BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Toby Jones overshadows Berberian Pretensions

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
dir. Peter Strickland **1/2
Starring: Toby Jones
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Sound has been with movies almost from the beginning. Long before Al Jolson uttered the immortal words "You ain't heard nothin' yet" in 1927's The Jazz Singer, filmmakers experimented with having original scores composed for their films and even designing live foley and sound effects - all of which were achieved by full orchestras for some of the bigger releases in more established picture palaces. Once the "talkies" came, though, a whole new art and craft began to develop - not just synch sound recordists on set, but all the magicians in the sound studios who created effects, mixed and tweaked the sound and edited the sound.

In this day and age, sound has become, for better or worse (and depending on the film), the primary instigation for how, why, where and when to actually make picture cuts in genre pictures. Sadly, far too many contemporary directors that have absolutely no eye for creating decent action or suspense sequences, rely solely on sound to make up for their lack of talent. Or rather, they think they know precisely what they're doing and have their butts saved by editors as well as the low standards of audiences all afflicted with ADD.

One dreadful (and idiotically overrated) director after another (Christopher Nolan and JJ Abrams to name two especially egregious members of this ever-expanding club of dimwits), piece together a wide variety of badly composed, poorly conceived and mostly close shots, throw them into the post-production blender where picture editors must save the miserable footage by using sound as the driving force behind their cuts rather than propelling the image forward to hit dramatic beats. The moron directors think it's all about pace and creating suspense from cacophony when in actual fact, this style of shooting and cutting exhausts an audience to a point where watching the film has less to do with being able to follow a story as it is to be whacked repeatedly in the face.

We're bludgeoned and pummelled senselessly by sound and a whole whack of great artists and craftspeople in this field are turned into volume (of the amount AND level of audio variety) generators.

While, there are a number of great movies about movies, the only one that brilliantly and perfectly captures the art of sound men is still Brian DePalma's seminal thriller Blow Out which starred John Travolta as a movie sound recordist who tries to solve a mystery using the location sound he's recorded. (The Conversation counts as a great "sound" picture, but its focus is surveillance rather than the movies.)

Berberian Sound Studio could have been the best movie about sound in movies since DePalma's mournful thriller, but finally, it achieves that for about 30 of its 92 minutes until it starts spinning its wheels and diving into bargain basement Lynch-like surrealism and sledge hammer (albeit somewhat disingenuous) commentary on the effects of screen violence.

But, first, let's concentrate on the good.

Set during the heyday of Italian horror/suspense thrillers of the 70s, the picture tells the tale of Gilderoy (Toby Jones), a pathologically introspective sound man (which, ultimately, all great sound guys must be). He's as twee and British as Queen Elizabeth (but not quite as inbred) and he's taken a job presiding over the aural arts being applied in post-production to the latest blood-spattered giallo epic by Santini (Antonio Mancino), the reigning maestro of spaghetti horror.

At first, the film is a loving homage to the magnificent giallo genre and a great fish out of water tale. As Gilderoy works his sound magic on this ultra-violent and decidedly misogynistic gore-fest, things slowly and creepily build (not unlike the best Polanski) to a point where dream, reality and nightmare collide and eventually cross a line where we're experiencing a potential mental breakdown.

Alas, once the picture crosses over into this territory, tedium starts to set in. It's too bad. Toby Jones delivers a crackling good performance, whilst the production design and cinematography go above and beyond the call of duty in creating an atmosphere that seems like it was ripped out of the single greatest movie decade in the history of movies. But, as sure as Dario Argento is Italian, Gilderoy's mind starts to crack under the weight of the long hours, a xenophobic attitude (on both sides of the equation) and image after image of the most brutal violence against women.

What's a bit disappointing is that this is our expectation almost from the beginning and our hope, because the first half hour IS so cool and atmospheric (and a movie geek's wet dream), is that it will not veer into familiar territory. As such, the movie feels like a short film idea stretched out interminably over 90 minutes.

It was fun, however, being in a sound studio that bore all the familiar traces of what it was like to work with real film, mag stock and optical. No digital allowed, thanks! Weirdly, though, the most disappointing aspect next to the by-the-numbers surrealism is the fact that the movie SOUNDS like most movies today.

Oh, how I wish it all sounded like a great centre-speaker mono mix with that gentle hiss that can only emanate from optical and analog sound. If Berberian Sound Studio truly had the courage of its convictions - it should have adhered to every element of the period.

A good script might have worked wonders, also.

"Berberian Sound Studio" originally played during the Toronto International Film Festival's 2012 edition of the Vanguard series. It is currently in theatrical release via FilmsWeLike. In Toronto, it is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

PARADISE: LOVE - DVD review - Review By Greg Klymkiw - First in Seidl's Paradise Trilogy

Paradise: Love (2012) *****t
dir. Ulrich Seidl
Starring:Margarethe Tiesel, Peter Kazungu

Review By Greg Klymkiw
"Never have I looked so directly into hell."
-Werner Herzog on Animal Love, by Ulrich Seidl

One almost imagines an off-screen Julie Andrews singing "These are a Few of My Favourite Things" as the lens of filmmaker Ulrich Seidl greedily drinks in globs of fleshy pink corpulence jiggling like mounds of jello, streaked with road maps of stretch marks boring through virtual mountain ranges of cellulite and grotesque cauliflower-like skin tags gripping desperately to spongy thighs like bats in a cave. But no, as the blonde blob adorned in a sun hat flip-flops onto the sunny airport tarmac of a Kenyan resort, surrounded by her equally porcine 40-50-something Austrian maidens, she is greeted with the happy voices of a welcoming party as they joyfully croon "Hakuna Matata." Once happily ensconced in the paradise of the resort, our jolly Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) ogles the rich, lithe, cocoa bodies of her male hosts, salivating with the same delightful desire she might express when gazing upon a platter of rich Viennese pastries, imagining the joy of stuffing them all down her expansive, greedy gullet.

That said, Teresa looks like someone's mother.

And indeed she is. She's left her nasty, blubbery smart-phone-obsessed daughter in the capable care of an aunt. Also behind her is the daily toil of caring for extremely mentally challenged adults. However, the loneliness permeating her single parent existence will soon be filled to overflowing. "Filled" is indeed the operative word here.

She will soon enter the pleasurable heart of darkness known as sex tourism and we know, within seconds, that we have plunged ourselves yet again into the wonderful world of Ulrich Seidl. As noted by director Werner Herzog upon seeing Seidl's early documentary Animal Love, we too are looking "directly into hell".

