GLITTER'S WILD WOMEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2018 - Women Making Movies

A film festival with no viewers? It's the wilderness out there.

Glitter's Wild Women (2018)
Dir. Roney
Starring: Grace Glowicki, Cotey Pope

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Suppose you make a movie. Well, obviously you want people to see it and maybe, just maybe, you decide to launch the film by hosting your very own film festival. You make your own flyers, post them around, set up a makeshift theatre in your front yard and then, wait for the crowds to pour in.

This is, in a nutshell, what the two young women (Grace Glowicki, Cotey Pope) at the centre of Roney's debut film do. It is, however, a bit more complicated than that. Their lives and, by extension Roney's film itself become infused with magic. Inspiration is all around them, to be sure. They live in an isolated country house surrounded by peace and natural beauty. They spend inordinate amounts of time watching 70s movies with tough, kick-butt female heroines, they drive along the empty highways and byways of the rural municipality they find themselves in, emulating the poses and dialogue of the movies, but using that inspiration as a springboard for their own imaginations.

And of course, they harvest the mysterious glitter infusing their bucolic surroundings. Glitter, you see, especially in the world of magic realism (which Roney's film has in spades) has oh-so mysterious ways. However, magic will only get you so far and these two women have a lot more going for them. They mine the gold with sheer determination.

This is one fine debut. The Vancouver-born Roney, who studied at Ryerson University, displays an assured hand behind the camera. She guides this tale with a talent that seems natural. She feels like someone with filmmaking hard-wired into her DNA. Her compositions are rich, she has a natural propensity for hitting the proper dramatic beats to drive the film forward (with plenty of cinematic poetry) and she elicits fine performances from her two leads.

There is, as it turns out, a strange melancholy to the fun proceedings. These women, these friends, these artists, are working in the wilderness and I can't help but think of the patriarchal nature of the film industry itself. They're on their own and it shouldn't have to be that way. So while Glitter's Wild Women offers plenty of entertainment value, it also delivers plenty of food for thought.

As it should be, really.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***1/2 Three and a Half Stars

Glitter's Wild Women premieres in the Short Cuts program at TIFF 2018.

GREG KLYMKIW'S TEN BEST SHORT FILMS OF 2017 in alphabetical order - By Greg Klymkiw

I saw over 100 short films this past year.

These are my 10 favourites from 2017.

Greg Klymkiw selects

THE TEN BEST SHORT FILMS OF 2017

(in alphabetical order)

BARGAINING WITH THE FUTURE
Lasha Mowchun's moving, poetic and playful documentary about climate change.

BICKFORD PARK
Dane Clark & Linsey Stewart's sweetly, enchantingly melancholy romantic pas de deux.

CHARLES
Dominic Etienne Simard's gorgeous, bittersweet (mostly) monochrome life journey.

DOMUS
Rhayne Vermette's experimental bio-doc is an exquisite two-by-four to the senses.

HOMER_a, HOMER_b
Milos Mitrovic & Conor Sweeney's creepy duo of low-fi Homer Simpson madness.

SHADOW NETTES
Phillip Barker demonstrates angling with one visual jaw-dropper after another.

SHE CAME KNOCKING
John Ainslie's grim, scary thriller is a creepy throat-catcher of a very high order.

TESLA WORLD LIGHT, THE
Matthew Rankin's glorious, dreamy ode to Nikola Tesla soars like no other.

THREADS
Torill Kove's lovely and simple animated tale about the threads that bind us all.

WE FORGOT TO BREAK UP
Chandler Levack's compulsive slice of life builds cleverly to glorious musical 3rd act.

BICKFORD PARK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Skateboard pas de deux at TIFF 2017

The babe suffers, but NOT in silence. Ain't it always the way?

Bickford Park (2017)
Dir. Dane Clark, Linsey Stewart
Starring: Lianne Balaban

Review By Greg Klymkiw

So you've had to suffer through listening to your long-haired loser husband tinkling the ivories in the basement as he caterwauls his way through a contemptibly worthless tune he's composed and now, after a long day at work, you're sitting in your car reading a book, conveniently avoiding home.

The phone rings.

It's hubby. He wants you to pick something up on your way back. Uh, what's he been doing all day? He delivers the expected answer.

"I meant to go out, but I got pretty deep into it today."

Trying to imagine what bottomless chasm of talent-bereft hack-dom he'd plunged into fills you, no doubt, with utter dread.

Such is the current lot in life for Jill (Lianne Balaban), a bright gorgeous thirty-something who spends her evenings jogging the streets as far away from hearth, home and hubby as possible. One evening during a restorative sojourn in sneakers and shorts, she spies a lone skateboard. It beckons. She gets on board. Her attempt is shaky, and perhaps even more so when the owner of the board, a hunky dude at least ten years her junior, claims it as his own and asks for its return.

This delightful new form of physical activity (and escape from the emptiness of domesticity) sends her straight to a sporting goods store. It doesn't take long before she return to the park to try out her new skateboard. Happily, the hunky dude shows up.

The lessons begin - a pas de deux on wheels. What sparks will fly? Is romance in the air? Watching Bickford Park, one certainly hopes so. Smartly, directors Dane Clark and Linsey Stewart don't take any expected turns. There's a reason why they chosen to film in monochrome - shades of grey are always more interesting.

Their film is sweet and enchanting but ultimately infused with melancholy. We want to spend a lot more time with its characters, we want to see it play out well beyond its running time, we get expected delights to be sure, but it's the unexpected hands we're dealt that offer the kind of layers of complexity that send us out of the theatre with so much more than the by-rote fodder most contemporary romantic comedies pass off as clever.

Bickford Park delivers something far richer.

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

Bickford Park plays at TIFF 2017

THE DROP-IN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Beauty Parlour Catfight Action at TIFF 2017

Hmmm. Will there be a catfight in the shop tonight?

The Drop-In (2017)
Dir. Naledi Jackson
Starring: Mouna Traoré, Oluniké Adeliyi

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Drop-In, an action thriller with an undercurrent of science fiction and politically-charged thematics, provides a raft of reasons why hair stylists closing shop for the day should never accept a customer with no appointment who pops by, desperate for a quick "do". In fact, it's probably best to keep the door locked and the curtains drawn whilst sweeping up the floor. But, it's a movie, eh. The door has to be open, or there wouldn't be a movie.

