SPOTLIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw ****TIFF 2015**** MUST-SEE

Spotlight (2015)
Dir. Tom McCarthy
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup, Len Cariou

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Organized religion has always had about as much to do with genuine faith in God as the Corleones' Genco Oil Co. had to do with selling olives. In both cases, neither parties are what they seem on the surface. The Catholic Church is probably more insidiously evil than the Mafia.

Built on secrecy, shame and corruption of the highest order, the Church has always been the perfect hiding place for sadists, psychopaths and pedophiles. Catholicism is so powerful that it's been almost impossible to break through their fortresses of protection. Too occasionally, through dogged determination, commitment and bravery on the part of its victims and valiant supporters, the Church has occasionally been exposed.

Where there is a Catholic Church…
there are Child Rapists!

The movie Spotlight takes deadly aim upon Catholic corruption and is so terrific, the picture easily takes its place with a handful of classic films featuring journalists as crusading detectives under the yoke of dark forces. Director Tom Mcarthy expertly lays out the proceedings in such a clear, precise fashion that his picture knocks us on our asses as mightily as 70s stalwarts All The President's Men and The Parallax View managed to do.

Telling the true story of a team of Boston Globe investigative reporters, the film powerfully and breathlessly details the eventual discovery and exposure of not one, not two, nor even a handful of Catholic Church pedophiles, but hundreds of them. In fact, this was one of the most significant takedowns of Catholic proclivities towards sexual abuse in recent decades.

McCarthy serves up one of the most astonishing casts in recent American cinema to lead us into the labyrinthine evil that plagued Boston as horrifically as Whitey Bulger. We follow Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), a newly appointed Globe editor who pushes the long-respected "Spotlight" team to drop everything and pursue the story behind the story and yet, behind the story, on Catholic pedophiles.

Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), the team leader, initially complies under duress, but as he comes to know and respect his new boss and discover the twisted truth, he drives his crack reporters to dig deeper than they've ever dug before. The reporters are all Catholics, albeit of the lapsed variety, but even their "lapses" descend into pits of outright indignation as they realize how many children have been sexually abused by priests how both the Catholic Church and the legal system have buried the truth.

Mark Ruffalo - Lapsed Catholic Reporter

Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) takes on Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), a lawyer representing ninety victims. The attorney wants to help, but can only do so surreptitiously. He also has knowledge of documents that can only be secured legally by suing the Catrholic Church. Matt Carroll (Brian D’Arcy James) discovers pedophile priests who are merely reassigned to new parishes to rape anew (with the full knowledge and blessing of the Archdiocese of Boston), while Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) discovers even more victims than the aforementioned ninety - hundreds more. She also goes after slime bucket lawyer Eric MacLeish (Billy Crudup) whose collusion only protects the Catholic pederasts further.

Collusion, of course, is the key, and as the film progresses it seems the entire city of Boston is protecting this Confederacy of Holy Child Rapists: the rich and famous, the captains of finance/industry, the Crown, the cops and even the parents of victims (one victim describes his mother putting out cookies for his rapist). Oh, and just so the Globe doesn't come off completely lily-white in all this, McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer make sure to nail the local media also - especially The Globe and its early collusion with the Church.

McCarthy's mise-en-scene is intelligently, tastefully un-fettered by overwrought visual excess. He spins the yarn by allowing the terrific script and first-rate cast do their business within well-blocked scenes that play-out in longer takes with punch-ins occurring only when they're necessary to genuinely tell the story and move the picture ever-forward. This is not to suggest McCarthy's work is by-the-numbers - instead he subtly creates three primary looks which assist in terms of tone - garish, fluorescent lights in office settings, dark interiors punctuated with glowing warmth when in the presence of the denizens of the Church and finally, a kind of drab, grey quality to most of the daytime exteriors as the reporters go about their business.

Stanley Tucci - a lawyer holds the truth

The entire film grips you by the throat and its impossible to shake free of its grasp - ever-maddening, ever-frustrating, ever-creepy and at times, even downright scary. In addition to the corruption and collusion, the film doesn't avoid exposing the Catholic Church's virulent anti-semitism (especially when blame is placed on the Jewish editor of the Globe). There's also an unbelievably creepy performance from legendary Canadian actor Len Cariou as Cardinal Bernard Law, Boston's prime pervert priest apologist/protector.

The Catholic Church has never looked quite so evil as it does here, and for good reason. It's the sheer paper-pushing bureaucracy at all levels that is used to hide these rapists and then put them back into situations where they can rape again. The movie is so dazzlingly structured that in its final minutes we're not only on the edge of our seats, but are eventually dealt a mighty cathartic blow.

To expose the Church is one piece of the delicate process of healing for its victims - all of whom were children when they were repeatedly raped by supposed men of God, who in turn were protected by the Church itself. The Church should have been protecting the children, not the rapists of the Cloth. In a sense, it would be wonderful if the children had the final word on this. They're the future, not the Catholic Church. As Spotlight stirringly demonstrates, it's the Catholic Church and its legacy of shame that needs to be exposed, but also, placed in a coffin.

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

Spotlight is a TIFF Special Presentation at TIFF 2015 via Open Road Films

BLACK MASS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2015: A solid cast in search of a good movie

Black Mass (2015)
Dir. Scott Cooper
Starring: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch,
Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Peter Sarsgaard, Rory Cochrane,
Adam Scott, Dakota Johnson, Mary Klug, Corey Stoll

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Joe Berlinger's Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger (2014) is a modern masterpiece. It tells the same story as Scott Cooper's Black Mass, but aside from a genuinely solid cast working overtime and a few directorial frissons, the latter is little more than a derivative, often dull dramatic exercise in style. This ultra-violent homage to much better pictures like Goodfellas, which it desperately wants to be, really has little going for it, save for its stalwart performances.

