HYENA ROAD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2015 - Yet another Gross Canadian movie

This is not a scene from HYENA ROAD.
It is a scene from the genuinely brilliant
BRING ME THE HEAD OF TIM HORTON:
The Making of "Hyena Road"

Hyena Road (2015)
Dir. Paul Gross
Starring: Paul Gross, Rossif Sutherland, Christine Horne, Niamatullah Arghandabi

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Even though the word "Hyena" is in the title, try not to confuse the abomination that is Hyena Road with the superb 2014 Hyena. The former is yet another dreadful Paul Gross war film, the latter a grim, gritty UK crime picture about police corruption and the Albanian Mob in contemporary London. The former will be released wide across Canadian screens later this year, whilst the latter has disappeared without a trace. Both films, however, played at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The former this year, the latter last year.

Canadians have a real treat in store for them. They will not see Hyena. They will, however, see Hyena Road. This is primarily thanks to the largesse of the Canadian taxpayers themselves, who forked over a good chunk of the $12.5 million needed to put this rah-rah slice of propagandistic pro-war excrement on the screen and, of course, the ever - ahem - visionary Cineplex Entertainment theatre chain (monopoly) which would prefer to exhibit endless prints of awful studio pictures and, naturally, Paul Gross movies, rather than genuinely great Canadian films (or, for that matter, the very best indie foreign films).

Hyena Road has one thing going for it, though. While it's genuinely awful, it's not quite as laughably horrendous as Gross's previous war picture Passchendaele. That said, it might even be worse - not in terms of craft - but the fact that it extols the virtues of Canada's role in a war the country should never have become a part of. There isn't a single war in the Middle East which should have happened, never mind with the assistance of Canada's Armed Forces, but happen they did AND with Canada's help (not to mention the senseless deaths of our soldiers and those of innocent Afghanis and Iraquis).

So, what does the director of Men With Brooms (a witless purported comedy about the sport of curling) do? As he proved successful enough with Passchendaele, his WWI anti-war effort (a film which had its box-office grosses in Canada bought and paid for with oodles of marketing assistance from the Canadian taxpayer and the screen-count-largesse of the - ahem - visionary Cineplex Entertainment), Gross scratched his noggin and crapped out the fine idea of a pro-war propaganda film in Afghanistan.

Oh Canada. We stand on guard for thee by wiping out Afghani villages to ensure the safety of the American armed forces.

Yup, this is what we get with Hyena Road:

Pete Mitchell (Paul Gross) is the Canuck in charge of safely building a road through Taliban territory to allow for the safer passage of coalition forces (America, really). Mitchell, however, is no mere lean, mean, fighting machine, he's a military intelligence (a bit of an oxymoron, mais non?) officer. His real goal is to ferret out The Ghost (Niamatullah Arghandabi), a mujahideen who could prove to be an excellent ally. To this end, Mitchell puts the brave sniper (a bit of an oxymoron, mais non?) in the role of front man for this operation.

Ryan Sanders (Rossif Sutherland) has scruples, however. He doesn't like being manipulated and he refuses to kill children. Isn't that special? Good thing too, since he's been boinking Jennifer Bowman (Christine Horne), the film's token female window dressing who runs the command centre (and also appears afflicted with - horrors - morning sickness). It sure would be Gross if he killed kids whilst his girlie-pie is carrying his eventual progeny (to no doubt grow up to kill more people in battle during the next senseless war).

Amidst the simplistic military maneuvers and soap suds outlined above, Gross stages several big violent action set pieces with both Jordan and Manitoba's Carberry Desert nicely standing in for Afghanistan. Here is one aspect that the film modestly excels at. Gross wisely crews up with artists who've plied their trade on good, if not great Canadian films.

Thanks to one of Canada's most gifted cinematographers Karim Hussain (We Are Still Here, Hobo With A Shotgun), and the equally gifted Canuck editor David Wharnsby (Guy Maddin's Saddest Music in the World and Sarah Polley's Away From Her), the action more-than-ably rip-snorts along, providing superb war-porn for action aficionados.

