THE DAY - Review by Greg Klymkiw - Lame, ultra-low-budget post-apocalyptic cannibal thriller a dull loser.

The Day (2011) *1/2
dir. Doug Aarniokoski
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Ashley Bell, Cory Hardrict, Dominic Monaghan, Shannyn Sossamon

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Okay, so we all know when we’re watching a genre picture that’s low-to-no-budget - we’re out in a wilderness setting with one primary location and a relatively small cast. This normally isn’t a problem when the filmmakers go out of their way to make up for a lack of dough by:

(a.) Taking the genre into territory we’ve never quite experienced before and/or;

(b.) Maintaining a sense of dark (and hopefully not tongue-in-cheek) humour and/or;

(c.) Showcasing really good writing in terms of character, theme and dialogue.

This, I think, is especially important for post-apocalyptic thrillers, because the last thing you want to offer fan-boys is a dour, humourless, low-to-no-budget post-apocalyptic thriller.

This is often, shall we say, apocalyptic in more ways than one.


The Day hits zero out of three on the aforementioned checklist of low-to-no-budget genre thriller requirements. It’s a dour, humourless been-there-done-that post-apocalyptic thriller with by-rote writing that no doubt thinks it’s smart. The screenplay by Luke Passmore loads up all the clichés of the genre with a heap of dull blah-blah-blah in confined spaces and stock characters (the cool collected leader, the kick-ass babe with smarts (as it were), the loner kick-ass babe who is seemingly off her rocker, the supposedly funny team member who is sick and holding everyone back and, for the life of me, I can’t even remember who the fifth team member is, but I can assure you he’d probably be more memorable if I bothered to watch the movie again.

The picture focuses on one day in the life of five apocalypse survivors trying to stay a step ahead of crazed cannibals (identified by an “I’m a cannibal” tattoo) looking for fresh meat. Food is in short supply so humans are the best bet for good eating. The one-day-in-the-life conceit could have been interesting, but it’s not fully exploited in any meaningful and/or useful fashion. The device appears to be there because the filmmakers think they're being clever and/or have used it as a let’s-keep-exigencies-of-production-in-mind convention.

None of this is surprising since the movie is all about setting up expectations and then not delivering (and when it does, it's much ado about nothing). For example, early on in the film, the survivors come upon a seemingly abandoned farmhouse. We sit back in anticipation as director Doug Aarniokoski draws out the “suspense” whilst our team slowly susses out the situation. This drags on for what feels like an eternity until… nothing.

All seems well.

Phew!!!

We then have to suffer through a whole lot of dialogue where the actors get to emote and be characters we could care (less) about and it then seems to take another eternity before something vaguely exciting happens. When it does, it’s exactly what I predicted when they first discovered all was well. I have no doubt you'll figure it out too. My apologies, then, for having seen too many movies and knowing exactly where things are going, If you’re going to make a picture like this for no money you better damn well think of shit that geeks like me aren’t waiting for. Or, if you do utilize obvious genre tropes, you better damn well do something interesting and/or funny with them. Instead, the movie plods along with no surprises, no thrills and nothing new under the sun. At times, it’s hard to believe the movie is only ninety minutes. It's so dull it feels like ninety hours

About the best one can say is that The Day is at least professional and borderline competent. The performances are as fine as they can be under the circumstances and director Aarniokoski (director of the incomprehensible hack job Highlander: Endgame and the ludicrous Animals) handles the suspense and action with rudimentary competence. This, however, is hardly a compliment. If the movie had at least been utterly incompetent, it might have been blessed with something resembling entertainment value.

The Day had its unveiling at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011). If it's theatrically released, civilization as we know it will be dead. You can find it on DVD and Blu-Ray from eOne Films home entertainment.

THE HUNGER GAMES (now on Blu-Ray and DVD from Alliance Films) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Yes, this is now out on Blu-Ray and guess what? It still stinks!

The Hunger Games
(2012) dir. Gary Ross
*1/2
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Willow Shields, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland

Review By
Greg Klymkiw

"What the fuck!" bellowed an angry sweet-faced teen as she and her girlfriends stood outside of the theatre playing The Hunger Games. "That was such a piece of shit. I didn't wanna see some bullshit PG-13 version. I wanted to see way more killing." Other than her proclivity for sadistic violence and the litany of sailor-worthy epithets barfing out of her gullet, you'd think, just looking at her, that she was a simple girl next door in Bible Belt Country. In most respects, she was, no doubt a genteel young miss. And importantly, she was right about two things. The movie was indeed a "piece of shit" and the violence - given the subject matter, proved to be all sizzle and no steak.