Berlinger's modern classic is an alternately terrifying and heartbreaking documentary exposé of Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, his protection at the hands of the FBI and the suffering of his hundreds of victims. It's the perspectives of the victims which gives Berlinger's film its oomph, but alas, Cooper's picture is saddled with a by-the-numbers screenplay by Jez Butterworth and Mark Mallouk which does little more than blast through key high points of Bulger's "career".

Bulger was an asshole and psychopath of the first order. This places Black Mass immediately at a disadvantage. There's clearly no room for redemption and the only change of any consequence is just how appalling Bulger's actions become. Though Cooper interestingly (albeit too briefly) focuses on the odd family dynamic between Bulger, his Massachusetts State Senator brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch) and their tough, accepting Mom (Mary Klug), all that's really left to target is Bulger's 30-year history as an FBI informant, set-up by his old neighbourhood chum, FBI agent John Connolly (superbly played by Joel Edgerton). Bulger is given complete immunity to commit horrific crimes so the FBI can get the dope on the Italian mob whom our "hero" is attempting to rub out so his Winter Hill Gang can completely control all criminal activities in Boston.

Much will be made of Depp's performance as Bulger and he does indeed seem to be having the time of his life mugging malevolently under a variety of insane makeup designs. It's hardly a departure from most of his flamboyant excess and though it delivers prime entertainment value (to a point), the fact remains that he has delivered much better work in pictures like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Ninth Gate, Donnie Brasco and especially Ed Wood and, for that matter, most of his collaborations with Tim Burton. Hell, I even love his work as Tonto in The Lone Ranger.

Unfortunately his toils here are merely showy. The ho-hum screenplay doesn't really provide a strong-enough adversary for Bulger to play against. This wasn't a problem in Berlinger's great documentary since he placed the lion's share of focus upon one of Bulger's victims who delivers some of the most chilling moments in the film and all throughout the picture fears for his life (and indeed was rubbed out during the film's shooting and Bulger trial). All Depp has to work with here are his enablers, henchmen and virtually faceless rivals whom he stylishly dispatches.

It's the human factor that's missing right across the board and without it, both Depp and his talented director Cooper are lost at sea in a dinghy with no oars. Though I have little use for his overrated Crazy Heart, Cooper previously infused his superb crime film Out of the Furnace with a scary creep factor as well as considerable humanity. All that's left in Black Mass is plenty of creepy.

Creepy is always good, but when it's really the only thing driving a picture, it eventually loses steam and by extension, so too does Black Mass.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two Stars

Black Mass enjoys its Canadian Premiere as a TIFF Special Presentation at TIFF 2015. For tix, times, venues, dates visit the TIFF website HERE. The film opens wide on September 18, 2015 via Warner Bros.

THE DAUGHTER - Review By Greg Kymkiw - Ibsen-o-rama *****TIFF2015 TOP PICK*****

The Daughter (2015)
Dir. Simon Stone
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neill, Ewen Leslie,
Paul Schneider, Miranda Otto, Anna Torv, Odessa Young

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"If you take the life-lie from an average man, you take away his happiness as well." Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck

Though one seldom discovers sentimental bones in the body of Henrik Ibsen's greatest work, it's definitely imbued with the properties of melodrama, which many directors eschew completely, or worse, are unable to work with properly.

The Daughter, a contemporary film adaptation of Ibsen's "The Wild Duck," taken from screenwriter-helmer Simon Stone's stage production, strikes the perfect balance twixt the manufactured artificiality of the play's gloriously melodramatic form twixt the deep core of emotional and thematic truths pulsating under the surface. This yields a genuinely gripping and ultimately moving film experience.

Henry (Geoffrey Rush) is the richest man in town. He and several previous generations of his family have provided the local populace of a sleepy Australian hamlet with its entire reason for being. Unfortunately the devastating emotional downturn of recent years has forced him to shutter his formerly lucrative pulp and paper mill; in turn forcing most of the area's citizenry into seeking employment elsewhere and as such, potentially turning the community into a ghost town.

Ghosts have been lying dormant there for years. A ghost town might be an ideal place to house these hidden spirits as the film contrasts Henry's deeply-entrenched ruling dynasty and that of the working class family headed by Oliver (Ewen Leslie), wife Charlotte (Miranda Otto), daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young) and reclusive grandpa Walter (Sam Neill).

Out hunting for sport (as the rich are wont to do), Henry wounds a beautiful wild duck. He hasn't the "heart" to put it out of its misery. Somewhat ironically, he's happy to maintain his vast fortune rather than operate his company at a loss to save the life of the community, but he indeed sees a way to save the life of his prey. The duck is dispatched to Grandpa Walter who runs an unofficial animal sanctuary with Hedvig, the latter of whom develops a special attachment to the beautifully feathered creature and its desperate need to fly in spite of a severely wounded wing. (And yes, Hedvig reveals a deep emotional wound later on, which also requires "flight".

Though the recent travails of the mill shutdown wreak considerable devastation upon nearly everyone, our central working class characters seem happy enough to grin, bear it and hope for something new. This element quickly comes in the form of Henry's prodigal son Christian (Paul Schneider) who's lived 15 years in America. It's his first time back since he left and he's grudgingly in attendance for his father's wedding to the very young housekeeper of the estate.

He is, however, extremely delighted to spend time with his old school chum and best friend Oliver, taking a special liking to the whole family - almost taking the place of his own fractured family life.

Here is where the magic of Ibsen and Stone's direction really come to the fore. Slowly and compellingly, the very existence of heretofore repressed secrets are made clear and each major story beat imparts answers which tantalize, but also beg more questions. Stone's direction is intelligent and assured, but he's especially gifted in parcelling out several exquisite melodramatic (in the very best sense of the word) set pieces.

The final third of the film becomes such a powerfully charged and exquisitely wrenching melodrama, that most audiences will be compelled to squirt copious tears in the direction of the big screen. And, of course, the terrible truth behind Ibsen's great line of dialogue rings so sadly and evocatively true, in spite of the film's attempt to yank something vaguely positive out of the whole affair. As far as I'm concerned, THIS is the heart and soul of the film, the play and life itself:

"If you take the life-lie from an average man, you take away his happiness as well."