Seidl is no ordinary obsessive. He's an artist with one of the most unique voices in contemporary cinema. His early documentaries exposed things about humanity (and by extension, ourselves) that we all try to deny as being within us and the rest of the whole wide world. Where Seidl differs from traditional documentarians is his insistence upon shooting in long takes - expertly composed shots with exquisite lighting (or in some cases, starkly appropriate such as when his camera trained itself upon the aforementioned individuals who truly loved their animals - a lot!)

All this went several steps further, however, once Seidl switched gears in 2001 and began to apply his unique mise-en-scene and obsessions in the world of drama with what is inarguably still his greatest picture Dog Days.

Paradise: Love isn't too far behind in terms of its brilliance and impact. The tale of the aforementioned Teresa might prove far to unsettling for some, but like all Seidl, patience and perseverance with pay off.

Some accuse him of being little more than a cinematic equivalent to a freakshow impresario, but this is to remain myopic to what he's really up to. Seidl is indeed a humanist who seeks his quarry amongst the extremities of mankind (and most notably in the backyards of Austria).

With Paradise: Love, Seidl unflinchingly charts a woman's descent into satisfying her most basic sexual needs by exploiting those who are so poor they will do whatever they have to do in order to survive.

Teresa parades along the Kenyan beaches in outfits that accentuate her strudel and schnitzel induced corpulence. It's her fat face emblazoned with lustful wonder that ultimately betrays her slatternly desires. Surrounded by eager, young and almost criminally gorgeous Kenyan men who vie for her attention in the hope she'll buy a lot more than the trinkets they have on offer, Teresa eventually sets her sights on one young lad who, on every level, offers just what she wants.

And as Seidl's camera unflinchingly reveals, what some of these young lads have to offer is jaw-droppingly succulent. I dare even strictly heterosexual male viewers to not fantasize about dropping their own jaws to take in the stunning magnificence that dangles between the thighs of these heartbreakingly beautiful young men. With their smooth gentle voices, glisteningly ripped bodies and irrepressibly insistent promises of the love they will provide, it's not hard to believe that Teresa and her ilk might actually believe it is LOVE they are paying for, not sex.

As per usual in Seidl's dramas, the script is a springboard for the drama created in lengthy, intensive improvisations between professional actors and real people. This results in a number of especially harrowing moments. For all the genuine dark humour the movie generates, there are just as many sequences when Seidl's camera catches the eyes of the beautiful young men (who are indeed - in real life - dirt poor and who have provided their services to women like Teresa many times in their lives).

Their eyes betray desperation and terror. The performances of non-actors and actors alike are imbued with reality and poignancy - so much so that it eventually becomes impossible to laugh and you are, in turn, indelibly overwhelmed and saddened with the naked truth of the world we live in. Humanity is indeed at the top of the food chain, but as it devours its own with through-the-roof relish and frequency, one can only despair at where it will all lead us.

Seidl leaves us with a Kenyan folk music group performing "Hakuna Matata" which, in Swahili is literally translated into English as "There are no worries."

No worries, indeed.

"Paradise: Love" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2012 (TIFF 2012) and is currently available on DVD via Strand Releasing.

FILL THE VOID - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The rich, vibrant backdrop of Tel Aviv's strict Orthodox Hasidic Haredi community yields the first great movie love story of the new millennium and a bona fide contemporary masterpiece. In release via Mongrel Media, this is a movie that's NOT TO BE MISSED. See it in a movie theatre on a big screen. In terms of its canvas, the film's humanity deserves to be experienced in the temple that is, the cinema.

Fill The Void (2012) *****
Dir. Rama Burshtein
Starring: Hadas Yaron, Yiftach Klein, Irit Sheleg, Chaim Sharir, Razia Israely, Hila Feldman, Renana Raz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In a time when selfish personal needs are placed above those of tradition, culture and the preservation of the nuclear family unit, it's a genuine blessing to see a motion picture like Fill The Void which focuses so deeply and intensely upon a modern community steadfastly adhering to an ages-old way of life. That the film is one of the most beautifully written and delicately directed love stories in at least a decade - probably longer - is a testament to the great poetic qualities of filmmaker Rama Burshtein.

Like all great films, its surface is relatively simple, but as such, yields complexities and layers that augment this already enriching family drama. Shira (Hadas Yaron) is 18 years old and her family, members of the strict Orthodox Haredi community, has endeavoured to put together a perfect match for her husband-to-be and when she catches a glimpse of the bright, handsome young man selected to be her eventual life partner, she's thrilled beyond belief.

To add to her joy, it is Purim and her father, the venerable Rabbi Aharon (Chaim Sharir) is granting audience with family, friends and community in his patriarchal domicile - paying tribute by requesting their greatest needs and the good Rabbi granting them the practical means of attaining it. Shira's gorgeously radiant sister Esther (Renana Raz) is pregnant and her handsome, kind-hearted husband Yochay (Yiftach Klein) are in attendance for the festivities. Their undying love for each other is movingly and privately reaffirmed within the crowded family home.

The only spanner in the works appears to be the unmarried Frieda (Hila Feldman) who loves the family dearly, but also harbours jealousy and resentment that she is still without a match and terrified she will become an old maid. This, however, is not enough to spoil this time of celebration, prayer and song. Happiness abounds.

Sadly, into this bliss, tragedy of the most unexpected and devastating kind strikes. The family is faced with an emptiness and sorrow that is exacerbated by the conundrum of what to do about all the marriage plans in the works that have been seriously thrown out of whack by the calamitous events that have befallen them. And it is young, hopeful Shira who is faced with the greatest challenge of all - to maintain family purity, lineage and the very ties that bind - all of which are potentially convenient for everyone but herself and most of all, with the very real possibility that all her hopes and dreams will be forever altered, if not completely shattered.

Fill The Void becomes one of the most universal and moving of all love stories - rooted as it is in the notion of a greater good - sacrifice.

Burshtein's screenplay is both literate and passionate. She's provided herself with a first-rate template to direct a film of great power. Like the conservative community she trains her lens upon, she forces herself to stay within their world as closely as possible with mostly interior scenes, often in closeup and with a look that is warm, sumptuous, gorgeously composed and lit - all reflective of an insular world that beats on in spite of an outside secular and modern world. Her pacing is meticulous in its fluidity or rather, she seems in such complete control of the slow, deliberate nature of how life unfolds that we never feel like she's self-indulgently plodding along to maintain "reality", but instead creates a slow, delicate series of ebbs and flows that build to a crescendo of passion and emotion.

