PORCH STORIES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Low-Budget Canadian Indies sans splatter, weird sex & (with apologies to Katherine Monk) snowshoes are a dime a dozen. Not so with Sarah Goodman's new picture. It's a rarity.

Porch Stories (2014)
Dir. Sarah Goodman
Starring: Laura Barrett, Jose Miguel Contreras, Brad Hart,
Hallie Switzer, Reid McMaster, Alex Tindal, Uerania Silveira, Sergio Sarmento

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Beginning in 2001 with Army of One, the extraordinary award winning portrait of young men joining the American Armed Forces, Sarah Goodman had settled quite nicely into a successful trajectory as an acclaimed director of documentaries. Like any gifted filmmaker, she's been able to bring her observational eye into the arena of feature drama. Her latest film, Porch Stories, accomplishes, in its own special way, what so many great filmmakers before her (John Boorman, William Friedkin and Martin Scorsese to name but a very few) had done. Bringing the eye of a documentarian to drama has always yielded a veritable wealth of great cinema.

Of course, as is the case these days, there's virtually no money out there for independent filmmakers wanting to make movies that fall outside the purview of empty Hollywood roller coaster rides or sickeningly twee vomit-inducers about old people rediscovering themselves in sunny European climes or worse yet, fake machine-tooled "indie" movies rooted in either repetitive bromances and/or explorations of the horrific bourgeois concerns of 20-or-30-somethings set around fucking dinner tables.

Goodman, however, has delivered the goods with Porch Stories, and then some. Her steadfast commitment to making a movie about what she knows and cares about, but how she nails it, where so many (mostly Canadians) fail, is by blending her observational eye with a nice sense of both humour and a respect for elements which are purely and simply imbued with good, old fashioned entertainment value. In fact, this film pulsates with the kind of life that can only come from the careful, passionate observation of what's around you.

It tells the story of Emma (Laura Barrett), a young musician who has given up her dreams to settle into a comfortable domestic relationship with Stefan (Alex Tindal), a kind, hard (over) working young fella. They've bought a house together, plan to marry and are in the midst of moving away from the vibrant downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Little Portugal.

They appear to love each other, but there's also a strange disconnect. Emma is (rightly) obsessed with packing for their impending move. Stefan is so busy with his job, he's pretty much left the huge job to his wifelet-to-be. One mid-morning, whilst hubbles-to-be is off to work, blithely ignoring the fact that Emma is having to take time off work to accomplish what they both should be doing together, an unexpected visitor precipitates a whirlwind bout of soul searching: active soul-searching, mind-you, not the usual Canadian aesthetic trait of passivity.

Gabriel (José Miguel Contreras), a handsome, swarthy young feller wanders about Emma's neighbourhood with his sensitive, sexy eyes zeroing in upon various "For Rent" signs (one of which is mounted in the front yard of Emma and Stefan's place). Though one might say, "as luck would have it", there's no luck involved when he and Emma lock eyes. Given the nature of this community, their meeting is as natural as the hazy pollution which clouds the summer air of Toronto. They not only know each other, but were lovers and band mates many moons before Gabriel dropped everything and hightailed it to Bolivia to "find" himself and Emma abandoned her carefree, happy itinerancy as a musician to seek "normalcy".

However, with Gabriel almost magically appearing in her life again, the chief conflict of the film is spun handily into fast forward. Emma is faced with the crisis of conscience and desire she's been repressing. Perhaps she shouldn't have given up music. Perhaps she shouldn't be marrying and moving out of the hood. Maybe, just maybe, she can rekindle what was once so special in her life - personally, romantically and artistically.

What allows this story to breathe is the milieu, of course.

By choosing Little Portugal, something clearly rooted in her own experience, Goodman is blessed with a locale radiating the diversity of (now mostly) old, retired immigrants to Canada who left their homelands in the Azores decades earlier, recreating their previous milieus within Canada's welcoming official policy of multiculturalism. Into this "old" world are recent inner-city emigres, youthful Canadian-born men and women of all stripes who place their identities, not so much in ethnicity, but who they are and what they are, with respect to their youthful hopes, dreams and aspirations. In fact, many of these young'uns are students and/or all manner of artists, simply seeking decent places to live that won't break the bank when it comes to rent, and in so doing, creating a parallel community of their own to that of the Portuguese-Canadians.

In a sense, both worlds are like strangers in their own land; strangers who have separately found a very special place they can call their own.