And so it is that a pretty stylist (Mouna Traoré) accepts a babe-o-licious drop-in (Oluniké Adeliyi) for a quick braid job. As the handiwork in the chair unfolds, it seems like both women harbour agendas and secrets which lead to a furious catfight of MMA gymnastics. Who will survive? What will be left of them?

First-time director Naledi Jackson displays considerable gifts for building tension and when the movie shifts to all-out fisticuffs, she handles the proceedings exactly how a director should. The superb stunt/fight coordination is presented so that we can actually appreciate/enjoy it with no annoying herky-jerky shots (mucking up the geography/choreography of the fight), endless closeups and ADHD-style cutting. God knows I detest the incompetence of filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Sam Mendes who continually commit these cardinal action movie sins in pictures that have all the money and time in the world to do it properly.

The Drop-In, however, clearly had very little money and time to pull itself off and yet it puts so many contemporary studio genre extravaganzas to shame since Naledi doesn't resort to the tin-eyed. ham-fisted mechanics that filmmakers (who should supposedly know better) do in film after wretched film. There is one disappointment I had through this, especially given Naledi's clear directorial gifts.

The film is set in a hair stylist shop. The joint is overloaded with so many natural implements of violent carnage that are not (sadly) employed in all their glory. Clippers, scissors, blades, shears, curling irons, barbicide (oh magnificent chemicals!) and, of course, plenty of mirrors for bodies to go sailing into and allowing for shards of shattered glass - the list of items "natural" to the setting is endless.

One of the best classical examples of how a screenplay (and director) structure such a scene for maximum impact is Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain. In an old country kitchen in East Germany, a mathematician and a farmer's wife must kill a deadly Stasi agent, and they must do it silently. Let's just think of all the things in such a kitchen. Damn! You almost don't even need to see the scene to begin salivating at the prospect of visceral delights. Added to the mix are the political backdrop of the Cold War and memories of the Holocaust. Hitchcock did the math beautifully. The old country kitchen is equipped with a gas oven. Uh, you do the math!

Given the political edge in The Drop-In and its setting, the promise of so much more is palpable. Oh, you say, "Greg, you doth protest too much. These kids clearly had a small budget and little time." To that I say: "So what?" Compromise is especially egregious in no-to-low-budget films. (I can say this with a bit of been-there-done-that as someone who never compromised as a producer no matter how low my budgets were.)

There might be some light on the horizon, though. It comes by way of my other mild disappointment in the film. About halfway through I started to get the sinking feeling that I was watching a short film designed as a "calling card" for an eventual feature film version. I can smell this with the same olfactory repugnance I feel when I hit a skunk on the highway. Sure enough, the end title credits revealed that The Drop-In was financed by a fund set up to create just such a film.

So yes, the promise is here, the talent is here, a solid idea is here and there will no doubt be one hell of a terrific feature film to eventually be made. That said, I urge the filmmakers to study Hitchcock before the next draft of their feature screenplay. One can't go wrong using The Master as a primary influence.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

The Drop-In enjoys its World Premiere at TIFF 2017.

WE FORGOT TO BREAK UP - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A song will be sung @TIFF2017

Surprise backstage visit yields bigger surprise.

We Forgot To Break Up (2017)
Dir. Chandler Levack
Scr. Steven McCarthy & Levack
Nvl. Kayt Burgess
Starring: Sofia Banzhaf, Cara Gee, Grace Glowicki, Steven McCarthy, Mark Rendall, Dov Tiefenbach, Jesse Todd

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Backstage within a concert venue, a young man hurriedly attempts to pen a note amidst all the accoutrements which suggest that at any point, a soon-to-be-prepping-to-perform band will be filing in. Sure enough, one by one, they do.

Each time, with each musician, the same thing happens.

At first, the young man is not recognized. Then, he is.

You see, he was, many, many years ago, familiar to all of them - more than familiar, actually, but very, very close. To one of them, he was more intimate than all the rest.

There will be a confrontation. Perhaps even a reckoning.

And there will be a song.

We Forgot To Break Up is a clever, compulsive slice of dramatic life. It builds to a third act that could have, in less skilled creative hands, seemed little more than a glorified music video with an extended preamble. As David Lynch recently proved, week after week in Season 3 of Twin Peaks, there are some final acts that ring-out musically with dramatic/thematic resonance, and do so in ways we seldom see in the movies anymore.

We Forgot To Break Up succeeds in an identical fashion.

It’s a short dramatic film adapted from a novel. Obviously this means that it’s a slice from a much larger work, but happily, the movie feels like a piece unto itself and is bereft of that whiff inherent in short calling-card-styled films meant to announce an eventual feature is round the corner. Though this might indeed be the case here (a short that could become a feature), it's not something that nags at us as the picture unspools. This, is good. So's the film.

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

We Forgot To Break Up plays at TIFF 2017

SHADOW NETTES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Sick puppy Barker dazzles at TIFF 2017

An angler must know how to capture his quarry.

Phillip Barker is clearly one of Canada’s leading avant-garde film artists. He is also clearly one sick puppy. This, however, is a good thing. His new film Shadow Nettes expertly demonstrates the fine art of angling, but be advised, we’re not talking the quarry sought in the likes of actor/musician/director John Lurie’s immortal 1991 PBS cult series Fishing With John (1991) nor any of the fine array of reality-TV-based output on offer at the World Fishing Network.

Beginning in the late-19th-Century never-never land of a rich mixed forest overlooking a bucolic lake, we are introduced to a lanky, long-tressed, golden-locked young man of the rural persuasion (imagine Max Baer from The Beverly Hillbillies as Jethrine Beaudine sans a floral-patterned dress and adorned, rather, in Jethro’s dude-duds) who observes his father sailing the waters upon a queer conical vessel with a wide, round platform, stilts reaching and converging to a point up top with a platform situated at its most heavenly point, which holds a mysterious box-like filter.

What manner of contraption is this?

Well, of course, it’s a shadow nette. Duh! Grab a brain!

We continue on Barker’s strange journey to witness Dad attempting to train Sonny-Jethro, not unlike the Pat Morita/Ralph Macchio teacher-student gymnastics immortalized in John G. Avildsen’s The Karate Kid. Dad strikes a series of manly poses. Sonny-Jethro awkwardly attempts to mimic them.