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-a-half-stars

The Daughter is a Mongrel Media and Mongrel International Release receiving its North American premiere as a TIFF Special Presentation at TIFF 2015. For tix, times, dates and venues, visit the TIFF website HERE.

BROOKLYN - Review By Greg Klymkiw *****TIFF 2015 MUST-NOT-SEE*****

As you can see, impish colleen immigrants
do not require hands to provide good service
in the better department stores of Brooklyn.

Brooklyn (2015)
Dir. John Crowley
Scr. Nick Hornby
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen,
Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters, Jessie Paré

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Save for the pleasing cast of babes (Saoirse Ronan, Jessie Paré) and hunks (Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson) providing ample scenery (in addition to the general period production design) and a couple of old Brit stalwarts (Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters) ham-boning to the hilt, about the best I can say about Brooklyn is that my Mother (God rest her soul) would have enjoyed it thoroughly. She was, however, uh, like, old.

The aforementioned are what the film has going for it. I was less inclined to favour the alternately sad and jaunty Irish folk music elements of the syrupy score, the dull, style-bereft miniseries camera-jockey direction and a screenplay playing out like a muted soap opera with about as much conflict as having to choose twixt Aunt Jemima pancakes and Rice Crispies at breakfast time.

Gorgeous Saoirse Ronan, with the help of her big sister and Jim Broadbent's Father Flanagan-like priest, leaves behind the lack of opportunities in Ireland and hits the big boat for the wide-open shores of America. The good Father sets her up in a lovely boarding house for young ladies run by an endlessly quipping Julie Walters, then he gets her a good job in a nice department store where she's mentored by the STUNNINGLY gorgeous Jessica Paré and, Faith and Begorrah, our jovial, benevolent man of the cloth pays for her tuition at business college.

Sounds like being a gorgeous Irish immigrant of the female persuasion is a good deal. Oh sure, you have to go to endless dances to land a prospective husband and quite often, you get homesick for Ireland, but truth be told, it's a cakewalk. Hell, Saoirse even falls in love with a mouth-wateringly handsome Italian stud-muffin (Emory Cohen) in Brooklyn and upon visiting her old Irish home, she meets a yummy prim and proper rich boy (Domhnall Gleeson).

And here you have it, ladies and gents, the only conflict in the whole movie.

Must be nice.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2-Stars

Brooklyn is a TIFF 2015 Special Presentation. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

ROOM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - FRANK director delivers another winner - TIFF 2016

Room (2016)
Dir. Lenny Abrahamson
Scr. Emma Donoghue
Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Tom McCamus, William H. Macy, Sean Bridgers, Wendy Crewson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Lenny Abrahamson turned out to be the best director imaginable for this screen rendering of Emma Donoghue's novel of the same name. His last film Frank, created a wondrous, expansive world within the isolated confines of the country cottage wherein the title character's band creates music for a new album. Abrahamson then shifted us, ever-so deftly to a constrained, insular and painful emotional domain once Frank and company attend the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas. Finally, we were plopped, alongside the film's characters onto the flat, open, limitless landscape under a big American sky, dwarfing, as it always does, everything and everyone.

Room shares a similar story structure to the aforementioned gem of a film. Like Donoghue's book, the first half of Abrahamson's new picture confines us to the tiny space that Ma (Brie Larson) and her 5-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) live in. Having been kidnapped and held hostage by Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), a sexual predator who has repeatedly raped Ma until she became pregnant with Jack, the isolated room of the title has been turned into a wide open world by Ma to keep her sanity, as well as that of her child.

Ma has used what meagre means she has at her disposal to educate her child. For example, every item in the room is ascribed qualities akin to humanity which not only describe said items, but allows Jack to offer salutations upon first laying eyes upon them every morning. Personification in fiction is one thing, but in real life, it's clearly quite another.

At the midway point of the picture, a harrowing escape delivers us into the world outside the room and in spite of the new expanse, Ma especially suffers as a free woman - her incarceration and the repeated sexual abuse (not to mention relentless media attention) has somehow dwarfed everything that could be seen as healthy and positive to her.

The two halves of the film are rendered with an astonishingly brilliant mise en scène, which indeed creates expanse in isolation and isolation in expanse. The first half, in spite of the one "room" setting, never really seems claustrophobic as the film roots the mother and son's relationship in a limitless love and deep imagination. Conversely (and not unlike Frank), freedom takes us to drearily grey exteriors and "normal" interiors that bear so much in common with everything that is so unbearably "normal" to anyone with huge imaginations (like Ma and Jacob).

Luckily, Abrahamson has the source material of Donoghue's novel to draw upon, as well as her screenplay adaptation. Oddly, Donoghue's screenwriting mostly eschews the novel's great "voice" (the story in the book is told by the five-year-old Jack) and Abrahamson must render it visually, without relying upon Jack's "voice" (except in tiny dollops). The lighting utilized in the room is especially evocative during daytime wherein the lone glimpse Ma and Jack have at the outside world is a small, dirty and unreachable skylight, casting a variety of eerie glows upon the proceedings. This genuinely great filmmaker pulls off the first half of the picture with flying colours, especially in the manner he blocks the movement within the interior of the "room", then eventually, outside of it - maintaining superb compositions to tell the story by cinematically capturing the evocative "voice" of the novel.

One other aspect which plays beautifully in the film is how it actually downplays the book's rather obvious allusions to the legend of Perseus. Donoghue makes use of an evocative epigraph of Simonides's (c. 556-468 BCE) poem "Lamentation of Danaë" which does help set the overall tone:

My child
Such trouble I have
And you sleep, your heart is placid;
you dream in the joyless wood;
in the night nailed in bronze,
in the blue dark you lie still and shine.

Alas, perhaps it sets the tone too well.