It is one of the few contemporary pieces of cinema that soars in ways the medium, at its core, has the potential to do when its exploited artistically in ways it seldom is - a medium that is more often squandered instead of being nurtured and valued for the great gifts it can bestow upon mankind.

Burshtein has created what might be one of our few modern masterpieces. Not a frame seems out of place, not a line of dialogue seems false, not a single performance achieves less than the miraculous.

Fill The Void does indeed fill a void. It's a movie we desperately need in these times - a film that explores both the pitfalls and joys of tradition, but at the same time, exposing how tradition can indeed be a beautiful part of existence when it is mediated and tempered by those, like the character of Shira, who allow the indomitability of her intellect, reason and spirit to seek what is ultimately her own happiness and fulfilment - one that is as inclusive of herself as it is of those around her.

Given that this is a film about a community in which marriage is the highest and holiest aspiration for women, Burshtein might have actually crafted one of the most feminist films in recent movie history. At its most basic level, though, it's a film so full of joy, sadness, humour and romance, that it puts most films about love, family and tradition to shame.

A masterpiece? I'd say so.

"Fill The Void" is in theatrical release via Mongrel Media.

BEYOND THE HILLS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Cristian Mungiu delivers harrowing masterwork in the tradition of Dreyer's great work focusing upon the exploitation of women within fundamentalist religions. Playing theatrically in Canada at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX in Toronto via Mongrel Media.

Beyond the Hills (2012) *****
dir. Cristian Mungiu
Starring: Cosmina Stratan, Cristina Flutur, Valeriu Andriuta

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Women who confess during their menstrual period are sinners. Afflicted with the said Woman's Time, they do not dare enter a church (Orthodox, of course - other denominations are unholy). It's highly inappropriate to expose the "dirty" condition of vaginal discharge to the face of God or his representatives.

In fact, women who commit any sins whatsoever are shit out of luck in Eastern Rite Christian religions and their penance for any affronts to Our Lord will rate more vigorous, painful prostrations than a priest can shake his censer of incense at. Related to this is that most orphanages (in virtually any former Communist state in Central/Eastern Europe) boot out their charges penniless at age 16-18. The young women who are lucky enough to be earmarked to serve God as a Nun are the few who can avoid being sold into sexual slavery upon leaving the orphanage.

Many of these women recruited to serve God have ironically already suffered abuse at the hands of orphanage officials who notoriously (and for a price), would look the other way while little girls in their care were forced to pose for child pornography. And then, once the "lucky few" chosen to serve God enter the religious institutions, they are repressed, humiliated and indoctrinated into a life of endless exploitation within the Eastern Rite worship of Christ.

I try to reserve the word "masterpiece" for motion pictures that have lived a bit longer in the world than this one, but I'm pretty convinced Cristian Mungiu (director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) has created a film of lasting value. In its own way the film tells an extremely vital tale in a manner that contributes both to cinema as an art and perhaps even more importantly, to humanity.

So yes, Beyond the Hills is a masterpiece. It tells the harrowing and moving story of two friends who took separate paths after their release from a Moldavian orphanage and charts their heartbreaking reunion some years later. Voichita (Cosmina Stratan) joined a nearby monastery to become a nun under the strict patriarchy of an Orthodox priest referred to as "Papa" (Valeriu Andriuta). Alina (Cristina Flutur) has been living "alone" in Germany and working, so she says, as a waitress. Her plan is to extricate Voichita from the monastery so they can rekindle their deep love and friendship together.

God, or rather, religious hypocrisy and hysteria has other plans. What follows is as nightmarish an exploitation of women as the forced sex trade - the creepily insidious manner in which women are forced into the sexist, misogynistic and subservient roles that are so prevalent in cultures rooted in the centuries-old Eastern Rite religious traditions. Even more horrendous are the deep-seeded attitudes these cultures have towards orphans (also rooted in sexism and misogyny). For a huge majority of Eastern Rite followers, orphans take on the sins of their mothers and as such, our two central characters were born into a world that believed them to be lesser human beings because of this.

Mungiu charts the final weeks of the orphans' friendship in a style that is somewhat reminiscent of that employed by Carl Dreyer - most notably in the religious-themed Day of Wrath and Ordet. Visually, Mungiu's images are occasionally stark, but unlike the austere qualities Dreyer imbues his visuals with, Mungiu's frames are much more packed with details that border on neo-realism. Dreyer's approach is obviously more classical (in his own demented, compelling fashion), however he was so ahead of his time in terms of exploring themes of religious repression/oppression upon women. With Mungiu, and Beyond The Hills specifically, it feels like Dreyer has spawned a younger contemporary director to tackle similar themes in equally brilliant ways. Even more extraordinary is that BOTH directors - separated by decades - speak universally, and NOT ephemerally on this theme.

With Beyond the Hills, nothing in terms of production design ever seems less than real, but where Mungiu and Dreyer share approaches can be found in the tableau-styled takes and, of course, in the stories that are told. Dreyer might be one of the great film artists to have committed himself to the thematic concerns of women amidst religious and/or societal repression and their exploitation within these worlds. Clearly with the horrific tale of abortion, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and now Beyond the Hills, Mungiu continues in Dreyer's bold thematic and narrative tradition of placing women and their suffering in patriarchal worlds.

Mungiu's screenplay is quite exquisite. There is, on the surface, a relatively simple plot which allows him to layer numerous complex psychological layers and points of view (though the focus is always clear when it needs to be). His cast acquit themselves beautifully with the gorgeous writing he's wrought for them and the long, simple takes allow his cast to naturally bring the story beats alive and to play out in ways that never seem false or predictable.

Furthermore, and with the same mastery brought to bear in Dreyer's great work, Mungiu establishes a pace that is so hypnotic that the film's running time never seems as long as it actually is.

"Beyond The Hills", distributed by Mongrel Media, is playing theatrically in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival's TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX.   For further information and tickets, visit the TIFF website HERE.

GREG KLYMKIW'S 10 BEST FILMS AT TIFF 2012: ALL THE MOVIES I WAS ABLE TO SIT ALL THE WAY THROUGH AND LOVE WITHOUT RESERVATION AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (TIFF 2012) - By Greg Klymkiw

ALL THE MOVIES I WAS ABLE TO SIT ALL THE WAY THROUGH
DURING THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (TIFF 2012)
AND ACTUALLY ENJOY WITHOUT ANY RESERVATIONS WHATSOEVER

By Greg Klymkiw

In brief, here are my star ratings for the stuff I enjoyed at this year's orgy of cinema in Toronto. You can check out full reviews on a number of them here and soon, I'll be filing a full round-up of this year's festival over at the delightful UK-based "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema".