At nightfall, however, we get the most delectable demonstration of all. The shadow nette is placed upon the rugged ground of the Canadian Shield and Dad steps inside it. From the thinnest end of the cone, light beams onto the round, white, net-like screen at the bottom end. Dad stands before the screen, casting a shadow upon it.

But what is a shadow when it doesn’t behave?

Shadows are never what they seem to be. The light casts Dad’s shadow, but the shadow has a life of its own. This is no mere replication of his image. Dad demonstrates that he must control light and shadow to create the image he wants to present. This, of course, is not dissimilar to the image most gentlemen wish to present, especially in their pursuit of a mate.

This pursuit, this quarry, is ages old.

As his picture progresses, Barker delivers one visual jaw-dropper after another as he reveals the full force and power of the subject at hand, to capture an image of oneself, the manipulation of said image to capture its quarry and ultimately, to not only capture it, but indeed, create it out of one’s own image.

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

Shadow Nettes enjoys its World Premiere at TIFF 2017.

homer_b - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Scary Creepy Springfield via Winnipeg at TIFF 2017

There is someone in Homer's house in Winnipeg.

homer_b (2017)
Dir. Milos Mitrovic, Conor Sweeney

Review By Greg Klymkiw

At the best of times, three-quarter-inch videotape on U-Matic playback machines seemed degraded, especially when constantly rotating, whirring drumheads would connect with the tape in pause-mode and render all manner of glitches. Even more problematic was an editing process that required constant duping in order to create desired cuts and resulted in further image degeneration.

At the time, watching community cable programs in the 80s, using already-retro equipment (though not that much worse than the "advancements" made in commercial mainstream video broadcasting at the time), felt positively otherworldly. Seeing said tapes some 30+ years later, especially if they'd been duped to straight VHS and simply captured decades later on a digital format without any remastering results in images that have been dredged from the pits of some analogue septic tank Hell.

It's scary stuff. So too is the astonishingly creepy, disturbing and funny film homer_b by contemporary Winnipeg filmmakers Milos Mitrovic and Conor Sweeney (one of the founders of the visionary Astron-6 collective). Gorgeously recreating the aforementioned look of ancient technology, this is one fine addition to the tradition first coined by film critic Geoff Pevere as "prairie post-modernism".

Feeling and looking like the work of a Matt Groening doppelgänger, or more likely, a Winnipeg community cable Matt Groening wannabe, we're greeted with a series of simple, decrepit opening images: a flash of pre-roll video noise, a screen of piss-pale yellow and a quick, crude fade-up of an ugly title treatment over a faded green star, bold-capped typeface in purple and dark yellow with a shimmering slightly askew shadow drop and then, an inelegant cut to black video noise, followed by an even-more graceless cut to a ruffled, white-tea-dyed curtain and a lone standup microphone in the foreground. Organ music on the soundtrack that makes David Lynch's use of Fats Waller sounding positively chipper, accompanies the chilling fade-up on a live action figure approaching the mic wearing a horrifying Krusty the Clown mask.

Things are not right in Springfield, or rather, uh, Winnipeg. If independent cinema from that midwestern Canadian city is to be believed (and why not?), the likes of Guy Maddin, John Paizs, et al, painted a myriad of cinematic treasures that would lead one to believe that nothing, absolutely nothing, was ever right in Winnipeg. (God knows David Lynch himself was happy to utilize his unacknowledged John [Springtime in Greenland] Paizs influences in his depiction of Lumberton in Blue Velvet.)

As the masked Krusty approaches, his voice queerly distorted in the Lynchian Twin Peaks backward-enunciation-played-forward reverberations, relates a childhood memory that most of us would rather forget, the tale of a boy, a pig and vomit. A masked intruder into this scene, making the testicle-cheeked Lady-in-the-Radiator from Eraserhead seem perfectly normal, manages to perk up the creepy quotient, as if it wasn't high already.

We're then treated to a disturbing "commercial" break segment involving masked Homer and Bart Simpsons in a grubby basement. When the "message" is over, we return to Krusty.

He has a warning.

It is one we must all heed.

Someone is in the house.

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

homer_b enjoys its World Premiere at TIFF 2017.

THE TESLA WORLD LIGHT (Tesla : lumière mondiale) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2017

"I've fallen in love with a pigeon... a beautiful bird."
- Nikola Tesla to John Pierpont Morgan Sr.

The Tesla World Light aka Tesla : lumière mondiale (2017)
Dir. Matthew Rankin
Starring: Robert Vilar

Review By Greg Klymkiw

O! A dream! A dream to unite the world across the Heavens, to transmit energy, to communicate across the vast Atlantic: absolved of cables, wires, mere radio technology, with the freedom of a bird in flight - THIS is a dream worth having. Alas, to be a visionary is to burn with the light of the world and to often have the dream fall on deaf ears, empty minds and souls bereft of the percipience only true genius can spawn. But, O! The vision! When it burns, it burns bright and in The Tesla World Light, a glorious new masterpiece from Winnipeg-born-and-raised Montreal filmmaker Matthew Rankin, vision burns brightly indeed!

And so it will be, and indeed so it is, that Rankin plunges us into the magnificent synaesthesia of Serbian-American engineer-inventor Nikola Tesla (Robert Vilar), his huge head, brimming with ideas, glowing with a magnificent oil-slicked straight edge razor double pompadour, two winged Matterhorns of pitch black hair, divided with a part that cuts deep into the scalp, into the very bone marrow housing the roiling cerebellum of the world's greatest pioneer of electricity. Rankin shares with us the Eureka of Tesla as he pens yet another entreaty to his erstwhile benefactor John Pierpont Morgan Sr. This will be his final appeal to the filthy-rich old man. It is 1905, in New York, in yet another squalid hotel room Tesla is forced, penniless, to reside in.

Tesla writes that his "pillow has been bathed in tears" for over a year with the sorrow and frustration he feels, that Morgan has not provided the funds he needs to finish "The World System" - his penultimate invention which, could advance world communication by a century. Webs of light explode around him as he lies on his bed, occasionally looking out the window to the sky, knowing that only filthy lucre is what keeps world unity at bay.

Then, it appears! Like an avian symbol of peace and flight!

The light of the world is the heart of the world.

"I've fallen in love with a pigeon... a beautiful bird," writes Tesla, enveloped in the fever of invention and receiving visits from the hand-animated, then stop-motion animated feathered creature. He details his dreams, they explode before us and for eight astounding minutes of dazzling cinematic brilliance we share Rankin's fantasia of the bushy-moustachioed Tesla.