That this extra-long episode of Hannah Montana with killing is now out on Blu-Ray, I did so choose, like Our Lord, to sacrifice myself for the sins incurred by those who love the movie. I nailed my feet to the floor and watched it again.

I am now happy to report that The Hunger Games is no worse than it was on the big screen.

Based on the first of a trilogy of bestsellers by Suzanne Collins (I skimmed the first novel, but never bothered with the others), this might well have made for a decent picture if it had veered towards Norman Jewison's Rollerball and mated with Kinji Fukasaku's aforementioned Battle Royale - the cool dystopian future vision of the former and the utterly insane ultra violence of the latter.

Alas, even with the dreadful Hunger Games script (co-written by its original author Collins), a watchable movie would have required something resembling a director which, helmer Gary Ross clearly is not.

There is not, of course, a soul on the planet who is unaware what The Hunger Games is about. This teen-friendly miasma of fetid science fiction cliches is set after an apocalypse wherein the world has been rebuilt as The Capitol, a right-wing city state with a bunch of satellite districts representing the working class. Two kids from every district are selected by lottery to engage in too-the-death combat games which are broadcast live to all.

Clumsily, we are forced to follow the idiotically named couple Katniss (Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) from the mining district as they wend their way through the proceedings, presumably fall in love and leave an open door for the sequel since they have displeased the government and Katniss has betrayed Gale (Hemsworth), her love interest from before the games began. Great! We'll enjoy a Twilight-like love triangle for two more miserable movies.

Gary Ross really can't direct.

He's written a few decent screenplays in his time - notably Big, Dave and The Tales of Despereaux - but his directorial output to date includes the lame attempt at quirky mainstream psuedo-post-modernism Pleasantville and the horrendous biopic of the famous racehorse Seabiscuit (which made me long for the 1949 Shirley Temple and Barry Fitzgerald weepie The Story of Seabiscuit).

With The Hunger Games, Ross reaches his filmmaking nadir. He's yet another director who has absolutely no idea how to direct suspense and action. Full of annoying shaky-cam and endless, cheap-jack quick cuts, he's all bluster. He has no idea of spatial geography, the camera placements are, dramatically, a mess and there is nary a genuinely thrilling moment in the entire movie.

For screen violence to really work - for it to have the power to alternately tantalize and sicken, a director needs to have a combination of craft and style. Ross has neither. Sam Peckinpah, for example, often shot his violence with a myriad of shots and numerous quick cuts, but the shots were exquisitely lit and/or composed and every single cut was like a dramatic beat - moving the film forward in terms of pace, but also conveying vital visual story information. The Hunger Games is edited in today's typical Attention Deficit Disorder style with a cornucopia of ugly shots.

Adding to the film's ineptitude is a lumbering 142-minute running time which inspired me to yearn, in vain, for the 80-90 minute length of Roger Corman New World pictures that were oft-blessed with crisp, stylish, humour-infused direction.

Neither Ross nor author Collins have anything resembling a sense of humour, but luckily, a couple of great supporting actors livened things up just in the nick of time. Stanley Tucci as the host of the broadcast and Woody Harrelson as a hunger game mentor, both serve up more than a few laughs (plus really bad haircuts) whilst Donald Sutherland in a small role as the Capitol's head-honcho is deliciously chilling and as such, comes closest to capturing what the movie might have been if the rest of it had actually been directed.

Our two leads have both acquitted themselves superbly in other movies - Lawrence in Winter's Bone and Hutcherson in Journey to the Centre of the Earth and its sequel Journey 2 The Mysterious Island. While they're both attractive here, our ability to feel anything at all for either character has more to do with their commanding screen presence as opposed to any of the lame dialogue forced into their memory banks and out of their mouths and the garbled action gymnastics they're put through by the woefully incompetent camera jockey Ross.

Nothing one says or does will stop the Hunger Games juggernaut. It's going to make a few thousand times as much as the GNP of all the Third World nations put together. This, sadly, has a lot to do with the genuinely brilliant marketing coupled with the increasingly susceptibility of younger audiences to outright crap.

Like the moronic Twilight films (save for the first half of the decently directed first instalment), Hunger Games is another example of how young audiences, so desperate to follow the Pied Piper of the current cultural dystopia plaguing our world, will happily, greedily, moronically and voraciously scarf down whatever buckets of excrement are placed before them.

