginning - all this and more are all under the scrutiny of Mettler's exquisite kino-eye (one of the best in the world, I might add). Mettler always journeys far and wide to seek answers, enlightenment and maybe, just maybe, both terrible and beautiful truths. And he lets us all come along for the ride.

FORTUNATE SON dir. Tony Asimakopoulos
This stunning personal documentary is a perfect companion piece to Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell. Telling a brave and identifiable story about love, loyalty and family that extraordinarily mirrors the lives of all who watch it, the picture demonstrates the inescapable truth that love is not easy. For love to BE love, for love to really count, it takes work, courage and fortitude. It means giving up ephemeral happiness for the happiness of endurance, of perseverance, of never giving up - the happiness and fulfillment that really counts. Tony Asimakopoulos is one of Canadian cinema's great unsung talents. His work has been charged with a unique underground flavour - a kind of Greek-Scorsese "boys in the 'hood" quality of obsession, dapplings of George Kuchar melodrama and lurid high contrast visuals. And Fortunate Son is, quite simply, a genuinely great film.

GOON dir. Michael Dowse
A Great Canadian Hockey Movie to follow in the footsteps of Canuck "Lumber-in-the-Teeth" Classics as FACE OFF, PAPERBACK HERO and, of course, the most Canadian Movie Never Made By A Canadian, George Roy Hill's Classic SLAP SHOT. Etching the tender tale of the kindly, but brick-shit-house-for-brains bouncer recruited to a cellar-dweller hockey team in Halifax as an enforcer, Dowse captures the sweaty, blood-spurting, bone-crunching and tooth-spitting circus of minor league hockey with utter perfection. The camaraderie, the endless bus trips, the squalid motels, the brain-dead fans, the piss-and-vinegar coaches, the craggy play-by-play sportscasters, the bars reeking of beer and vomit and, of course, Pogo Sticks - it's all here and then some. GOON delivers laughs, fisticuffs, mayhem and yes, even a dash of romance in a tidy package of good, old-fashioned underdog styling.

KEEP A MODEST HEAD (Ne crâne pas sois modeste) dir. Deco Dawson
Oh, Glorious surrealism! Oh, Canada! Oh, Headcheese de Cinema! Deco Dawson delivers his most mind-blowing magic to date with this delirious ode to French surrealist Jean Benoit. No longer content to volley mere scuds into cinema’s boundaries, Dawson hits all the buttons from mission control at Burpleson Air Base in Gimli, Manitoba to launch several A-bombs and a few H-bombs (for good measure) at the sturdy bastions of convention, thus fulfilling the true glory, madness and poetic potential of the greatest art form of all.

KRIVINA dir. Igor Drljaca
Not a single shot is fired in Canadian director Igor Drljaca's stunning feature debut, but the horror of war - its legacy of pain, its futility and its evil hang like a cloud over every frame of this powerful cinematic evocation of memory and loss. The film's hypnotic rhythm plunges us into the inner landscape of lives irrevocably touched by man's inhumanity to man - a diaspora of suffering that shall never escape the fog of war. Krivina is an astounding film - a personal vision that genuinely affects our sense of self to seek out our own worth, our own place in the world. Like Olexander Dovzhenko, Sergei Paradjanov and, to a certain extent, Tarkovsky, Drljaca achieves what I believe to be the fullest extent of what cinema can offer - the ability to touch the souls of its characters and, in so doing, touching the souls of those lucky enough to experience the magic that can only, I think, be fully wrought by the art of the motion picture.

PEACE OUT dir. Charles Wilkinson
This a powerful, persuasive and important film that focuses upon the environmental decimation of Canada's northwest. It's about energy and the horrible price we all pay for our hog-at-the-trough need for Hydro. The picture takes you by surprise and leaves you breathless. Diving into this vital film, we're witness to activist cinema of the highest order. Clever, subtle juxtapositions, smooth transitions between the beauty of nature, the destruction of the environment, the fluorescent-lit government and/or corporate offices, the dark, almost Gordon Willis styled shots of energy executives and in one case, an utterly heartbreaking montage of energy waste set to Erik Satie's Gymnopedie #1 - all of these exquisitely wrought moments and more, inspire sadness, anger and hopefully enough of these emotions will translate into inspiring action - even, as a Greenpeace interview subject suggests - civil disobedience.

STORIES WE TELL dir. Sarah Polley
Sarah Polley’s latest work as a director, a bonafide masterpiece, is first and foremost a story of family – not just a family, or for that matter any family, but rather a mad, warm, brilliant passionate family who expose their lives in the kind of raw no-guts-no-glory manner that only film can allow. Most importantly, the lives exposed are as individual as they are universal and ultimately it’s a film about all of us. Love permeates the entire film – the kind of consuming love that offers (as does the film itself) a restorative power of infinitesimal proportions. Sarah Polley is often referred to as Canada's “national treasure”. She’s far more than that. She’s a treasure to the world – period. And so, finally, is her film.