A magical spiral coil spits out blasts of energy as Tesla's hand grips the switch, pulls it with purpose, the beauteous bird of hope perched upon his shoulder and then, the "infinite power for all nations" erupts from the engorged phallic joy that is Tesla's Wardenclyffe plant on Long Island, splattering upon the greedy faces of mankind.

O! This is cinema! In all its radiant poetic beauty, the true promise of the medium is borne upon our souls through our eyes. As he did with his previous film, Mynarski Death Plummet, Rankin's The Tesla World Light takes its rightful place alongside such classic Canadian short films as John Martins-Manteiga's The Mario Lanza Story, John Paizs's Springtime in Greenland, Guy Maddin's The Dead Father and The Heart of the World, Phillip Barker's Malody and Deco Dawson's Ne Crâne pas sois modeste / Keep a Modest Head. Rankin (son of the late, great Canadian writer/historian/curator Laird Rankin) unites the clocks, the toasters, the world and through his visionary imaginings of Nikola Tesla, he unites all of us in the dark room, lit only by the pieces of time we call cinema.

Curiously, the movie is about a great visionary needing a benefactor. Rankin himself is a visionary of the highest order. Happily, he did find a benefactor for his vision, the National Film Board of Canada. Oh Canada! We stand on guard for thee!!!

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

The Tesla World Light is a National Film Board of Canada production. After its triumphant World Premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, it enjoys a Canadian premiere at TIFF 2017.

THREADS, CHARLES - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - NFB at TIFF 2017 soars with joy and sadness

Life leads us from the frogs.

Charles (2017)
Dir. Dominic Etienne Simard

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In a mostly monochrome world, doughy lad Charles tends to his gargantuan lolly-gagging mother in a squalid flat. There are simple joys, of course, his beloved frogs, school and dips in the nearby lake. Dollops of colour, albeit pale and/or muted keep threatening to bring joy and solace, but they are fleeting.

Colour eventually explodes in the form of rising blue waters threatening to drown him. Will he be rescued? And whom or what will rescue him? Will it indeed be life itself? And oh, when it rains, what will rain down? Frogs? Kitty cats? Doggies? Big pudgy baby bears?

And will he find happiness?

Or is it, ultimately, imagination that will provide the ultimate freedom?

In Dominic Etienne Simard's Charles (a National Film Board of Canada co-production with France), it is the waters of time and the long, slow march to adulthood and freedom that await. The journey will, like so much of our lives, prove to be bittersweet. The film's gorgeous expressive visuals fill in all the blanks and finally, we're left with a work that soars with a great, though sometimes terrible beauty.

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

Charles plays at TIFF 2017.

The ties that bind hang by a thread.

Threads (2017)
Dir. Torill Kove

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To hang by a thread usually suggests imminent danger, something unstable and/or doomed to failure. In Oscar-Winner Torill Kove's lovely and simple animated short (a National Film Board of Canada co-production with Norway), it's the ties that bind which hang by a thread; a slender thread indeed.

This delicate and moving work details the life of a young woman who grabs a thread dangling from the heavens and allows it to hoist her upwards on a journey we come to recognize as life.

When she finds another thread, it's attached to an infant. She and the little girl are inseparable. Though the child grows incrementally into adulthood, they're bound together by that mysterious thread. Even when the thread leads the child to peers on a playground and, for a time, completely out of the mother's purview, the thread remains.

But the day comes, one we all dread I think, when when her daughter must sever the tie that binds to jump up to the heavens, to clutch her own thread.

As a single Dad to a teenage daughter the film inspired so many personal memories of past and present. It provided both solace and melancholy as I, like the mother in the film, face the imminent severing of my own thread to my own child. Yes, we dread the severance, but we also accept it. Life must go on and for those we love the dearest, our children, it must move forward.

There might not be anything new revealed in the sentiments and story revealed in the film, but its visual metaphor is one I welcomed, understood and responded to on a deep emotional level.

I suspect I'll not be alone in this.

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

Threads plays at TIFF 2017.

she came knocking - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Canadian Film Fest 2017 - Short Chills Bigtime

The eyes have it. The eyes always have it.

she came knocking (2017)
Dir. John Ainslie
Scr. Ainslie and Kimberly-Sue Murray
Starring: Kimberly-Sue Murray, Christian McKenna, Janet Porter

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A pretty young Uber driver (Kimberly-Sue Murray) shows up to collect a fare in a quiet, leafy Toronto neighbourhood and comes face-to-face with something insidious and decidedly unexpected. She knocks on the door. It opens so violently, both she and the audience jump. On the other side of the divide, a tall, brawny, bearded, bulletheaded creep (Christian McKenna) with "prick" written all over his face greets our wide-eyed, hoodie-and-cut-off-shorts-adorned beauty with a mean-ass, "The fuck do you want?"

This is clearly not her fare. What is clear, is that bullethead is a mean, abusive sonofabitch and that his female companion (Janet Porter) is trapped in an altercation in which he's got the upper hand and keeping her against her will.

A shameless abuser answers his door.

This is all plenty disturbing, but even more alarming is the telephone call twixt our Uber Babe and a 911 dispatcher who claims a police car will not be sent out since no act of domestic violence, nor threats have been uttered. It's obvious to our leading lady and us, that all is not right in this household.

There are, unfortunately, laws - laws to protect perpetrators, to offer no solace to victims and to put the common sense of those who bear witness into question.

John Ainslie's grim, scary movie she came knocking is one of the best short dramatic films I've seen in years. His taut direction keeps us squirming in our seats from beginning to end and the screenplay (by Ainslie and star Murray) offers ultra-charged suspense, vital social commentary and perhaps most wisely, serves up the notion of two sides (and often many more) to all stories.

An act of violence that occurs in the film never comes as a surprise, but that's not what the picture boils down to. Though the denouement is hardly ambiguous, it's supremely, throat-catchingly infused with the kind of food-for-thought that is rooted, where it should be: emotionally, dramatically, incisively and effectively.

Watching: Creepy. Scary. Necessary.

