MARY PICKFORD: RAGS & RICHES COLLECTION - THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, THE HOODLUM, SPARROWS - Review By Julia Klymkiw - Cub Reporter - 12-year-old Cub Reporter reviews the exquisite Milestone Film and Video Special Edition, Extras-Packed Blu-Ray which presents "Kid-Friendly" Silent Films Starring Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford: Rags & Riches Collection - Milestone Film and Video
The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) *****
Dir. Maurice Tourneur 
The Hoodlum (1919) Dir. Sidney Franklin *****
Sparrows (1926) Dir. William Beaudine **********

Review By Julia Klymkiw
(The Film Corner's 12-year-old Cub Reporter)

Mary Pickford was a really big movie star from Canada who made movies almost 100 years ago. She played the roles of kids a lot even though she was not a kid, but because she was petite and had really cute curly hair, she could do these roles very well. She was as popular as stars we know from today like Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts and Jessica Chastain, but I will tell you that she was very different from so many of the big stars we all know because she made silent movies before they had sound in them.

I love Mary Pickford and I think many girls like me will love her if their Moms and Dads let them see the movies on this Blu-Ray. She is someone who is so good that she always makes you laugh, but sometimes her stories can be sad too.

The Poor Little Rich Girl is so good because she plays a little girl whose Mom and Dad are very rich and they are afraid to let her go outside of the house. She just wants to be like other kids, but her parents are too busy for her. They love her and aren't really mean to her, but she sure wishes she could go out and play. Her nanny is mean though and Mary has to be pretty crafty at finding ways to sneak outside to play. Her Mom and Dad are angry and upset when they find out. She gets into some really bad trouble and needs to get out of it all by herself.

The Hoodlum is sort of like The Poor Little Rich Girl because in this movie, Mary lives with her grandfather and he is always too busy for her. This makes her very lonely. They move to a poor area of the city because her grandfather is a scientist who is studying poor people. He lets her be a real girl, but only because he is so busy. It's nice because she gets to meet her real Dad who is poor. When she goes to play with the poor kids in the neighbourhood they don't like her at first, but as she gets to know them better, they really begin to like her because she is a lot of fun and they always get into trouble. It's not bad trouble, but fun trouble. This movie is really exciting and made me laugh a lot. Mary not only gets to be like real kids, she gets to be like some of the poor kids and she gets to learn a lot about how other kids live.

Sparrows is so good that I gave it 10 stars. [Ed.note: Try arguing with a 12-year-old sometime.]

This movie has funny things in it, but it's not like the other two movies at all. This story is sad and scary. Mary plays a little girl who lives in an orphanage where a family of super bad people are very mean to all the kids. They buy kids and sell kids and this is not something orphanages should do, but in the old days this probably happened a lot. Even today it can happen, but only in countries like Russia and Ukraine.

In this movie, Mary is a bit older than the other kids and because she's a teenager, she always has to try to save them from the really horrible man who is the father of the family. He's not very nice. Well, that is being polite about it, because he is so evil. He makes the kids work really hard, he doesn't care when they are sick, he feeds them horrible food that is not nutritious and in such small amounts that Mary needs to sometimes steal extra food from the kitchen. The orphanage is completely surrounded by a swamp and I do not want to spoil the movie for you, but there are some horrible things in that swamp that want to eat kids.

This is a really great silent movie and I have to say it might be my favourite silent movie of all time. There are times when it is so sad you want to cry, but Mary is such a great hero that you always hope things are going to get better for all the poor orphans. Mary might be a kid, but she is almost like a real mother to the kids.

You really can't ever stop watching the movie. It's that good. Sometimes you laugh and other times it is so exciting and full of suspense that you almost can't bear it. And when the movie is scary, watch out! It's that scary!!!!!!

I think this is an amazing movie for all kids of today to watch. You see how people were very poor in those days, but even though it is from a long time ago, it is interesting to watch because you start to think about how poor people are today and that even today, there are a lot of kids who are treated badly. You hope that in real life there are characters like Mary plays and yes, there are brave people who help kids, but I think we probably need more of them.

Many movies and TV shows for kids have girls who are the main characters, but many of them only care about silly things. In Sparrows, Mary plays a little girl who is so brave, smart and caring. I wish more modern movies had actors like Mary Pickford who could play characters like the one Mary plays here.

Even though I think Sparrows is the best silent movie I have seen, I think the movie is so good that it is probably one of my favourite movies ever that's silent or sound. If you have not seen it, you need to.

This is such a good Bluray and I think all parents have to get it for their kids because they will learn a lot about how movies used to be so different, but were just as good as they are now. Even if the movies of Mary Pickfor are silent, they are not really silent. They always have great music and even the black and white has colour in it because in the old days they used to put colours on scenes in the labs. There is only one colour in the scene that goes on top of the black and white, but it is kind of cool because the colour is used to make you feel if the scene is happy, sad, sunny, cloudy or dark. My Dad explained that to me a long time ago when we watched other silent movies.

There are also a bunch of extra things on the Bluray that kids will enjoy because it explains and shows you how to watch silent movies. I do not mean to brag, but I did not really need this stuff because I have been watching silent movies ever since I started watching movies, but for kids who do not have a Dad who tells them all the stuff they need to know about movies then this is totally perfect. I enjoyed the little documentary things the Bluray plays before each movie starts and even though I knew most of the stuff I find it interesting to see how much stuff other kids don't know about it and how they should. The thing that's really cool is the extra sound on the movies that has the titles read out loud to you and gives you all kinds of cool information. This was good even for me because I didn't need to bug my Dad when I did have questions. He never minds when I ask him questions, though. ;-)

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Mary Pickford Rags and Riches Collection - HERE!

In Canada - BUY Mary Pickford Rags and Riches Collection HERE, eh!

In UK BUY Mary Pickford Rags & Riches Collection HERE

SIGHTSEERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - British Serial Killer Black Comedy Not Without a Few Laughs

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" in in limited theatrical release via Mongrel Media and can be seen in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

THE WARRIORS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - In light of so many dreadful blockbusters permeating the screens with their rancid odour of directors who cannot, for the life of them, direct action sequences (or much else), it's time for audiences to flush the likes of J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan, et al down the toilet and see what a real director can do with action.

