THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Turgid Tedium Rules Romance

The Light Between Oceans (2016)
Dir. Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander,
Rachel Weisz, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Early into this historical romance, the two lovers-to-be (Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander) go for an extra-long picnic, walking and talking ad nauseum through hilly, seemingly treeless and wide-open Aussie wilderness until, settling several hours later on a cliff overlooking a gorgeous sunset on the ocean, they kiss and profess their love for each other. As Alexandre Desplat's ludicrously lush score throbs over cinematographer Adam Arkapaw's dull picture-postcard images, all I could think about was when, where and for how long did our lovebirds relieve themselves of waste matter. Worse yet, I wondered about how the two deposited heavier loads with no apparent evidence of toilet paper.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last thing one should be thinking about in any romance are bowel movements, but think about them, I did - long and hard. And as the film plodded along, I thought about my own need to relieve myself. Thank heaven for tender mercies.

The Light Between Oceans had plenty of potential to be a weepy in the 40s Warner Bros. tradition, but alas it suffers from a horrendously miscast leading lady and worse yet, plods along to a relatively safe denouement.

Fassbender and Vikander play a newly married couple living an Eden-like existence on a remote island - its only practical reason for being is to provide a lighthouse to guide ships from its rocky shores and towards the safe harbours about 100 miles away. We watch them boink like minks, but their attempts to generate progeny result in not one, but two - count 'em - still births. Vikander takes it especially badly. When a small boat washes ashore with a dead man and a living, breathing newborn baby, she petulantly, selfishly insists that Fassbender bury the evidence of the obviously real Daddy and keep the child for themselves.

For what seems like several hours of running time, we watch our couple raise the child as if it were their own. Alas, back on shore, there is the baby's real grieving mother. Rachel Weisz suffers quite magnificently in this role - so much so that occasional sojourns to the mainland by our baby-napping couple inspire Fassbender's guilt to overwhelm him.

Needless to say, things will probably not turn out too well. Unfortunately, instead of some really unbearable suffering, we're dealt the unkindest cut of all, a relatively happy ending tinged with bittersweetness. Some of the melodramatic elements in the movie do indeed work in a rudimentary sledgehammer fashion, but neither the screenplay nor the direction take brave enough steps into completely ludicrous tear-wrenching territory - it's all eventually so bloody tasteful.

Under the circumstances, Fassbender and Weisz acquit themselves nicely and it's great seeing Aussie stalwarts like Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson in top form, but the ubiquitous Alicia Vikander pretty much upends the whole picture. She seldom wipes the dimple-inducing smile from her face and even when she expresses sadness or desperation, there's more giddiness in her visage than anything remotely real or harrowing. In fact, her dimples become so bothersome, one wants to pave them over with cement. Most embarrassing are her line-readings which seem oddly anachronistic. Ultimately, Vikander galumphs her way through the proceedings with such misplaced intensity that the movie galumphs alongside her.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **

The Light Between Oceans opened the 2016 Venice Film Festival and is now in wide release via Disney.

HANNAH MONTANA: THE MOVIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Genuine Big Screen Version

Here's a terrific wifflegif.com rendering of the immortal Hannah Montana Hoedown Throwdown for thine pleasure

Le ART film du Miley
Hannah Montana - Le Film

Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009)
Dir. Peter Chelsom
Starring: Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Emily Osment, Jason Earles, Peter Gunn

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When a middle-aged man wanders alone into a theatre full of 8-year-old girls and their Moms, then plops down front row centre, is it fair to automatically assume he is a child molester? What if this gentleman grew up in a simpler age when the likes of scrumptious childstar Hayley Mills delighted not only little girls and their mothers, but little boys as well? Though a lad couldn't admit he loved Hayley Mills, it was assumed his mates were equally enamoured with the sweet-faced star of Pollyanna.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Will I EVER like a comic book movie? Well, if they're directed by the likes of Sam Raimi, Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez, the answer's YES!

This is MY Captain America Golden Age and no movie has yet come close.

Scarlett (UGH!!!) Johansson
in a Captain America movie is
SACRILEGE!!!

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) *1/2
Dirs. Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson,
Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I do have a bias when it comes to comic book movies and it's simple: I want them to capture the spirit of the comics I loved when I first discovered them. I am, however, not curmudgeonly-narrow-enough to dismiss said pictures if they're directed by real directors with something resembling panache. God knows I love all three Sam Raimi Spiderman movies (even part 3) because they not only capture the essence of Marvel during MY primetime enjoyment of the comics during the 60s and early 70s, but they're all superbly directed. Zack Snyder's Man of Steel rocked my world because it not only captured the DC items I loved in the 60s, but came closest to the first brilliant season of the George Reeves TV series which was dark, nasty and noir-like. Oh yeah, and Snyder can direct rings round most filmmakers. His work on graphic novels like 300 as well as that of Rodriguez's top-dips into such adaptations like Sin City kick major, royal ass from stylistic standpoints.