Where these sequences fail, however, is Gross's awful screenplay which puts dull dialogue in the mouths of the characters - if one can even call them characters as opposed to simple types - and, of course, unlike genuinely great (if not even good war pictures) we have no human being to hang our hopes and dreams upon as they march forward into the carnage of battle.

Though Hyena Road is a disgrace and has no business receiving taxpayer financing and even less business being featured as a Gala Presentation during TIFF, one of the world's most prestigious film festivals, its real problem lies in the fact that the movie is just plain bad as opposed to being the unmitigated stinker Passchendaele was.

That film was so awful I blessed it with my lowest Film Corner rating imaginable: THE TURD FOUND BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL GRILL & DINING LOUNGE. But WOE! I could not even bring myself to affix my second-lowest Film Corner Rating to Hyena Road, the ever-famous, ONE PUBIC HAIR (which I proudly bestowed upon Sharknado).

Nope. Hyena Road belongs to a special class of bad movies - a picture so dull and mediocre it rates the most dull and mediocre of all the Film Corner Ratings.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Hyena Road enjoys its World Premiere as a GALA at TIFF 2015. For further info visit the TIFF website HERE. It will be seen all across Canada via Elevation Pictures.

THE MARTIAN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2015 - Murrican Moovees Fer Wun n' Awl

The Martian (2015)
Dir. Ridley Scott
Scr. Drew Goddard
Nov. Andy Weir
Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The worst thing to say about Ridley Scott's The Martian is that it's, well, uh, okay, uh, I guess, uh, sort of. Well, it's not bad, I suppose, but to suggest it's any better than moderately watchable would be stretching it.

The best thing to say about The Martian is that it's the finest work the overrated hack Ridley Scott has pulled out of his ass since he delivered the miraculous fluke Alien. Seeing that he's only made two or three watchable pictures since the astonishing 1979 horror-in-space masterpiece, this is clearly as back-handed a compliment I can pay to this new bloated effort.

By now, most viewers will know it's the story of a manned mission to Mars in which one astronaut is left behind for dead, only he's most assuredly alive and needs to muster all of his scientific know-how to survive until a rescue mission can be launched. And that's pretty much it.

One man alone against the Angry Red Planet.

Based on the popular novel by Andy Weir and with workmanlike scripting by Drew Goddard, the tale is well-structured as a science fiction survival tale with relatively distinctive (though hardly credible) characters in the rescue ship (all solidly played, especially the always-engaging Michael Peña) and at NASA (all solidly played as cliches), plus a fair whack of semi-amusing monologue-style dialogue for hunky Matt Damon to utter as the stranded astronaut.

The film conjures memories of Byron Haskin's (The War of the Worlds, From the Earth to the Moon, Conquest of Space) modest, but terrific 1964 survival adventure Robinson Crusoe On Mars. The memories Ridley Scott's film inspires are good ones - mostly how good Haskin's film was and how woefully overblown and occasionally dull The Martian is.

We know from the beginning that yummy Matt is not going to die and that good, old fashioned American bravery and know-how is going to save the day. The ride to get to this predictable conclusion is intermittently entertaining, but buried beneath its layers of fat is a much snappier, pulpier movie wanting to burst forth like the parasitical penis creature exploded from within John Hurt's chest in Alien.

I've always wondered what happened to the Ridley Scott of that 1979 classic. The Martian could have used that guy.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2-Stars

The Martian makes its world premiere as a TIFF Gala at TIFF 2015. For tix, times, dates and venues visit the TIFF website HERE.

MAPS TO THE STARS (TIFF 2014 - TIFF GALA) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

In Hollywood, the eyes of the Dead are always upon you. Only the Dead see the Truth and only in Death can Truth be found.