They don't even need a spoon to scoop the fecal matter into their mouths. They bury their faces deep into the waste matter. Like pigs at a trough - bulking up for slaughter

"Hunger Games" is now on Blu-Ray and DVD via Alliance Films.

If you really feel you must own this abomination, feel free to order from the Amazon links below and support the maintenance of this site.



There's really no reason to present a Hunger Games clip here, so instead I'm presenting clips from much better movies with a similar theme.

Norman Jewison's Rollerball trailer:



Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale trailer:

CANADIAN SHORT FILMS AT THE CANADIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

CANADIAN SHORT FILMS at CANADIAN FILM FEST 2012
Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw
The Canadian Film Fest 2012 at the Royal Theatre in Toronto is feature-heavy, but luckily, there are a number of shorts that will provide a nice glimpse into what several Canadian filmmakers can achieve with few dollars, tiny running times and scads of talent. Below are reviews of a few short films I had the opportunity to screen prior to the festival. Most of these will be screened in a short film program later today, Saturday, March 31 at 12:00pm. The following reviews are presented in alphabetical order. For tickets and further information visit the Festival website HERE.

Everybody Wing Chun Tonight (2011) dir. Karen Suzuki
Starring: Karen Suzuki, Mike Dufays, Kevin Robinson, Christopher Mott
**
By Greg Klymkiw
A group of sexist, misogynistic boneheads harass a woman verbally as she walks through the park. Little do they know she possesses the prowess of a highly skilled martial artist. It's one thing to fantasize about what she'd like to do to them, but is her true power in the knowledge that she could decimate them? Slight and didactic martial arts lesson makes its point - perhaps a bit too clearly.

Hangnail (2011) dir. Cavan Campbell
Starring: Tasha Lawrence, Dylan Scott Smith
****
By Greg Klymkiw
Shot completely in one take, this exquisitely written, acted and directed kitchen sink domestic drama examines a great divide between a couple in their bathroom. He's an immature video-game-and-porn-obsessed mall employee. She's a "dancer" in a "gentleman's club". He's taking a dump. She's taking a shower. Both of them are smoking cigarettes. The sniping is vicious, the pain is palpable. Love, however, finds itself in the strangest of places and in the most unusual circumstances. It's rare to find this level of maturity and dramatic resonance in short films these days when the emphasis in this medium is usually on one-note jokes and empty "calling card" endeavours. Hangnail takes us into the territory of despair among the disenfranchised. Though these characters live on the fringe and are often the types whose existence we'd prefer to repress, this evocative slice of their life is more universal than most will care to admit. Out of anguish can come incredible tenderness and compassion. This is a powerful work. It creates levels of complexity within a simple framework and I have to admit the film has continued to haunt me since first seeing it. I am especially eager to see more films from this clearly gifted filmmaker. He's the real thing.

Long Branch (2011) dir. Dane Clark, Linsey Stewart
Starring: Alex House, Jenny Raven, Al Maini
***1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
She wants a one-night stand. He's into it - bigtime. Her place is not an option. Luckily, his is. The problem, as it turns out, is that he lives two hours away via public transit. Subway. Bus. Bike. All in the frigid, snowy climes of a Canadian winter. She wants simple, fun, no-strings-attached sex. Two hours, however, leaves many opportunities for conversation. The last thing she wants is to get to know him. He's too nice. Like Willard's journey into the heart of darkness neither is quite sure what will be waiting for them in deepest, darkest suburbia. Hopefully, it won't be Col. Kurtz. Long Branch is a bright, breezy and thoroughly delightful romantic comedy. The dialogue is crisp, gorgeously performed by the two attractive leads, shot with clear, simple and direct compositions to let the magic and movement work within the frame so that every cut counts as a truly resonant dramatic beat. Though the soundtrack is peppered with far too many whiny, upbeat indie-styled songs for this curmudgeon's liking, most normal people - especially those who are not curmudgeons - will love it as much as everything else in the picture that truly deserves - uh, love.

My Loss Your Gain (2011) dir. Elli Raynai
Starring Chris Handfield
**1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
This Sci-fi-tinged one-hander is replete with cool retro-styled effects and an effectively odd obsessive quality. Take a lone scientist, a fly in a jar and imagination - the results can prove to be quite revelatory.