All the others pretty much stink (though Jon Favreau's first Iron Man was watchable, Kenneth Branagh's Thor was decently written and even well directed except for the action scenes and Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk had tons of visual panache, decent tone, though a disappointing script). The big reason the contemporary comic book movies drive me nuts is that they usually offend my bias, but are also miserably directed.

Captain America: The First Avenger fell into a disappointing, but not terribly offensive middle ground for me. Director Joe Johnston is an agreeable enough hack. His action scenes were relatively comprehensible (though a tad dull) and thankfully weren't of the herky-jerky variety (used by losers who mask their directorial incompetence with way too many poorly composed closeups and ludicrous lightning cuts). Unfortunately, aside from the great Hugo Weaving as The Red Skull, the movie seemed woefully all over the place in terms of tone and, of course, the screenplay left a lot to be desired.

And so, that brings us to the equally humdrum Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Tonally, it offends my bias, but at least the action scenes have some decent fight choreography that Anthony and Joe Russo manage to shoot in focus with a few nicely composed fixed-camera positions and minimal rapid-fire cuts. Like the first instalment, it features a terrific villain, though here it's not the super-villain, but the slimy political weasel played really well by Robert Redford.

Alas, the rest of the movie stinks.

At least the Russos keep the camera still enough to display the fight
choreography. Not that it matters much, since the movie is Dullsville.

The I-could-care-less plot involves Cappy Am (Chris Evans) embroiled in some tiresome hijinx involving Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) being assassinated by Bucky-Barnes-incarnation The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) and slimy Redford being behind a plot to take down SHIELD and the Cap needing to team up with the tediously uninteresting Black Widow (Scarlett "UGH - get off the screen, already" Johansson) and the ridiculous Falcon (Anthony Mackie), a character who, in the 70s Marvel Comics started to turn me off to Captain America. This all results in a bunch of decently directed action scenes with virtually no dramatic investment for us since the plot is as perfunctory as they get, lacking any of the truly haunting tone the pre-Falcon Marvel comics had.

Call me a sourball. I don't care. I'm getting sick of these pictures. Given how dreadfully directed The Avengers, Iron Man III, Thor: The Dark World and the completely useless Amazing Spiderman reboots have been (and don't get me started on the Christopher "One Idea" Nolan Dark Knight garbage), I'm feeling like life is getting too short to watch anymore of these unless real directors are attached to them.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is in wide release from Walt Disney Pictures.

THE ARISTOCATS - Anything after Walt Disney's death was Verboten in our home, unless Walt had developed and/or green-lit it prior to his Big Nod-Off

The Aristocats (1970) ****
dir. Wolfgang Reitherman
Voices by: Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers

Review By Greg Klymkiw

With my first child, I had a strict rule regarding what Disney product she was allowed to see – especially when it came to the animated product. Nothing that was made after Uncle Walt’s death would be allowed in our home. Everything in the post-Walt world was risible at worst and mediocre at best. For me, this especially includes that wretched period which barfed out the overblown and overrated and overwrought “Aladdin”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “The Little Mermaid” and (gag me with a very big spoon), “The Lion King” and everything else of that unfortunate ilk. These dreadful pictures with their annoying use of actors like Robin Williams and syrupy scores would not only remain verboten in my home, but were, no doubt, sending Walt’s corpse into major grave-spinning mode.

There was, however, one exception to this strict rule and that exception was this: films that Walt personally developed and/or had already given a thumbs-up to for production PRIOR to his death were perfectly acceptable. The Aristocats, the Disney Company’s twentieth animated feature film was finished after Walt’s death, but developed personally by him. A-Okay, by me.

Some criticize the movie for being super-derivative of so many Uncle Walt classics, which, of course, is utter nonsense and true all at once. While there is no denying that “The Aristocats” is basically “Lady and the Tramp” with cats, crossed with “101 Dalmatians” and dollops - here and there - from a handful of others, all that basically proves is that good stories are always worth telling and re-telling and re-telling again – just so long as the details are not only different, but that they are, for lack of a better description, cool.

And “The Aristocats” is nothing if not cool.