The Warriors (1979) Ultimate Director's Cut ****
dir. Walter Hill
Starring: Michael Beck, James Remar, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, David Patrick Kelly and Roger Hill

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Damn! This is one spectacular action picture that definitely deserves to be ranked as a classic of the genre. The movie is over thirty-years-old and while falling a few tiny notches below utter perfection, it has not dated at all and still carries the weight and power to dazzle audiences as it did so many years ago. It really is so terrific that I'm compelled to urge everyone to see it - especially in light of such dreadful recent action blockbusters like Star Trek: Into Darkness, Iron Man III, The Fast and the Furious 6 and God only knows what other horrendous piles of crap that await us this summer from directors (I use the term loosely) who have absolutely no idea how to shoot action scenes.

We can also breathe a sigh of relief that the occasionally proficient hack Tony Scott took his mysterious dive off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro before he had a chance to realize his planned remake of The Warriors (not to mention the potential of a Scott remake of The Wild Bunch, a bonafide, untouchable classic from Hill's mentor Sam Peckinpah).

That said, Tony Scott perfected the fast-cutting herky-jerky style of action with considerable aplomb. He, at least, knew what he was doing as opposed to the likes of J.J. Abrams, Justin Lin or Shane Black. The list can go on. In 2012 we had to suffer through the tin eyes of lame action direction from Joss Whedon (The Avengers,), Marc Webb (The Amazing Spiderman), Gary Ross (The Hunger Games), Sam Mendes (Skyfall) and the absolute worst hack of them all, Christopher "One Idea" Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises).

What is it with these clowns who can't direct action being allowed to direct action anyway? Even worse, what's up with audiences willing to accept noisy, frenetic, substandard shooting and cutting? Attention spans and/or brain matter must be at such an all time low that the Decline and Collapse of Western Civilization is not too far away.

One of the things The Warriors has going for it over these other horrendously directed pictures is that it has a nice simple narrative coat hanger for Hill to hang his cool shit on.

A visionary New York City crime warlord named Cyrus (Roger Hill) gathers nine reps from one hundred gangs to assemble for a meeting in a Bronx park where he charismatically informs everyone that fighting for turf amongst each other is a losing game. He notes that NYC gang members number 100,000 strong and with only 20,000 policeman to fight crime, they outnumber law enforcement authorities big-time. In this small, but pivotal role, Roger Hill - with his resonant alto-bass voice - whips the masses into a frenzy with his punctuating cries of "Can you dig it?"

Alas, the psycho Luther (brilliantly played by David Patrick Kelly - a pre-Crispin Glover who out-Crispin-Glovers Crispin Glover) assassinates Cyrus and blames the murder on the Coney Island gang called The Warriors. Soon, the nine, stylish and buff young fellas from the wrong side of Brighton Beach find themselves having to get back to their home turf with 100,000 furious gang members thirsting for their blood. As Cyrus ordered everyone to come to the meeting sans-heat, The Warriors are unarmed and need to use brains, animal instinct and their fists to savagely defend themselves and embark on a dangerous odyssey across the city - a city so dark and labyrinthine, they might as well be trying to make their way on foot from Toronto to Timbuktu.

Led by the silent, but deadly Swan (Michael Beck) and the hot-headed Ajax (James Remar), The Warriors encounter some of the most nightmarish gangs imaginable. This is where Hill really succeeds in painting a veritable inferno. This New York City is unlike any New York we have ever seen. Yes, the streets are as rough and dirty as we've seen, but the population at night appears to be solely comprised of cops and gangs. And the gangs are adorned in "colours" (the threads that identify them) that create a kaleidoscopic of fresco of trash fashion and malevolence: the Gramercy Riffs are adorned in bright yellow satin kung-fu jammies and shades, the Lizzies, an all-female gang ooze sex appeal with their trashy, utilitarian garb and, among many other, the Baseball Furies deliver the kind of dazzling nightmare qualities that only the movies can give us as the gang members are outfitted in full baseball regalia, hideously painted faces and wielding heavy-duty baseball bats.

The journey itself is propelled by the gorgeous lips of a female D.J. who sexily spins (on vinyl no less) appropriate tunes to fuel the action of the evening and murmurs threats to the Warriors and updated information to the 100,000 strong looking to take them out.The only slight disappointment here is the otherwise appropriate song "Nowhere to Run" which is, unfortunately, delivered by a pallid cover band instead of the original Martha and the Vandellas. Other than that, though, Barry De Vorzon's pulsating synth-score and Joe Walsh's stirring anthem "In the City", more than make up for the above mentioned musical gaffe.

Andrew Laszlo's cinematography etches a veritable film noir quality, but with dollops of fluorescent light and garish colour. The entire picture, save for the early morning light during the picture's climax, is shot at night where every deep, dark shadow pulsates with the threat of all manner of nastiness.

It's certainly no wonder that The Warriors took North American audiences by storm. Boxoffice on the picture sizzled and responses were highly emotional - especially in theatres situated in areas populated by heavy gang activity. This led to actual violence in some cinemas and both the studio and exhibitors across North America, fearing a backlash, idiotically started pulling advertising and even dropping the picture, in spite of its sizzling grosses. This, of course, resulted in numbers that didn't accurately reflect the movie's full potential.

As an audience member in the relatively benign (at least in the 70s) city of Winnipeg, I was always amazed at the hugely emotional reaction to the film. People cheered, whistled, and clapped their way through the picture, and even when it ended its run, I remember booking the film in a repertory cinema I programmed - again and again and again. The grosses were stunning long after its first-run. Midnight screenings were especially lucrative and the audiences (gang-affiliated or not) stylishly adorned themselves in the manner of all the gangs in the movie.

The Warriors was more than a movie. It was a phenomenon. The kind of thing that doesn't really happen anymore in our world of short-runs, multiplexes and home entertainment.

Directed by Walter Hill, the only real heir apparent to the legendary Sam Peckinpah (Hill wrote the wonderful screenplay adaptation of Jim Thomson's The Getaway for Peckinpah), he was, for much of his career, one of the most agile, tough-minded and original directors of exquisite pulp. Hill could direct action scenes with the assuredness of a master, but his real talents were rooted in creating worlds that could ONLY exist on film - delicious never-never-lands that delivered a macho fairy tale quality for little boys of all ages. (Though, if truth be told, my 12-year-old daughter has seen The Warriors many times and is thoroughly dazzled by it each time she does.)