Most of the houses have porches and most everybody, young and old, Canadian-born or not, use them as if they were appendages to their very being, sitting back, staring at neighbours across the street, communing with those living next-door in adjacent porches, playing music, listening to music, having barbecues, tending to potted plants or simply catching snippets of life itself as it literally passes by (on car, bike and foot).

Goodman's narrative captures bigger-scale events like a solemn Easter parade (representing the "old" world) to the myriad of tiny details of the "new" world: the comings, goings, whisperings and the gentle filtering in and out of these elements which create this neighbourhood.

The film's sense of place is sharp and thorough. I can personally attest to how Goodman captures the heart and soul of this actual district, as I lived in it for a few years myself. Watching her film is like being back in Little Portugal again and there are no false notes in her anthropological mise-en-scene,

She knows her world, knows what to capture and does it with belief and passion. She knows it and she cares about it and because of this, there are no false notes in the world she fashions and then, by extension, the characters and narrative she places within it.

By choosing to capture her story with a delicate monochrome, Goodman not only allows for a splendid evocation of time lost, time gained and time moving on, but aesthetically, the overwhelming quality of the gorgeous cinematography, is positively imperative in that it contributes to the "documentary" quality of the work. As well, the very nature of black and white cinematography has always been a "natural" way to render visual shades of grey as well as those rooted in story, character and life itself. (Bravely and sagely, the film builds to a brilliant use of ambiguity, one which is ultimately not all that ambiguous at all, but rather, working quite genuinely as a resolutely satisfying and moving summation of both the film and, frankly, all of our lives as we live them.)

There's also a practical advantage to black and white which filmmakers have recognized since the early days of technicolor. It magically allows them to address exigencies of production since monochrome allows for so much more flexibility in both hiding and accentuating elements of production which, in colour, would require a far more extensive commitment to time, energy, materials and cash outlay.

From a story standpoint, Goodman has wisely chosen a multi-character approach, allowing for other stories to merge with Emma's journey in a more holistic manner. Though there was a risk in overplaying the schematic hand of this approach - a young couple next door finding love, an old couple across the street discovering a deep-seeded divide, both of which contrast Emma's complicated situation involving her love for two resolutely different men - Goodman adheres to the principles of the very best multi-character dramas. The primary approach is to create a character whose very presence is integral to the world of the film - think Ronee Blakley's Norma Jean in Nashville or Mark Wahlberg's Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights - remove either one from the equation and you have no movie. The same holds true for Emma's character in Porch Stories. (I also suspect this is something which accentuated itself subtly in Goodman's approach to her coverage during shooting as well as eventually in the cutting room.)

One of the more canny elements utilized in creating a tiny indie movie, especially within the context of Canadian cinema which, is often far too twee and insular, is that Goodman has her cake and eats it too by creating a sense of scope to her story by the challenge of limiting it to a 24-hour period. Any one of the dilemmas, either on their own or together would seem far too slender within a story which spanned a much longer space of time. By creating a natural and very realistic parameter of a specific and short space of time is the very thing which infuses the work with the kind of urgency that indeed provides the kind of breadth which typifies the best movies - low budget indie or not.

Goodman's cast is a very special feather in the film's cap. On a very basic level, it's always driven me madly bunyip when Canadian filmmakers (in particular) seem to go out of their way to cast living, breathing equivalents to dishrags and rusty septic drums. You don't cast actors, no matter how damn good they are, if the camera doesn't love them. (On a base level, I'd typify it thusly: Ya gotta cast Babes and Hunks who can also act.) Canadians are more often than not, averse to the notion of babe/hunk casting; as if somehow it will impinge upon the movie's commitment to "realism". Nothing could be further from the truth - you want a blend of attractive leads and character actors with quirks in supporting roles.

Luckily, the film is dream casting for such a property. The two female leads are indeed babes and the men are hunks (one exotic, one manly-man and one super-sensitive-geeky). Both sides of the coin of the sexes offer nice contrasts in looks and temperament to boot. And, of course, the acting amongst the company of players is exquisite (including the camera-loved old couple across the street.) Add to this mix the genuine musical talents of some of these performers, naturally on display at various points and the reality quotient goes up a few notches further.

Try to see Porch Stories on a big screen. It might be a small slice of life, but its emotional largeness (and scope) also benefits from the aforementioned look of the film as well as its beautiful, brilliant soundscape. Most of all, such a sweet, funny, evocative and deeply romantic film deserves a big screen. You deserve it, too.