Though it works perfectly as a short film, it leaves us wanting to spend far more time with its characters. One can imagine the whole situation playing out as a delectably layered cat-and-mouse suspense picture over a feature length. The only thing that doesn't quite work is that the film plays out with a mostly percussive musical score. There's nothing especially wrong with the music, but the movie cries out for no score. The film is so beautifully shot (compositions bordering on greatness), played so perfectly by its actors and edited with such precision that the picture's "musical" qualities might have been better served by the bolder choice of utilizing soundscape over score. (The film ends with a dazzling image, a hideous breath on the soundtrack and a knock-you-on-your-ass cut to black/title that the score not only feels redundant over picture, but even over the end title credits.)

Ainslie directed the Polanski-inspired feature The Sublet and contributed to writing the screenplay for the cult feature Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. He's clearly a force and talent to be reckoned with. Let's hope he makes a new film. And soon.

The Film Corner Rating: **** 4-Stars

she came knocking premieres at the Canadian Film Fest 2017 in Toronto.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF TIM HORTON - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2015 ***** 5-Stars

Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton: The Making of Hyena Road (2015)
Dir. Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson
Starring: Guy Maddin, Michael Kennedy, Paul Gross

Review By Greg Klymkiw

You probably needn't bother seeing Paul Gross's mound of mediocrity that is Hyena Road, unless, of course you're into bargain basement Canadian war-porn which propagandistically extols the virtues of the Canuck military during the horrendous, needless war in Afghanistan. That said, WHATEVER you do, do NOT hesitate to purchase Gross's movie when it becomes available on Blu-Ray and DVD since it will include a special feature worth owning and cherishing - the brilliant 30-minute "Making-of" film by Guy Maddin, a genuine Canadian national treasure and made in collaboration with his brilliant young charges, the Brothers Johnson (Evan is co-director of Maddin's brilliant The Hidden Room and Galen was the picture's production designer and composer).

For a "making-of" documentary to be lightyears better than the film it's supposed to prop up and promote is virtually unheard of, but Maddin and the Johnsons have managed to do it. In fact, they've followed in the footsteps of the great 1975 film Vampir-Cuadecuc by Pere Portabella. That film mixes high-contrast degraded monochrome behind-the-scenes images of Jesus Franco's Count Dracula starring the two greats of Hammer Horror, Christopher Lee and Herbert Lom. No such greats appear in Hyena Road, unless you consider Gross a "great" for starring in the insufferably long-running TV series "Due South", wherein he plays a straight-laced pole-up-the-butt Canuck Mountie doing his thing on the mean streets of Chicago. And though Jesus Franco ground out enough horror and soft-porn to fill several racks of video rentals, he was imbued with the kind of style and utter insanity which often resulted in genuine masterworks like the astonishing Vampyros Lesbos. No such luck with Gross as a director as his output adds up to the unfunny comedy about curling, Men With Brooms, one of the worst films of all time, the risible WWI anti-war howler Passchendaele and now Hyena Road.

One of the brilliant aspects of Portabella's film is how it presented a sardonic portrait of both the movie-making process, but most importantly, how it used Jesus Franco's film to examine the notion of myth making via the powerful images of both motion pictures and political propaganda. Let's not forget that Spain had a far more dangerous, insidious "Franco" who ruled with an iron Totalitarian fist and also manipulated his "image" to justify his acts of brutality and persecution.

Maddin and the Johnsons are in similar territory here, crapping on the populist waste of Gross's war-porn whilst condemning Canada's involvement in the Middle Eastern Wars which had nothing to do with fighting for liberty and freedom, but instead were used to instill racist images in the minds of those on the home front as our boys actually fought and died for the insidious needs of the "1%" to control Middle Eastern Oil.

At one point, Maddin actually describes how he's used as an unpaid extra (which, I assume, was A-Okay by Canada's acting union ACTRA): "I suppose it was someone's idea of a joke to cast me as a background extra during a glorious Canadian raping of an Afghanistan village," he says with more than a tiny bit of bile.

In fact, one of the most powerful elements of Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, alluding to the long-dead Canadian hockey star who built an empire of Canadian donut shops and, of course, Sam Peckinpah's greatest film, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, which dealt with the rape of poverty-stricken Mexicans at the hands of American gangsters in cahoots with Mexico's 1%, is how Maddin and the Johnsons take aim at the corruption inherent in Canada's cultural industries and the country's acquiescence to both America and the very rich.

At one point, we see Maddin lying in the hot sun of Jordan as his voice-over informs us of what brought him to this lowly point. He needs money to desperately finish his masterpiece The Forbidden Room. Not including himself, the film had 15 credited producers (!!!) to what was a complex, but still more-than-do-able avant-garde picture. Facing a veritable swamp with an army of fingers in his creative pie, how is it that one of Canada's greatest artists is so destitute he needs to take this weird job in order to finish his own modest film? Surrounded by an army of indulgence and millions of dollars, this brilliant "making of" morphs into one of the most personal and powerful works of art to ever be made in Canada.

"Man. Oh man, Oh Man," laments Maddin. "Whatever! Here I am, lying in the dirt. Broke. Flat broke. Down. Out. A lowly unpaid deepest background extra playing a slain Taliban soldier, surely the pinkest of all Taliban soldiers in Paul Gross's big budget Afghanistan war epic Hyena Road. I'm lying in the dirt in the middle of a Jordanian desert, a 100-hour camel, car and plane ride away from home, hiding my pink hands in my pants so they won't be seen by the camera a few football fields away. Jordan is gorgeous, yet everything about my visit here is GROSS, hideous."

Maddin adds: "Dead. Inert. Impotent. I might as well be garbage flapping in the wind."

The garbage, as it turns out, is Hyena Road. Maddin uses this opportunity to dream about the kind of movie he'd make if blessed with millions of dollars. Astoundingly and not surprisingly, the movie Maddin would make is recreated brilliantly - veering twixt high contrast monochrome (which makes this horrific war look a glorious studio propaganda film from the 40s, but blended with the documentary look of the immortal Frank Capra - John Ford - Samuel Fuller - George Stevens "Why We Fight" series). Then Maddin and the Johnsons dive into over-saturated faux technicolor, blending a crazed David O. Selznick/William Cameron Menzies epic with a cheesy 80s video game. Finally, we get the greatest fever dream of them all - an Afghani War Film with the magnificent adornments of a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. (During this section, the filmmakers captured some footage of Paul Gross exiting from within a closed door onto the set, his face plastered with a strange smile that makes him look like he's had some good times in an on-set glory hole and then, ignoring the "spaghetti western" action, he engages in a cel phone call with a smug, distracted smile.)