Mia Wasikowska
handily
brandishes the
Genie Award
Bludgeon
(the Canadian version of an OSCAR)

Maps to the Stars (2014)
Dir. David Cronenberg
Starring: Julianne Moore, John Cusack, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, Evan Bird

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've
been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read
the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings,
murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles,
revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is
a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be
violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been
cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing."

- Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust

The movie business is creepy.

Its heart and soul resides in the City of Angels and surrounding environs of Hollywood, the Dream Factory. The place hasn't really changed much since 1939 when Nathanael West wrote his seminal novel about the Hollywood underbelly "The Day of the Locust". There's more smog now, but the sun still shines bright and the desperation of its populace, especially those in the movie business, is just as sick, venal and pathetically palpable.

And the business? No changes here, either.

It's mind-numbingly cruel, shallow, exploitative, backstabbing, bereft of truth, lacking in taste and just plain evil. That it's a world full of hustlers, whores, scumbags, flakes and empty-vessel operators is not so much the cherry on the sundae, but rather the undigested peanuts and corn flecking an already-unhealthy-looking loaf of faecal matter. The poor are still poor, and desperate. Even the rich and powerful, are desperate.

This odious backdrop allows Canadian visionary David Cronenberg to take no prisoners and serve up one of his most agreeably sickening films in some time. Maps to the Stars is in deliciously poor taste, nastily funny, blessed with a consistently gnawing malevolence and makes for one hell of a Mr. Toad-like wild-ride through the Indy 500 of broken dreams in contemporary Hollywood, the same living Hell Mr. West wrote about 75 years ago. L.A. still burns.

Cronenberg is, of coursed, blessed with just the right amount of petrol to torch Hollywood. Bruce Wagner's screenplay is imbued with the rather perverse quality of plotting that's often quite compelling, but in its own way, seems intentionally perfunctory. Too often, I found I was pointed precisely where the movie was headed. I don't think, however, that's a flaw in the writing, so much as the point of the film (and screenplay).

First and foremost, the plot is and, in fact, must be secondary to the WORLD of the film and as such, feeds into it. Secondly and perhaps most importantly, the manner in which the plot-points play out are, in a perversely brilliant manner the very thing that contributes to the film's satire. Hollywood, especially now, is built upon is providing plot elements that no longer surprise. Such is the case here, but both Wagner and Cronenberg mask this very well. For half the film's running time you feel like the elements of plot are assembled to obscure the fact that there are only certain directions it can go and by the midpoint, I found it relatively easy to know exactly where the train was headed.

That the film is about the sick vapidity of making movies that are themselves even more vapid and familiar, is the brave sign of a writer fully in command of what makes satire so special. When you experience the real thing, as you do here, it's a wonder to behold.

And can there be anything more delightfully, nastily and appropriately vapid than the central characters in this film? Nope. This, of course, is a testament also to just how brilliant the film's cast is in rendering the emptiness beneath their shells, but doing so with no tongue-in-cheek and always making them real. These are people you'd never want to know (or be), but that's what makes them even more compelling.

Given the utter emptiness of the people in this world, I was delighted that Wagner's screenplay seemed to inspire Cronenberg, his cinematographer and production designer to always hammer home the hollow qualities of the world and characters. Everything takes on a kind of flat smog filtered look. The consistency of the lighting from interior to exterior, from day to night and back again (and then some), all managed to maintain a kind of ugliness that was strangely beautiful and ghastly. The homes most of these people live in are filled with wide, open spaces and yet, they seem empty and bereft of any personal touches on the parts of the characters. The environs appear to have all been art directed, or, if you will, interior designed.

This might be the most hollow film made in the past couple of decades and to that I say: "Huzzah!"

