A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - How can a Spaghetti Noir Vampire Chick in Iran NOT be cool? Stunning directorial debut from Kino Lorber, opens TIFF Bell Lightbox, The Royal Cinema via VSC (Video Services Corp)

This is what you could meet in lovely Iran.

Iranian Bloodsucker in a Chador

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour
Starring: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi,
Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marnò, Dominic Rains

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There aren't too many vampire movies these days like A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. In fact, there aren't any at all, but now that this one exists, we can all repress the stench of the abominable Twilight series. What we've got here pretty much blows all recent blood-sucker extravaganzas away.

It's not only a genuinely terrific picture, but it's all in Farsi, the language of Iran, where, incidentally the movie is set (though, amazingly, it was shot in southern California). The movie is staggeringly original, yet at the same time, owes a debt of gratitude to Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Sergio Leone, Guy Maddin and James Whale.

Decent bedfellows all, especially for the film's director, a young Iranian-American lassie who makes her feature length debut with this moving picture graphic novel that could well have sprung from the loins of Frank Miller if he was a woman from Iran and wasn't a misogynist.

Nothing sexier than the scent of a jugular vein

The movie itself is light on plot, which is really no matter. Besides, story is more than one plot-point after another. When narrative can be imbued with the poetic qualities of cinema, so often neglected, forgotten or simply not attainable, then story takes on a richness that all the Robert-McKee-influenced product, machine-tooled by hacks, can never, nor will ever, attain. This is a narrative driven by style, theme, mood, character and setting.

And what a setting!

Bad City is practically a ghost town smack in the middle of some desolate plain in Iran, surrounded by endless rows of unmanned oil pumps seesawing ceaselessly and deeply into the flat, dusty earth. In the distance, desolate factories belch clouds of smoke into the atmosphere, the sunny skies blotted out by the filth of pollution.

A lone whore wanders aimlessly on the streets at night, hoping ever-so desperately that someone, anyone will drive by or walk up to her for a cheap fuck or blow job, anything, no matter how degrading will do to avoid being beaten to a pulp by her pimp for not turning enough tricks.

Daylight is murky, nighttime is murkier still, pools of light from high pressure sodium street lamps cast their eerie glow upon the forlorn streets, flanked by dollops of pitch black shadow. If anything, the subtext of the film is found within the shades of grey. Black and white are the pillars holding it all up, but the depth resides twixt those visual support beams of light and darkness.

Somewhere in Bad City is a vampire.

Not that anyone would notice or even care. Life is cheap. Bodies appear, then disappear. Corpses are tossed casually just outside of town into a ditch. The men are (mostly) pigs, the women are invisible and/or abused. The brutish sex in Bad City are pimps, pushers, addicts, drunks, unemployed, slave-class labourers and/or all of the above. Homes appear squalid, their interiors are even more squalid. There's little to do and pretty much nowhere to go. The one nightclub is full of ecstasy-popping babes and scumbags.

At times, we feel like we're in a dreamscape that could only exist in the movies. Of course, I never have a problem with that, but as the film progresses, we're creepily affected by a world that feels as real as it is fantastical. This is a country of waste, repression, rape of the land, rape of the soul and the clear suppression, or rape, if you will, of women's rights. Oil, the ever-present oil being pumped, seems to be the only life or at least, vigorous movement, in this somnambulistic, backward, backyard of despair.

Escape seems to be the only way to avoid death, or at least, a living death, but everyone seems too beaten down to even bother thinking about it. Flight at the end of a needle or the lip of a bottle or whatever can be popped down the gullet, all seem to be the easiest way to dull the pain and, perhaps, allow Bad City's denizens to imagine a better world.

ARASH VARANDI is HOT!!!

Arash (Arash Varandi) is a hardworking young (and almost ludicrously handsome) jack-of-all-trades who lives with his drug addict father Hossein (Marshall Manesh). The lad's prize possession is a pristine T-Bird which is snatched from him by Saeed (Dominic Rains), a foul pimp/dealer/loan-shark who takes it as a payment he's owed for a debt incurred by Dad.

Pops once had something resembling class, but now he's an addled bum, obsessed with the whore Atti (Mozhan Marnò) who reminds him of his late wife, but who, in turn, refuses to acknowledge his pathetic existence unless he's got money to buy her grudging attention and/or respect.

There is, however, a mysterious, exotic and gorgeous young woman (Sheila Vand) who slowly creeps about the streets at night in a full traditional chador.

She's no whore. She's a vampire on the prowl for blood. Her tastes, however, appear limited to exploitative misogynistic men.

Luckily for Arash, he's a sensitive lad, not deserving of having his throat torn out by her fangs, but one of the vampire's victims conveniently opens an opportunity for our hero to secure wads of dough, scads of drugs and the return of his beloved Ford T-Bird coupe.

SHEILA VAND is pretty HOT too!!!

Even more pleasingly, the vampire takes a liking to Arash (in one of the most perverse meet-cutes, like, EVER) and he, of course, to her.

Why not? They're young, smoulderingly intense and, uh, HOT! So what if she's the walking dead? Living in Bad City with a drug addicted father makes him just as undead. Mais non?