With one great action picture after another, Hill took us into almost fantastical worlds on the darkside of human existence. His debut, Hard Times lovingly recreated the world of prize-fighting during the depression, The Driver dove deeply into a pseudo-existentialist post-Jean-Pierre-Melville-styled world of car thieves and crooked cops, The Long Riders was, without question, one of the most evocative renderings of the Jesse James legend ever made, Southern Comfort - clearly in Deliverance territory - was a terrifying thriller following a group of unarmed National Guardsmen through the Louisiana Bayous as they fend off repeated attacks by slavering psycho Cajun inbreds and finally, the spectacular expressionistic rock and roll phantasmagoria Streets of Fire capped a sterling career.

His foray into overtly conventional and commercial cinema delivered the well-directed, but empty-headed 48 Hrs. (and its dreadful sequel Another 48 Hrs.) and signalled a beginning of the end for Hill. He never quite recovered from this period and his output ranged from dreadful to competent, with a few flawed, but interesting pictures like Wild Bill, Johnny Handsome and Crossroads.

His one great masterpiece, however, was and still is, The Warriors. Hill's camera is always where it should be with superb compositions. Each shot is a gem and much like a great cartoon, Hill doesn't hold longer than he has to - he leaves you desperate for more. The editing, while fast-paced and flashy (replete with really cool wipes and dissolves) is, in tandem with the fabulous cinematography, never disorienting and/or sloppy in that contemporary herky-jerky style of contemporary action (usually directed by the aforementioned boneheads like J. J. Abrams et al, who have no talent whatsoever for crafting lean and mean action).

The Blu-Ray and DVD releases of The Warriors are both presented as a Director's Cut. What this really means, is that Hill was finally able to incorporate comic book panels to bridge all the different movements and locations in the film. While the film lived without these additions for a long time - now that they're there, I can't quite imagine the picture without them.

With all the contemporary comic book film adaptations out there these days, The Warriors actually comes closest to recreating a thrilling and delightful comic book style. Not only because of Hill's recent additions, but in his adherence to a never-never-land mise-en-scene.

And the action sequences have seldom been matched. These spectacular set-pieces - replete with Peckinpah styled slow motion - are charged with the kind of fury that great action thrillers MUST have. The battle between the Warriors and the Baseball Furies in a dark, inner-city park with rich green lawns and leafy trees, is still a thing of great beauty and there's a sequence on a subway platform that's both chilling and finally, when the action shifts to a grotty public washroom, the choreography and pyrotechnics are a veritable ballet of visceral violence.

If you've never seen The Warriors you are doing yourself a great disservice by not seeing it. If you've seen it before, see it again. My recent helpings of the picture were the first times I'd seen it since the 80s and I can assure you, it not only held up, but actually felt fresher, more vibrant and more urgent than ever before.

"The Warriors" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Paramount Home Video.

MANBORG - DVD Review and Editorial Commentary By Greg Klymkiw - From Anchor Bay Canada in partnership with Raven Banner comes the most triumphant DVD for a Canadian Film that is comparable to a Criterion Collection release. This is a no-budget Canadian movie that all burgeoning filmmakers need to watch and then dive into the fabulous extra features and learn how to make their first feature the RIGHT WAY!!! This DVD is practically a film school in a box. DON'T WASTE MONEY ON FILM SCHOOL, JUST BUY THIS DVD!!! And if you DON'T agree these guys made EXACTLY the kind of first feature REAL FILMMAKERS must make when they are bereft of money, then you are a POSEUR! In the tradition of John Paizs and Guy Maddin, Astron-6 is the REAL THING!

CONOR SWEENEY AND DOLPH LUNDGREN

SEPARATED AT BIRTH.

BELIEVE IT, BABY, BELIEVE IT!!!

SUCCUMB TO THE GREATNESS

THAT IS MANBORG

OR DIE!!!

PROSTRATE YOURSELF BEFORE MANBORG!

DINE GREEDILY AND GRATEFULLY

UPON THE KUBASA PROTRUDING FROM HIS HOLY

ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT SPHINCTER

OR DIE LIKE THE DOG YOU ARE!

MANBORG enjoyed one hell of a hootenanny at the 2011 Toronto After Dark Film Festival. Not long after, Toronto's Jesus H. Christ Almighty of Edgy, Cool and Just Plain Insane Cinema, Colin (TIFF'S "Mr. Midnight Madness" Himself) Geddes strapped on the powerful dildo that became a Co-Executive-Producership of Manborg and fudge-packed this puppy into a Midnight Movie hit at Toronto's Royal Theatre as well as spearheading (as it were), a variety of home entertainment deals throughout the universe.

Up in the Great White North, the powerhouse partnership of Raven Banner and Anchor Bay Canada have placed this masterwork of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror onto the grand pedestal of DVD immortality for all to cherish and enjoy. With a superb looking transfer magnificently magnifying every analogue and digital artifact known to technology in addition to the extremity of every garishly gorgeous colour spewed like so much fresh Mandarin Buffet regurgitate upon a cathode-ray screen, this superlative entry in the canon of the Winnipeg-spawned Astron-6 is directed within an inch of its ever-loving life by the Shit-Stompingly Stellar Steven Kostanski.

Yes, now you can own your own copy and goddamn all to hell, fuck me blind over a month of everlasting Sundays, this fab DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada is - no kidding - one of the best DVD packages you are likely to ever buy, own and cherish. The DVD is co-produced by Manborg's other Executive Producer Peter Kuplowsky and it is crafted with all the loving attention to detail that one normally expects from the Criterion Collection and not on a DVD for a zero-budget film that brilliantly recreates (and transforms into its very own original hybrid) all those cellar-dwellar straight-to-home-video SF pictures from the 80s.

First and foremost, this is a DVD that every burgeoning young filmmaker must own - especially Canadian filmmakers. Why Canadians especially? Well, in all my years as an independent producer I worked with filmmakers who were artists, loved movies more than life itself and did anything and everything they had to do to make movies - such born filmmakers like John Paizs, Guy Maddin, Bruno Lazaro Pacheco, Cynthia Roberts and Alan Zweig.

Every so often as an indie producer, and then during my 13 years as a senior creative consultant and Producer-in-Residence at Uncle Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre, I'd meet Canuck filmmakers who wanted to replicate the kind of success generated by many of the pictures I produced or, at the very least, they had some notion that making movies in a no-to-low-budget fashion would still afford them the opportunity to make ANY movie they wanted and to pave their own road to Oz with bricks of gold.