So, in alphabetical order, here are:

Greg Klymkiw's 10 Best Films at TIFF 2012

ACT OF KILLING, THE - *****
BABY BLUES - **** (tied with Penance)
BEYOND THE HILLS - *****
BLACKBIRD - **** (tied with Krivina)
CAPITAL - ****
FILL THE VOID - *****
KRIVINA - **** (tied with Blackbird)
THE MASTER - ****
PARADISE: LOVE - **** (tied with Spring Breakers)
PENANCE - **** (tied with Baby Blues)
RHINO SEASON - ****
SPRING BREAKERS - **** (tied with Paradise: Love)
STORIES WE TELL - *****

Close Runners-Up (in alphabetical order):

FRANCES HA - ***
GINGER AND ROSA - ***1/2
LOVE, MARILYN - ***1/2
REBELLE (WAR WITCH) - ***1/2
ROOM 237 - ***1/2


The bottom line is this:

If I had to pick the absolute best movie at TIFF 2012 it would be a tie twixt Sarah Polley's STORIES WE TELL and Joshua Oppenheimer's THE ACT OF KILLING in the Documentary category and Cristian Mungiu's BEYOND THE HILLS and Rama Burshtein's FILL THE VOID in the Drama category.

Obviously, if anyone let me have my way, I'd be giving the Best Canadian Feature Award to Polley's STORIES WE TELL and the Best Canadian First Feature Award to Igor Drljaca's KRIVINA.

I'm exhausted.

Are you?

Tomorrow I'm going to cleanse my palate and see my lithe Ukrainian princess Milla Jovovich kick some zombie ass in RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION even though it's bound to be utterly dreadful.

ROOM 237 - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Blending cine-mania with conspiracy theory, Rodney Ascher's clever & funny documentary opens your eyes wide shut to new insights on Kubrick's "The Shining" that you never knew, and perhaps, were even afraid to ask.

Room 237 (2012) ***1/2
TIFF 2012 - Vanguard Series
dir. Rodney Ascher
Starring: Bill Blakemore,
Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns,
John Fell Ryan, Jay Weidner

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Cineastes and those who follow conspiracy theorists have a lot of things in common. They're obsessive, slavishly devotional and frankly, almost fanatical in studying, appreciating and relentlessly imbibing in their respective fields of interest. Can their paths cross? You bet. I know. I am one of the afflicted (or blessed, depending on how you choose to look at it).

The engaging new documentary feature entitled Room 237 blends both cine-mania with conspiracy theory. Chances are, if you're a movie geek, you'll already understand the significance of this title and if you aren't, nor have you seen Stanley Kubrick's crazily scary, creepy and hypnotic film adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining, then let's just say it refers to a room in an isolated old hotel where something very, very horrific happened (and likely will again).

Using a treasure trove of clips and stills from Kubrick's canon, director Rodney Ascher interviews five people who have spent an unhealthy number of their waking hours (over an ever MORE unhealthy number of years) studying and dissecting the hidden meanings they purport are found buried within The Shining. Ascher's picture is not a traditional making-of documentary or even a critical appreciation in the usual sense. Instead, we examine each one of the subjects' theories.

All of them believe Kubrick used subliminal messages in the film and generated a high-profile horror movie to act as a mere foreground mask for its real meaning.

The most outrageous conspiracy theory presented in Room 237 is that Kubrick stuffed The Shining with numerous secret messages he hoped would work as both an apology and cinematic form of redemption to make up for the overwhelming guilt he carried for his part in faking all the Apollo Moon landings.

Say what?

Yes, Kubrick's filmmaking genius was contracted by the American government to fake the historic trips to the Moon. If, according to the conspiracy theorist, you look really hard, everything anyone would need to prove this is on-screen in The Shining.

Good to know.

In all fairness, those interviewed for Asxher's film spend a fair bit of time discussing Kubrick's obsessive attention to the most minute details of every inch, of every frame, of every shot. This is indisputable. Kubrick was indeed a meticulous control freak and he no doubt included numerous subliminal (or not so subliminal) images to bolster the drama, themes and/or style of his films.

I have some doubts, however, that The Shining is an apology to the world for faking the entire Apollo moon programme. So too should you, lest, of course you're planning to check yourself in for some electro-shock therapy. (Something my late barber, Bill Sciak did for many years. Not because he was insane, but because he enjoyed getting regularly zapped.)

Some of the other theories are definitely fruit-loopy, but those which suggest Holocaust allegory or the effects of colonization upon America's indigenous peoples are certainly not without interest. For me, though, the most intriguing presentation involves Kubrick playing with the space and time of his own sets by intentionally making sure the designs - and one room in particular - could not logically exist within the architectural setting of the Overlook Hotel.

This theory is kind of cool as it feels like the kind of perverse filmmaking trick Kubrick might use to help generate an overall sense of unease. The interviewee in question comes across as completely bonkers, but in spite of this, it provides considerable food for thought.

What I really appreciated about Rodney Ascher's approach to this material is that he himself never makes fun of these people. His entire mise-en-scène is quite clever. The interviewees never appear on camera - only in voice-over. The images are virtually all Kubrick all the time. They're used to tell the interviewees' stories and to provide as much visual evidence as possible to bolster the theories. Yes, Ascher uses the footage to occasionally buoy the film with a sense of humour, but it's never mean-spirited and it's often clever and in and of itself, a definite homage to Kubrick.

The movie will also make you think twice about Calumet Baking Soda. (I'll let you discover that nugget on your own.)

As I mentioned earlier, movies and conspiracy theory can be ideal bedfellows.

For me, my appreciation of conspiracy theory almost parallels my obsession with movies. It began in the 1960s, not long after experiencing a series of near-epiphanies upon first seeing films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Mario Bava's Black Sunday, Hammer Horror films, Sergio Leone westerns and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Movies not only became my whole life, they were, in fact, my life force.

At this time I read Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods", the first of a series of best selling "non-fiction" books that popularized the notion that extraterrestrials had been to Earth in our deep, dark past and were responsible for mankind's development. This wasn't classic conspiracy theory per se, but it was one of the first times I became enamoured with postulations that refuted traditional ways of thinking about the world. Not that von Daniken's theories were especially original - many of them had already been identified by other scientists (including Carl Sagan who had little use for the Swiss author's interpretations). His theories, to my child's minds eye, we forcefully and punchily conveyed.