Onion Skin (2011) dir. Joseph Procopio
Starring: Zachary Peladeau, Vanessa Qualiara
***1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
Gorgeously photographed, well written tale of a young man who has a major crush on a beautiful young lady who is new to his high school. Instead of utilizing the contemporary communication techniques of text messaging and cel phones, he takes the time to craft a series of hand-written love letters. In our age of technologically convenient approaches to getting a message across, the young lady is initially flummoxed by this "odd" approach. Infused with heartfelt sentiment and romance, Procopio demonstrates a natural gift for creating images that are as beautiful as they are dramatically resonant. There isn't a single performance in the film that rings any less than true. All this said, there is a gorgeously acted and directed scene in the middle of the film that, from a writing standpoint provides a too convenient impetus for the young lady to discover and accept the approach of this wildly romantic suitor. It's a minor quibble, but given how terrific the film is, it's one of those elements that sticks out prominently. In time, however, I have no doubt Procopio will discover any number of narrative shorthands that will allow him to craft many more fine films that avoid the sorts of pitfalls that are ascribed in a knee-jerk fashion to young filmmakers, but are, in fact, quite prominent in any number of mainstream works made by people with far more experience and who should ultimately know better.

The Perfect Vacuum (2011) dir. Alana Cymerman
Starring: Natalie Choquette, Carl Alacchi, Pierre Lenoir, Géraldine Doucet
**
By Greg Klymkiw
Mona lives for her vacuum cleaner. She's lost her true passion and this normally inanimate object takes on a life of its own. At first she shares her perverse love with neighbours and suitors. However, in order to regain her lost passion, she abandons human contact to keep the dirt-sucking phallic symbol all to herself. Will this achieve the desired result or will tragedy strike? This slender, mildly amusing comedic musical vignette is clearly rooted in operatic and melodramatic tradition. Its visual compositions and art direction are both lovingly rendered with aplomb - resembling a curious amalgam of Frank Tashlin, Douglas Sirk and Arthur Freed. One, however, wishes the approach to the material had been less over-the-top. The material itself is already imbued with a bigger-than-life quality. Straighter playing of it might have brought out its richly and potentially hilarious perversities much more pointedly.

Sonata For Christian (2010) Dir. Stéphane Oystryk
Starring: Benjamin Beauchemain, Onalee Ames, Claire Thomas
**1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
A young lad in the leafy burbs of Winnipeg has the hots for his piano teacher. His Mom assumes he is lazily wanting to avoid going to his lessons. Nothing could be further from the truth. He fantasizes about a romantic tryst with the sexy neighbourhood keyboard instructor. This manifests itself in obsessive masturbatory shenanigans in his bedroom. If anything, he's terrified of acting on his amorous impulses. And what might be the result if she should respond? In spite of tentative performances and a script that doesn't quite deliver on its potential, there is clearly a strong talent here for visually rendering a narrative.

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CARRE BLANC - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stunning Debut Yields Modern SciFi Classic

Carré blanc (2011) ****
dir. Jean-Baptiste Léonetti
Starring: Sami Bouajila, Julie Gayet

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Those who cling to wealth and power by forcing conformity, stifling creativity and crushing the very essence of humanity are the faceless dominant evil that exploits the most vulnerable aspect of what it means to be human. It is ultimately our spirit which is, in fact, not as indomitable as we'd all like to believe. Through indoctrination and constant scrutiny we are reduced to lumps of clay. We are moulded in the image our true rulers want to see.

They want us tied to the consumption they control. Call them what you like, but they are indeed The New World Order.

And, they are winning.

And, worst of all, the loser is love.

And, without love, we all become prey.

Harkening back to great 70s science-fiction film classics like The Terminal Man, Colossus: The Forbin Project, A Boy and His Dog, Silent Running and THX 1138 - when the genre was thankfully bereft of light sabres, Wookies and Jabba the Hut - when it was actually ABOUT something, Jean-Baptiste Léonetti's debut feature film Carré blanc is easily the finest dystopian vision of the future to be etched upon celluloid since that time.

The future it creates is not all that removed from our current existence.

Léonetti announces himself as a talent to be reckoned with. This low budget science fiction film astounds us with its visual opulence. That, of course, is because it's so obvious that Léonetti has filmmaking hardwired into his DNA. NEVER does the film feel cheap or low budget. Never do we feel like the film has structured itself around all the usual budget-saving techniques that so many other first-time filmmakers unimaginatively opt for. Leonetti has wisely, painstakingly chosen a number of actual exterior and interior locations that fit his vision perfectly and work in tandem with the narrative. His compositions are rich and because his location selection has been so brilliantly judicious, he clearly had the time to properly light and dress the images.