How wrong they were. Many outside the coterie of what I'd become used to working with had this perverse sense of entitlement that made me sick to my stomach. They all immediately wanted huge crews, union actors (almost impossible in the old days, but somewhat more manageable as the years progressed) and every single one of the poseurs in the bunch yammered on about "excellence" and (ugh!) "production value". These to me were the sort of buzz words that signalled one thing - THESE PEOPLE WERE NOT FILMMAKERS. At least, not REAL filmmakers. They were spoiled entitled Canadians living in a bubble of taxpayer financing who were choosing filmmaking as a career the same way one might choose to be a fucking dentist - the only difference being that filmmaking is cooler than being a dentist and THAT is the only reason they were choosing it.

What many of them didn't realize is that the international successes of Canadian filmmakers within this bubble often came from the fact that the product was generated by real artists - many of whom employed slow, steady, exponential gains in budget levels. What a lot of the poseurs really wanted was a job. Most of them ended up doing shitty television for that. Television these days is the perfect medium for most directors who are not real filmmakers and Canadian television is usually the lowest of the low. Thirdly, they believed one could CHOOSE to become filmmakers. WRONG! Filmmaking in its purest form CHOOSES YOU!

Worse yet, these losers, not being REAL filmmakers, needed all the bells and whistles that "real" movies had. What's especially pathetic is that the "support" they were asking for would have - within their desire to make a movie for no money - rendered pictures that looked, for lack of a better description, Canadian. Up to a certain budget level, most Canadian films made for no money, but attempting to adhere to "industry standards", end up looking cheaper and uglier than most real low budget films made by real filmmakers.

Some people ask me: What does a Canadian film look like? Well, the colour blue is almost always used to represent night. I call it "Canadian Blue" and it is appalling. The other thing a Canadian film of this ilk looks like is television. CANADIAN television at that! Believe me, it's ugly.

Kostanski and the entire Astron-6 team make movies that look gorgeous. Like some of the best filmmakers before them - like Paizs and Maddin in particular, the Astron-6 boys LOVE movies to death and make movies using whatever is at their disposal to render wildly entertaining AND original cinema. No money? No problem. Paizs often replicated odd training and corporate films from the 60s and B-movies from the 50s, Maddin dove into the crude cusp period between silent and sound motion pictures with dollops of German expressionism whilst Astron-6 embraced the movies they loved as kids and young adults. Here's the key difference between the Astron-6 guys and virtually every other Canuck filmmaker who first discovered movies in the 80s (unlike say, Paizs or Maddin, who had a few years on these guys and looked further backwards for inspiration).

I have had people who first discovered movies in the 80s referring to - I kid you not - the "classics" by the likes of John Hughes or - God Help Us - The Goonies. Fuck that shit! The movies Astron-6 embraced were ultra-violent, ultra-sleazy, ultra-cheesy, ultra-retro and mega-entertaining genre pictures from such fine purveyors of Grade Z straight to video fare as Cannon, Vestron and other now-forgotten companies.

No-budget movies that put real filmmakers on the map do not come from sickly sweet retreads of John Hughes movies - they come from filmmakers making their lack of funds a virtue and delivering product that's unlike anything else. David Lynch (Eraserhead), John Waters (Pink Flamingos) and Kevin Smith (Clerks) - to name a mere three filmmakers who blasted onto the filmmaking scene with no-budget movies - and did so with movies about deformed babies, dog-shit-eating transvestites and foul-mouthed convenience store losers.

Astron-6 in one year delivered two features: Father's Day (a serial killer who fucks Dads in the ass and sets them on fire) and Kostanski's Manborg wherein an alien demon from Hell takes over the Earth and does battle with a Robocop-style superhero who's aided by three martial artists of the higher order - amidst, of course, some of the most grotesque makeup effects and gore this side of supernatural gialli from the likes of Bava, Lenzi, Argento, et al.

The Manborg DVD is the best film school any young filmmaker can get - because the movie comes from people who know movies, love movies and know how to assemble all the elements to deliver a rocking good time to their audiences.

Here's some of the highlights of the Manborg DVD: Not one, but TWO genuinely GREAT commentary tracks.

The first track is from Kostanski himself and it's a masterpiece of what one wants from a director. Most directors are useless at doing these and end up telling us what we already know (usually by literally describing the action on the screen - duh!) or worse, filling our ears with way too much useless anecdotal crap. Not Kostanski! He gives us the straight goods - HOW he made the movie. His commentary is right up there with some of the best purveyors of these things like Norman Jewison and Martin Scorsese. The second commentary track is again Kostanski, but he's joined by one of the film's Executive Producers Peter Kuplowsky and actor, writer, fx designer and composer Jeremy Gillespie. There's a tiny bit of anecdotal stuff here, but most of it is rooted in the filmmaking process and we don't get a mere repeat of the other track, but one that works to enhance our appreciation of how the movie was made.

My only quibble with this second commentary track is when the guys start to SHIT TURDS FULL OF UNDIGESTED CORN NIBLETS AND STREAKS OF BLOOD FROM THEIR ANAL FISSURES all over my original review of Manborg which was one of the earliest raves of the movie online. FOUR FUCKING STARS I gave these assholes! I spewed bucket-loads of ejaculate all over their faces (so to speak). I wrote about the film - NOT ONCE, NOT TWICE, BUT THREE TIMES (and here I'm writing about it a FOURTH TIME, and next month, I'm writing about it a FIFTH time in the legendary Joe Kane's super-fab genre mag from south of the 49th parallel, "Phantom of the Movies VIDEOSCOPE" and a SIXTH time for a cool UK-based film mag).

So what do these fuckers do? They single out my review. They don't mention my name because I'm older than 30 and they, being young people, don't know or remember anyone's name over the age of 30 (save, perhaps, for their Moms and Dads). However, I know they're referring to my review because they use the phrase "one review even complained...". Well, goddamn it, you are fucking right I complained - one complaint and for good fucking reason.

The movie stars two mega-babes. BABES!!! Babes, I tell you! And my complaint was so minor, but one I thought these assholes might take to heart for their next film. All I wistfully opined on was that they didn't adequately exploit some good girl-on-girl action of the catfight variety. I wasn't asking for LESBO ACTION, though that might have been good too. Nope! All I wanted was at least one or two or maybe even three more babe-on-babe catfights.

Who doesn't enjoy seeing babes kick the shit out of each other?

Haven't these clowns ever seen any women in prison pictures or Russ Meyer movies or Doris Wishman exploitation items? That's it. One complaint. More catfights. What do these whiners do on their commentary track? They shit on me for complaining about this.

What Astron-6 EXPUNGED Upon My Very SOUL!!!