One of the more oddball bits in the movie (as if there haven't been quite enough) is a perverse montage of Michael Kennedy, the Executive Vice-President of the Canadian exhibition chain (and virtual monopoly) as he provides a kind of Greek Chorus as an oath of fealty to the corporate manufacture and exhibition of machine-tooled motion picture product. As a huge explosion rocks behind Kennedy, he happily chirps, "Stay tuned. We're going to go beyond the scenes."

The most positive aspect to this amazing short work of cinematic art is that it genuinely represents the poetry of movies with references to the play books of great scribes in addition to hockey legends like Guy Lafleur.

There's clearly little in the way of art displayed in Hyena Road, but the film might be the most important work Gross has ever done. It assisted Maddin to finish The Forbidden Room and yielded Maddin and the Johnsons an opportunity to create a work that will long be remembered, long after the mediocrity of Hyena Road is but a fleeting memory in Paul Gross's mind.

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

Bring Me The Head Of Time Horton: The Making of Hyena Road is a Vanguard presentation during TIFF 2015. For further info, visit the TIFF website 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.

HOT DOCS 2015: SURVIVORS ROWE - Review By Greg Klymkiw *****

This is one of purportedly hundreds of children

viciously & mercilessly sexually assaulted by

former Anglican priest & Boy Scout leader Ralph Rowe.

Survivors Rowe (2015)

Dir. Daniel Roher
Prd. Peter O'Brian

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I doubt you're going to see a better short film at Hot Docs 2015 than Survivors Rowe. In fact, I doubt you're going to see a better short film all year than Survivors Rowe. There's something heroic about this picture - it's terrific filmmaking to be sure, but its subjects, all grown men who share their most deeply personal reminiscences of childhood are to be exalted to the highest degree imaginable.

The other heroic element, which cannot be ignored, is the commitment of the short's Producer Peter O'Brian to have offered his expertise, passion and artistry to director Daniel Roher's fine work. O'Brian is a legend. He's a genuinely heroic figure for having produced so many of Canada's greatest motion pictures including, but not limited to The Grey Fox with the late-greats Richard Farnsworth and Jackie Burroughs in one of the great westerns of all time - period - and One Magic Christmas with the astonishing Harry Dean Stanton as one of the most evocative (and dark) guardian angels in film history in (yes) one of the great films about Christmas - period!

What is not heroic is Canada itself and the country's insidiously grotesque and hateful history with respect to our aboriginal nations, a horrifying element of which is so artfully and powerfully exposed in Roher's short film. It is one of a multitude of inhuman(e) assaults upon Canada's Native People, one that began with colonialism and frankly, continues to this very day, especially in light of the hatred and disregard expressed by Canada's Chancellor (or is it Prime Minister?) Steven Harper, the leader of our country's Nazi party (or is it, the Conservative party?).

This is Canada's Prime Minister.

He and his government of intolerance

refuse to acknowledge the ever-prolonged
exploitation of Canada's Native People and the
heinous crimes perpetrated against them.

Colonialism, Hatred,
Human Rights Violations

and Apartheid
will continue under this
government's "leadership".

What's reflected in Survivors Rowe is at once, infuriating and on another level, infused with a sense of both healing and forgiveness - indicative of the fearlessness of its subjects and the skill with which Roher renders his film. Skillfully blending archival footage with knock-you-flat-on-your-back interviews, we're introduced to several young men - notably Joshua Frog, John Fox and Ralph Winter of Northern Ontario's Anishinaabe nation. They tell us their stories of living on isolated reservations, a strange combination of genuinely idyllic surroundings, but within the trappings of Canada's own system of apartheid. There are fond, memories, to be sure: living in the wilderness, a special bond with the natural world, skating on icy waterways, genuine play not rooted in the mind-destroying contemporary world of digital gaming and, at least initially, the dashingly dramatic arrival of Ralph Rowe, the rugged man's man who serves as a pilot, Boy Scout leader and Anglican priest.

Rowe is not only a charismatic, almost mythic figure, but he's actually taken the time to learn Native languages and dialects to converse with elders, adults his own age and kids. What nobody knows, what nobody could ever imagine, is that Ralph Rowe is a pedophile. The on-camera testaments delivered by the film's key subjects reveal some of the most harrowing, horrific and just plain malevolent acts perpetrated by this man of the wilderness, this man of God, this monster.

One of the most extraordinary things director Daniel Roher achieves here as a filmmaker is how he fashions any great narrative's need for an antagonist. On the surface, this figure is clearly Ralph Rowe, but as the film progresses, Rowe's external position as a villain, or rather, as an antagonistic force flows into the pain, sorrow, self-loathing and self-harm faced by the victims of his crimes. Then, even more extraordinarily, the antagonistic force of Rowe, his victims' suffering and the metamorphosis of this into the aforementioned process of healing, gives way to an even greater antagonist - a seemingly perpetual cycle of abuse which, is ultimately societal and must be actively addressed far more vigorously and openly than it is.

Ralph Rowe most likely sexually assaulted over 500 Native children and was, no doubt, responsible for a huge swath of suicides amongst both children and adults (not to mention residual effects upon subsequent generations). Unfortunately, the Canadian judicial system has only tried and convicted him for what amounts to a mere handful of sex crimes. He served a meagre five years in jail, was essentially handed a deal by the Crown to leave him be no matter how many accusations continue to surface and he lives a quiet, peaceful life in Surrey, British Columbia. Neither the Anglican Church nor the Boy Scouts have ever officially apologized to the victims and yet, those victims who did not commit suicide have endured decades and, if truth be told, lifetimes of living Hell.

On a purely aesthetic level, what Roher achieves here is a film that serves as a document of the suffering, torment and misery Ralph Rowe caused, but there is a strangely magical and poetic structure to the work which takes us from idyll to horror and finally and astoundingly, but perhaps necessarily, to forgiveness.

It's impossible to shake the impact this short film has. In fact, it has the sickening shock of a merciless cold-cock, blended with an elegiac, profoundly moving sense of loss and leavened with a kind of grace that not only reflects the deep humanity of the film's subjects, but shines a light of clemency upon a monster.

What the film cannot forgive, nor can any of us (I hope and pray), is the deep-seeded hatred and racism of colonialism which continues in Canada to this very day. If an Anglican priest and Boy Scout leader viciously sexually assaulted over 500 white children, would he still be living freely in society with the legal implication that he'll never serve more incarceration for his crimes, no matter how many continue to surface?