It's difficult to read Donoghue's book without thinking heavily about the woman in the Simonides poem being both confined to a tiny space and unmoored upon unfamiliar waters, and, of course, Jack's brave actions during a harrowing escape sequence wherein, like Perseus, he essentially slays the gorgon Medusa - or rather, is responsible for the undoing of Old Nick. (In spite of the character's inherent evil, Abrahamson manages to do a great job of extracting a great performance from Bridgers which, in turn, adds a layer of humanity that far exceeds that of the book.)

Luckily for most audiences, the film subtly mutes Simonides. It's there if we want it, but I trust most eggheads will repress its use in the book once seeing the movie. And speaking of repression, one of the most moving aspects of the film is how Ma represses her pain rather than facing it. This is in direct contrast to her son Jack, whom she's sheltered from as much pain as possible so that he can hoover up every aspect of the great wide world. Ma's sacrifices and both Jack's support for his mother and his unyielding quest for knowledge are guaranteed to extract copious tears from even the most blinkered eyes.

Room is deeply moving, thanks to its evocative source material, an odd, but effective screenplay adaption by the novel's original author, to-die-for performances (especially Brie Larson as Ma) and Lenny Abrahamson's delicate direction. He's the real thing and then some. I suspect we're going to see many genuine masterpieces from Lenny Abrahamson over the next decade (or two, or three, or four, etc.).

Well, here's hoping, anyway.

Room is a Special Presentation at TIFF 2014 and is the lucky recipient of thr Grolsch People's Choice Award, and as such, will screen for free.

MR. TURNER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Opens TIFF BellLightbox via MongrelMedia

TIMOTHY SPALL:
JMW TURNER

Mr. Turner
Dir. Mike Leigh
Starring: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Lesley Manville

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It seems fitting that the first film biography of the great Romantic landscape painter JMW Turner, oft-referred to as "the painter of light", is the product of one of the world's greatest living directors, Mike Leigh (Life is Sweet, Naked, Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy). The exquisite properties of light in cinema, the glorious dance of film through a projector, the astonishing grace, promise and amalgamation of so many mediums into one, all driven by exposing and rendering the luminosity which, Turner proclaimed on his deathbed as God itself, is what yields this astonishing, moving celebration of a supremely important visual artist.

STILL ALICE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2014 - TIFF SPECIAL PRESENTATION

Hanky Honking Alzheimer's Soap/Slop

Still Alice (2014)
Dir. Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland
Starring: Julianne Moore, Kristen Stewart, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If watching the great Julianne Moore stumble about in an early-onset cloud of Alzheimer's Disease turns your crank, have I got a movie for you! For me, there's a greater disappointment than watching Moore give her all in a shamelessly by-the-numbers disease-of-the-week movie.

Seeing as she stars with Robert Pattinson (Twilight's Edward) in David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars and Kristen Stewart (Twilight's Bella) in Still Alice, I was kind of hoping for a Julianne Moore Twilight hat-trick this year, but alas, there appears to be no movie at TIFF 2014, nor anywhere on the immediate horizon in which she co-stars with (a preferably shirtless) Taylor Lautner (Twilight's Jacob). I, for one, would have been thrilled to bits if an adult remake of Shark Boy and Lava Girl with Moore and Lautner had surfaced for this very purpose. It was, however, not to be.

What we get is Moore in Cronenberg's creepy, brilliant magnifying glass hovering over the emptiness of contemporary Hollywood and sadly, Moore coupled with the dour and increasingly unwatchable Kristen Stewart in a glorified disease-of-the-week movie that has no business unspooling in major film festivals, much less any big-screen venue.

And make no mistake, Still Alice is wretched - so much so that it actually doesn't hold a candle to some of the best disease-weepies from the 70s movies-of-the-week, which offered up one Camille-like sobber-o-rama after another for the edification of North American housewives not satiated with their afternoon overdoses of soaps on the television and thus allowing them to sit on their plastic-covered chesterfields adorned in curlers stuffing bonbons down their gullets twixt a few solid honks into their hankies.

So do it, ladies (and gents of the appropriate persuasion): don those curlers and pop those chocky-treats into thine respective maws (loaded up with plenty o' Kleenex). You'll be well-equipped to waste more of your lives. Moore plays a brilliant linguist who turns 50 and still has a glorious life and career ahead of her. She's married to a wildly successful Alec Baldwin, a handsome (albeit with a paunch) doctor. On top of this, the lady's got three grown up kids. Two of the three are making her mighty proud. One of them is going to be a lawyer (and is a twin-popping, happily married breeder) and the other, a promising young doctor in med school. The one disappointment to Moore is - you guessed it - Kristen Stewart. She wants to be an actress (in this movie, not real life). It doesn't take the movie long to have Julianne forgetting a whole whack of stuff and when she's diagnosed with Alzheimer's, all hell breaks loose.

Adding even more fodder to inspire tear-gushing and snot-dribbling is that Julianne's strain of Alzheimer's is genetic which means - you guessed it - all three of her kids are prime candidates for the same thing. Oh, woe!

The movie goes through all the motions of our gal getting worse, but trying desperately to hold onto remnants of her sanity. And guess what? The disappointing child, turns out to be a champ and her closest ally during this horrendous time. Who'd a thunk it, eh?

Moore is, of course, terrific. Anyone who knows anyone with Alzheimer's will see a whole lot of truth in the performance she delivers, but that's simply not enough to carry a picture that's so ploddingly predictable and jam-packed with all manner of hackneyed elements. Directors and screenwriters Glatzer and Westmoreland manage, between the two of the them, to serve up all the requisite cliches with very little resembling a discernible style beyond standard camera jockeying.

Adapted from a bestselling novel (which I've happily not read), Still Alice scores points for being about adults and not full of chases and explosions, but it's reverted to the more egregious elements of filmic storytelling for mature audiences. It's not only pure soap suds, but its melodramatic qualities are marched out in the most by-rote fashion imaginable. What seems even more horrific is that after 20+ years of astonishing work as an actress, Moore finally stands a good chance of winning a coveted Oscar for good work in a terrible picture.