THE WORLD BEFORE HER dir. Nisha Pahuja
What is the future for the young women of modern India? Is it adherence to thousands of years of subservient tradition or finding success through beauty? Is it deepening their love for the Hindu religion through rigorous paramilitary training or maintaining their ties to religion and culture while engaging in the exploitation of their sexuality? The chasm between these two polar opposites couldn't be wider and yet, as we discover in Nisha Pahuja's extraordinary and compelling documentary feature The World Before Her, the differences are often skin deep as parallel lines clearly exist beneath the surface. All of this makes for one lollapalooza of a movie! Vibrant, incisive, penetrating and supremely entertaining, director Pahuja and her crackerjack team deliver one terrific picture - a genuine corker!

Oh, you might have noticed there are actually 11 films here. Don't like it? Fucking sue me!

BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW Cool Canadian Cult Picture on Blu-Ray from Mongrel Media - Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw

WOW! Need a cool movie? Here it is!!!  Need a fix of a truly creepy science fiction cult item? Got a few fat  doobies to suck back? Good. This rip-snorting Canuckian head film from Panos Cosmatos was criminally neglected upon its theatrical release, but now, thanks to Mongrel Media, you can BLOW YOUR FUCKING MIND on Blu-Ray since movie theatres don't let you toke up in them anymore anyway.

Beyond The Black Rainbow (2012) ***1/2

dir. Panos Cosmatos

Starring: Michael Rogers, Eva Allan, Scott Hylands, Rondelle Reynoldson, Marilyn Norry

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash." If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical; under such circumstances, I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside, and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin." -- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

In 1983 the world's foremost scientists tirelessly collaborated with naturopathic healers, forging new and exciting psychiatric pathways. These iconoclasts of mind expansion, secured under a massive glass dome within a secluded arboretum just outside Vancouver, aimed their sights upon, in a word: "happiness".

A short corporate film that opens Beyond The Black Rainbow, was commissioned during this era by the Arboria Institute. Like any good piece of hucksterism, it teases and pleases with the goals and discoveries of its sponsor.

Between images of bucolic splendour, positive on-screen intonations from the corporation's chief scientist and select glimpses of behind-the-scenes activities, a series of tantalizing taglines flash by and include such come-hither gems as:

"A state of mind, a way of being."

"A practical application of an abstract idea."

"Born in a dream to create reality."

"A different way to think. A new way to live. A perfect way to believe."

"A new, better, happier YOU!"

Alas, for young Dr. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers), a steadfast belief in his mentor Dr. Mercurio Arboria (Scott Hylands) is not unlike that of young Victor Frankenstein's belief in the dangerous alchemical theories of Cornelius Agrippa.

Playing God is not without intermittent highs, but like crack cocaine, the heights of ecstasy lead to dangerous lows. Such dabblings often lead to the loss of all that is dear. Barry learns the hard way when he implements his soul-damning dabbling upon his beautiful daughter Elena (Eva Allan).

Beyond The Black Rainbow features one of the most thrilling debuts in years. Panos Cosmatos, who both wrote and directed this supremely enjoyable first-feature (including the brilliant aforementioned film within the film), is the son of the late and grossly underrated director of Massacre in Rome (a heartbreaking tragedy of WWII with Richard Burton and Marcello Mastroianni), Tombstone (featuring one of the best Doc Hollidays in moviedom, played by Val Kilmer) and Cobra (with Sylvester Stallone's best line of dialogue ever - "Crime is the disease. I'm the cure.").

Though perhaps unfair to the younger Cosmatos, one can't help but think a chip or two of flair and proficiency off the old block managed to find its way into his DNA. That said, the elder Cosmatos, a slam-bang commercially-minded director with considerable panache would never have made a movie as utterly insane as his son has. (Though, in its own perverse fashion, Rambo: First Blood II, occasionally verges on Ecstasy-infused Buñuelian surrealism.)

There's no two ways about it: Beyond The Black Rainbow is a 70s/80s-style "head" film that has "cult" emblazoned upon its celluloid forehead. In fact when I ran a repertory cinema during the same time period the movie harkens back to, it's EXACTLY the sort of picture I'd have been thrilled to get behind and try to generate a cult-friendly theatrical exhibition atmosphere to shoot it up into the midnight movie stratosphere of such "wacky-tobacky" hits as Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos and El Topo. (Sadly, in these days of theatrical, there are fewer venues for a picture like this to succeed and it will likely find its most appreciative audience in the home entertainment arena.)