So that, is now my second complaint. Maybe these fuckwads will scarf down some Mexican food (real Mex food from TJ, washed down with E-Coli-infused tap water) before their next commentary track and release their excremental floodgates all over me for complaining that they complained about my minor complaint that they needed more babe-on-babe fight action. So before I continue raving about the genius of this DVD - FUCK YOU!

What else do we get? We get two - count 'em - TWO phenomenal short films. One is a completely, insanely and deliciously inspired extended trailer for a feature I hope they're making for real called Bio-Cop (with one of the best lines in movie history - so great, I won't ruin your experience by reprinting it here) and an astoundingly sweet AND grotesque short called Fantasy Beyond, about a little girl in a strange art gallery where the pictures start to attack her and she's rescued by some fucked-up-looking heavy metal dudes with electric guitars that double as ray guns.

We get some supremely cool Visual Effects and Stop Motion Montages that are so good they almost feel like standalone short films. There's the requisite Behind the Scenes footage, but this stuff, in addition to the great commentary tracks, is not only entertaining, but earns the right to be included in the finest DVD accolade one can bestow - it's all the film school you'll need.

There are Bloopers, which I usually hate seeing and these don't really change my mind, but if you, God Forbid, you do like this sort of thing, you won't go wrong with anything included here.

The Deleted/Alternate Scenes are de rigueur on extras-packed DVDs and these do NOT disappoint in the least.

A whole whack of community cable TV-inspired Mackenzie Murdoch interviews featuring Adam Brooks (Dr. Scorpius, Draculon, Voice of Dying Soldier) who thrills us with his obvious verve, Andrea Karr (one of the babes in the movie who should have been given a chance to do more catfighting and, was dating director Kostanski), Conor Sweeney (eating), Jeremy Gillespie (interviewed by Peter Kuplowsky in some whacked out surreal shit involving an escalator), Ludwig Lee (a martial artist who appears attired as if he works in a Bay Street brokerage), Matthew Kennedy (Manborg himself with a puppet and the best quotation in all the interviews: "Steve uses his actors like marrionettes - 'fuck you I'm a fucking actor, not a puppet'!!!"), Meredith Sweeney (the film's other mega-babe who is short changed by not being given enough catfight opportunities and has some deliciously foul responses to Murdoch's line of questioning. When he mentions she resembles 80s anime chicks, she responds: "I have no fucking idea what you're talking about. What kind of a fuckin' question is that, anyway?" and Mike Kostanski (shilling his rock band).

The other great extra is a videotaped Q and A at the Royal Theatre premiere and features Kostanski's wisest observation wherein he mentions the shitty expensive movie Van Helsing as having the cool concept of all these great monsters, but how in the same breath he says how disappointing the movie was. His response to seeing the movie was to make the brilliant Manborg for about $2000 (Canadian funds) and anyone who complains that his movie doesn't have enough monsters is a total asshole. (Anyone who complains about a lack of chick-on-chick catfights would not be an asshole, but would, in fact, be me.)

And now, in its pure, unexpurgated form (including my catfight reference) is my original review of MANBORG.

MANBORG (2011)  ****
dir. Steven Kostanski

Starring: Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Ludwig Lee, Conor Sweeney, Meredith Sweeney, Jeremy Gillespie, Andrea Karr

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The time will come when we are dominated by a One World Government. This will be no mere conspiracy theorist's idea of a New World Order. Art Bell won't be predicting this one!

In fact, the Illuminati are pussy-whupped-momma-boy-teat-sucklers compared to what waits for us just round the corner. As dramatically postulated in the latest production from the kubassa-stuffed-to-overflowing loins of the Winnipeg-spawned hit machine Astron-6, be afraid - be VERY afraid of the future.

Straight from the jaws of Hell comes Draculon (Adam Brooks), a crazed totalitarian infused with a slavering desire to inflict pain. He makes the Dictator combo-platter of Adolph Hitler (former German Chancellor), Joe Stalin (former butcher of ten million Ukrainian garlic eaters), George W. Bush (annihilator of Islam) , Stephen Harper (current Il Duce of Canada) and Michael Bay (Brain Sucker Extraordinaire) look like your kindly Granny Apple Cheeks knitting her umpteenth doily and churning butter.

As brilliantly rendered in the opening minutes of this 70-minute masterwork, you will cringe as our pitiful armies do their best in battle with the demons of Mephistopheles, but even the best of the best of the best of mankind will be no match for the foul, pus-oozing Satanic beasts.

When a brave young fighting man hits the turf and pushes up the daisies, he is mysteriously and miraculously transformed by the mad genius Dr. Scorpius (Adam "Fuck me and a month of Sundays, this guy gets around!" Brooks) into the next best thing to Jesus H. Christ Almighty (or Robocop - take your pick!).

He is, and always will be:

MANBORG!!!

Blending cutting edge technology, Frankensteinian alchemy, Einsteinian science and the mind of mankind's leanest, meanest fighting machines, Manborg (Mathhew Kennedy) has, alas, retained the heart and soul of humanity. Instead of serving Draculon and his evil henchman The Baron (Jeremy Gillespie), he joins forces with three superHUMAN heroes in the struggle to free Earth from the clutches of Hades.

This trio of badass mo-fos includes the wildly pompadoured kick-butt-Kiwi (or Aussie, or Brit, or what-the-fuck-ever-his-deliciously-delightful-accent-is) played by Conor Sweeney, a blade-o-licious platinum-tressed kick-butt, delectably-racked, red-grease-painted-faced babe (Meredith Sweeney) and a melt-in-your-mouth, magnificently buff kick-butt Asian martial artist (Ludwig Lee) dubbed into English by someone who sounds like the offscreen voice artist who dubbed all of Steve Reeves's lines into English in his numerous Italian sword and sandal epics of the 50s and 60s (in spite of the fact that Steve Reeves actually, uh, spoke English).

JESUS, JOSEPH AND MARY? THINK AGAIN!

Needless to say, our heroes save the world. (Yeah, I just released a wet fart of a spoiler.)

The movie is replete with mega-martial-arts, chase scenes on what appear to be ATVs without wheels that fly, Tron-like arena jousts and plenty of shit that blows up real good. Oh yeah, have I mentioned yet that the movie was made for about a thousand smackers, shot on glorious DV-CAM and includes tons of in-camera and rudimentary effects that resemble early 80s community cable blue screen? No? Well, I have now and there's not one damn thing in this movie that looks awful.