The movie does attempt to add a veneer of poeticism, especially during its final minutes, but it's too little too late and frankly, feels false within the context of the rest of the picture. All through Still Alice, I kept thinking, "Yeah, Moore is great, but so what?" This thought, of course, was in the context of Todd Haynes' masterpiece Safe, made 20 years ago (!!!) and starring Moore as a woman afflicted with massive environmental illnesses. That was truly poetic and harrowing and never once conceded to the needs of standard, obvious plot points and dialogue to make the whole thing audience-friendly. On its own, Still Alice stinks, but in contrast to Safe it's as bad a picture as one could ever imagine.

Oh, and not only is it dreadful, but it's sickeningly bourgeois. Moore and her family get to suffer in expensive homes, cottages and all adorned in the finery of the nouveau riche. I guess this is what makes the suffering palatable. God knows poor people are never afflicted with this horrendous disease and if they were, I can't imagine anyone wanting to make or see it.

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

Still Alice is a Special Presentation at TIFF 2014.

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NED RIFLE (TIFF 2014 - WORLD PREMIERE TIFF SPECIAL PRESENTATION) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Aubrey Plaza is always worth OGLING!

Ned Rifle (2014)
Dir. Hal Hartley
Starring: Liam Aiken, Aubrey Plaza, Martin Donovan, Parker Posey, Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak

Review By Greg Klymkiw

How much you respond to Ned Rifle will probably depend upon how much you can stomach the twee neo-noir quirkiness of director Hal Hartley, but mostly, how positively you responded to the first two films (Henry Fool and Fay Grim respectively) in this fairly tiresome trilogy of idiosyncratic crime comedies.

The funniest and most engaging parts of the new picture occur in its opening 20-or-so minutes wherein we’re introduced to young Ned (played throughout the series by Liam Aiken) who hits his 18th birthday as a foster child in a witness protection program. You might remember from the dreadful Fay Grim that the title character, Ned’s Mom (Parker Posey), was in pursuit of hubby Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) and became idiotically embroiled in some naughty terrorist activities. She’s now serving life in federal stir and her son’s foster family are batty evangelical Christians led by Rev. Gardner (Martin Donovan). Their kindness and religious fervour have paid off in spades since Ned’s become quite the devout follower of Jesus, but of course, with a twist.

Maintaining his devotion to Christ, but using Old Testament justification of the ‘eye for an eye’ kind, he’s convinced himself to embark upon an odyssey to track down his father and murder him. His reasoning is rooted in some perverse King James Version of restoring his Mom’s honour after it’s been sullied by the evil influence of Henry.

Fair enough, I guess.

Leaving behind the sun-dappled small-town America and the family who now love him (including a mouth-wateringly gorgeous foster sister), Henry tracks down his nutty ex-poet-laureate uncle Simon (James Urbaniak) to find Dad. Add to the mix a hot babe in the form of sexy academic Susan (Aubrey Plaza) who’s written her thesis on Simon, but who also (not too surprisingly) shares a connection to Henry.

Up to this point, things amble along in a pleasant enough fashion, but all along the way it’s impossible to remove Hartley’s tongue that’s burrowed far too deeply in his cheek. If anything, he manages to jam his tongue even deeper and it explodes through the flesh, allowing the film to careen off the rails into even more offensively twee territory.

If you can hack the clipped (to a fault) deadpan deliveries of Hartley’s self-consciously clever dialogue and the constant, machine-tooled twists and turns of the silly plot, then I suppose you’ll be in for a rollickingly jolly ride.

The rest of us, though, can stay home. We’re the plebeian curmudgeons who have come to detest the American Indie genre force-feeding at the hands of Hartley, the poster boy for the predictable sameness of so much independent cinema spewed forth from the jolly maw of Uncle Sam.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two-Stars

Ned Rifle has its world premiere as a TIFF Special Presentation during TIFF 2014.

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THE SOUND AND THE FURY (TIFF 2014 - TIFF SPECIAL PRESENTATION) - Review By Greg Klymkiw

James Franco delivers the "full retard" and Scott Haze is sheer, utter evil incarnate. Just another day o' good old finger lickin' yummy Southern Gothic 4 U 2 enjoy!

The Sound and the Fury (2014)
Dir. James Franco
Scr. Matt Rager
Starring: James Franco, Scott Haze, Jacob Loeb, Tim Blake Nelson, Joey King, Ahna O’Reilly, Loretta Devine, Janet Gretzky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Last year, James Franco plunged his lead actor Scott Haze into the unenviable position of having to go ‘full retard’ as a psychotic half-wit in Child of God, the genuinely great film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s shocking potboiler. The real impediment to Oscar glory here was not just going ‘full retard’, but the fact that Haze took a crap on screen, wiped his poopy-butt with a stick, spied on young lovers boinking whilst jerking off, slaughtering a host of honey-pies, having sex with their corpses and then donning their finery before launching into a killing rampage in drag as he goes head-to-head against a whole passel of lawmen.

Here we are, one year later, and Franco hands the brilliant Haze the role of Jason Compson, easily one of the most reprehensible figures in American literature. Haze is probably thanking Franco for this one, though, since Franco reserves the ‘full retard’ challenge all to his lonesome. Playing Jason’s tetched in the head little brother Benjy, Franco sports enormous buck-toothed prosthetics, plenty of eyeball rolling, grunting and drooling. Franco goes further on the ‘full retard’ front than any actor in film history.

This is Franco’s second stab at William Faulkner in so many years, and it mucho-outdoes his shot at As I Lay Dying. Faulkner – to my mind – is a thoroughly unsuitable literary source for film adaptation. God knows many have tried and failed miserably, but Franco just keeps on giving the gift that keeps on giving. He plucks what he loves about the book and splatters it Jackson Pollock-like on the screen. This is probably the best thing to do cinematically with Faulkner's rich, stream-of-consciousness prose. Screenwriter Matt Rager delivers a grotesque blueprint that plunges Faulkner into the same lollapalooza inbred territory as Anthony Mann's overlooked masterpiece of Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre and Elia Kazan's madcap Baby Doll.