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

Porch Stories begins its platform release via Kinosmith and the TIFF Bell LightBox in Toronto.

BEST OF ENEMIES / HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - 2 Must-See Documentaries @ the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival

Best of Enemies (2014)
Dir. Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon
Starring: Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley Jr.

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is a documentary that brilliantly fulfills some mighty pre-requisites: Important subject matter that needed, after so many decades have passed, to be presented in as blisteringly entertaining and deeply incisive a manner as possible. As such, Best of Enemies is a great story and superb filmmaking.

In 1968, America changed forever - in many ways. First of all, during the Republican and Democratic conventions, the country was in post-JFK-assassination ennui, the height of Vietnam, civil rights clashes, endless protests and yearning for some kind of defining change. Ever more jaw-dropping was that Television News at the network level was still infused with passion, journalistic excellence and thorough, balanced coverage. These days, it's little more than exploitative sound bites and out and out propaganda.

Of the three networks, ABC's national news was strictly a cellar-dweller affair with such abysmal ratings, it would not have been an exaggeration to count its viewers, sardonically of course, on two hands. ABC knew something had to turn this around. Eschewing traditional coverage of the conventions, ABC instead presented a live debate/commentary on these events by none other than the ultra-conservative William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal, the left-leaning best selling writer of controversial works like Myra Breckenridge.

This format of vicious jugular-slashing debate had never before been used in so effective a fashion. In fact, it was so unique, so compelling and so much a reflection of America's split-down-the-middle sensibilities, that ABC's ratings skyrocketed to epic levels. Using actual footage with the debates and supplementing it with contemporary interviews, a bottomless pit of additional archival footage, contemporary interviews with those still alive to offer vivid, candid reflections and off-screen readings of Buckley and Vidal's prose by John Lithgow and Kelsey Grammar, directors Neville and Gordon have us on the edge of our seats.

It's razzle-dazzle filmmaking at its best. Most telling, in spite of some rather shocking LIVE (and then, unheard of) name-calling twixt the two pundits, is that America sat down and absorbed, in the millions, two dynamic, intelligent men, duking it out with equally intelligent discourse. What Vidal and Buckley achieved set the trend for TV broadcasting to follow, so much so, that today, point-counter-point duels are a matter of course. The difference between then and now, however, is the high degree of intellectual political discourse between the two men - a far cry from the cacophonous scream-fests so prevalent on television ever since.

We get biographical details on both men in order to set the stage for the astonishing footage, allowing us the opportunity to know them as intimately as possible within the context of such a film and reflecting all the events of interest in America AS THEY HAPPENED. One of the more chilling sequences involves Mayor Robert Daley of Chicago turning his city into a veritable police state during the Democratic Convention (captured at the time, brilliantly and shockingly by cinematographer Haskell Wexler with his feature length directorial debut Medium Cool).

As thrilling as the film is, we also experience a considerable degree of melancholy. By witnessing such intelligent and exciting debates in raw, unexpurgated form, there's a sinking feeling that overwhelms us as we realize how this landmark event eventually denigrated into what we now know today.

The experience of seeing this film is the best anyone's going to have to actually experiencing this event as it happened. This is great documentary filmmaking as it should really be - namely, great filmmaking period.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Best of Enemies plays at the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, dates and venues, visit the NIFF website by clicking HERE.

How To Change The World (2015)
Dir. Jerry Rothwell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"If we wait for the meek to inherit the earth, there won't be anything left to inherit" - Robert Hunter

Robert (Bob) Hunter was many things. Mostly, I just always thought he was cool. And well, you'd kind of have to be that to have accomplished so much in so short a time (he died of cancer at age 63). A committed veteran journalist, broadcaster and the founder of Greenpeace, Hunter is clearly the hero of this film, but director Jerry Rothwell leaves no stone unturned to tell as much of this extraordinary story as possible. Rothwell poured over hundreds of 16mm rolls of film that had been canned and unopened since the 1970s. Seeing, pretty much before his very eyes, the visual history of the Greenpeace organization, the filmmaker consulted with Hunter's colleagues and foes, conducted fresh interviews with all of them, then blended his Herculean research to expertly select and edit footage from the Greenpeace Archives. The result is a documentary which paints a portrait of environmental activism which comes across as thrilling as Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin "Master and Commander" high-seas swashbucklers. FULL REVIEW from Hot Docs 2015 HERE.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

How To Change The World plays at the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, dates and venues, visit the NIFF website by clicking HERE.