Will love conquer all?

Will escape be a viable option?

Will Bad City become a distant memory?

The answers to these questions will all be found in this compulsively engrossing, gorgeously photographed (in beautiful monochrome) and yes, often creepy and scary immersion into the delectable depths of feminist revenge fantasy with a to-die-for soundtrack and a pace so hypnotic that filmmaker Amirpour might well be more than a mere artist.

She's a Class-A mesmerist and as such, watching the movie is to fall under her spell of magic and to emerge pumped, enriched and convinced you've seen one of the most original movies in years.

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

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night from Kino Lorber is in theatrical release across Canada via VSC (Video Services Corp) with Toronto playdates at TIFF Bell Lightbox and The Royal Cinema. Keep your eyes peeled. You won't want to miss this for anything.

"THE GHOSTS IN OUR MACHINE" + "CHIMERAS" + "FELIX AUSTRIA!" - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - Klymkiw's Bases-are-loaded HOT DOCS 2013 HOT PICKS

The Ghosts in Our Machine (2013) ****
Dir. Liz Marshall

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Okay, so something funny happened on the way to my home in the country. My wife and child, both being inveterate tree-huggers, got the craziest idea. What they wanted to do sounded like one hell of a lot of work. They promised I would not have to avail my services upon any aspect of their venture. Well, good intentions and all that, but now I find I'm not only a gentleman farmer, but involved in the rescue of animals living in horrid conditions and headed for inevitable slaughter. Now, it's not that I'm some kind of anti-environmental redneck or something, but what I love about living in the country is sitting in my dark office, smoking cigarettes, watching movies and writing. I occasionally step over to the window, part the curtains briefly and look outside to acknowledge - Ah yes, nature! I then happily return to my prodigious activities.

You see, prior to becoming a gentleman farmer, I liked the IDEA of nature, the IDEA of being in deep bush, the IDEA of living off-grid on solar energy. Well, more than the ideas, really, since I did enjoy all of the above in practice, but in my own way.

Now, I have animals. Shitloads of them that my wife, daughter and eventually I rescued from misery with the assistance of a super-cool Amish dude.

Needless to say, when watching Liz Marshall's film, I was completely blown away. You see, having experienced the joy of coming to know a variety of animals, I eventually realized that all of God's creatures I mistook for being little more than blobs of meat with nothing resembling character, spirit or intelligence was just downright stupid. I've always had dogs and THEY certainly have character, spirit and intelligence - so why NOT chickens? Or donkeys? Or hell, even bees.

Marshall's film, you see, focuses upon someone I'd have to classify as a saint. Photographer Jo-Anne McArthur is not only an astounding artist of the highest order, but by restricting her activities to mostly photographing animals in the most horrendous captivity, she's risked both her life and mental health. Given my recently-acquired predilection for animal rights, I watched Marshall's film three times. Yes, on a first viewing I was far too emotionally wound up to keep my cap of critical detachment on, but now I'm perfectly convinced of the film's importance in terms of both subject AND cinema. It's a finely wrought piece of work that takes huge risks on so many levels in order to present a stunningly etched portrait of the heroic McArthur and HER subjects - all those animals being tortured to fill the bellies of ignoramuses and line the pockets of corporate criminals. (Not that I'm planning to go Vegan anytime soon, but I do believe that ANYONE who consumes any animal product derived from cruel meat factories as opposed to natural free-range is no better than a torturer and murderer.)

Not kidding about that, either.

What you see in this film will shock you. There is no denying what both Marshall and McArthur see and capture with their respective cameras. Creatures with individual souls and personalities are being hunted, incarcerated in conditions akin to concentration camps and/or bred in captivity and tortured until they are slaughtered. Equally frustrating are the corporate boneheads in a variety of publishing industries devoted to generating purported journalism - the difficulty with which McArthur must suffer to get her work published and to bring attention to these atrocities gets me so magma-headed I need to almost be physically restrained from going "postal".

You must see this movie.

If you're a coward, loser and/or asshole and don't want to see the truth, then fuck you!

Chimeras (2013) ***
Dir. Mika Mattila

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Two artists. One rich and famous. The other - well, not so much. Both are on opposite ends of the art world spectrum. One does commercial art, the other - well, not so much. Is our tale situated then, in the two different NYC worlds of Madison Avenue and the Village respectively? Nope. We're talking China - the nation poised to be the ultimate superpower. And artists, no matter who they are grapple with common issues. They both want to pursue a purely Asian style, which is all well and good until one has to grapple with the intricacies of Communism vs. traditional Eastern philosophy and religion vs. the strange contemporary cusp period China is in which blends the tenets of a free market with Totalitarianism. Add to this heady brew the increasing and almost overwhelming influence of North American culture and artists young and old, rich and poor, seasoned and neophyte - who are grappling with a conundrum of overwhelming proportions. Director Mika Mattila steadies his gaze upon these two poles of experience through two artists and delivers are nicely made exploratory rumination upon these complex ideas. The picture is a tiny bit precious in its approach, but patience will yield rewards for discriminating viewers.