In fact, it is endowed with the kind of visual splendour that can only come from filmmakers who love movies and movie-making. Special effects that LOOK like special effects, have always held a humungous soft-spot in my heart. I love knowing that I'm watching a MOVIE. I love knowing the effects are - uh, just that - effects. I love to be reminded that I am in a world that only exists up on a big screen. For me, this IS magic.

The ultimate magic in the movie comes when two babes square off for a cat fight supreme. When one of the babes morphs into a demon, all my hopes and dreams momentarily diminished. Sure, it's fine to watch a babe kick a demon's butt, but for Christ's sake, babe-on-babe fight action always takes precedence.

But I digress.

As rendered by Steve Kostanski, MANBORG is a fairy tale of cosmic proportions for geeks and freaks the world over. It makes perfect sense that this, and the other Astron-6 works of consummate film art come from the recesses of Winnipeg.

In addition to the asbestos-lined water pipes, an insane need to tear down heritage buildings to build parking lots when the entire city is a fucking parking lot and a bowling alley bearing the name of the late, great Billy Mosienko (who, prior to his death, would man the counter and rent you bowling shoes), the 'Peg (my own former winter city) is not only the geographical-near-centre of North America, but boasts a grand tradition of what film critic Geoff Pevere dubbed as Prairie Post-Modernism.

Filmmakers like John Paizs, Guy Maddin, Noam Gonick, Lorne Bailey and Matthew Rankin forged a path that few in the 'Peg have been able to follow as memorably (though Regina-based cousins like Brian Stockton, Brett Bell and prairie-boy-at-heart Richard Kerr HAVE, in their own demented ways). Kostanski, by the way is a brilliant effects artist and his most recent makeup design is on view in the terrific Xavier Gens sci-Fi thriller The Divide.

Make way, now, for a new generation of mad geniuses from Winnipeg.

They are Astron-6. And though some from this collective of total filmmakers have temporarily (one hopes) left the world capital of napping and Salisbury House Mr. Big Nips for bigger locales, the snug blankets and Icelandic sweaters of the prairies sprouted their grand vision that are and will continue to take the world by storm.

That said, I do expect that MANBORG II will have plenty o' babes catfighting.

MANBORG is available on Anchor Bay Canada. Buy it! NOW! You can even buy it an other Astron-6 titles here. Just click on the Amazon links below and you'll be helping me get royalties to assist with the ongoing maintenance of this site.

In Canada BUY the Astron-6 Short Film Collection HERE
In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY the ASTRON-6 Short Film Collection - HERE
In Canada BUY Astron-6's FATHER'S DAY - HERE
In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Astron-6's FATHER'S DAY - HERE
In Canada BUY Astron-6's MANBORG - HERE
In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY ASTRON-6's MANBORG - HERE

STORIES WE TELL - DVD Review By Greg Klymkiw - Masterpiece of Canadian Cinema by Sarah Polley is now Available on DVD from Mongrel Media as its brilliant director receives Canada Highest Honour - the 2013 Governor General's Award for Performing Arts

"Under cover of her silence he pressed her arm closely
to his side, and, as they stood at the hotel door, he felt
that they had escaped from their lives and duties,
escaped from home and friends and run away together
with wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure."
- James Joyce, The Dead

“Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might,

and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry.

Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” - William Saroyan

Call it hyperbole, call it what you will, but from the first time I saw this film and each subsequent viewing (I've now lost track of how many times I've actually watched it all the way through), I am convinced more and more that Sarah Polley has made one of the greatest documentaries to ever come out of Canada. This alone would be enough praise, given the fact that Canada essentially invented the documentary genre as we have come to know it in the purest form, but I'll go further and say that she's etched a modern masterpiece and that frankly, it's my pleasure to declare that it is one of the greatest documentaries made anywhere at anytime.

The film blends three key elements that make a great documentary:

1. The craft is impeccable.

2. The film busts through borders, but in subtle, intelligent ways.

3. The subject matter - for me, love - is unbeatable.

Using the filmmaking process as a journey of self-discovery is a solid enough tradition, but Polley uses it in a completely unselfish way to find a great story during the process itself and doing so without any of the self indulgence that can taint many such pictures. It's a great story that touched not only her (and we do experience this), but one that reaches out to the audience and provides such universal emotions that I cannot think of anyone being unable to find pieces of their own lives and souls within this astonishing movie.

Polley was recently honoured with Canada's greatest accolade, the Governor General's Award in Performing Arts for her long and distinguished career (over a very short span of time). Coinciding with this is the DVD release of this film via Mongrel Media. This is clearly a must-own item in spite of the fact that one assumes Mongrel will eventually produce and release a Deluxe Blu-Ray edition replete with a myriad of supplementary features. I for one, look forward to a detailed moderated commentary track, out takes and deleted scenes (including full extended interviews) and, if possible, festival panel discussions Polley participated on in support of the film. Until that time, this is a film you need to own and cherish. I suspect you will be happy to indulge in what collectors refer to as a "double dip" when a more added value edition becomes available.

In the meantime, here is a slightly revised version of my review that appeared during TIFF 2012 and upon the film's subsequent theatrical release.

Stories We Tell (2012)

***** dir. Sarah Polley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Death is not an easy thing for anyone to understand, least of all a child, but ... I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life." - William Saroyan, The Human Comedy

Nature, nurture and the manner in which their influence upon our lives inspires common threads in the telling of tales that are in turn relayed, processed and synthesized by what we think we see and what we want to see are the ingredients which make up Sarah Polley’s latest work as a director.

Her Oscar-nominated Away From Her was a well-crafted dramatic plunge into the effect of Alzheimer’s upon a married couple. Take This Waltz blasted a few light years forward, delivering a film that’s on one hand, a wonky-plonky romantic comedy and on the other, a sad, devastating portrait of love gone awry and all the while being perhaps one of the most progressive films about female passion and sexuality made in a modern, contemporary North American (though specifically Canadian context).

Stories We Tell is something altogether different and, in fact, roots Polley ever so firmly in contemporary cinema history as someone who has generated a bonafide masterpiece. It is first and foremost a story of family – not just a family, or for that matter any family, but rather a mad, warm, brilliant passionate family who expose their lives in the kind of raw no-guts-no-glory manner that only film can allow.

Most importantly, the lives exposed are as individual as they are universal and ultimately it’s a film about all of us. It is a documentary with a compelling narrative arc, yet one that is as mysterious and provocative and profoundly moving, as you’re likely to see.