The answer is obvious.

Here's what convicted pedophile Ralph Rowe
looks like now in his comfy Surrey, B.C. environs.
It'd sure be nice to have a few more recent photos
out there for the safety of all children and families.

One final note about the heroism of the film's producer Peter O'Brian: Read his moving article in the Toronto Globe and Mail about the sexual assaults he suffered as a child and eventually came to terms with as an adult. Read it HERE.

And whatever you do, don't miss Survivors Rowe.

The Film Corner Rating: ***** Five Stars

Survivors Rowe is making its World Premiere at the 2015 edition of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Visit the Hot Docs website for dates, showtimes and tickets by clicking HERE.

CANADIAN SHORTS at the illustrious TORONTO AFTER DARK FILM FESTIVAL 2014 - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - FOXED!, DAY 40, ROSE IN BLOOM, MIGRATION and HONOR CODE - 5 Terrific Canadian Shorts at #TADFF 2014

Screening a new Canadian short film before every feature is one of many deserved accolades to bestow upon the magnificent Toronto After Dark Film Festival, which proudly displays its unwavering commitment to the future of Canadian Cinema as well as its open embrace of the short film medium. Here are five Canadian shorts that tickled my fancy during the 2014 edition.

Every child's worst nightmare!

Foxed! (2013)
Dirs. James E.D. Stewart, Nev Bezaire

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Originally presented in 3-D, I was grateful that TADFF screened this gorgeously animated grim fairy tale sans my least favourite mode of projection. This dark, icky, terrifying world is imbued with both visual and thematic depth to such a degree that its eye-popping visuals are, to my eyes, exquisitely sumptuous in a non-3-D format. The film is a grotesque phantasmagorical portrait of a little girl kidnapped by evil foxes and forced to serve in a purgatory of hard labour. When she discovers a window upon her previous home and hearth, we're treated to a delectably creepy rendering of every kid's worst nightmare. The film should be marketed to parents as a tool to keep kids in their proper place.

Foxed! played before the feature film Housebound @TADFF14 THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

What the fuck did all those animals do?

Day 40
Dir. Sol Friedman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

From here on in, whenever my attempts at repressing the loathsome experience of Darren Aronofsky's ludicrous, humourless, overblown debacle Noah aren't working as well as I'd like, I now have the perfect antidote. Aronofsky's Noah is the disease, Friedman's Day 40 is the cure! Sol Friedman's knee-slappingly hilarious and alternately vicious and moving (!!!) satirical look at activities on Noah's Ark is one of the most cleverly amusing cartoons I've seen in a longtime. If you've ever wondered WHAT THE FUCK was really going on within the bowels (so to speak) of that ark for 40 days and 40 nights, Friedman's quaintly perverse film provides more answers than one could ever begin to imagine on their own.

Day 40 played before the feature film Zombeavers @TADFF14 THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Kids see things they should NEVER see!

Rose in Bloom (2014)
Dir. Trevor Kristjanson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When a young girl turns 13, there are many things on her mind which are confusing, thrilling and even kind of scary, but it's all part of what it means to grow up. Sadly, there are things they should never have to see, think about or experience. Trevor Kristjanson's super-creepy evocation of a child's birthday celebrations is splashed with a kind of rural, midwestern White Trash gothic as it follows a child during pre-party preparations, through to a mysterious ride into a murky, muddy, isolated flatland and eventually, back to a celebration where her poker face does not reveal the horror she's experienced, but the almost voyeuristic approach to storytelling reveals everything we need to know. It's ambiguous, but only on the surface. It's a tidy, twisted and painful short that will keep you haunted long after you've seen it.

Rose in Bloom played before the feature film Wolves @TADFF14 THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Aaron Poole
One of Canada's best actors
as a Buster Keaton corporate Samurai.

Honor Code (2014)
Dir. Pascal Trottier

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If honour could truly be found amongst the zombies working in the world of corporate fluorescent cubicles, it stands to reason that the best of its best could only settle differences as aggressively as they pursue filthy lucre to line the pockets of their CEOs. Pascal Trottier's clever and funny satire ascribes the most honourable methods to settling roiling hostilities twixt suited, brief-case-toting warriors who adhere to long-honoured traditions of the Samurai. Seeing these Masters of the Universe engaging in Toshiro Mifune-like bows, nods and sabre-wielding gymnastics is not only hilarious, but decidedly pointed. Aaron Poole is the challenger. With a Buster Keaton deadpan, he proves again why he's one of Canada's finest actors.

Honor Code played before Time Lapse @TADFF14 THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***1/2 3-and-a-half Stars

All of God's Creatures Must "Go Home."

Migration (2014)
Dirs. Fluorescent Hill
(Mark Lomond, Johanne Ste-Marie)

Review By Greg Klymkiw

They say that all living things are God's Creatures and if there is such a higher power of all-embracing love, then surely there could not be a more perfect example of his glory than the herd of sweet, intelligent and fun-loving animals in Migration whom we follow as they traverse a multitude of barren topographical regions tainted by humanity to get to where they belong. This might well be one of the best short films ever made, not just in Canada, but the world. Utilizing a gorgeous 8mm-like home movie aesthetic and imbued with a narrative, characters and theme that are as profound for our time as they will be for future generations, this is a film that deserves no less than being lauded as both a classic and a masterpiece. This is pure cinema and a magnificent tribute to the importance of its funder, Canada Council.

Migration played w/Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter @TADFF14
THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

EVERYTHING & EVERYTHING & EVERYTHING, HAPPY B-DAY, INVADERS, SWORDFIGHTS, HE TOOK HIS SKIN OFF FOR ME Reviews by Greg Klymkiw - SHORTS AFTER DARK, TADFF 2014

Shorts After Dark is a stellar lineup of international shorts of the genre-persuasion that make the majority of pieces in the ABCs of Death and VHS anthology features look like so much swill floating in sewage treatment plants. Here's a few reviews of the TADFF offering of bite-sized bloody treats.

Blue Pyramid Expunges Doorknobs

Everything & Everything & Everything (2014)
Dir. Alberto Roldán
Starring: Shane Carruth, Makeda Declet

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Morgan (Shane Carruth, director/actor Primer, Upstream Color) is a slacker. When a blue pyramid appears in his living room, his life morphs into one of ever-increasing corporate greed and adherence to the shackles of corruptible capitalism.

