THE HERETICS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Canadian Film Fest 2017 - Aesthetic Heresy 4 U

Who doesn't love lesbo action in horror movies?

The Heretics (2017)
Dir. Chad Archibald
Scr. Jayme Laforest
Starring: Nina Kiri, Jorja Cadence, Ry Barrett

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who doesn't love human sacrifices and devil worship? I know I do. That said, I much prefer seeing these devilish shenanigans in movies that aren't as irredeemably dreadful as The Heretics. This latest low budget horror picture from Black Fawn Films and its chief creative cook and bottle washer Chad Archibald has the dubious distinction of being one of the worst horror films I've ever seen - and that takes some doing.

On the plus side, the movie is replete with babes. One cannot quarrel with horror movies starring babes - however, if they're not naked, as they are not in The Heretics, then one must not only quarrel, but declare all out war. There is one sex scene that has nudity, and while one cannot quarrel with this, the babe doing the bumping and grinding upon the pelvis of a happy fellow is so obviously a body double for the babe who should be naked, but isn't, that all one wants to do is throw in the towel. There is also, happily, some lesbo action. One can NEVER quarrel with lesbo action, but when there isn't enough of it and it's sans nudity, then all one can really do is relax one's sphincter muscles and let loose upon the sapphically-challenged gymnastics.

That's pretty much it for the movie on the plus side, and it comes with qualifiers, so really, there's nothing much good about the movie at all.

Who doesn't love human sacrifice and devil worship?

Well, there are two elements of some genuine merit. Director Chad Archibald is enough of a pro that the camera is usually where it's supposed to be. In a movie that is afflicted with a boneheaded, muddled screenplay, his professionalism is certainly a tender mercy. The other positive element are the costumes and masks for the demon worshipping denizens of the night - very nicely done, but in service to a moronic movie.

Most of the blame must be foisted upon the purported screenplay by Jayme LaForest. Though one must also blame the production company for approving such a dreadful property and a director for even bothering to helm it, the fact remains that someone had to write (or rather, not write) this thing.

In a nutshell, we've got a brunette babe suffering from nightmares. She lives with her Mom in some nondescript suburban dwelling and attends "group". What kind of "group" it actually is seems a bit difficult to ascertain (or maybe I just couldn't bother to figure it out), but it definitely seems to be some kind of self-help kaffeeklatsch in a community hall. Our brunette babe goes to "group" with a lanky carrot-topped babe and the two of them are lovers.

Great eyes almost make up for a lack of acting talent.

One night, our toothy brunette (yes, the leading lady has one nice set of choppers, a great smile and gorgeous ocular orbs) is kidnapped and shoved into a Winnebago. She's secreted away to a cabin in the woods by some geeky guy who secures her with chains. Meanwhile, lanky Red begins a search for her lover when the only policeman in town proves to be ineffectual.

Eventually, geek boy has sex with Toothy and she begins to grow wings.

In the meantime, Lanky Red murders Toothy's Mom and the town's only cop and hightails it to the Winnebago and cabin in the woods. It seems she's the sister of the Geek and there appears to be some strange conflict between the sibs. The Geek wants to save Toothy. Lanky Red Sis wants to sacrifice her.

And yes, there appear to be other "worshippers", but none of them are distinguishable as characters. Then again, not that there are any denizens of this underpopulated movie who can even remotely be considered as characters, but the movie seems unconcerned about this.

Not only is the movie lacking in even the most basic logic, but it's utterly humourless and worst of all, it is, in no way, shape or form, suspenseful. Why it exists is beyond me. Not that Archibald's The Drownsman was actually any good, but even it had a few decent frissons in spite of its pointlessness. His previous film, Bite, however, was not only skillfully directed, but grimly scary and yes, even well written by LaForest, scribe of this woeful demon-worship vehicle.

Not only is the narrative strictly dullsville, but the dialogue is pretty much incompetent. Unfortunately, it's the worst kind of "incompetent" - it's not even bad enough to be unintentionally funny.

This might be the greatest sin of aesthetic heresy.

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
TURD DISCOVERED
BEHIND HARRY'S
CHAR BROIL and
DINING LOUNGE
For the full story behind this LOWEST Film Corner Rating Visit HERE

The Heretics had its world premiere at Canadian Film Fest 2017

ELLE - Review By Greg - TIFF 2016 - Verhoeven manages unimaginable, makes boring film

Elle (2016)
Dir. Paul Verhoeven
Scr. David Birke
Nvl. Philippe Djian
Starring: Isabelle Huppert

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It seems unthinkable that Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Showgirls, Total Recall) could actually make a boring movie. That he could make a film that's repugnant - in all the wrong ways - is equally shocking. He's done it with Elle, though.

Michèle LeBlanc (Isabelle Huppert) is raped by a ski-masked scumbag in her tony Paris digs, but she doesn't report it to the police. She has other ideas.

Michèle happens to be a dynamo in the world of gaming production. Failure eludes her because she makes her designers, colleagues and programmers suffer her sharp-tongued wrath. She knows what her gameboy customers want and, irony of ironies (ugh), the lads living in front of their gaming consoles want big boobs, blood and rape, especially rape.




Yes, she eventually tracks down her rapist, but not before Verhoeven can provide rape flashbacks and rape dreams. And isn't this all going to be oh-so Francais? She may or may not be out for revenge, but mostly, she seems fuelled by the cat and mouse aspects of the rapist stalking the rape victim and vice versa. Super Ugh!

Working with a ridiculous script, his first in the French language (from what must be a dreadful novel), Verhoeven has made a film that's vagina-stuffed with lame satirical jabs, mostly of the easy-poke variety against gaming and gamers to justify what turn out to be the rape fantasies of his leading lady.