Love permeates the entire film – the kind of consuming love that we’ve all felt at one point or another. We experience love within the context of relationships most of us are familiar with: a husband and wife, a mother and child, brothers and sisters, (half and full) family and friends and yes, “illicit love” (at least within a specific context in a much different time and place).

Mostly though, Stories We Tell expresses a love that goes even beyond our recognizable experiences of love and running a gamut of emotions.

Sarah Polley Looks For Truth
Feel Free To Look Through Her Fancy Viewmaster

The film is often funny, to be sure. It is, after all, a film by Sarah Polley and is infused with her near-trademark sense of perverse, skewed, borderline darkly comedic, but ultimately amiable sense of humour. The great American author of Armenian heritage, William Saroyan, titled his episodic novel (and Oscar-nominated screen story) The Human Comedy – something that coursed through his entire canon and indeed is the best way to describe Polley’s approach to telling stories on film.

She exposes truth, emotion and all the while is not willing to abandon dollops of sentimental touches – the sort we can find ourselves relating to in life itself.

There is a unique sense of warmth that permeates Stories We Tell, and by so employing it, Polley doesn’t merely tug at our emotions – she slices them open, exposing raw nerve endings that would be far too painful if they were not tempered with an overall aura of unconditional love, not unlike that as described by those who have survived a near-death experience.

The emotions and deep feelings of love in Polley’s documentary are so enveloping, I personally have to admit to being reduced to a quivering, blubbering bowl of jelly each time I saw the film. Four screenings later and her movie continues to move me unconditionally – on an aesthetic level, to be sure (her astonishing blend of interviews, archival footage and dramatic recreations so real that they all blend together seamlessly), but mostly on a deeply personal and emotional level.

At the heart of the film is a courageous, vibrant woman no longer with us. Polley guides us through this woman’s influence upon all those she touched. Throughout much of the film, one is reminded of Clarence Oddbody’s great line in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life: “Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?”

I try to imagine the lives of everyone Polley introduces us to and how if, like in the Capra film, this vibrant, almost saint-like woman had not been born. Most of those we meet in the film wouldn’t have been born either and the rest would have lived lives with a considerable loss of riches.

And I also think deeply on the fact that this woman was born and how we see her effect upon all those whose lives she touched. Then, most importantly, I think about Clarence Oddbody’s line with respect to the child that might not have been born to this glorious woman – a child who might have been aborted. I think about how this child has touched all the lives of those in the documentary. The possibility that this child might have never been born is, within the context of the story relayed, so utterly palpable that I can’t imagine audiences not breaking down.

I can’t imagine the loss to all those people whose lives this child touched. And the world? The world would genuinely be a less rich place without this child.

THEN, it gets really personal. I think about all those in MY life who could have NOT being born – people who are very close, people (two in particular) who have indelibly made a mark on my life – people whose non-existence would have rendered my life in ways I try to repress.

And I weep. Kind of like Brando says as Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now: “I … I … I cried. I wept like some grandmother.”

Most of all, my tears are reserved for the film’s aura of unconditional love, its incredible restorative power. Sarah Polley is often referred to in Canada as a “national treasure”. She’s far more than that.

She’s a treasure to the world – period.

And so, finally, is her film.

Sarah Polley's STORIES WE TELL is available on DVD via Mongrel Media

REPO MAN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Alex Cox's quintessential, if not utterly seminal 80s cult film classic gets its much-deserved & long overdue Criterion Collection treatment in this ABSOLUTE MUST-OWN BLU-RAY

Repo Man (1984) *****
Dir. Alex Cox
Starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Blasting out of the dreary landscape that was Reaganomics came one of the very few studio pictures that spoke directly to all those tail-end baby boomers and burgeoning Gen-Xrs who were hit hardest by the trickle-down economic policies that:

- benefited the rich (of course),
- did nothing for the poor,
- eventually resulted in ever-increasing unemployment,
- drove many twenty-somethings to look disparagingly at their ex-hippy elders for slurping up all the decent employment opportunities, holding onto them, piggishly, for dear life, building fiefdoms that allowed entry to only a select few who'd happily strap-on knee-pads to prop-up their ex-flower-power hypocrite bosses and allow for their accumulation of greater wealth thanks to tax breaks and keeping anyone with any new ideas (that they didn't feel like stealing) at bay.

How Repo Man came to be financed by Universal Pictures would have never been a reality if it weren't for the fact that ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith executive produced the film and secured a "negative pickup" deal with the big studio for this insane first feature from the early-thirty-something L.A.-transplanted Brit Alex Cox. Cox was initially going to make the movie for $50,000 and shoot it however he could - over weekends, on holidays and/or whenever he, his cast and crew and the gods of scheduling karma allowed. Nesmith was the saviour. He was able to up the budget to well over a cool million - though the risk was that his negative pickup deal meant that he financed the film personally and would only be repaid once the finished product was delivered.

Things happen for a reason - sometimes they're even good.

Repo Man was one of them.

With his mind-blowing first screenplay, Cox fashioned a film that was at once a reflection of the times, yet at its core, shared many of the values of his more seasoned 70s counterparts. How or why nobody had ever chosen to focus upon the lowest of the low - those men who prided themselves upon repossessing goods from the less fortunate - is beyond me. In 1977, Canadian Zale Dalen fashion the seedy collection agent drama Skip Tracer, but as great as it was, its very grim qualities would, if it hadn't been Canadian and thus relegated to virtually no play, still would have kept people away in droves.

Not that Cox himself hadn't fashioned a picture that the Status Quo wouldn't get, but he had two things going for him - youth and a preposterously morbid sense of humour. And though the picture was slow to start, having been nearly buried by Universal Pictures, its ultra-cool soundtrack album and a whole new generation of young movie-goers sick of movies that didn't speak directly to them or their experience, found the picture and its bonafide cult status was ensured.

Cox, of course, gave us a hero we all knew - someone who felt like one of us - a supremely disenchanted young gent with a huge fuck-you chip on his shoulder. Some of us watched the picture and not only knew those of his ilk, but we were, in fact, imbued with the same sensibilities. Some of us gazed agog at this character and nodded with silent recognition - this is me, this is who I am!

Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez) is an angry young punk rocker who can no longer take the dreariness of his job at a local supermarket. The final straw comes when his shelf-stocking colleague is happily and incessantly singing the theme song to a 7-Up soft drink TV commercial. "Feelin' 7-Up, I'm feelin' 7-Up..." croons the dweeb who ignores Otto's demands that he cease and desist. Exploding in a fit of rage, Otto cold cocks the happy-go-lucky fucker and storms off the job. Who wouldn't?