And good goddamn, I accept this with open arms.

Here’s my bias. I love James Franco as a director. He spits in the face of everything and everybody, does what he damn well pleases and makes movies like nobody else in contemporary America. He celebrates what he's into and does it in such a go-for-broke manner, that it's hard not to respect the finished product.

Here he tackles the meandering tale of the once-rich-and-powerful Compson family dynasty of the Deep South and infuses it with the most delectably over-the-top melodrama imaginable. He divides his film into three chapters, primarily focusing upon the Compson brothers: simpleton Benjy, scumbag Jason and the doomed Quentin (Jacob Leob). In the mix we’ve got ‘fallen’ sister Caddy (Ahna O’Reilly), her ‘bastard’ child Miss Quentin (Joey King), loyal housekeeper Dilsey (Loretta Divine) and even hockey star Wayne Gretzky’s wife, Janet Jones, as the deluded Compson matriarch.

It's the family that snipes at each other, loses most of their legacy together and pretty much helplessly rue the day foul Jason took the patriarchal role. For his part, he steals, lies, vents, abuses and bullies his way through his pathetic, dwindling life.

And what of Benjy, our ‘full retard’? Well shucks, he’s a mite jealous when his beloved sister starts a-rollin’ in the hay with eager male suitors, so he begins a-stalkin’ some local gals and does somethin’ he shouldn’t ougtha be doin’.

This is pure, delicious Southern Gothic at its most insane. It even indulges in some delightful Terence Malick Tree of Life shenanigans, which play like parody of the highest order. Some might believe Faulkner would be spinning in his grave over this one, but I doubt it. I think even he might have had himself as rip-roaring a good time as I did.

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

The Sound and the Fury is a Special Presentation at TIFF 2014.

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WHIPLASH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2014 Special Presentation

Student and Teacher: FULL METAL JACKET - as it should be!

"GOOD" is never good enough!

"You are a worthless pansy-ass who's now weeping and slobbering all over my drums like a nine-year-old girl! 

Whiplash (2014)
Dir. Damien Chazelle
Starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist, Paul Reiser, Chris Mulkey
Review By Greg Klymkiw

"If you deliberately sabotage my band, I will fuck you like a pig." - Teacher to Student, Whiplash

So barks Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), a jazz instructor at a tony private music conservatory in the dirtiest of towns, the glorious NYC. Fletcher is a character who makes Gny. Sgt. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket look like your kindly old Grandma Apple Doll.

There's no two ways about it.

Fisher's a major-league prick-to-the-nth-degree, but his aim is true.

Do you think I'm fuckin' stupid? I know you were "the one"!

He believes his students are the best of the best, but frankly, for him, that's not good enough. He demands they push their gifts harder than a prize studhorse slams a mare in heat. He demands true force. He demands self-inflicted pain as well as the infliction of pain. He demands greatness. Fletcher might be bi-polar or passive-aggressive (accent on aggressive), but he knows damn well that he must be cruel to be kind. Inspiration comes to the talented only by slamming their faces repeatedly against a brick wall, and then, like some abusive parent, offering words of solace (when warranted) and continuing the cycle again and again until the student either breaks through or is broken. It's the only way. And God help you if you're just "good". The Gospel According to Fletcher (and frankly, any such teacher in the real world) is this: "There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job."

I personally believe in this philosophy and perhaps it's why I partially and so strongly responded to Whiplash, the searing story of Fletcher and his cruel, brilliant and passionate relationship with Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller), a drumming prodigy who seeks to be greater than great.

Being the greatest musician of the 20th century is anyone's idea of success.

That said, I think my personal connection to this philosophy is a drop in the bucket compared to the nasty, rip-snorting drama writer-director Damien Chazelle has wrought with this relentless sledgehammer-to-the-face of a film. I've not been so charged during a movie in a long-time. In fact, Fletcher's ferocious demands and almost vindictive bashing of students' psyches, and in particular, that of the equally obsessed student Andrew, has the visceral force of a great vigilante picture with equally compelling cat and mice at the forefront - only here, the mouse definitely becomes no mere cat, but a man - all MAN and a real one at that! Simmons's performance knocks you on your ass, but Teller holds his own with the man of iron resolve.

NOT MY TEMPO

Add to the mix, gorgeously gritty cinematography by Sharone Meir (a delicious blend of 70s pulp and colour-tinged noir) and the editing of Tom Cross that has you breathless - almost from beginning to end. I say "almost", only because Chazelle's screenplay wisely settles down with occasional moments of tenderness twixt father (Paul Reiser) and son and the less-compelling, but ultimately necessary doomed romantic relationship between Andrew and a sweet, young thing (Melissa Benoist) who must come last on the lad's list of life priorities.

What I love most about Cross's cutting is the fact that neither he nor Chazelle back away from making bold (some might erroneously say "obvious") cuts that draw attention to the virtuosity of the cinematic storytelling. I'd argue, however, it works in tandem with the mise-en-scene and the screenplay to drive a story about the sheer intensity of creation. As well, one cannot deny the tale's rhythms of mano a mano twixt Fletcher and Andrew. The act and art of creation is a war zone and Cross understands the macho tempo of this dynamic. Though Cross's cutting is flashy, it never once descends to the herby-jerky of so much contemporary cutting. Part of this comes from the wise compositions Meir and Chazelle have settled upon as well as a spectacular retro lighting scheme that plunges us into that astonishing world of 70s existential male angst - more than appropriate given the natural of the story.

The climactic sequence Chazelle delivers is a musical equivalent to a great action-suspense set-piece. Here is where the aforementioned collaboration between Cross, Meir and Chazelle explodes in all its richness. It had me breathless and on the edge of my seat upon a first viewing. Subsequent viewings have allowed me to bask in its sheer cinematic razzle-dazzle.

The movie is not at all pleasant, but its very disagreeable tone transcends all pathetic notions of palatability and finally serves up one entertaining and provocative series of cinematic blows to the gut.