With a late 50s jazz mentality set against the ultra-romantic and super-cool backdrop of Gay Par-ee, or, if you must, Paris, “The Aristocats” is up there with the best of them because it takes something from a previous (“old”) generation that already WAS cool and makes it cool again. Keep in mind that “The Aristocats” was released in 1970, long after rock n’ roll had become king, but rather than resorting to what was hip in terms of “now”, the picture steadfastly held onto what was cool in the past and not only cool, but frankly, the kind of thing that COULD withstand the test of time and appeal to generations well beyond the here and now. Disney was always ahead of his time, but he also knew that the ephemeral could make some quick bucks, but wouldn’t ensure several lifetimes of profits. And it was that knack for creating work that could keep making money for generation upon generation, work that had staying power, work that could, in fact live forever, is the very reason that Disney was a genius and a visionary and the ultimate filmmaker – an artist of the highest order in addition to being a captain – no, a General of Industry.

In a nutshell, the picture tells the story of a crazy old rich lady (Hermione Baddeley) who has a gorgeous, pampered cat called The Duchess (Eva Gabor) who, in turn, has three cute and precocious kittens. When the old rich lady decides to bequeath her whole fortune to her manservant Edgar, he decides to kill all the cats since he won’t get a single penny until all four cats live out all their nine lives due to a clause in the will that puts the kitties before Edgar. He cat-naps the felines, takes them to the middle of nowhere, tries to drown them, but is foiled in his nefarious intentions by a couple of mangy, but heroic old hound dogs. The kitties, stranded in the middle of nowhere are assisted in their plight by O’Malley (Phil Harris) and his other alley cats, a bunch of American expat-cats, who play mean jazz as only Americans in France could.

The humour, the characters, the voice-work are all first-rate. The animation, especially in terms of detail with respect to feline behaviour, is exceptional. But what really rocks (so to speak) in this picture is the fantastic musical score – especially the “Ev’rbody Wants To Be A Cat” number that is the soaring definition of the expression: “jazz hot”.

I personally saw The Aristocats in 1970 as a kid and subsequently on a couple of occasions when it was officially re-released theatrically. I saw it when it was first released on DVD, and most recently watched it in the magnificent new 2-disc DVD special edition released by Buena Vista. Each time the movie held up magnificently. It’s one great picture.

That said, my daughter eventually demanded to see all those banned Disney titles. I grudgingly bought all of them. Imagine, if you will, my shame and remorse at bringing “Aladdin”, “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast” and, God help me, “The [Goddamn] Lion King” into my home. Interestingly enough, my daughter watched all of those dreadful titles once and once only. She has never wanted to watch any of them again. The true Disney films, that she’d be indoctrinated with, however, are always on – again and again and again. She never tires of the real thing. “The Aristocats” is a movie she’s seen at least twenty times – probably more.

This, of course, not only proves how great Walt Disney was, but how important it is to expose children to only the best in their early years. That way, they learn how to discriminate between what’s good and bad. Most pointedly, they develop an excellent shit detector when it comes to much of the garbage that has been made in the RECENT past. When their yardstick is the very best, everything else becomes so much landfill.

2/27/08

SPIRITED AWAY - BY JULIA KLYMKIW - TIFF Bell Lightbox presents a great series entitled "Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli" until April 13. Junior Cub Reporter, 11-year-old Julia Klymkiw, fills in for Dad today and reviews Miyazaki's masterpiece.

The Toronto International Film Festival TIFF Bell Lightbox is presenting a wonderful series entitled "Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli" until April 13. Junior Cub Reporter, 11-year-old Julia Klymkiw is filling in for her Dad today with a review of the Academy Award winning animated feature film, "Spirited Away".

"Spirited Away" is showing at Sunday March 25 at 7:00 PM, Sunday April 1 at 7:00 PM and Saturday April 7 at 1:00 PM. Tickets can be purchased online HERE.

Spirited Away***** (2001)
dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Review By Julia Klymkiw
The Film Corner's
Junior Cub Reporter

When I was lots younger I saw Spirited Away on DVD and I loved it. I loved it so much I watched it again and again.

Now that I’m older I had a chance to see it on film. I was amazed when I saw one of the most magical and beautiful movies I’ve ever seen on a big screen in a theatre. An actual real film, not a DVD. My Dad took me to see the movie at the Lightbox Theatre.

We sat in the back row and before the movie started. Dad showed me the projectors through the windows and I saw the big rolls of film. Dad says there are separate pictures called frames that move very quickly in front of the light bulb. The frames go so fast they make a picture that moves and it shows on the big screen down at the bottom of the room through the projector lens, which is kind of like a magnifying glass.