The picture's not funny, nor suspenseful and worst of all, it's a mega-bore. I love Verhoeven, but this is a total misfire. I imagine most psueds and/or film critics will defend the picture and applaud its "bravery" and purported nods to "empowerment", but this is the domain of pinheads, not anyone with taste, compassion and humanity.




THE FILM CORNER RATING: Lowest Rating:
TURD DISCOVERED
BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL
AND DINING LOUNGE

Elle is a Mongrel Media Release playing TIFF 2016

THE EYES OF MY MOTHER - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Slaughter Slog

The worst exploitation pretends to be art.

The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Dir. Nicolas Pesce
Starring: Kika Magalhães, Will Brill, Paul Nazak, Flora Diaz, Clara Wong

Review By Greg Klymkiw

At only 77 minutes, The Eyes of My Mother feels like it's never going to end. It's one of the more disagreeable pictures I've recently had the displeasure to experience. Offensively boring (and just plain boringly offensive), it's a pretentious, nasty and misogynistic art-house-horror slug of the lowest order. What we're essentially dealing with here is a bottom feeder hoisted to heavenly heights by its makers to bamboozle audiences into thinking they're watching something lofty. Worse yet, its makers even think they've created something high-toned, but have, in fact, generated a movie squarely aimed at pseuds who will laud its affectations rhapsodically.

Director Nicolas Pesce is obviously not a nincompoop. He's put his thinking cap on for this one and he's also gifted visually, creating dense monochromatic images guaranteed to stay with you. You won't really want them cluttering your cerebral cortex, but they'll adhere to it anyway, like globs of agglutinative faecal matter tossed against a wall to see if they'll stick.

This sordid slice of rural Americana begins with a mother of Portuguese descent dissecting the head of a cow for her daughter Francisca and removing the eyeballs to teach her little lassie about the wonderful world of vision. (Oooohhhh, this is getting heady already, mais non?) As bad luck would have it, Mom allows a serial killer into the house and when Dad gets home, he discovers Francisca sitting in the kitchen whilst his wife is being hacked and bludgeoned in the bathtub.

No matter. Dad subdues the serial killer and chains him in the barn - still alive, naturally. With Francisca's help, he hauls his wife's body into the woods and buries it.

Wouldn't you?

Mother teaches daughter facts of life:
How to best remove eyeballs.

We flash forward a few years later and Francisca has blossomed into a fully grown babe (rendered in stultifying monotone by actress Kika Magalhães). Dad is constantly morose. One might think it's because he misses his wife, but since he's always watching "Bonanza" on TV, we naturally assume a steady diet of the Cartwright family is contributing to his ennui.

Francisca seems a tiny bit happier. She's surgically removed the serial killer's eyeballs and spends her days torturing and humiliating him. Eventually, when Dad dies and she tires of bathing, then sleeping with his smelly corpse, she gets a might horny and begins to seek ways to satisfy her natural urges.

This leads to her own serial killer-like tendencies coming to full fruition.

Lacking the razzle-dazzle and dark humour of something like Lucky McKee's The Woman (which it bears a few similarities to) and fraught with far too many dull Terrence Malick-like stretches, The Eyes of My Mother is little more than a wank-fest for its director and an even bigger masturbation-o-rama for the aforementioned pseuds amongst both paying audiences and film critics, all of whom want to impress each other with their nonsense-infused justifications for the sheer, nasty, empty malevolence of this horrendous picture.

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
TURD DISCOVERED
BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE
Lowest Film Corner Rating.
For elaboration on its history, usage and full meaning,
please visit HERE.

The Eyes of My Mother is an Unobstructed View release enjoying its Canadian premiere at Fantasia 2016

KNIGHT OF CUPS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Terrence Malick's Cinematic Athletic Cup

Terrence Malick's Malodorous Gems of Wisdom

Knight of Cups (2015)
Dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman,
Antonio Banderas, Brian Dennehy, Freida Pinto, Imogen Poots,
Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer, Wes Bentley, Armin Mueller Stahl, Ben Kingsley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Athletic cups come in pretty handy. They hold onto the crown jewels for dear life, protecting them from injury, sealing them in and collecting pools of nourishing, cheese-like smegma, the nectar of the Gods. This is the grand achievement of filmmaker Terrence Malick.

With Knight of Cups, Malick's created cinema's first-ever motion picture athletic cup, encasing his sweaty, salty, malodorous gems of wisdom so they can mummify and be preserved for all time. In fact, his new film might go well beyond that of an athletic cup - it's not unlike a jar of sour pickles in a brine of horse piss. The contents ain't Kosher, but they're ripe and juicy.

Knight of Cups is the scintillating portrait of a screenwriter (Christian Bale) who spends far more time wandering the beaches, streets and garden parties of Los Angeles than actually doing any writing. He is searching, you see. But for what? For what is he searching for? When he looks up at the sky, which he does quite often, he is greeted with the voice over of God (sounding suspiciously like Ben Kingsley).

"Pieces, fragments of a man," intones the voice.

"Where did I go wrong?" asks the screenwriter. "I'll throw my life away."

"Don't go back to being dead," is the retort of portent.

The screenwriter does what any screenwriter who looks at the sky too much would do. He heads out to Sunset Boulevard and visits a psychic. She begins to do his Tarot cards, but her reading confuses him even more.

"Which way should I go?" he asks.

Well, quicker than you can say "athletic cup", the screenwriter is back on a beach. He's not alone. There are frolicking babes with him, but alas, they offer little solace. He walks away to be on his own, to do what he does so well. He broods. God knows we can all relate to this. Who needs babes when brooding is so much more satisfying?