So, speaking of hollow, Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) is a gorgeous, self-absorbed movie star who is desperate to land a role in a remake of her late mother'a big starring role. Essentially, she'll be playing her mother. From any reasonable perspective, she'd be perfect for it, but what in Hollywood is ever reasonable? There are mysterious nagging doubts amongst the suits at the studio, most of whom are seldom seen. They also never return phone calls from either Havana or her agent. Via Wagner's script, Cronenberg deftly manoeuvres through the utterly ludicrous ins and out of Havana pathetically attempting to land the role, which is, in many ways, the vessel of emptiness that carries us into the heart of hollow Hell.

Havana's biggest weapon, it seems, are regular sessions with Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), a new-agey, ubiquitous paid-programming-TV-fixture who provides massage-therapy-self-help to Hollywood royalty and any stupidly rich person who can afford his outrageous fees. Weiss is married to Cristina (Olivia Williams), a doting stage Mom to their horrendously spoiled child star son Benjie (Evan Bird), who must constantly placate the studio suits that he's no longer hooked on drugs. He is, after all, the star of what must be a loathsome, but successful studio franchise entitled "The Bad Babysitter".

Moving down the Hollywood Food Chain, a bit closer to Nathanael West territory, our seemingly satirical journey places a fair bit of emphasis upon Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), a beautiful burn victim with a close Twitter relationship with Carrie Fisher which lands her the coveted job of being a personal assistant to Havana. Agatha is involved in a flirty, but borderline serious relationship with Jerome (Robert Pattinson), a handsome limo driver-actor-screenwriter who's at first repelled by Agatha's burn scars, but gradually comes to accept them. Sadly, whilst relationships in business are everything in Hollywood, relationships on a human level take a back seat. Jerome's limo, of course, has a very big back seat and he's more than willing to use it when aging stars require some backdoor servicing from his trusty sword.

This is probably not what the doctor ordered. Agatha, you see, is completely out of her gourd. Just released from years of incarceration in a Florida loony bin, pumped full of anti-schizo pills and fuelled with a burning (as it were) desire to make amends with those whom she wronged. Many years ago, she set the family home ablaze in a fit of pyromaniacal insanity, attempted to murder her little brother and in the process was horrifically burned herself.

A family reunion is not desired by her Mom, Dad and Brother, but in a town of six degrees of separation, it seems inevitable. Chances are also good, it's not going to be warm and fuzzy.

Have I mentioned the ghosts yet?

No? Ah, good. Well, yes. many of our characters receive regular visits from them and these creepy apparitions are prone to placing horrendously nasty ideas into the heads of those they haunt.

Have I mentioned the incest yet?

No? Ah, excellent. I'll leave it all for you to discover.

Have I mentioned the killings yet?

No? Lovely. You're in for a real treat.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Maps To The Stars is a Gala Presentation at TIFF 2014.

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THE CONNECTION aka LA FRENCH - TIFF 2014 - TIFF GALA - Review By Greg Klymkiw

A whole lotta spiffy-dressing Frenchmen in spiffy cars,  in spiffy digs with spiffy babes, dining in spiffy bistros, sipping spiffy French wine, adds up to a whole lotta spiffy nothing.

The Connection (aka La French) (2014)
Dir. Cédric Jimenez
Starring: Jean Dujardin, Gilles Lellouche, Céline Sallette, Benoît Magimel

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In 1971 director William Friedkin knocked the world on its ass with The French Connection, a film that even now has few equals in the genre of crime and cop thrillers. Based on the real-life adventures of New York detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, Friedkin brought the hard-hitting grittiness of a documentarian and the sheer kinetic virtuosity of a razzle-dazzle showman to detail one of the biggest drug busts in American history for the silver screen.

One would think, based on Friedkin's great film and the solid, but unexceptional John Frankenheimer sequel French Connection II, that on the other side of the pond in Marseilles, our Gallic law-enformement officials were doing little more than eating cheese and drinking fine wine.

Well, it's over forty years later and a new motion picture has come along to prove that there were indeed law enforcement officials on the French side who did a little something to break the case.