Gorgeously shot by Norm Li, vigorously edited by Nicholas T. Shepard and blessed with a cool score/soundscape as well as an imaginative production design, the movie is replete with a delicious combination of creepy psychiatric experimentation sequences, dollops of shockingly grotesque bloodletting and several dreamscape montages that are pretty trippy all by their lonesome. If truth be told, the movie can work quite nicely without added stimulants, but far be it from me to deter anyone from enjoying the movie with a massive ingestion of some fine west coast weed.

The pace of the film is slow, but seldom sluggish. Its creepy-crawly tempo alternates between ominous and repellent, yet it's almost always compelling. That said, the movie really does feel about 10-15 minutes too long. Cosmatos and his team have an abundance of cool shit in the movie and I can only imagine how hard it must have been to let any of it go.

From a plot standpoint, things are relatively slender save for the vaguely Frankenstein-ian elements, but one slightly confusing shred of story that could have used some pruning involves Rosemary (Marilyn Norry) an odd-duck second (I think) wife to Barry (or perhaps she's his first and only wife and the gorgeous woman who resembles his daughter in the dream/flashbacks is a result of the Arborian mind control methods gone wrong). However, pruning this character would have resulted in losing an absolutely hilarious (and creepy) deadpan exchange between the clearly disconnected husband and wife.

Besides, confusion is okay. It's a bloody head film with cult appeal, for Christ's sake. If someone is into the picture, they might, if they're even so inclined, figure it out on repeated viewings.

So, what else could have been cut?

There's one elongated trip sequence - mostly in black and white - that probably could have been sliced and diced, but then the movie would be bereft of one of the most insanely overlong trip sequences in recent memory.

Damn! Even I don't want to lose anything.

The movie also has a few elements that resemble, uh, ideas. Thankfully, they're not too offensively obvious and/or obtuse and/or "film-school-ish". In fact, they're frankly, way less ludicrous than Ridley Scott's half-baked philosophical meanderings in Prometheus and one of them is actually kind of cool. Given the early 80s setting, we're blessed with some brief nods to the Panamanian military leader Noriega and Rompin' Ronnie Reagan. This ties in with the 80s Cold War insanity quite nicely. It's also a cool nod to the work of Cosmatos's Dad during this period.

Most engagingly, these touches of Reagan-era nuttiness play perfectly with the whole survivalist mentality prevalent back then (and creeping back even now). At one point, Barry refuses to let Elena see her father. "The world is in chaos and we live in times of great uncertainty and danger," Barry warns in a ruthlessly icy monotone.

Speaking of monotones, I loved all the straight-up performances in the film. Nothing is played for cheesy tongue-in-cheek effect and even the magnificent Scott Hylands, in the role of the Cornelius Agrippa-like founder-mentor, could have easily torn the scenery to shreds, but instead offers up something quite chilling and understated. And I loved Rondelle Reynoldson as a perfectly foul nurse. Conjuring up bad memories of Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Cosmatos also gives the character a well-earned and deliciously disgusting demise.

For me, I got way more bang for my buck out of this modestly budgeted SF whacko-fest than Sir Ridley's plodding mess. I suspect, I might not be alone in this, but like most cult items, it might take some shelf life for the devotion it deserves to discover it.

So settle back, folks.

Fire up a fat doobie and enjoy!

"Beyond The Black Rainbow" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD via Mongrel Media. Shot on FILM an stunningly manipulated in post, the movie is really a treat on Blu-Ray. I haven't seen the DVD, but I suspect it looks fine also. This, however, is a movie that DEMANDS a healthy bevy of special features. It would have been great to see the corporate films on their own (and possibly in expanded versions if they existed). Storyboards and/or a gallery of original design drawings would have been amazing. A featurette or two on the music, soundscape and special effects would have been more than welcome. I'd have really enjoyed interviews with some of the cast. I normally hate that kind of thing, but given the trippy nature of the film, hearing what the on-camera talent might have had to say would have rocked bigtime. Hmm, and how about a featurette with Panos Cosmatos talking about having a Dad (George Pan Cosmatos) who made some extremely cool movies? Hearing Cosmatos reminiscing about Life With Father and discussing the movies his Dad made would have been a wet-dream for movie geeks. And finally, where, oh where, is a commentary track from Cosmatos? Hearing him talk about the movie as it unspooled would have been terrific. Sadly, none of these things exist. All that's included is ONE special effect outtake and a (very good) trailer. That's it? Okay, maybe a movie like this just can't work theatrically in a contemporary context (that, alas, is everyone's loss), but this had all the potential to be one of the most rocking home entertainment releases of the year. As it stands, the movie is cool enough and its high-def look is so first rate, that cult movie fans are still urged to pick this up. Hell, I've seen it on Wal-Mart movie racks. So get thee to a Wal-Mart or order it online from Amazon.