Fuming, handsome Otto pads down the street in his sneakers and civvies. A grizzled older man follows along in his car, eyeing Otto with interest until he drives up cloae and stops. Through his open window the man calls out in an alternately friendly and businesslike manner: "Hey kid, you wanna' make ten bucks?".

"Fuck off, queer," Otto hisses.

Luckily for Otto, Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), the older gent in the car, is a supreme kick-ass-take-no-shit motherfucking veteran repo man for the "Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation" and he persistently and successfully cajoles Otto into joining him in an especially challenging repossession. Otto's life is about to change in ways he'd never imagined.

At first, Otto hates the idea of being a repo man so much that he conveys this repeatedly - both verbally and demonstrably upon returning with Bud to the grotty offices within the chain-link-barbed-wire fence compound, littered with mounds of hulking Motor City steel ripped off (somewhat) legally from the hordes of Reaganomic-afflicted welches who've defaulted on their loan payments. Otto's reaction is strictly knee-jerk. When he's handed a wad of cold, hard cash for his part in the repossession, he's singing a different tune.

This disenchanted White Male Suburban Punk, soon sports a tidier look and opens himself up to learning the tricks of the trade. He's smart enough to know he's never going to really beat "The Man", so he becomes "The Man". However, Otto is still a green-horn and Bud takes the lad under his wing to train him in the ways of repossession.

Otto becomes a fly to shit and in no time he's jacking his fair share. And what a pair! Bud and Otto, not unlike the wizened veteran cop with his cocky rookie partner from so many policiers, eventually develop mutual respect and in so doing, fast cash becomes Otto's salvation.

What I haven't mentioned yet, though, are the liberal doses of conspiracy theory dished out by Helping Hand's sage-like trashman (Tracey Walter), the unbelievably stupid punks (Dick Rude, Jennifer Balgobin, Michael Sandoval) who were once Otto's friends and eventually engage in armed robbery to support their drug and booze habits. There is, of course, a delightfully perky love interest (Olivia Barash), a hot leggy FBI agent (Susan Barnes) on the trail of a radiation-crazed mad scientist who invented the neutron bomb (Fox Harris), one of the coolest punk soundtracks ever assembled for any movie, the largest assortment of generic product on virtually every store shelf in the world of the movie and, last but not least, the aliens.

Yes, aliens.

Cox has assembled such a great cast here and their work remains as great today as it was upon first seeing the film. Stanton has the role of his career as the surly, world weary sage of repossession, while Emilio Estevez has, to this day, never been better and the real treat, of course, is the inimitable character actor Tracey Walter as the wise, seemingly insane conspiracy theorist whose beliefs ultimately tie-in with the very ethos of the period and the film itself. Yet, the cast is only as good as Cox's writing which delivers the outlandish while making it strangely real and the dialogue he pens to put in their mouths is terse and funny.

JOHN WAYNE WAS A FAG!

Veering from an almost neo-realist 70s-style nihilism to a whacked-out druggie comedy to a borderline surreal presentation of a world gone completely nuts, Repo Man (tying with David Lynch's Blue Velvet) is the ultimate 80s film in American cinema. Cox's picture virtually spits in the face of the feel-goody-two-shoes of the execrable John Hughes teen dramedies and the sprawling, noisy, state-of-the-art macho action and adventure films that populated that wretched decade of cinema.

And make no mistake, this is no mere product of its period - Cox's style remains fresh and thematically, the picture is as relevant to our contemporary political, economic and strife-ridden world as it was during the reign of rompin' Ronnie. Repo Man remains one of the cleanest breaths of fresh air for its generation as Easy Rider was for the 60s. Most importantly, Cox pulled off a picture that will continue to speak to new generations - now and for some time to come.

This, of course, is what makes a classic.

The Criterion Collection edition of this film is utterly phenomenal. There is the requisite commentary track, though it is the somewhat disappointing DVD version that was used, I believe, on the old Anchor Bay limited numbered tin box edition from a few years ago. It includes far too many people on it (Cox, executive producer Michael Nesmith, casting director Victoria Thomas, plus actors Sy Richardson, Zander Schloss and Del Zamora), and as such is anecdotal, delivering far less emphasis on Cox and his storytelling techniques as both a writer and director. In a perfect world, I think an additional track with Cox solo on this element alone who have been far more insightful and instructive. People who like anecdotal-styled commentaries will NOT, however, be disappointed in the least - as far as they go, it's much superior to most.

What shines are all the other added value features. Deleted scenes, many of which are genuinely terrific in and of themselves, are presented with some very amusing interstitial segments involving some extremely surprising guests joining Cox in the proceedings. A taped roundtable discussion between Cox, producers Peter McCarthy and Jonathan Wacks, Zamora, Richardson, and Rude on the making of the film seems at first a repeat of the issues discussed in the commentary, but proves to be decently supplemental. That said, there's too much emphasis on the physical production aspects of the "making", but not nearly enough for my tastes about Cox's process as a writer and director from a story standpoint. Given the political implications of the film - then, as well as now - I'd have really enjoyed hearing Cox address these in ways he'd obviously be capable of.

New interviews with musicians Iggy Pop and Keith Morris and actors Dick Rude, Olivia Barash and Miguel Sandoval are thoroughly delightful, though and it's fun seeing both the used and unused trailers for the film.

The two utterly exquisite highlights of Criterion's great disc are a "cleaned-up" television version of Repo Man - replete with all sorts of hilarious alternatives to the more "foul" elements of the picture as well as scenes not used in the theatrical version; and the second item is a phenomenal taped conversation between producer Peter McCarthy (whose questions are always terrific) and Harry Dean Stanton. Stanton's philosophies on life and work are insanely cool - so convinced are we of his POV that we only think AFTER watching it that he might have brilliantly been pulling our respective legs. He probably wasn't, but this interview is, I think so historically important that it works as a mini-film unto itself and feels less like an "extra" and closer to the sort of creative approach taken years ago by the master of these sorts of things, Laurent Bouzerau. The packaging is impeccable and the added booklet is packed with tons of great reading (including Cox's original financing proposal for the film). The artwork and art direction of the booklet, the box and the menus are all first rate.

This is not only a great and important movie, but overall, the Criterion presentation (along with the exquisite transfer) is one of the best I've had the pleasure to dive into in years.