In fact, the picture contains a few barrel-loads of Christian Bale brooding.

"Howdy Doody!
Terrence Malick is the name.
Terrence Malick is my game.
I once made great movies!

Malick also breaks the movie up into chapters based on tarot cards. You don't really need to know what the cards represent, though. Malick provides explanations for you with his visual poetry which, for the most part attempts to be simplistically obtuse in all the ways Malick's become famous for since he stopped making movies people might actually enjoy.

In the chapter entitled "The Hanged Man", the screenwriter wanders through skid row and ogles alkies. "I just wanna feel, something," he intones. With a blank face, he meets up with his brother and informs us: "I loved my brother. I hated him too." This is first rate story telling. Instead of showing us the hows and whys, Malick just has the character tell us what the conflict was (and is). We also get to meet the screenwriter's father played by Brian Dennehy. He's a ranting and raving prick, though he keeps his ire to himself in what appears to be an endless monologue directed at nobody in particular. Oh, and we see some chick playing a harp. A fucking harp!

Thanks to the aforementioned, Malick has fully explained what a Hanged Man card means.

In the chapter entitled "The Hermit", the screenwriter continues to be surrounded by babes, but tellingly, he is so alone. Luckily, Malick clears matters up for us by having a bunch of dogs dive into a pool in slow motion to retrieve balls. Luckily, they are not Christian Bale's balls. Malick has encased the Bale Crown Jewels with an athletic cup.

Malick also makes this whole business abundantly unclouded by revealing that the screenwriter is attending a seemingly endless garden party with a bunch of rich assholes diving into a pool - just like the dogs! Only there are no balls for them to retrieve.

The screenwriter has been brooding this whole time and eventually he thinks he's floating. Alone. Hence, "The Hermit" and hence, the next chapter entitled "Judgement" wherein the screenwriter's character moves considerably forward by brooding. Then again, you'd brood to if you discovered that your wife was the insufferable Cate Blanchett.

Malick astutely hired the insufferable Cate Blanchett

"Do you remember how happy we were?" Cate asks. "You became so cruel and unkind."

The aforementioned is another example of Malick brilliantly avoiding any drama by having the characters talk about past, present and future conflict. Especially poignant is a scene where the couple appears to have been arguing, but the screenwriter seeks solace by staring at some guy blowing dead leaves around. In direct contrast to all this Bale-brooding, we learn that Blanchett wanted babies, in spite of the fact that she specializes in providing palliative care to people with infectious flesh disorders/diseases like leprosy.

This is no Isle of Molokaii. 'Tis only Los Angeles, but man, leprosy runs rampant.

Blanchett pointedly accuses Bale, as they walk around endlessly, looking at everything but each other: "You didn't want to be inside our marriage or," she adds with considerable heft, "you didn't want to be outside it either."

Have I mentioned that the running time of this movie is just over two fucking hours? Hell, it could have been twice the length for all its heady hardware. Witness: The screenwriter is constantly surrounded by women, yet he broods. At several points, he finds hissef in the company of nekkid broads and yet, he broods. "That's what damnation is," he opines. "Pieces of your life never coming together."

He might be looking for love, but it's in all the wrong places - mostly like the cheesy lint collecting in his sweaty navel which, he gazes at constantly (when he's not looking up at the sky).

One of the women he avoids loving asks, "What do you want from me?" The screenwriter replies, "To weave the spell of you. To make you dream." Then, as an aside, presumably for us, the audience, he adds, "Dreams are nice."

Malick shows this to be true, not by actually visualizing it, but by having Bale say, "Nobody cares about reality anymore." He follows this up with our screenwriter having empty stage-whispered conversations in a strip club. He astutely tells one of the strippers: "You live in your own little fantasy world, but you can be anything you want to be." The stripper retorts: "You can be an asshole, a saint and God."

"There's no such thing as forever," the screenwriter asserts as proceeds to push a chick around in a shopping cart.

Then he stops to look at Palm Trees.

Ever-so briefly, you stop watching the screen to check the time.

You say to yourself in an internal voiceover: "Fuck, there's still an hour left of this shit."

Unlike the rest of the sparse audience, most of whom have long-ago staggered out of the cinema, you stay in your seat, nailing your feet to the floor. If Christ had to suffer on the Cross for Our sins, the least you can do is suffer for having believed Malick is still capable of making movies as great as Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: THE TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE - LOWEST RATING

Knight of Cups plays at select cinemas via Broad Green Pictures.

PASSCHENDAELE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Cineplex Entertainment's - ahem - Continuing Commitment to Canadian Cinema: Cheap Cineplex Store Rentals on one of the WORST Canadian movies ever made! (Actually one of the worst movies - EVER!)

Cineplex Entertainment, the "proudly" Canadian movie theatre chain has always displayed a solid commitment to Canadian Cinema by not playing most Canadian Films, by providing no information on the few independent Canadian films they've pathetically played (referring to directors on their app as "Names Not Available"), charging small distributors exorbitant "virtual print fees" to play Canadian films in their theatres and, of course, playing Canadian films by the most acclaimed and beloved auteurs like Paul Gross. Now, in honour of Canada Day, Cineplex Entertainment's Cineplex Store is offering Canadian movies (they especially like) for rent in digital formats at cut-rate prices. Let us review one of these Canadian films which broke box-office records in Cineplex Entertainment cinemas with bought and paid-for grosses thanks to marketing assistance from the Canadian Government's Telefilm Canada.