Tellingly, my childhood fascination with von Daniken clearly sprouted from the magic of movies - most notably, Kubrick. The monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey did a damn fine job transforming me into a true believer in extraterrestrial visitations in earlier eras of Earth's existence.

Years later, I became obsessed with the world of shortwave radio. Shortwave had always been an acquired taste - a niche market, if you will. (I had been introduced to it as a child by my cousin Paul who was an avid listener of "Radio Free Cuba.") In the pre-internet days of the 1990s, shortwave had become the haven for a wide variety of nut cases.

Needless to say, I was drawn to this like a fly to the proverbial dung heap.

Every manner of conspiracy theorist, right wing religious psycho and, allow me to add, heavy metal Christian Rockers managed to find a home on these oddball airwaves. It was here where I discovered one of the great conspiracy theorists of them all, the extremely entertaining Kurt Saxon, a survivalist based in Alpena, Arkansas. "Just let them Federal Boys try and find us here in these backwoods," was a common Saxon refrain.

Though Kurt's ruminations on impending social/economic collapse proved both sound and prescient, his theories regarding Eugenics were, shall we say, a tad too extreme for a reasonably tempered right-wing Communist and dyed-in-the-wool pseudo-Liberterian like myself.

The late 90s and beyond delivered the highest-rated talk radio in the world: "Coast-to-Coast-A.M. with the master of all things conspiratorial Art Bell and his eventual and current replacement George Noory.

Through these decades of avowed interest in conspiracy theory, I maintained my obsession with the movies - becoming, as I was once described by some anonymous blogger as, "a quite possibly clinically insane cinephile."

I suspect that with this history, it makes sense to have been positively disposed to a picture like Room 237. That said, it's a genuinely clever, compelling and funny look at one of the best movies of all time.

And that, my friends, is nothing to sneeze globs of blood-flecked snot at.

"Room 237" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2012). For information, visit the TIFF website HERE.

SIGHTSEERS - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Sightseers (2012) **1/2
Dir. Ben Wheatley
Starring: Alice Lowe, Steve Oram

Review By Greg Klymkiw

They're not young.

They're pretty homely.

They're in love.

They're British.

They kill people.

Welcome to the world of Sightseers, a movie that's less than 90 minutes long and has about 30 minutes of really entertaining material and a whole lot of wheel spinning.

Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe) are not what any prospective in-law would traditionally consider a good "catch" for the apple of their eye. Then again, most parents of said individuals would probably have to agree.

Tina is a dullard living in middle-class emptiness with her abusive, mean-spirited harridan of a mother.

Granted, Mom has some reason to browbeat her unmarried, pasty-faced progeny since the twit was responsible for their frou-frou doggie getting impaled upon knitting needles.

Mom also has reason to dislike Tina's boyfriend Chris who has apparently killed someone - albeit by accident.

"I don't like you," says Mom to the bearded, beady-eyed sack of potatoes who is not only boinking her daughter, but about to embark upon a vacation through the dullest, ugliest part of England with her only begotten child in a motorhome.

The lovebirds take to the open road. After a bit of rockiness in their relationship, things seem to settle nicely until Tina notices that Chris's annoyance at fellow travellers manifests itself into pure, obsessive, unmitigated, psychopathic hatred for these miscreants who litter or look at him the wrong way or chide him for letting their dog crap on the lawn of a heritage site.

Chris does what any annoyed curmudgeon would do. He kills the fuckers. This appears to mildly concern Tina, but soon, she's all for it and even starts to kill people all on her lonesome. This annoys Chris to no end as he feels Tina has no acceptable justification for killing as he, uh, does.

Some of this is very, very funny. It's even mildly satisfying to see annoying people murdered. The problem with the movie is that our protagonists aren't especially interesting. The tagline on the ads and posters suggests they're "average". Wrong. They're ultimately way less than average.

What we're left with a satire-want-to-be that is little more than extended one-note sketch. What would have been perfectly acceptable as a short film, feels unnecessarily elongated in a feature length format.

Steve Oram is pretty darn amusing in his role - especially when director Ben (Kill List, Down Terrace) Wheatley focuses upon Chris's slow burns during the most mild of transgressions. Alice Lowe matches him quite nicely in her doormat-turned-woman-of-power. Alas, both of these performances, while consistent and solid, crush under the weight of the screenplay (that both actors wrote).

There's really nowhere for this story or characters to go that we don't see coming many beats in advance. The "surprise" ending, which isn't much of a surprise since any savvy viewer will figure out where things are headed long before, leaves us with the taste of inevitability in our mouths as we exit the cinema.

When the laughs come, they're big ones, but overall we're left feeling drained beyond the material's capacity to sustain our interest. There's nothing especially suspenseful about the proceedings and while the film is suitably muted when it needs to be, this tone is also the movie's eventual undoing.

"Sightseers" via Mongrel Media premieres at TIFF 2012.

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ILL MANORS - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ill Manors (2012) ****
Dir. Ben Drew
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Ed Skrein, Natalie Press, Anouska Mond, Lee Allen, Keef Coggins, Ryan De La Cruz, Nick Sagar

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Welcome to East End London. The manors are indeed, ill. Check it out:

A little boy of mixed race is left alone with a racist skinhead as his Mom gets porked by a gangster. The child's face gets mutilated by the skinhead. Children must be scarred forever to remind them and others how low their place in the world is.

A little boy wants to deal. He's 13. He's told to beat the shit out of his friend. He needs to prove his potential, his loyalty, his willingness to do anything it takes to build his street cred. He wants respect, He wants to be made. He does what he's told in the most horrendously brutal manner possible.

Two young men accuse a teenaged crack whore of losing a cel phone and she's forced into a harrowing night wherein she must raise 1000 big ones by offering herself to one john after another at 20 smackers-a-pop. These are not ordinary johns. She's led to every all night falafel joint, convenience store and other such establishments - staffed by poor new immigrants with their own unique cultural views on women - and specifically whores.

A young dealer and an innocent woman at the wrong place at the wrong time are gunned down in cold blood.

A young man is forced at gunpoint to carve up another.

A trembling, squealing young man has a gun shoved into his face and ordered to face death as a man.

A sex slave and her baby escape from Russian pimps, but she's tracked down pronto and forced to abandon her baby in a subway train. The baby winds up in the hands of a street thug. One things leads to another and the baby is sold. Eventually we see it tossed from a window.