Felix Austria (2013) **1/2
Dir. Christine Beebe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The dandy, well-dressed fellow is Felix Pfeifle from Modesto, California and director Christine Beebe offers up this scattershot, though often mind-blowingly imaginative documentary film which, being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are Viennese high culture, ultra-Austro-Hungarian-aristocracy and Archduke Otto von Habsburg, makes for a mostly intriguing mix of personal journey, obsession and history. Felix has dreams about his obsessions and this is where the film shines. Like some perverse coupling of Guy Maddin and Jan Svankmajer (with dollops of the Brothers Quay), we're treated to the sort of dazzlingly sumptuous cinema magic one would want from a film that focuses upon the aforementioned individual. Less interesting to me is Felix's real life which keeps getting in the way of the glorious dream sequences, his Austro-monarchical fetishes and finally, the astonishing moments where we lays eyes upon the last living descendant of the empire Felix so desperately adores. There is also the interesting exploration of a mysterious, huge box that arrives from the estate of one Herbert Hinckle (which, for some reason forces me to imagine some ancient, wizened version of Travis Bickle in his dotage). The package contains a wealth of materials to keep Felix in a state of perpetual orgasm for the rest of his life and it is elements such as these which make the film ultimately a worthwhile experience.

"THE GHOSTS IN OUR MACHINE", "CHIMERAS" and "FELIX AUSTRIA!" are all playing at the Hot Docs 2013 Filom Festival. For tickets and showtimes visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

THE MAN NOBODY KNEW: IN SEARCH OF MY FATHER, CIA SPYMASTER, WILLIAM COLBY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Personal Doc Strictly By The Numbers and as Unimaginative as its Unwieldy Title.

The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father,
CIA Spymaster William Colby

(2011) Dir. Carl Colby

**

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Yes, it's unfair to expect something to be what it isn't, but what it is, is so bland and inconsequential, that what it could have been is, indeed, a far more interesting prospect than what exists.

William Colby is one of the most fascinating subjects in 20th Century American history. A spy for over 30 years, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mastermind of the notorious Phoenix Program in Vietnam and the guy who spilled his guts to Congress about the innermost workings of the CIA is more than enough to generate an amazing documentary.

That Colby's personal life was one of secrets, deception, betrayal and cold, mean abuse of his children, adds yet another fascinating layer.

That this particular film is written and directed by Colby's son Carl - with unfettered access to anyone he wanted for interviews, an abundance of family photos, a wealth of newsreel footage and a story told in his own words and voice, one would expect far more than this glorified episode of A&E Biography.

The movie is so utterly by-the-numbers and without the stylistic scope a great feature documentary needs to rise above the mundane, that one's level of disappointment is profound indeed.

Carl Colby tells his Dad's story from beginning to bitter end and while one is marginally engaged in the facts, what's finally lacking is a personal filmmaking voice, in spite of Carl's personal voiceover and recollections.

What we get are mostly a series of talking heads - some interesting by virtue of the subjects themselves, while others - not so interesting. There's not a damn thing wrong with talking heads - nothing at all, but there is a problem with them when they're trotted out with all the panache of a television documentary.

God knows, a similar film in terms of subject matter was Errol Morris's absolutely stunning portrait of America's former Secretary of war. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara has a consistency of style, feels like the work of a genuine filmmaker (as opposed to that of a competent TV-doc-hack) and in spite of Morris's semi-objectivity, one feels like it's a far more personal film that Colby's.

I think where Colby blew it is by not being an integral presence on-screen, charting the life of his Dad and confronting, as well as ferreting out, aspects of his father's professional and private life. In fact, I have to admit I expected a strange cross between a Nick Broomfield or Michael Moore approach, blended with the straight up in your face self-reflective style of Alan Zweig.

We get none of this. All we do get is a ho-hum TV-doc that might be watchable if one had channel-hopped through enough stations and the pickings were so slim that one could finally only settle on this movie.

This is not the stuff of a dream factory that cinema - even in the genre of documentaries - should be.

The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby might well be feature length, but it's not a feature. Seeing this on a big screen would be like going out to the movies to watch TV.

If you're at all interested in the subject, Colby's movie is watchable.

No more. No less.

Perhaps it's up to a real filmmaker like Errol Morris to make the ultimate documentary about William Colby - a cold, calculating, but brilliant spy who ultimately got a raw deal from those who benefitted from his decades of service.

At one point in the film, the young Colby reveals utter disdain for his Dad. It's not disingenuous at all. We believe it because his words and tone of off-screen narration seems alternately cold and bile-ridden.

If anything, though, we feel the sort of sympathy for his Dad that Carl Colby was perhaps not hoping for. The math here is simple. Dad = Great Spy. Son = Competent TV director.

I finally have no idea what Carl Colby was trying to accomplish here, but whatever it was, it's pretty inconsequential compared to his Father's accomplishments.

"The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby" is in a very limited theatrical release before its home entertainment debut. In Toronto, it playing at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. For tickets and more information, feel free to visit the theatre's website HERE.

If, some reason you are compelled to buy this movie, feel free to support the maintenance of this site by ordering the picture direct from the links below.