NOTE: "PASSCHENDAELE" is pronounced as "pashin-dale". In honour of this fine film, herewith is a lovely witticism: A cabbie picked up a drunk lassie and she told him she needed to get to the Beer Vendor, but she didn't have enough money to take the cab there, so she would, in fact, provide him with a blow-job if he'd waive the fees. He happily agreed. As he drove to the Beer Vendor and the lassie worked upon his member prodigiously, the cabbie began to moan aloud. The young lassie looked up at him and said, "Oh, hey buddy, yer passionate." He replied, "Why thank you, indeed I am." She responded in her drunken slurring twixt slurps: "No buddy! Yer pashin it. Yer pashin the fuckin Beer Vendor."

Passchendaele (2008)
dir. Paul Gross
Starring: Paul Gross, Caroline Dhaverna

Review By Greg Klymkiw

How anyone could suggest with a straight face that Passchendaele is any good at all, renders me agog. I originally had no right to even comment on the movie a few years ago when I staggered out after the first miserable hour at its World Premiere in 2008 at the Toronto International Film Festival, but rest assured, I eventually suffered through the entire sewage bath when it opened theatrically to confirm my initial feelings.

The full dosage of Paul Gross's directorial followup to his risible curling (Yes, Curling!) "comedy" Men With Brooms (and preceding his monumentally sickening Western "comedy" Gunless) forced me to nail my feet to the floor. I have the scars to prove it.

This $20,000,000.00 war film (a bit of an oxymoron in this day and age, anyway - even before going in you know you're in for some bargain basement carnage) is one of the most embarrassing, poorly written, miserably directed excuses for something purporting to be a motion picture that I have ever had the utter displeasure to waste precious hours of my life on. The first few minutes of this Dollar-rama Saving Private Ryan had a few visceral shocks to be sure (thanks, no doubt to a decent second unit team), but once the stiff-jawed leading man (Gross, 'natch) settled his sorry shell-shocked ass back on the homefront, I pretty much had to nail my kneecaps to the seat to stay for entirety of this jaw-droppingly wretched picture.

The paper thin characters/caricatures all deliver mind-numbingly awful dialogue as the contrived story plods interminably along its dreary way - treading heavily into the territory of melodrama of the worst sort. Don't get me wrong - I love war pictures and I especially love war pictures that have both melodrama and sentimentality. That said, there is good melodrama and bad melodrama and there is sentimentality that resonates with the emotional heartache that someone like John Ford was able to master with his eyes sewn shut.

Alas, Paul Gross is most certainly not John Ford - Garry Marshall with a severe migraine, perhaps, but not much more than that. Gross directs with the grace of a faulty jackhammer that keeps missing its mark. Perhaps he might have made a good picture if he'd produced and starred in it and let a real writer and director do their respective jobs.

Gross is definitely a good actor and the camera loves him, but in this movie he lopes about like some pretty boy Gary Cooper over-dosed on Maple Syrup, uttering dialogue that not even Ed Wood would have been capable of writing. In fact, let it be said now that as a writer, Ed Wood was pretty much Clifford Odets compared to Gross.

The movie, for all its utter stupidity, reached some kind of nadir when Gross chose to crosscut between graphic descriptions of what shrapnel can do to the human body whilst a loving couple bang each other with youthful abandon. Spielberg did a similar thing in Munich. I applauded Spielberg for the audacity, but couldn't really forgive the stupidity - especially since he had his lead character boinking wifey whilst having flashbacks to violent killings he was not even present to have experienced. I was even convinced nobody could have topped such idiocy, but Paul Gross managed to do it. Alas, bereft of Spielberg's panache, which made Munich barely watchable, Gross has little to offer as a director save for complete incompetence.

If only Gross had been able to rise to the level of M.O.W. competence, I might have been able to avoid putting holes in my feet and kneecaps (in addition to not having the taste of bile in my mouth, which comes up on me even when I think about the picture). Alas, my desires fell upon deaf ears. Between those deaf ears, however, I can only assume plenty of air resides happily and fetidly within.

Happy Fucking Canada Day!

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL & DINING LOUNGE

This is a rating The Film Corner delivers 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.

The Rating is, quite simply and evocatively:

"TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL & DINING LOUNGE".

As pictured, 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.

Now, please feel free to acknowledge, as I do, pictures displaying the most appalling ineptitude, exceeding that of even Sharknado. It is a critical rating which will, one hopes, seal the selected work's fate in some manner of infamy.

FILMS WHICH HAVE RECEIVED THIS RATING

CLICK ON TITLE FOR REVIEW

THE VATICAN EXORCISMS

MUCK

CORNER GAS - THE MOVIE

OCTOBER GALE

DEAD BEFORE DAWN 3-D

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

GODZILLA 2014

VERONICA MARS

ENDLESS LOVE 2014

SEX AND THE CITY 2

THE COUNSELLOR

MR. NOBODY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Something execrable to blame the French for

Mr. Nobody (2010)
dir. Jaco Van Dormael
Starring: Jared Leto, Diane Kruger, Linh Dan Pham and Sarah Polley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Oh joy! Just what the world needed! More whimsy in the cinema!

For this, I blame the French.

Though the director of this godawful pastiche of science fiction, magic realism and whimsy Jaco Van Dormael is a Belgian filmmaker, let us not forget that Belgium itself borders on France and half its population, the Walloons, speak French.

As much as I'd prefer to blame the movie on the Walloons, the fact remains that this Belgian-French-German-Canadian patchwork quilt co-production has a much greater French pedigree than mere Walloonery will allow. So again, let's do the math by examining the French content of the co-production entities: half of Belgium speaks French, Belgium borders France, Germany was obsessed with occupying France and one of Canada's official languages is French.

The sum of the above is clear. We can blame the French with no guilt whatsoever.