The Connection (known in France as La French) might as well be about eating cheese and drinking wine. At 135 plodding minutes, this is one of the most dull crime pictures made in, well, let's say over forty years. Focusing upon the spiffy, snappy dresser of a prosecuting magistrate (Jean Dujardin) and his attempts to nail an untouchable drug kingpin (Gilles Lellouche), director Cédric Jimenez mounts a slick, but empty cat and mouse affair that places most of its emphasis upon back room dealings and occasional forays into the drug trade underbelly.

Jimenez tosses a whole lot of herby-jerky handheld camera work and occasionally quick cutting to let us know we're not watching a movie about well-dressed Frenchmen eating cheese, but it's all for nought. The Connection is an endlessly talky, convoluted and predictable low-key policier that only proves one thing - Americans did it first and better and if anything interesting or exceptional happened in this case on the French side, other than the ingestion of curds and grape, this is not the movie to prove it.

Aside from a whole lotta spiffy-dressing French dudes driving spiffy cars and living in spiffy digs with spiffy babes and generally being, uh, spiffy as they dine in spiffy bistros, the movie delivers a whole lotta spiffy nothing.

If anything it puts a blight on an otherwise noble tradition of French crime pictures by being so boring.

And, I guess, being spiffy - for no real reason.

THE FILM CORNER rating: * One-Star

The Connection is a Seville/eOne/Drafthouse release playing the Gala slot at TIFF 2014. Visit the TIFF website HERE for further info.

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THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2014 (TIFF GALA)

Boob Job Fonda,
Cuckold Bateman.
Dysfunctional
Shiva Sitters.
Rose Byrne
Cutesy-pies it up.

This Is Where I Leave You (2014)
Dir. Shawn Levy
Starring: Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Ben Schwartz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It would take a death in the family to get the Altmans under one roof again. Luckily the loving hubby of Hilary (Jane Fonda), a famous sex therapist with a new boob job, has just died. His last request, in spite of not being religious, is that his surgery-enhanced wife and his kids sit Shiva for him. Oy! The kids have their own problems. Judd (Jason Bateman) a recently-cuckolded radio producer, the unhappily married Wendy (Tina Fey), Phillip (Adam Driver) the womanizing baby of the family and Paul (Corey Stoll) the eldest son who's not only a dullard but drawing blanks with his wife to have their first child, all agree to seven days of mourning and reflection, and all living in their parents' house.

Needless to say, this dysfunctional family spars endlessly, but in so doing, they come to new understandings and discover how much they all really love each other.

Isn't that special?

Uh, not really. In spite of a few good lines sprinkled throughout and a uniformly fine cast, This Is Where I Leave You is pretty much a case of been-there-done-that. Playing like an extended TV sitcom episode, it even rushes to a climax where everyone and everything converges to tie up most of the loose ends into relatively neat bows. Director Shawn Levy, who surprisingly generated a solid science fiction action-adventure romp, 2011's Reel Steel and the fun fantasy of A Night At The Museum, falls back on his competent, but unexciting camera jockeying comfort zone from such unexceptional comedies as Cheaper By the Dozen, The Pink Panther and Date Night.

It would take an incredibly indiscriminate audience to swallow this with anything more exciting than the kind of blank passivity one reserves for time-killing, pure and simple. For me, the only thing that piqued my interest were some strangely coincidental items which inspired a bit of conspiracy theory conjecture on my part. I found it mildly annoying that this attractive cast living in an upscale environment were engaging in all manner of boozing and ingestion of both illicit and prescription drugs. At one point, Jane Fonda's character quips that she's popping Xanax like candies. My mind started to reel. Isn't Jane Fonda married to Ted Turner, I thought? He's the multi-zillion-billion-kajillion-aire who has been advocating all manner of culling poor people from the face of the planet in order to save it. I'm watching the movie and doing the math. Hmmm. Jane Fonda. Xanax as candy. Rich, attractive people engaging in addictive behaviour. TED TURNER. Population Reduction. Eugenics. Oh My God! Hollywood, the propaganda machine of the rich and famous.