Spirited Away is an animated cartoon fairytale about a family moving to a new home. They drive onto the wrong road and find a tunnel that leads to a small strange town instead of their house. When the father smells food, he and his family walk towards it. The mother and father find the food, There is a whole bunch of it, like the Mandarin buffet, but nobody is around. The mother and father stuff their faces into the food like pigs, but the little girl is not so sure this is a good idea. After wandering around the town she comes back and is shocked to see that her parents are transformed into animals.

Running in fear she meets a boy, a very nice boy who will help her. Curled up and hiding near a bush, she realizes something very strange is happening to her, something just as scary as what happened to her Mom and Dad, but worse. That mysterious boy gives her a magic berry and she goes back to normal. Pulling her up, they run through the town and she sees spirits and ghosts wandering around and eating the same food her parents were eating. The boy sneaks her into a big building and gives her instructions where to go and what to do to survive in this weird world and to be able to save her Mom and Dad.

She goes to the place the boy told her about. She stares in terror at the steep stairs. She doesn’t want to go down, but soon she starts creeping down slowly, one more step at a time until she slips and tumbles so far down we think she will die. Luckily, she slams into a wall and is okay.

As great as all this sounds, this is just the beginning, the beginning of a great adventure, the beginning of Spirited Away.

Things get crazier and scarier. There are huge ghosts and slimy monsters and a nasty old lady who looks like a witch. To save her parents is going to be very difficult and dangerous.

Will the little girl succeed? You have to see the movie to find out.

It sure is cool seeing the movie for real in a theatre. The colours are way nicer than at home and this is the first time I watched the movie in Japanese. When I saw it on DVD, it was in English. I didn't know the movie was made in Japan the first time. Later on I did because my Dad told me that it was a movie made from this guy in Japan who is like Walt Disney. Even when I was little the movie wasn't like a lot of the other movies I watched. Seeing it in Japanese, now I know why.

It's okay if you can't speak Japanese. There are titles at the bottom to tell you what the people are saying. Even if you have seen this movie like I did on DVD, it is way cooler to see it in a real movie theatre in the language of the country it is from.

JOHN CARTER - Review by Greg Klymkiw - The movie's poor performance at the boxoffice has the horrible whiff of a lazy company that had no idea what to do with this unique genre picture. While it's still playing on a few decent big screens, anyone who loves sprawling sci-fi fantasy adventures, owes it to themselves to see it now.

Buy the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novels here:

John Carter (2012) dir. Andrew Stanton
Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Thomas Hayden Church, Ciarán Hinds, Dominic West, Mark Strong

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

When I do the math that counts, I add up the following John Carter attributes:

A handsome, stalwart hunk hero.

A major league babe.

Noble allies for the hunkster and babe to right wrongs.

Great villains.

An overall mise-en-scene that captures the SPIRIT of the late, great, original author Edgar Rice Burroughs ("Tarzan of the Apes") whose book ("Princess of Mars") the film is based upon.

Eye-popping special effects (that work just as well in 2-D as they do in 3-D, the latter process being one I normally can't stand).

Cool aliens.

Cool sets.

Cool spaceships.

Monsters.

Yes, monsters.

Cool monsters, at that.

An astounding slaves-in-an-arena-fighting-aforementioned-monsters scene.

A rip-snorting battle sequence.

Have I mentioned the babe, yet?

The sum total of the above is that director Andrew (Finding Nemo, WALL-E) Stanton's big screen version of Burroughs's first John Carter novel is a total blast.

The movie details the adventures of our title hero (Taylor Kitsch), a two-fisted soldier from the Civil War who, while on the run and hiding from a military posse trying to force him back into service, is zapped to Mars through a mysterious worm-hole device buried deep within a southwestern American cave. Once on the Red Planet, his Earthly physiology allows him to defy Martian gravity, thus giving him the power to leap incredible distances.

In addition to his brawn and bravery, this gravitational endowment (amongst hunky actor Taylor Kitsch's other obvious endowments - especially one in particular) is extremely helpful when he happens upon a "good" city state being oppressed by a "bad" city state. As luck would have it, the good guys have mega-babe Princess Dejah (the fetching, drop-dead gorgeous Lynn Collins), who kicks mighty butt (as well as being endowed with one) AND is a super-brilliant inventor. She comes up with a device to battle the nasties who want to forge an unholy alliance by forcing her to marry the slimy Sab Than (Dominic West), an evil puppet ruler who provides the front for the real power, Matai Shang (Mark Strong).