In fact, by the end of Mr. Nobody, I was reminded of the lyrics penned by Mel Brooks and sung by the inimitable Dom De Luise in Blazing Saddles:

Throw out your hands/Stick out your tush/Hands on your hips/Give 'em a push/You'll be surprised/You're doing the French Mistake/Voila!

Yes, Voila! A French Mistake, indeed!

When this film was first released theatrically, we were inflicted, around the same time with the release of Jeunet's execrable (and French, 'natch) vat of whimsy Micmacs. Mr. Nobody, a dreadfully pretentious movie that purports to be about something, is finally so confusing and tedious, that it's ultimately not about much of anything at all. And unlike Micmacs, which at least tried (pathetically) to be funny, Mr. Nobody is mind-numbingly humourless.

That said, what might have perked things up in Mr. Nobody could have been a few digitally-rendered appearances from the late, great Chief Dan George as Old Lodge Skins from Arthur Penn's film adaptation of Little Big Man. Given the film's reliance on endless, trippy digital effects, this is not such an odd expectation, especially since our title character Mr. Nobody appears in the opening with Jared Leto (the go-to guy when Jake Gyllenhaal isn't available and, of course in Jake's case, vice-versa) in full old-man makeup, not unlike Dustin Hoffman's Jack Crabb. Being interviewed by a dweeby journalist, not unlike the one played by William Hickey in Penn's seminal 70s western, Mr. Nobody, it seems, is the oldest man alive in a dystopian future.

And boy, does he have a whopper to tell, not unlike Jack Crabb in Little Big Man.

Hell, why didn't Jaco Van Dormael go for a digital merging of Chief Dan George, Dustin Hoffman and Jared Leto in these sequences? It might have made the whole affair palatable. (Well, not really, but it would have been good for a few laughs.)

In reality, it seems Mr. Nobody is a man living in a world where everyone has become immortal except for him and he's part of some odd reality-TV death-watch because he has not succumbed to the stem-cell thing-a-muh-bobby that keeps everyone else in the film alive. He eventually begins to tell his story to the reporter and what we get is a story that gives us several versions of his life, most notably three different relationships with three women he loved, or could have loved, or should have loved (Kruger, Pham and Polley).

Or, uh, something like that. Who the fuck knows?

In his dotage and on the verge of death, he contemplates whether he made the right decisions in his life. The tale is told in triplicate and appears to be rooted in two significant moments from his childhood. This is, however, one of the film's many problems. We're shown how his life could have been when he's forced to choose between living with his mother and father when they decide to separate. We see his life with Mom and then with Dad. But as well, the other significant fork-in-the-road moment occurs when he spies three different little girls - all of whom become his wife in the different imaginings of where his life does indeed go.

Well, which is it? The first or the second? Why both? Well, because the director wanted it this way, that's why. He assumed, no doubt, that it would give him more options to deliver a "mind-blowing" series of stories.

Not content with this incongruity, Van Dormael presents the entire thing in a hodge-podge whilst tossing out teasing references to the "butterfly effect" and "quantum theory". Flash forwards, flash backs - here, there and everywhere - are all presented to be significant with a capital "S".

I was reminded, somewhat, of Kurt Vonnegut's great book (and George Roy Hill's terrific film adaptation of it) "Slaughterhouse Five" where we bounce between past, present and future. It made sense there because the central character Vonnegut creates is "unstuck in time" - a joyous and painful predicament since the character must, for an eternity, experience his birth, life and death. This fractured, intricately-etched approach to presenting the narrative was rooted strongly in the science-fiction "logic" of the piece, whereas a similar approach in Mr. Nobody is there, simply because Van Dormael wants it to be there. Even worse is that the fragmented nature of the movie seems to pull a Christopher ("One Idea") Nolan Memento reverse order to the events.

I think.

Whatever, this movie is dreadful enough without conjuring up memories of Nolan's pretentious 2000 pretence-o-rama neo-noir twaddle.

One of the more idiotic touches in Mr. Nobody is the name chosen for Mr. Nobody in his younger years which is... okay, now wait for it...Nemo.

I mean, Good God! NEMO!!!??? Is writer-director Jaco Van Dormael on crack? Does he really expect us all to "ooohhh" and "aaaahhh" over the apparent genius and GREAT SIGNIFICANCE of naming the younger version of Mr. Nobody with a word meaning "no man" or, if you will, "no one" in Latin. This reference also conjures up that of Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", but I suspect Von Dormael was more inspired by the dark fairytale qualities of the brilliant turn of the century comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland". If only Mr. Nobody proved to be as significant and original as that work.

It's not.

Mr. Nobody is one of those boneheaded exercises that pretends to be more intelligent than it is. Von Dormael, no doubt, believes in his "genius" and so do the audiences that smugly believe they're watching great art. They can be dazzled by the striking visuals and non-linear quality in order to feel good that what they're indulging in is not a machine-tooled Hollywood blockbuster from Michael Bay.

Van Dormael has created the greatest aesthetic crime - far greater than anything Michael Bay has foisted upon us - he's machine-tooled an art film for dummies.

There's not much to recommend here. However, poor Leto does what he can with the ludicrous role foisted upon him and the movie does feature a great performance from Sarah Polley as one of Nemo's wives. Playing a bi-polar housewife, Polley takes the kind of chances and delivers the kind of performance that proves once again why she's one of the world's great actresses. She's raw and real, unlike the rest of Van Dormael's candy-floss "complexity". But seeing as Polley also appears in Vincenzo Natali's terrific 2009 Splice, you're better off seeing that. You get a great Sarah Polley performance in a movie that respects its audience and manages to serve up something that's as entertaining as it is intelligent.