You see, it's all those damned doorknobs that the glowing, almost-monolithic tchochka keeps crapping out, which provide profits and work for a myriad of slackers that Morgan is forced to hire (and offer shares, profits and points to). Alas, corporate culture swallows the slackers whole with far more gluttony than a zombie seeking brains. This clever and funny American indie satire is a daring, deadpan delight.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-stars

A flaxen Frau offers a B-Day surprise

Happy B-Day (2013)
Dir. Holger Frick
Starring: Gabriel Raab, Isabel Thierauch

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The handsome young man (Gabriel Raab) taking a leisurely jog through a wintry German woodland is blissfully at peace. Fluffy blankets of snow adorn the flora of Der Fatherland on this, his hallowed day of birth. He's an easy-going fellow, but he absolutely hates surprises. Alas, he gets more than a few shockers he hadn't planned on when his babe-o-licious GF (Isabel Thierauch) appears out of nowhere.

Like some flaxen, winter-parka-adorned Kriemhild out of Die Nibelungen, the comely ice-queen inadvertently instigates a series of blood-soaked treats. Holger Frick's amusing shocker offers up more than its fair share of surprises and buckets of crimson nectar, but it also sneaks in a perversely dark layer of, uh, heart. It's a gutsy film, in more ways than one.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***1/2 3-and-a-half Stars

Swords Must Be Drawn
Is Virgin Deflowering an
art or craft? 

Swordfights! (2013)
Dir. Nasos Gatzoulis
Starring: Thanos Alexiou, Dimitris Liolios

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A gentleman visits his psychiatrist. During their session, one man reveals that he's professional deflowerer of virgins. The other admits he deflowers them for sport. The battle lines are clear. A duel is inevitable. Swords must be drawn. Swordfights! is an outrageously funny, gorgeously photographed (in monochrome) one-note joke, but it's a downright hilarious one.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY,
MOTHERFUCKERS!
BLARNEY STONES UP YER ARSES!

Invaders (2014)
Dir. Jason Kupfer
Starring: Ricky Wayne, Jordan Woods-Robinson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A pair of bumbling home invaders argue about what masks will freak out their potential victims the most. They settle on identical masks that'd definitely instil major freak-outs once a homeowner opens the door - the humungous axes being quite an added adornment. A bloodbath ensues. A most unexpected and knee-slappingly funny expulsion of blood at that.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

DO NOT REMOVE YOUR SKIN!
YOU CAN'T JUST PASTE IT BACK!

He Took His Skin Off For Me (2014)
Dir. Ben Aston Writer: Maria Hummer
Starring: Anna Maguire, Sebastian Armrest

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Having seen more short films than anyone in their right mind should (in addition to the ludicrous number of features I've seen in my life), it's especially gratifying to see a polished gem like this one - and not just polished, not just a gem, but a film that brilliantly contributes to expanding cinema's boundaries.

After spending 13 years as a senior creative consultant and teacher at Uncle Norman Jewison's film school the Canadian Film Centre and presiding over the mentorship of Jesus-H-Christ-Knows-How-Many short films, I'm relatively well versed in what it takes for young filmmakers to generate truly original and cutting-edge work in such a setting (often quite impossible given the pressure placed on them by - ugh - "industry stakeholders"). Since the mid-90s, far too many burgeoning filmmakers have squandered the opportunity (especially, though not exclusively in North America) to generate short films that work, quite simply, as good, if not great, films - period. Too many have been drawn to the "Look Ma, I can use a dolly, but have nothing to say" calling card nonsense which allows them a shot at camera jockeying series television (not too egregious in Jolly Old Blighty, though) or worse, making short-form versions of feature films they almost never end up making. It's enough to make a movie lover sick to the stomach. Once in awhile, though, once in a Blue Moon, once upon a mattress (as it were), a short film comes along - from a film student in an academic setting - that blows the living pants off everyone who sees it. He Took His Skin Off For Me is just such a film.

Based on a short story and screenplay by Maria Hummer, director Ben Aston has crafted a delectably creepy, darkly hilarious and jaw-droppingly perverse love story which traverses the mine fields of contemporary notions of sacrifice within the context of male-female relationships (though, frankly, any significant other coupling might well apply). Sacrifice in relationships has always been at the forefront of any deeply passionate and lasting union, but in recent decades, with the steady collapse of traditional family units and the rightful advance of women in modern societies, sacrifice, it seems can often take on the most ludicrous extremes. Here, Hummer and Aston, cleverly focus on the more traditional aspects of a relationship - one that seems to be a reflection of the kinds of traditions which can spell death for any relationship - where the rituals of what it means to be "traditional" settle into a kind of dull-as-dishwater existence of comfort and expectation.

Here, we have a couple who seek to put some pizzaz and pep back into their love. When the hubby makes an extreme sacrifice to literally remove his outer layer of flesh, things are clearly new and exciting, but once the relationship begins to settle back into familiar territory, it seems that the irreversible sacrifice is all for nought.

There are several elements which make the film work as well as it does. First and foremost is the simple approach it takes to rendering the tale. The filmmakers do not shy away from utilizing a borderline literary voiceover which is not only deftly scribed, but played with a delicate deadpan. The actions of the characters are also played straight and if there's any tongue-in-cheek at all, it seeps quite naturally from the proceedings due to the Buster-Keaton-like visages applied by both leads. The almost matter-of-fact acceptance of the inconvenience-factor in having no skin (trails and stains of blood that need to be endlessly cleaned) is what has us alternately laughing and grimacing. Aston's compositions and colour-schemes are also imbued with an aplomb that borders on muted - not unlike the approach David Lynch takes in his best work where the utterly insane proceedings are all the more insane because nobody on screen (or off, for that matter) is going out of their way to point a finger at it.

It's also gratifying to see that the special makeup effects are rendered without digital manipulations. This always adds a remarkably naturalistic touch to tales of the fantastical. This is especially important here given the fact that the film is often rooted in a kind of skewed realism that reflects the lives of so many (if not all).

This is a thesis film generated at the London Film School.

Bravo! It's a great short film no matter how, when or why it was generated. That it is the work of young talents, however, speaks volumes about their considerable talent, promise and yes, any powers-that-be that allowed them the freedom to create a work of singular and lasting value.

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

Shorts After Dark at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival includes the aforementioned delights in addition to four others. For further info, visit the TADFF website HERE.