And then there are the lizard-like Tharks (think Jar-Jar Binks from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace but with four arms and no patois) who try to keep a low profile, but are convinced by John Carter and Princess Deja to join them in their fight against the bad guys. Tars Tarkas (Willem Defoe doing great voice work) and Sola (Samantha Morton) are the prime movers and shakers amongst the Tharks who help our hero and heroine.

The "character" I think I loved best happens to be the cutest alien dog I've ever seen in all my days of going to the movies. Granted, it's the only alien dog I've ever seen in the movies, but why quibble? Woola is the Martian dog, ever-drooling with a perpetual tongue hanging out of its wide, happy mouth and resembling a roly-poly big-eyed pus bag. He's super-fast and super-loyal to John Carter.

Old Yeller, Rin Tin Tin and Lassie be damned - Woola's got your collective asses in his jaws.

When I was a kid, I devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs with a passion. He was no great genre "thinker" like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke, but his pulpy, punchy style, his serviceable and often cheesy dialogue (even when I was a kid in the 60s it made me guffaw good-naturedly more than once) and most of all, his incredible imagination - creating exciting worlds on the planet Earth and beyond - made him every kid's go-to guy for sci-fi-fantasy-adventure. Stanton's obvious deference to Burroughs renders John Carter the ultimate screen adaptation of the famed Tarzan-creator's work.

The movie is deliciously old-fashioned, even intentionally retro - but NEVER with tongue-in-cheek. Stanton plays everything straight which lets the natural humour of the material shine and most of all, allows the derring-do thrill and delight ever-so tantalizingly.

The action, humour and major battle scene at the end are as good as any I've seen in years. Curiously enough, there isn't a single story element from the original Burroughs that hasn't already been pilfered by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and pretty much any and every sci-fi silver screen outing since the books came out.

If truth be told, the elements Lucas lifted from Burroughs for his Star Wars films were enough to grip a couple of movie-going generations, but what Stanton delivers is the real thing and for me, is a lot more enjoyable. Lucas's Attack of the Clones, is probably my favourite Star Wars picture since it managed to capture everything the others merely purport to. I realize I might be in a minority here, but the majority haven't seen as many movies as I have. And John Carter, though reminiscent at times of SW:AOTC, beats that one and all the other Lucas efforts hands down.

By now, everyone has discussed - ad-nauseum - what a big box office flop Stanton's film is. I think this has less to do with the picture or the $250 million price tag - it has everything to do with Disney's utterly pathetic marketing. They blew it big time. Changing the shooting title "John Carter of Mars" to simply John Carter was the first idiotic move. For those fanboys who love Burroughs - fine, but to reel in new generations of moviegoers it would have made far more sense to include the "of Mars" appendage. The ads and posters Disney created are utterly lame also. Add a stupid generic title to ho-hum graphics and there's already a big strike against the picture in the marketplace.

John Carter's hugest per-capita theatrical grosses in the world were in Russia. They maintained the dumb title, but it sure looks cool in cyrillic letters and it sounds even cooler in Russian. Most of all, though, the graphics on the Russian ads and posters were deliciously retro, but so in the spirit of Burroughs that I'd argue a whole new generation might have been attracted to this ultra-cool approach if it had been employed round the world.

Worst of all, where were the literary tie-ins? All Disney could come up with was a novelization (!!!) of Burroughs's original book and the current screenplay.

Morons!

Where were the tie-ins with the actual Burroughs Carter books? They should have been out at least a year ago - building a whole new interest in his work with younger generations. Looking at other recent successful film franchises based on books, Burroughs more than deserved a shot at capturing the imaginations of young readers. Besides, his writing equals that of Leo Tolstoy when compared to the pathetic noodlings of J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), Stephanie Meyer (Twilight) and Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games).

John Carter is a movie that does have its fair share of longueurs, but I suspect this is due to some obvious truncations in the final picture editing. Part of me thinks the pace might have actually improved overall if the picture had been longer. The movie is already long, so I don't see the logic in keeping things on the cutting floor that might have improved the overall flow of the picture.

Disney screwed up. In fact, the company's recent proclamation of instituting a $200 million write-down based on the movie's poor performance at the boxoffice has the horrible whiff of a lazy company that had no idea what to do with this unique genre picture and decided - possibly in advance - to seek a tax loss.

While John Carter is still playing on a few decent big screens, anyone who loves sprawling sci-fi fantasy adventures, owes it to themselves to see it now.

That said, it's going to look great on Blu-Ray.

"John Carter" is currently in worldwide theatrical release and has been miserably marketed and distributed by Disney.

For a great perspective on Disney's pathetic marketing, the following is a fantastic open letter to Richard Ross, Chairman of the Disney Company. Read it HERE!

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