All that Mr. Nobody serves up, is the pathetic work of one pretentious, overrated, talentless hack:

Jaco Van Dormael.

He's the real Mr. Nobody.

THE FILM CORNER'S LOWEST RATING:
THE TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S
CHAR-BROIL & DINING LOUNGE
Click HERE for a full explanation of this woeful rating.

Mr. Nobody is available on Magnolia Home Entertainment Blu-Ray and DVD. And get this, it's available separately as an EXTENDED director's cut for all those who might enjoy some cinematic self-flagellation.

CORNER GAS THE MOVIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Canuck TV show on big screen, eh

Here be a real knee-slapper from CORNER GAS THE MOVIE
Nyuck. Nyuck. Nyuck. Are you be laughing yet?
It be real funny, eh? It be Canadian, eh.
Come on! Laugh, goddamn ye! LAUGH!
Ah, fuck you, gimme a beer, eh.

Corner Gas The Movie (2014)
Dir. David Storey
Scr. Brent Butt,
Andrew Carr, Andrew Wreggitt
Starring: Brent Butt, Gabrielle Miller, Fred Ewanuick, Eric Peterson, Janet Wright, Tara Spencer-Nairn, Lorne Cardinal, Nancy Robertson, Don Lake, Reagan Pasternak, Karen Holness, Cavan Cunningham, Graham Greene

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Canadian TV series Corner Gas was an undeniable smash. For six seasons, its ratings kicked everything off the charts, including big American programs. Its worldwide sales have also been through the roof. The show could probably have gone on for a few more seasons, but its creator Brent Butt bravely decided to pull the plug on a high note. The final episode drew a staggering three-million-plus Canadian viewers.

THE FILM CORNER presents THE 10 WORST MOVIES of 2014 as selected by Greg Klymkiw.

The Film Corner's
10 WORST MOVIES OF 2014
as selected by
Greg Klymkiw

2014 had its fair share of dreadful movies. A whopping four titles received my lowest rating: THE TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE. Below you'll get a link to my original review (by clicking on the title of the movie) and a brief italicized quotation from said review.

In alphabetical order, The 10 Worst Movies of 2014:

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2
Andrew Garfield is a woeful Peter Parker. Upchuck at this, web-slingers: An annoying hedgehog tuft of hair upon his oversized gourd-like cranium, a thin, misshapen long face that's seemingly being winched from his jaw to ground level, weasel-like eyes, crooked smirk and shrivelled proboscis with its perpetually upturned tip and an irremovable sneer. I won't even get started on his spindly Ichabod-Crane-like body. Oh, and it's 142 minutes long.

ENDLESS LOVE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Masterpiece of American Lit destroyed a 2nd time in 33 years.

The TURD

Endless Love (2014) Dir. Shana Feste
LOWEST RATING: "The Turd discovered behind Harry's Charbroil and Dining Lounge"
Starring: Gabriella Wilde, Alex Pettyfer, Bruce Greenwood, Joely Richardson, Robert Patrick

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Each time a song was insultingly coughed up into my face like some lump of technicolor phlegm by one of the infinite number of contemporary performers on the soundtrack of this horrendous 2014 film adaptation of Scott Spencer's magnificent novel, all I kept thinking was how much these gibbering gibbons had less collective talent than an infected cyst lodged deep inside Lionel Richie's ass-crack and a snot-tangled nostril hair poking out of the proboscis of Diana Ross. They were, of course, the duo du jour who crooned a number-one-with-a-bullet duet of the execrable (Oscar-nominated!!!) theme song "Endless Love" from Franco Zeffirelli's abominable 1981 picture which, like this 2014 version, also butchered the same great book. The intrusive pop tunes become so annoying - wedged, as they are into scenes like unwelcome music videos or worse, cascading noisily over dialogue - that they make Christophe's Beck's whiny instrumental score seem just this side of a lobotomized Bernard Herrmann as rendered by the 101 Strings Orchestra.

However, let it be said now, that the 1981 Endless Love which, was a sludge heap of immense proportions, must now surely be considered one of the greatest movies ever made compared to this 2014 bowl of Charles Manson's anal drippings. If Zeffirelli created a cinematic equivalent to an aborted foetus served up on a dollar-store paper plate, then it's clear the idiot-sans-savante, Shana Feste (she of the abysmal Country Strong) and who purportedly directed this version, must surely have outdistanced the cinematic abortionist styling of Zeffirelli and bloody well ripped a foetus from a womb with a rusty coat hanger, then stomped upon the gelatinous blob with the abandon of a lead performer in a crack-fuelled performance of "Lord of the Dance", then took a huge, rancid crap upon it and finally, with a hearty "Voila!", called it a movie.

I really have to ask: Why bother making this movie if the goal was not to improve upon Zeffirelli's? If the goal was to improve upon it, the manner in which its makers went about doing so suggests they must surely be afflicted with (what Borat might call) "the retardation". And, of course, the more pressing question is this: Why even bother to adapt a great book that, given its vivid characters, political subtext, emotional landscape, rich setting and superb story structure - all of it sitting there for even the most unimaginative filmmakers to take advantage of - why, oh why, oh why, butcher and/or patchwork quilt everything that makes the story great in the first place? If any book seemed movie-ready, it was this one and yet, it took not one, but two sets of brick-heads to screw it up within the course of Christ's rather short lifespan, 33 years.

At least Zeffirelli, in his addled fashion, attempted (albeit badly) to inject the movie with something resembling genuine passion and even vaguely acknowledged elements of Spencer's book that anyone with half-a-brain would have to do. Such is not the case here. The gaggle of morons leading the 2014 charge upon Spencer's fine prose appear to have been interested in crafting little more than an innocuous machine-tooled teen romance aimed at a Valentine's Day opening to sucker in as many undiscriminating female viewers as possible. I have no doubt the brain dead little ladies will get exactly what they paid for.