All of this was floating through my head while watching this movie to alleviate the been-there-done-that boredom I was feeling, which certainly says A LOT about this picture's numbing mediocrity.

Then it occurred to me that Fonda and Turner divorced some time ago.

Still, I thought. Anything's possible.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *½ One-and-a-half stars

This is Where I Leave You is a Gala Presentation at TIFF 2014 and a Warner Bros. release.

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THE EQUALIZER (WORLD PREMIERE TIFF 2014 - TIFF GALA) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Sometimes a peaceful man must
KILL RUSSIANS!

The Equalizer (2014)
Dir. Antoine Fuqua
Scr. Richard Wenk
Starring: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo, David Meunier, Haley Bennett, Allen Maldonado, Dan Bilzerian

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If you're going to make a movie about a retired CIA intelligence operative (Denzel Washington, sporting a nicely-shaved pate), living a quality life of mega-Zen-O-Rama in Boston, hanging out nightly in a quaint greasy spoon wherein he reads classic literature recommended to him by his now-dead wife, befriending a sweet teenage whore (Chloë Grace Moretz) "owned" by the Russian Mob, but who could be the daughter he never had, save for the parts where she spreads her legs for a myriad of gross clients and suffers savage beatings at the hands of her despicable Putin-like pimp, then, my friends, if your movie revolves around a man such as this, it is absolutely imperative that you give this lethal, morally incorruptible gent a job in a big box Home Depot-like store since sooner or later, he's going to take out the entire Russkie criminal underworld and it will be ever-so helpful (for him) and delightful (for us) when he's forced to kill a mess o' bad guys by utilizing what one normally finds in such insanely expansive shopping oases: various tools, hammers, drills, saws and (my favourite). . .

NAIL GUNS.

The mind boggles.

Well, as derivative as Richard Wenk's still-efficient screenplay proves to be, director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) runs with the sturdy coat hanger handed to him by the aforementioned scribe and offers up a genuinely great macho-man action film that dazzles with a perfectly-pitched directorial style and skill-level to put all the hacks and poseurs who can't direct action to complete and utter shame.

Fuqua knows exactly where to place his camera, holds nicely on wide shots that display rigorous fight choreography of the finest pedigree and only uses mediums, closeups and cuts when he needs to for the purposes of rendering dramatic beats. Wenk even allows for a Quentin Tarantino rip-off, which is, in fact, a rip-off of many films before the crime-loving auteur began to employ the delicious technique of endless dialogue twixt opposing forces and eventually exploding into the most mind-blowing extremities of violence imaginable.

Fuqua's picture is so well directed that all the cliches and rip-offs are water off a duck's back. It's first-rate entertainment which allows Denzel Washington the opportunity to rescue Chloë Grace Moretz and put a dent in the Mob's business dealings to a point where a vicious trouble-shooter from the Old Country sails into town with an endless supply of assassins who Denzel is allowed to dispatch - one after another, and in ways that might make even the most Liberal of audiences buy the rabid anti-Russia propaganda hook, line and sinker.

Vaguely based on the 80s cult TV show, this has "action franchise" written all over it. That's all well and good, but I'd love to see Fuqua direct Washington in a movie that actually had a great script a la the dirty 70s practitioners of violent existential male angst. I doubt we'll find it in a franchise, but for now, I'll hold fast onto the pleasures The Equalizer delivers and dreamily imagine a day when I see a movie truly worthy of these two supremely gifted men.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

The Equalizer enjoys its Gala world premiere at TIFF 2014 and will be released by Sony Pictures.