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

Whiplash is a Special Presentation at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. For further info, visit the TIFF Website HERE. Released via Mongrel Media.

REVENGE OF THE GREEN DRAGONS - Review By Greg Klymkiw TIFF'14SpecialPresentation

Revenge of the Green Dragons (2014)
Dir. Andrew Lau, Andrew Loo
Screenplay: Michael Di Jiacomo
Executive Producer: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Ray Liotta, Justin Chon, Kevin Wu, Harry Shum Jr, Shuya Chang, Geoff Pierson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some pictures bring a solid pedigree to the table so that you're pretty much guaranteed a mega-quality product. Revenge of the Green Dragons is registered to an extremely prestigious stud book (the gold standard of registries in animal husbandry). One half of the picture's directing team is the prolific dynamo who launched the 2002 Hong Kong crime hit Infernal Affairs and its prequel and sequel, which, in turn, eventually yielded the American remake The Departed, Martin Scorsese's longtime-coming Oscar-winner as Best Director. Here, adding to the pedigree, Scorsese also serves as Executive Producer of this sprawling saga of Asian gangland warfare in NYC during the 1980s.

Alas, "pedigree" in the case of this new film is best linked to animal husbandry rather than anything else since Revenge of the Green Dragons is a mangy, drooling dog that's more of the mongrel rather than purebred variety.

There isn't a single original element in this ploddingly familiar tale of childhood immigrants who grow up as members of a powerful mob dynasty. Michael Di Jiacomo (whose own dubious pedigree is linked to a few obscure indie pictures) is the purported writer of the dull screenplay which trots out the usual blend of mixed loyalties, betrayals and excuses for competently-helmed sequences involving a surfeit of gunplay - none of which has much impact since the characters aren't even interesting enough to be called cardboard cutouts. The movie is full of expository narration, all meant to infuse the picture with a sense of history and epic sweep, but serving little more than to provide opportunities for posturing and over-scored, lame-duck montages of the most bargain-basement-Scorsese kind.

Ultimately, Revenge of the Green Dragons proves that no matter what the pedigree, aberrations are always a distinct possibility. This one is especially hobbled and deformed. It doesn't even have a particularly engaging spirit so it can be pitied.

This doggie is fair game for euthanasia.

And speaking of assisted suicide, the film features an especially egregious misuse of a pasty, disinterested Ray Liotta (Henry Hill from Scorsese's Goodfellas) who somnambulistically shuffles through the proceedings as an FBI agent who, on paper, is intent on breaking the mob, but in practice just looks like he needs another drink or snort.

It'd be great to see a good, kick-ass hybrid of Asian and American criminal shenanigans. This, however, is most assuredly not it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Revenge of the Green Dragons is a Special Presentation at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and distributed in Canada via VVS Films. For tix, times and venues, visit the TIFF website HERE.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

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OCTOBER GALE - TIFF 2014 (Special Presentation) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A great movie for steno-girls, retail clerks and 70-year-old grandmothers looking for cheap thrills on cable TV.

A great movie for
steno-girls,
retail clerks
and 70-year-old
grandmothers
looking for
cheap thrills
on cable TV

October Gale (2014)
Dir. Rubba Nadda
Starring: Patricia Clarkson, Scott Speedman, Tim Roth, Aidan Devine, Callum Keith Rennie

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I went to see this knowing only the title and that its start time was when I had nothing else to see. Usually, this is perfect. Knowing nothing about what you're going to see at a film festival can yield great treats. However, I knew I was in for trouble when the picture started in black with one sole, sombre note plunked on a piano.

Ugh!

When this happens, I usually think, "Oh fuck, another Canadian movie with a crappy piano score." No sooner did the next keyboard plop resonate in my auricular cavities when the soul-sucking credit "Produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada" did spew, like a spray of chunky regurgitate on-screen. Though the opening score continued with a bit more variety of piano plunking, it sounded like something rendered by a Ferrante and Teicher tribute artist on a HiFi LP in the $1 bin at a used record store.

Luckily, things began looking a bit better when the gorgeous and great Patricia Clarkson appeared as a recently widowed doctor heading up to her Northern Ontario island cottage on majestic Georgian Bay to open it up for the spring. Alas, the first 15 minutes is devoted to more Ferrante & Teicher homages as she cleans the cottage, puts dead hubby's clothing into storage, takes a boat ride and - ugh - launches into sickening flashback mode wherein we learn how much she loved now-dead hubby (Callum Keith Rennie).

I thought to myself, "Oh Jesus! Is this going to be some Harlequin Romance where she meets a hunky rural guy and falls in love with him?" Luckily, her boat goes all sputter-sputter and she calls in a distress signal to the local boat repair guy. He retrieves her boat, tells her it's going to take a few days to fix and dumps her back at the isolated island. Alone, 'natch!

Briefly I'm thinking, "Hmmmm, a hot babe alone on an island. Maybe we're going to get a throwback to 70s Canadian tax shelter thrillers and she'll be assailed by some country cousin psychopaths and have to kill them all as revenge for being gang-raped." Though there's been nothing to suggest we're going into thriller territory I'm momentarily fooled that this might be a fairly clever script that's setting us up for one thing (potential Harlequin Romance) and delivering another (the great Canadian tax shelter rape revenge thriller Death Weekend).

Soon after these delights danced across my cerebellum, Patricia Clarkson's lovely breasts are revealed in a bathtub scene.

I'm stoked.

Fooled me, again. The movie is essentially a Harlequin Romance cross-pollinated with an extremely lame, poorly executed thriller. Hunky Scott Speedman shows up on her dock, bleeding and near death from a gunshot wound. As Clarkson is a doctor she patches him up really well. At one point he gets up from bed and his pants are so low-riding that we get a nice glimpse of Speedman's upper butt cheeks and ass crack.

Can romance be far behind?

Aidan Devine, one of Canada's greatest character actors is wasted when he shows up as a friendly local. When he buggers off, Speedman is terrified. He informs Clarkson that when Devine comes back, he's going to be joined by a super-bad dude and they're both going to be dead. Good gracious!