Ben Drew, the UK rapper AKA Plan B has made a fine feature film debut with Ill Manors. Brits are notorious and especially adept at shoving our faces into kitchen sinks, toilet bowls and garbage cans. It's a fine tradition that really hit its stride during the early 1960s during the British New Wave period of "Angry Young Man" pictures.

UK has delivered any number of crime melodramas in recent years that the heroes of the halcyon New Wave days like Richard Burton, Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Laurence Harvey, et all - spewing anger and pure venom, would just as easily have been at home in.

Here though, Drew populates his sprawling time-and-place-concentrated Ill Manors with a mix of professional and non-professional actors. A superb combination of brilliantly designed/chosen studio sets and locations allows Drew to place us completely in the palms of his cinematically virgin, though highly evocative hands. It's impossible to take one's eyes off the screen.

It's a cross between Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets in East End London and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (if that film had REAL balls and wasn't so overtly "manufactured"). Grit, grime and blood mingle perfectly to create a portrait of violence and despair that for some might feel slightly derivative, but in actual fact, is blessed with a powerful new filmmaking voice.

Drew's lens whips about the environs and proceedings with an eye for detail. At times, the suspense during tension-filled criminal activity is unbearable. When violence hits us, Drew might as well be slamming a shovel in our faces.

This, however, is no sloppy, herky-jerky, rag-tag affair. Compositions are effectively appropriate to the dramatic action. Most chillingly is how subtly Drew draws our eyes to key implements of death and destruction - guns, blades, crack bowls, etc/. As such, his staging/blocking and camera directives are so visionary and proficient that often single shots can have us shuddering.

The structure of the film revolves around several rap songs which drew wrote and performed. He cuts them like extremely sophisticated music videos to provide background, back story and street philosophy.

Amidst the chaos and criminal activity, Drew roots his tale in humanity. He delivers a movie where some of the most despicable actions lead to greater depth of understanding. Given the grim, bleak, violent reality of this world he never provides easy answers and never ties up his narratives into neat bows, but we do experience redemption and through the haze of crack smoke and the blood that feels like it's being splashed in our eyes, we even get a glimmer of hope.

But, just a glimmer. For the wasted, forgotten and/or reviled young men and women of this world, there are few real choices. They're the true progeny of Margaret Thatcher. They live, not for the future, but for the moment.

It's a film that's ultimately very moving and no matter how despicable the actions of its protagonists, Drew never forgets to remind us how fallible we are as a species and that for some, choices - no matter hpw bad - are the only power many of our kids have.

As grippingly as the film forces us to watch, it just as easily forces us not to forget. Once humanity gets to a point of collective avoidance then good and bad become one.

That's even scarier shit.

"Ill Manors" via Berkshire Axis Media premieres at TIFF 2012.

RHINO SEASON - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Exiled Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi delivers a heartbreaking love story that engages us in cinema's poetic qualities whilst making a plea for the rights of artists to be honoured and sanctified against the whims of all repressive government policies.

Rhino Season (2012) ****
dir. Bahman Ghobadi

TIFF 2012 - Special Presentation

Starring: Behrouz Vossoughi, Monica Bellucci, Yilmaz Erdogan, Belçim Bilgin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Artists have always been prime targets in power-hungry repressive regimes. To destroy a nation, then rebuild it in a new image, the first line of attack is to decimate its existing culture. During the 20th Century, the world experienced this again and again in every Totalitarian regime - Nazis, Fascists, Communists, Fake Democracies fuelled by corporate dictatorships and religious fundamentalism are but a few instances of this war on art.

Given that the world is on the precipice of complete collapse, works like Bahman Ghobadi's film Rhino Season are more important and vital than ever. That said, I do wish to temper this statement, since such an assertion can be a dual edged sword - relegating a work's importance to the picture's backdrop and subject matter can also place it in a lofty enough position so as to render its considerable aesthetic gifts as the sum total of its merits. Therefore, in declaring that the film is essential, I wish to also stress that the film's political and thematic necessity is not the only reason it holds a fundamental place in the world.

The picture is, quite simply, dazzling - an original voice that yields a deeply moving, artistically daring and consummate demonstration of how cinema can work at the highest levels of the medium. In the case of Rhino Season, the medium is simply not the message, nor the message it conveys, but how the medium is pushed over the usually accepted boundaries. However, in so doing, the film provides its important political stance and challenging aesthetic framework in a manner that, if properly presented and distributed to wider audiences, has considerable potential to affect cinema-goers the world over.

The tale director Ghobadi relates is as simple and ages-old as time itself - a love story that spans decades - replete with suffering, longing and passion that knows no bounds. Behrouz Vossoughi, a mega-wattage Iranian movie star now exiled to an America that has little to offer a great actor like him from a Hollywood that is so bereft of ideas that the only roles he is asked to play are those of terrorists, is the star of Ghobadi’s film.

Vossoughi plays Sahel, a Kurdish writer who specializes in poetry. In spite of the fact that his writings are not political, he is arrested, tortured and interrogated until he receives an inhuman 30-year-long prison sentence.

Not content to destroy Sahel's life, the authorities do the same to his wife Mina (a heartbreaking performance by Monica Bellucci). She is incarcerated for 10 years and upon her release, she is told that Sahel is dead. He most certainly is not. Ghobadi then delivers the unforgettable scene of Mina making her way through a forlorn graveyard devoted to the burial of "heathen" and finally weeping before the weathered marker of her husband.

Sahel serves all 30 years of his sentence and devotes the rest of his existence to tracking down Mina.

If this tale doesn't move audiences to tears, nothing will. What contributes to rendering this simple, affecting narrative in the richest and most artistically complex mise-en-scène imaginable, is how Ghobadi peppers the tale with voiceovers reciting Sahel's clearly humanist (not politically didactic) poetry which contrast the horrendous words of his torturers. Blended with images of sublime beauty that convey resplendence of the most exquisite kind, they too provide a contrast to the visual realities of the dank, foul prison Sahel spends 30 years in.

Rhino Season accomplishes the extraordinary. It achieves the highest level of cinematic poetry, tells a great story and, by virtue of Ghobadi's approach, it achieves its goal of exposing us to the plight of artists in Iran whilst gently and metaphorically delivering the most powerful plea of all - that artists have no place in prisons for simply expressing themselves (politically or not) and that finally, this should extend to all people, of all walks of life, in all countries.