While it is true that every single person involved in the writing, direction and production of Endless Love 2014 is clearly a moron, even they must be bloody Rhodes Scholars compared to the brain-bereft slugs at Universal Pictures who hold all the remake rights to Spencer's book and chose to green light this utterly detestable piece of work in just the manner in which it's been wrought.

Endless Love tells the tale of teen lovers David (Alex Pettyfer) and Jade (Gabriella Wilde). He's poor. She's privileged. He's unsure about his plans after high school graduation. She's headed for university. She's going to be an eminent doctor just like her Dad, Hugh (Bruce Greenwood). Pater is, to make things interesting, protective and controlling to almost psychopathic extremes (with more than a few Oedipal peccadilloes). He clearly disapproves of Jade's boyfriend. Eventually, he places a restraining order against David. Jade moves on, unhappily. Their love, however, is endless. David comes to Hugh's manse to claim the woman he loves. Dad knocks a candle over. The house is soon ablaze. David saves Hugh's life. Hugh comes to accept David. Jade is happy. David is happy. Their love, you see, is endless.

Ugh.

None of this has anything to do with Scott Spencer's novel - a book so romantic, it hurts, literally. The book slashes, scourges, stabs, cuts, saws away at the bone and greedily sucks out the marrow. There isn't a wildly romantic beat that doesn't alternately soar AND emit pain. The novel brilliantly fucks with everyone's notions of romantic love, but does so in a way that we begin to question if its portrait of aching love is really as aberrant as we've been told to believe. Instead we accept, nay - we EMBRACE - that THIS is what love, in fact, MUST be.

Romantic love in its purest state MUST be a sickness. If it doesn't hurt, and hurt BAD, how can there be joy?

Spencer's tale of obsession, familial dysfunction and love is so excruciating, so aching, so debilitating that we, as readers, are plunged into an emotional landscape that's scary beyond belief - mostly because it's so true, so familiar, so real and finally one of the few literary depictions of love to have the courage to proclaim that the purest, most intense form of love borders on the aberrant, the antisocial and yes, even (at least in the eyes of society), the criminal. Spencer's story begins with pain and destruction, with fire - one that rages literally so that we never forget what burns beneath the flesh.

The movie that resides in Spencer's book continues to remain untapped - dormant. Zeffirelli missed the boat, but Feste jumps aboard and just sinks it without even trying. Casting Gabriella Wilde and Alex Pettyfer is the height of stupidity. Both actors are so insipid that neither of them feels like they're in a movie based upon one of the greatest works of literary art in the history of American letters. Instead, they both come across as if they're hitting their marks on some TV soap opera. They're as bland as Wonder Bread and on that basis alone, there's very little reason to care a whit about these people as characters. There is one fine performance in the film and one only wishes that the stunning malevolence, yet odd humanity displayed by Bruce Greenwood could have saved itself for another and better screen adaptation. Alas, he's wasted here.

The best thing about Endless Love, the movie, is the freedom to just skip it.

Just skip it and read Spencer's book. It's so great you won't be able to put it down and after you've read it once, you'll want to go back to it again and again. God knows, I have. For 35 years it's been a book that I am always happy to revisit and experience at various junctures of my life and, most importantly, at ever shifting stages of my life experience. It grows with you and constantly offers its own form of endless love - the ability of art to reflect life and, in turn, give you the sort of nourishment you need to survive - to fill your head and heart with truth and beauty - neither of which are EVER on display in this utterly abhorrent, despicably repugnant and contemptible pile of trash.

See Endless Love at your peril. I can pretty much guarantee the screen will be full of buzzing flies, all seeking resting points to devour the stools deposited by its filmmakers.

"Endless Love" is playing theatrically via Universal Pictures.

TORONTO AFTER DARK 2013 - ROUNDUP - THE BEST OF THE FEST - KLYMKIW ACCOLADES - By Greg Klymkiw

Another year of Toronto After Dark Film Festival has ended. Recently TADFF 2013 announced their audience awards and I've decided to hand out a few of my own. Here then are the Film Corner's Accolades and Excretions. The accolades receive my citation appropriately named The Val Lewton Oblation for Genre Excellence and the more dubious films receive my hallowed excretions in the form of my very special "Turd Behind Harry's Char Broiled Burgers and Dining Lounge" - a genuine artifact discovered by myself and "Project Grizzly" director Peter Lynch. Both seem ideal ways to celebrate the best and worst. So, without further delay, here are the Greg Klymkiw Accolades and Excretions for the 2013 Edition of TADFF 2013. ENJOY!

GREG KLYMKIW'S ACCOLADES AND EXCRETIONS

2013 TORONTO AFTER DARK FILM FESTIVAL

Greg Klymkiw's "Film Corner Accolades" By Film:

SEPTIC MAN - Winner of 10 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Canadian Feature Film: SEPTIC MAN, Jesse Thomas Cook
Best Screenwriting: Jesse Thomas Cook, Tony Burgess, SEPTIC MAN
Best Art Direction/Production Design: Jason David Brown, SEPTIC MAN
Best Makeup: Alex Rotundo, SEPTIC MAN
Best Actress (Supporting): Nicole G. Leier, SEPTIC MAN
Best Social Commentary: SEPTIC MAN
Most Disgusting Movie: SEPTIC MAN
Best Movie Demanding a Sequel: SEPTIC MAN
Best Line of Dialogue: "I’m a civic-minded shit sucker." SEPTIC MAN
Best Babe Taking a Shit and Vomiting: Nicole G. Leier, SEPTIC MAN