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PARKLAND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF2013:Before, during & after November 22 1963

TIFF 2013 - GALA PRESENTATION
Parkland (2013) *1/2
Dir. Peter Landesman
Starring: James Badge Dale, Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden, Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver, Jackie Earle Haley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Even at age of four I knew what was happening on our murky black and white television with rabbit ears and why my mother was crying. President John F. Kennedy was genuinely larger than life and the impact of his assassination on November 22, 1963 was felt all over the world. Fifty years later, nobody believes the spurious findings of the Warren Commission and there is enough evidence to suggest that the President was murdered by forces much larger than the lone patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. That's why I really don't understand the necessity of a film like Parkland (the title signifying the name of the hospital in Dallas where both JFK and Oswald were unsuccessfully operated upon). Shot in urgent annoying shaky-cam and blended with actual stock and news footage of the time, the film details the preparations leading up to Kennedy's visit to Dallas, his assassination, all the chaos of getting him to the hospital, the desperate unsuccessful attempts to keep him alive, the various law enforcement gymnastics with respect to the FBI, CIA, Dallas Police and the Secret Service, the assessment of the Zapruder 8mm home movie footage, the capture of Oswald, the subsequent shooting of Oswald, the unsuccessful attempt to keep him alive in the hospital and finally, juxtaposing the opulent state funeral of the slain president with the threadbare proceedings afforded to the purported assassin.

Though the reasons for this film's existence is a mystery, the ponderous James Newton Howard musical score which alternates between militaristic solemnity and a kind of bargain basement John Williams bombast, reminds us that the intentions of the filmmaker are very serious - though at face value, one couldn't begin to imagine what those intentions actually were. In fact, one of the most offensive things about this movie is that it's structured to avoid the notions of conspiracy in JFK's murder. If anyone was watching this film without a whole lot of knowledge on the subject (sadly, not as surprising as one would think), they'd be leaving this film convinced that the Warren Commission findings were NOT a load of utter horse shit.

Screenwriter-Director Landesman used Vincent Bugliosi's book "Four Days in November" as the primary source material, but one really has no idea why he chose to re-enact a hodgepodge of all the above, with an all-star cast instead of, perhaps, choosing one or two interesting threads, sticking with them, and maybe creating a sustained narrative with actual characters instead of what amounts to extended cameos. It's actually more than a little bit ludicrous to have former teen heartthrob Zac Ephron trying to act as the bewildered inexperienced resident in the president's operating room with dewy-eyed nurse Marcia Gay Harden relieving a weeping Jackie Kennedy of chunks of the President's skull and brains and to then drag Jackie Earle Haley on screen as a priest to administer the last rites.

Not unlike the George Stevens all-star Jesus biopic The Greatest Story Ever Told, I half expected John Wayne to wander into the Parkland Memorial Hospital in full Roman Centurion garb and stand over JFK's corpse and intone: "Truly this Man was the son of God," before realizing he'd stepped onto the wrong sound stage via some kind of Time Machine or wormhole. Well, if only this film was even a pubic hair as good as the Stevens picture (which was pretty rank to begin with), then maybe one might have been able to ignore the messy inconsequence of Parkland and perhaps embrace the genuinely fine (albeit wasted) performances of Paul Giamatti as Zapruder and James Badge Dale as Oswald's brother. But no, instead of choosing to focus on either one of those characters, we're given a parade of cameos and scenes that are only marginally a cut above those cheesy dramatic recreations inserted into lower-drawer TV "documentaries" for cable.

In fairness to Landesman and his abysmal misfire of a movie, one must give him some credit for allowing the inimitable Jacki Weaver to shred every stitch of the scenery with her ludicrously overwrought performance as Oswald's crazy mother. Weaver is every bit the quintessential crazy Southern belle/harridan that if anyone was planning a remake of gothic white trash classics like God's Little Acre or Baby Doll, or for that matter, one of those Robert Aldrich old lady slugfests like Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, then one look-see at this movie and they'll know Weaver is their go-to gal.

"Parkland" is a Gala Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2013). For tickets, visit the TIFF website HERE. Opening theatrically via Remstar just in time to celebrate JFK's assassination.