Expression is who we are. It is what defines our respective cultures and most of all, who we are as a species. Humanity IS expression. What places Ghobadi's great film on a pedestal of truth is that expression includes love.

Love is what drives his picture, his characters and by extension, the human race.

Love must be protected and sanctified at all costs.

When that ceases, so do we.

"Rhino Season" received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2012). For ticket information, please visit the TIFF website HERE.
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HOW TO MAKE MONEY SELLING DRUGS - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

How To Make Money Selling Drugs (2013) ***
Dir. Matthew Cooke
Starring: Barry Cooper, Freeway Rick Ross, Brian O’Dea, Bobby Carlton, David Simon, 50 Cent, Eminem, Woody Harrelson, Susan Sarandon

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A day doesn't go by when I can't help but shake my head over how utterly moronic America seems. Its founding principles seem to be diametrically opposed to the actual manner in which the country is continually driven by the not-so-secret needs of its wealthiest few and how easily the vast majority of its populace accepts the country's endless human rights violations, lack of freedoms and the exploitation of the basic tenets of democracy.

It is a country that's essentially on the verge of being little more than a Third World Nation run by puppets and populated with a majority of boobs exploited for their willing acceptance of a system that continues to dumb them ever-downwards by any means necessary. The country's seemingly endless war-mongering - most notably its idiotic War on Terror - is matched by its War On Drugs.

Matthew Cooke's clever, funny and mildly subversive documentary How To Make Money Selling Drugs delivers a step-by-step, blow-by-blow how-to guide on the ins and outs of hawking marijuana and cocaine (and by extension, pretty much any illicit drug). Replete with all manner of flashy TV-styled cutting, sound effects and on-screen title cards, it is - on its surface - a fascinating look at how some of the best in the "business" ply (or have plied) their illicit trade and yielded oodles of cash. These individuals run the gamut of street dealers all the way up to cartel-leaders and through their experiences we learn the perils and pitfalls as much as we learn the ways to achieve success.

Some of the more seemingly successful practitioners of the trade, Barry Cooper, Freeway Rick Ross and Brian O’Dea are all incredibly open and informative as they detail their how-to approaches. These guys are on-camera, but off camera (with disguised voices) or in front of the camera (in disguise and/or with pseudonyms) we get additional tips. If we were to follow their advice, the movie suggests that we too can make ourselves a decent living.

Luckily, the film also presents these same subjects' downfalls (occasional or permanent) and some of it seems so convincing that we feel like IF we could avoid some of the mistakes made that led to incarceration, we could hit dizzying heights of financial success without penalty. This, of course, is tempered by reality and it's eventually obvious that selling drugs IS indeed a losing game - not because it's wrong, immoral or criminal (which to varying degrees it is and/or can be), but because the Status Quo has stacked the deck to allow it AND then deny/destroy it - all for personal gain at the political level.

In addition to focusing upon several real-life dealers, the picture also presents numerous law enforcement officials - cops, DEA agents, lawyers and judiciary. Their presence confirms and presents the ease with which one can make money selling drugs, but also how those on the other side of the coin make their "collars" - none of them, not surprisingly, all that imaginative. The law uses a variety of snitches, but also employs threats, intimidation, entrapment and even just plain planting drugs on suspected dealers.

One of the more interesting subjects is Bobby Carlton an ex-cop who details every single manner in which he willingly and even gleefully entrapped people. Astoundingly, the film follows his story to a point where he joins the "other side" and becomes an activist and advocate for the rights of dealers to the point where he is now forced to live in self-imposed exile to escape persecution by American law enforcement officials who frown up his change of heart and activities associated with it.

The filmmakers also present a wide variety of celebrity interviews - those who have dealt and/or used drugs to those who are fighting against the archaic and immoral anti-drug laws and campaigns. Interviews with the "real thing" former dealers and/or users include the stellar likes of 50-cent and Eminem. Celebrity activists include Little Mrs. Commitment herself Susan Sarandon and everyone's favourite wacko advocate Woody Harrelson.

Right from the start of the film, there's a subtle and eventually, not-so-subtle subtext which provides both a history of America's War On Drugs and exposes the utter hypocrisy of it. In so doing, the movie cleverly uses its how-to guide as a plea for saner American approaches to the "Drug Problem" - a problem that seems manufactured by the government with its Draconian approaches to the War On Drugs - so much so that David Simon, the creator of hit series The Wire, points out the irony that law enforcement agents and agencies (including straight-up cops themselves) place so much emphasis on how to entrap dealers that good, old-fashioned police work goes the way of the Dodo (to the detriment of many other serious crimes never being properly solved).

The movie cleverly manipulates itself to deliver one poignant and often heartbreaking sequence after another that details the fall of the aforementioned "criminals" in addition to those who are not dealers at all, but are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The dealers all seem to be at peace with the risks of the profession, but those caught up in the trade innocently and inadvertently suffer from wrongful arrest, incarceration and what often seem like utterly unconstitutional, if not illegal (and certainly immoral) raids, arrests and incarcerations.

At the end of the day, we have a film which uses a satirical approach to its subject to act as a plea for a saner approach to drugs and both the use and sales of said hallucinogens. Some of the satire is of the Lite persuasion and while at times, I might have preferred an even more subversive approach to the subject, it doesn't take away from the fact that this is yet another convincing and important expose of America's hypocrisy - not just in terms of drugs, but by extension, everything.

"How To Make Money Selling Drugs" via Berkshire Axis Media premieres at TIFF 2012.

TO THE WONDER - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is a revised version of my review. As I fell asleep for the last five minutes, I felt it incumbent upon me to see the film again, so I did and watched the movie from beginning to end. This allowed me the opportunity to glean a lot more from Mr. Malick's feature length greeting card. I hope you appreciate this effort.

"Love made us one. I in YOU. You in ME."
The Wonder. The Wonder.
The Horror. The Horror.

Terrence Malick or Jed Clampett? You Decide.

To The Wonder (2012) *
dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In Paris, the city of love, people talk to themselves. Not out loud, mind you. After all, they aren't afflicted with Tourette's Syndrome but rather, they yammer away in their heads.

In Paris, a Man and a Woman, both pierced by Cupid's arrow, are unable to keep their eyes and hands off each other whilst Hallmark Greeting Card prose-poetry floats from their respective inner sanctums and into the ether - swirling about like the ghostly intonations of the dead.