When Devine does pop back, a semi-smarmy Tim Roth is in tow. He's hell-bent on killing Speedman for one of the stupidest reasons imaginable (I won't ruin it for you). Roth works hard enough that we can ascertain he's been paid upfront to sleepwalk through his dull role and the film delivers a few minutes of incompetently helmed suspense that might have my mother (and other 70-year-old suburban women looking for a thrill on cable) on the edge of her seat. That said, I'm sure it will also appeal to more than a few steno-girls, retail clerks and middle-aged empty-nest housewives.

How and why (aside from marginal marquee value) the filmmakers bothered to waste money on Tim Roth when the great Aidan Devine could have outacted the shit out of him is something that briefly haunted me. Even more pressing a question is this: How in God's name this movie ever landed a Special Presentation berth at one of the world's most prestigious film festivals is almost beyond me. I say "almost" because it does have Patricia Clarkson, Scott Speedman and Tim Roth in it and its picture postcard cinematography delivers enough production value to look professional on a big screen, but other than that, it's a nothing movie aimed at an under-served demographic. I've personally seen several fine low budget Canadian thrillers and horror films made this year - any of which display more thrills and virtuosity in one frame than October Gale possesses throughout its short, but still lugubriously interminable running time.

Ah well, if you fit the aforementioned demographic, go ahead. Knock yourself out. Steno-girls, retail clerks, middle-aged empty-nest housewives and 70-year-old ladies deserve movies too.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: LOWEST FILM CORNER RATING:

Delivered to films too bad to garner one-star (*). Said films would normally then receive the "One Pubic Hair" rating, however, not to besmirch the fine pubic hair recipient Sharknado by lumping it in (so to speak) with genuine turds, I was forced to create a critical rating even lower for Ridley Scott's abominable The Counsellor.

The Rating is, quite simply and evocatively:

"TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND
HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE".

As pictured to the left, this an actual turd found by myself and Project Grizzly filmmaker Peter Lynch in the illustrious Parkdale parking lot behind Harry's wherein the two of us had just dined with writer Geoff Pevere. Recipients of this hallowed rating since Scott's atrocity have been the wretched 2014 remake of Endless Love, the putrid Veronica Mars movie, the stinking Dead Before Dawn 3D and the horrendous 2014 Godzilla.

Now, please feel free to add: October Gale to the aforementioned list of recipients of this most appalling critical rating which will, one hopes, seal the work's fate in some manner of infamy.

October Gale is playing at the Toronto International Film Festival 2014 as a Special Presentation. For tix, dates and showtimes, visit the TIFF website by clicking HERE. It will be distributed in Canada via Pacific Northwest Pictures.

99 HOMES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2014 Special Presentation

99 Homes (2014)
Dir. Ramin Bahrani
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern, Tim Guinee

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Michael Shannon (Bug, Take Shelter, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done) is such a great actor, I'd be happy to watch him sitting on the throne George-Kuchar-like and reading aloud from the backs of shampoo bottles a la Woody Harrelson in the Farrelly Brothers' Kingpin as he takes a comfy, cozy and lengthy dump. For some reason, I had a hard time getting this out of my mind at about the half-way point of Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes.

It's not that there's anything especially wrong with the movie to inspire this nagging image upon my cerebellum, but at a certain point, the screenplay by Bahrani and co-writers Amir Naderi, Bahareh Azimi seemed to be treading such predictable, familiar waters that I realized I'd ultimately need to concentrate on simply enjoying Shannon in the role of a despicable realtor who specializes in foreclosing upon the homes of Americans who've been unlucky enough to get caught up in the housing crisis of the new century.

Shannon is always impossible to not watch, but when he's delivered a role, as he has here, which is essentially a humungous cut of prime, delicious steak, he's enthralling beyond all belief.

As Rick Carver, the hatchet man for banks who've placed ordinary Americans in the dire straights of multiple mortgages, Shannon is Mephistophelean as all get out. His wide, expressive eyes, his thin lips, the face which is Buster-Keaton blank until he opens and/or purses his thin lips to reveal sinister cheek-creases are all the stuff adding up to a relentlessly methodical businessman who'll stop at nothing to evict families, buy their homes for next-to-zero from the banks, renovate them as economically as possible and then flip the suckers for huge profits.

Such then is the central relationship within 99 Homes. Carver is repossessing the family home of the youthful, unemployed handyman Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield, far more acceptable in the role of a proletarian rather than the horrendous turns he's delivered in the Spider-Man reboots). The home has been mortgaged up the wahzoo by his Mom Lynn (Laura Dern) and he's forced to relocate her (as well as himself and his kids) and what few possessions they can get onto a truck into a sleazoid motel crammed with other families in the same boat. You'd think these normal Americans were living in some John Steinbeck novel and/or Third World country, but no, they're pretty much living like a vast majority of Americans these days.

Carver, however, recognizes both a spark and hunger in Nash's eyes and offers him a job on his renovation team with the offer of potentially returning the family home to him. Nash takes to the work like a bat out of frigging Hell and soon he's moved up into the role of a foreclosure agent.

It's fun and compelling to watch a relatively realistic portrayal of a scumbag and even more fun to see the youthful proletarian slide into the same shoes. Alas, where can a story like this really go, though? Hence my occasional mind-wandering at the halfway point as SOMEONE lets his CONSCIENCE get the better of him. Yes, things settle in rather predictably, but the performances are never less than first-rate and director Bahrani keeps it all moving at a decent enough clip.

Whaddya gonna do? What ails 99 Homes is the same thing that befell even Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Still, the potential to celebrate scumbaggery is always worth exploring. Unfortunately, too many films only take you so far down that path until a comeuppance for the said scumbags seems all too inevitable. I know where a film like this in the 70s might have gone, but sadly, we don't live in the 70s anymore.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

99 Homes is a Special Presentation at TIFF 2014. For more info, visit the TIFF website HERE.

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