EEGA - Winner of 7 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Foreign Film: EEGA, S. S. Rajamouli
Best Editing: Venkateswara Rao, Kotagiri, EEGA
Best Musical Score: M.M. Keeravani, EEGA
Best Special Visual Effects: Makuta Arts, EEGA
Best Comedy/Laughs: EEGA
Best Villain: Sudeep in EEGA
Most Original Film: EEGA

WILLOW CREEK - Winner of 6 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Feature Film: WILLOW CREEK, Bobcat Goldthwait
Best Horror Film: WILLOW CREEK
Best Director: Bobcat Goldthwait, WILLOW CREEK
Best Actress (Lead): Alexie Gilmore, WILLOW CREEK
Best Ass Cheeks: Bryce Johnson, WILLOW CREEK
Best Movie To Watch With An Audience: WILLOW CREEK

FOUND - Winner of 5 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Actor (Lead): Gavin Brown, FOUND
Most Promising Young Director (Feature): Scott Schirmer, FOUND
Best Opening Title Sequence: FOUND
Best Gore: FOUND
Best Necrophelia: FOUND

BOUNTY KILLER- Winner of 4 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Action Film: BOUNTY KILLER
Best Action Scenes: BOUNTY KILLER
Best Hero: Christian Pitre as "Mary Death" BOUNTY KILLER
Best Killing: BOUNTY KILLER

THE GUEST - Winner of 2 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Short Film: THE GUEST, Jovanka Vuckovic
Most Promising Young Director (Short): Jovanka Vuckovic, THE GUEST

THE MACHINE - Winner of 2 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Science Fiction Film: THE MACHINE
Best Babe: Caity Lotz, THE MACHINE

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE - Winner of 2 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Cinematography: Ryan Samul, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
Best Ensemble Cast: WE ARE WHAT WE ARE

THE BANSHEE CHAPTER - Winner of 1 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Scariest Movie: THE BANSHEE CHAPTER

SILENT RETREAT - Winner of 1 Greg Klymkiw "Film Corner Accolades"
Best Actor (Supporting): Robert Nolan, SILENT RETREAT

Greg Klymkiw's "Film Corner Accolades" By Category:

Best Feature Film: WILLOW CREEK, Bobcat Goldthwait
Best Short Film: THE GUEST, Jovanka Vuckovic
Best Foreign Film: EEGA, S. S. Rajamouli
Best Canadian Feature Film: SEPTIC MAN, Jesse Thomas Cook
Best Action Film: BOUNTY KILLER
Best Horror Film: WILLOW CREEK
Best Science Fiction Film: THE MACHINE
Best Movie To Watch With An Audience: WILLOW CREEK
Best Director: Bobcat Goldthwait, WILLOW CREEK
Best Movie Demanding a Sequel: SEPTIC MAN
Best Screenwriting: Jesse Thomas Cook, Tony Burgess, SEPTIC MAN
Best Cinematography: Ryan Samul, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
Best Editing: Venkateswara Rao, Kotagiri, EEGA
Best Art Direction/Production Design: Jason David Brown, SEPTIC MAN
Best Musical Score: M.M. Keeravani, EEGA
Best Makeup: Alex Rotundo, SEPTIC MAN
Best Special Visual Effects: Makuta Arts, EEGA
Best Actor (Lead): Gavin Brown, FOUND
Best Actor (Supporting): Robert Nolan, SILENT RETREAT
Best Actress (Lead): Alexie Gilmore, WILLOW CREEK
Best Actress (Supporting): Nicole G. Leier, SEPTIC MAN
Best Ensemble Cast: WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
Most Promising Young Director (Feature): Scott Schirmer, FOUND
Most Promising Young Director (Short): Jovanka Vuckovic, THE GUEST
Scariest Movie: THE BANSHEE CHAPTER
Most Original Film: EEGA
Most Disgusting Movie: SEPTIC MAN
Best Action Scenes: BOUNTY KILLER
Most Original Film: EEGA
Best Social Commentary: SEPTIC MAN
Best Comedy/Laughs: EEGA
Best Monster/Creature: SEPTIC MAN
Best Babe: Caity Lotz, THE MACHINE
Best Hero: Christian Pitre as "Mary Death" BOUNTY KILLER
Best Villain: Sudeep in EEGA
Best Babe Taking a Shit and Vomiting: Nicole G. Leier, SEPTIC MAN
Best Line of Dialogue: "I’m a civic-minded shit sucker." SEPTIC MAN
Best Ass Cheeks: Bryce Johnson, WILLOW CREEK
Best Opening Title Sequence: FOUND
Best Killing: BOUNTY KILLER
Best Gore: FOUND
Best Necrophelia: FOUND

Review Links:

SEPTIC MAN
EEGA
WILLOW CREEK
FOUND
BOUNTY KILLER
THE GUEST
THE MACHINE
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
THE BANSHEE CHAPTER
SILENT RETREAT

Greg Klymkiw's "FILM CORNER EXCRETIONS" - Worst of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2013

Worst Films: STALLED and ODD THOMAS

Most Disappointing Narrative, but with Promising Direction: SILENT RETREAT

Most Mediocre Display of Calling-Card Competence: SOLO
Worst Direction: Stephen Sommers, ODD THOMAS
Worst Screenwriting: Corey Brown, Tricia Lee, SILENT RETREAT
Worst Movie with Decent Lesbo Action: STALLED

Review Links:

SILENT RETREAT
ODD THOMAS
STALLED
SOLO

FULL LIST OF OFFICIAL TADFF 2013 AUDIENCE AWARDS HERE