In Paris, Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko play this loving vapid couple. They wander amongst the architectural treasures of Gay Paree, psychically transmitting their purportedly soulful words to each other and to the audience of Terrence Malick's latest pretentious snore-Fest To The Wonder.

Based upon their words alone, either Malick and/or the characters are touched - not by love, but by some form of retardation of the cerebellum.

"Newborn," Kurylenko declares. "I open my eyes. I melt." One certainly hopes, like M&Ms, that she melts in his mouth and not in his hand.

Olga continues, as if she were in a sequel to Twilight: "Into the eternal night. A spark. You got me out of the darkness. You gathered me up from earth. You've brought me back to life."

Alas. no vampires here, and writing that makes Stephanie Meyer literarily akin to no less than Leo Tolstoy himself.

Olga, aside from looking deeply into Ben's eyes, spends an inordinate amount of time jumping up and down like a pogo stick and/or twirling about. At one point, Ben tries taking snaps of her with his digital camera, but she keeps spoiling his shots by snapping at it with her purty mandibles. Presumably, this is because she's happy. Perhaps she is in love. Perhaps, she's hungry. If the latter, there is no doubt - Olga is afflicted with the aforementioned retardation of the cerebellum.

Now, I have to admit I might have missed something, but I really have no idea why Ben is in Paris. He has virtually no dialogue save for a few words of hideously pronounced French. I have no idea why Olga is in Paris either, but though she is Ukrainian, she does speak French quite beautifully and she's gorgeous. Paris has many gorgeous women, so why shouldn't she be one of them?

What I know for a fact is this: Olga and Ben are in love. Just in case, I didn't know, Malick's screenplay wisely has Olga intone in voice-over that she is, indeed, "in love".

Thank you Mr. Malick. Your screenplay is full of helpful information like that. I was grateful during one special moment early on in the movie when Ben and Olga visit some old castle or church or whatever it is - in any event, it's old - and Olga delivers extremely vital story information in the past tense, as if she's remembering it (or something) as we see the lovebirds climbing up some steps, .

"We climbed the steps," reveals Olga.

Again, thank you Mr. Malick. Good to know.

We eventually find out that Ben hails from Oklahoma - not the dullest state in the Union (that honour would go to North Dakota), but dull enough that one wonders why he wants to drag Olga and her daughter back there with him. Once they get there, they move into what appears to be a house lacking much in the way of furniture.

Olga informs us that Ben "speaks very little."

This is true. He's hardly spoken a word and just so we get it, Malick gives us many scenes where Ben speaks very little, save in voice-over when he tells us what we can see for our own eyes.

Apparently, Ben and Olga's daughter hit it off famously. We know this because Kurylenko tells us in a voice-over. We don't actually see it rendered dramatically. Why bother when you can convey this through greeting card voice-overs?

Happily ensconced in hurricane and tornado country, the lovebirds spend quality time walking through fields and looking at the flat landscape and big skies while we get to hear more greeting card philosophy.

Most disappointing here is that we never get any storms. For years, the late, great experimental filmmaker George Kuchar would travel to Oklahoma during tornado season, stay in sleazy motels, watch weather reports, take dumps, inspect and comment upon his faecal matter and put it all on film. This resulted in his ever-so brilliant Weather Diaries.

I mention this only because Malick and Kuchar are brothers in the avant-garde tradition. Kuchar, however, always had a great sense of mordant wit. Malick is humourless. Hence, no tornados. And very sadly, no faecal matter, save for the movie itself.

Whilst living in Oklahoma, Affleck appears to have a job, but damned if I can tell what it is. Olga starts to spend a lot of time doing laundry, washing dishes and going shopping for furniture. (Some might quarrel with this, but I didn't - she is, after all, a Ukrainian woman - put on this Earth by God Himself to serve her Man.) Besides, she isn't living a complete life of drudgery. She has plenty of time to wander through fields, stare at the sky, examine foliage, recite monologues in voice-over and jump around like a pogo-stick. Her daughter appears quite adept at this bouncing motion also. I smiled and chortled to myself in a good natured manner. "Like mother, like daughter," said my internal voice-over.

Alas, as luck and life would have it, Olga and Ben appear to move quickly beyond the "honeymoon" stage of their relationship. Ben starts sniffing around his old flame Rachel McAdams. This allows for more voice-overs. Olga begins sniffing around the parish priest who is having a kind of Gunnar Bjornstrand-like crisis of faith and in turn, has his sights set on Olga. (Or does he? At one point he stares at a very pretty nun while she washes dishes.)

The priest is played by Javier Bardem. His face is so grimly deadpan we expect him to blow someone's head off with an automatic assault rifle. Alas, all we get are voice-overs like this howler: "You shall love whether you like it or not." At one point, Javier visits a home. Is it Ben and Olga's home? If so, who is the woman with a baby in the backyard? Your guess is as good as mine.

In any event, Javier does not knock or go in. He looks at toys strewn about the front veranda. We perk up. Perhaps he is a child molester. Most priests are, after all.

No such luck. He walks away as he speaks to himself in voice-over. "My heart is cold," he says. "Hard." Alas, that's all that's hard.

Olga leaves Oklahoma and goes back to Paris. This allows Ben Affleck to spend a lot of time looking out his window. An Italian woman shows up out of nowhere and babbles nonsensically in Olga's direction. I have no idea who this woman is, but Olga seems to and before you can say, "voice-over," our Ukrainian princess is compelled to return to Oklahoma.

On my first helping of the film, I looked at my watch, sighed and closed my eyes. The last five minutes of the movie was a mystery to me - not because of anything Malick barfed up onto the screen, but because I fell asleep. It was one of those power naps I hate where I had a short, grotesquely vivid dream - you know the kind - where jellylike, viscous blobs fall from the ceiling on your Mother's bed and she tenderly strokes them with the knobby stumps where her arms once were.

After such an awe inspiring experience as To The Wonder, I did not want the aforementioned dream to be the last thing I remembered, so I watched it again. This time, I did not bother to suppress my guffaws and watched it to the end. I'm elated I did. I do not wish to spoil it for you by giving away the ending. Even if I did give away the ending, I'm not quite sure what I'd tell you as I have no fucking idea what the ending was. Suffice it to say that Javier has a ridiculously long voice-over monologue wherein he intones Christ's name many times, various characters stare at the sky, Olga licks a branch and eventually bounces around again like a pogo stick and someone, I'm not telling who, walks into a white light.

As the credits came up, I walked into the toilet and turned on my own white light.

"To The Wonder" via VVS Films premieres at TIFF 2012.

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