The next time I hear some young filmmaker whining about the "challenges" of their one-set low-budget production I will consider placing them on my list of those who shall feel the wrath of my Baikal semi-automatic Russian assault rifle when civilization collapses and it becomes one giant free-for-all.

Though Carré blanc shares a specific approach from past work to a genre that can - perhaps more than any other, effect true analysis and possibly even change, there is nothing at all retro about the picture - no obvious post-modernist nods here. It is completely unto itself.

Carré blanc is fresh, hip, vibrant and vital. Blessed also with a deliciously mordant wit, Léonetti delivers a dazzling entertainment for the mind and the senses.

The tale rendered is, on its surface and like many great movies, a simple one. Phillipe (Sami Bouajila) and Marie (Julie Gayet) grew up together in a state orphanage and are now married. They live in a stark, often silent corporate world bereft of any vibrant colour and emotion. Muzak constantly lulls the masses and is only punctuated by announcements occasionally calling for limited procreation and most curiously, promoting the game of croquet - the one and only state sanctioned sport.

Phillipe is a most valued lackey of the state - he is an interrogator-cum-indoctrinator - and he's very good at his job. In fact, with each passing day, he is getting better and better at it. Marie, on the other hand, is withdrawing deeper and deeper into a cocoon as the love she once felt for Phillipe is transforming into indifference. In this world, hatred is a luxury. It's a tangible feeling that the rulers would never tolerate and punish with death.

Indifference, it would seem, is the goal. It ensures complete subservience to the dominant forces. Love, however, is what can ultimately prove to be the force the New World Order is helpless to fight and the core of this story is just that - love. If Phillipe and Marie can somehow rediscover that bond, there might yet be hope - for them, and the world. It is this aspect of the story that always keeps the movie floating above a mere exercise in style.

So many dystopian visions suffer from being overly dour. Happily, Léonetti always manages to break the oppressive force of the film and its world by serving up humour. Most of the laughs in Carré blanc occur within the context of tests delivered by the interrogating indoctrinators. In the world of the film, suicide is often the only way out for those who have a spirit that cannot be crushed. One early scene features Phillipe as a young teen and another boy his age who have both attempted unsuccessfully to kill themselves (by hanging and wrist-slashing respectively).

Both boys are led into an empty room where smiling corporate lackeys speak to them in tones of compassion. They are both asked to engage in a test to cheer them up. Lying before them is a body bag. The test is thus: which one of them will be first to go inside the bag? They hesitate. They're assured how much fun it will be. The other boy dives down immediately and enters the bag.

The lackey zips the boy inside, hands a club to Phillipe and orders him to begin beating the boy within the body bag. Phillipe hesitates. The lackey praises our young protagonist - assuring him he's made the right choice and that anyone who would choose (as Phillipe has not) to go into the body bag is not worthy of life. Phillipe continues to hesitate and the lackey strikes him viciously with a club, ordering him to strike the boy repeatedly.

When Phillipe beats the boy in the bag, but halfheartedly, he is again punished by the lackey. Phillipe knows what he has to do now and does so with vigour.
Here we laugh in horror as Phillipe beats the child in the body bag. (I wasn't the only one laughing in the packed house at the film's TIFF screening. A handful of sick puppies belched out appreciative guffaws.)

Narratively, this sequence reveals that Phillipe is clearly an interrogator-in-the-making. The test itself is a perfect way to not immediately "waste" potential "talent" by snuffing them out before seeing what they're really made of. As the film continues to unspool, some of the biggest laughs and equally chilling moments come from the tests Phillipe concocts and metes out to discover those who must be weeded out of society - permanently. Other laughs derive from the odd announcements and pronouncements over the endless loudspeakers.

To Monsieur Léonetti, I offer a tip of the hat for coming up with so many dollops of darkly humorous nastiness throughout the proceedings. They not only offer entertainment value, but are inextricably linked to the world he creates, a world so similar to the one we live in and one which feels just around the corner if humanity does not prevail over the force of a very few.

Love becomes the ultimate goal of Léonetti's narrative and as such, he delivers an instant classic of science fiction. At the end of the day, the best work in this genre IS about individuality and the fight to maintain the indomitability of spirit.
It might, after all, be the only thing we have left.

Carré blanc was unveiled at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011)

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