STRANGER / MADE IN BALI - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - 2 Terrific Short Films @ NIFF 2015

PREFACE: THE HOLY GRAPE?
OR ASBESTOS IN THE DRINKING WATER?

My journeys to the cinema have recently been blessed with the joys inherent in truly independent, indigenous, regional cinema - everyone from the Soska Sisters (Coquitlam, B.C.) to Alex Orr (Atlanta, Georgia) to Károly Ujj Mészáros (Budapest, Hungary) - it's truly been a pleasure to partake of stories and filmmaking which eschews the mind-numbingly machine-tooled crap from Hollywood (excepting Mad Max Fury Road and Spy, of course).

One of the hottest new regions for indigenous indie films seems to be the Niagara area of Southern Ontario wine country. Are these people imbibing too much of The Holy Grape? God knows, the oddities from the Winnipeg film scene can be traced back to asbestos in the waterworks which has contaminated tap water for many decades, so anything's possible. Though my personal preference leans more towards asbestos in the pipes, I'm more than delighted to equally acknowledge that many would, indeed, choose The Holy Grape.

There are plenty of short films on view amongst the myriad of feature films at the 2015 edition of (the legendary) Bill Marshall's Niagara Integrated Film Festival (NIFF 15). Two of them are exceptional. They're amongst the best of the best - not just at NIFF, not just from Niagara, but from Canada. Oh Hell, let's just place this in an international context - the world, already.

One will give you the willies.

The other will wrench geysers of tears from thine ocular orbs.

Both are truly terrific.

Stranger (2015)
Dir. Jason Lupish
Starring: Erica Sherwood, Ralph DeGroot, Jason Zones

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I get the willies when I see closed doors. - Joseph Heller, Something Happened

There are plenty of closed doors in this creepy little thriller which is disturbing, unnerving and almost quietly hilarious (you know the kind, like those moments in Carl Dreyer movies when, say, an old woman takes forever to cross a room, from one side of the frame to the other). The closed doors here, are, of course, not literal, but share the kind of nasty paranoia and fetishistic qualities of Joseph Heller's greatest book (from which the aforementioned quotation comes from - the book's first sentence, no less).

Writer-Director Jason Lupish (who gave us the insanely oft-kilter feature length dark comedy A Kind of Wonderful Thing) stuffs this chillingly demented picture with all manner of closed doors - not necessarily of the literal persuasion, but the super-scary kind. The doors that shut on secrets, mental illness and, of course, murder most foul.

Hannah (Erica Sherwood) keeps peeping through the venetian blinds. It's dark and there's a guy standing across the street, immobile and seemingly staring - the kind that drills holes into you. The pitch black of night-shadows masque his upper torso and face, the murky street lights illuminate his legs which, are rooted firmly on the sidewalk, poised perfectly for stalking.

Hubby David (Ralph DeGroot) gets home late from work. The place is unkempt, uneaten dinner beckons his finger to dip into the gravy and pilfer a taste. Hannah is glued to her venetians. She informs David what's out there. He sees the same figure, but appears somewhat lackadaisical about doing anything about it.

Clearly, this marriage is under duress.

The next day, a detective (Jason Zones) shows up after David's grudgingly called the cop-shop. Unfortunately, the line of questioning is such, that a deep, hurtful secret is revealed. Pretending doors are closed yields what was behind them in the first place and leads to even more creepy events than anyone watching would want to bargain for. Suffice it to say, they're not only bone-chilling, but infused with a kind of Von Trier-like fetishistic quality which allows them to also be grotesquely sexy.

Lupish handles the proceedings like a burgeoning master of suspense. The performances of the trio of actors are first-rate. In particular, leading lady Erica Sherwood is loved by the camera in ways which suggest she's got star-in-the-making qualities.

Prepare for doors to opened, which ultimately reveal more closed doors and more things to get the willies over.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Stranger is part of the "Niagara Rises" short film program at the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, dates and venues, visit the NIFF website by clicking HERE.

Made in Bali (2014)
Dir. Michael Pohorly
Starring: Mike Lewis, Slamet Rahardjo

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Make sure you're armed with a few Kleenex tissues for this one. Michael Pohorly's tender, sensitive drama, shot gorgeously against the beauty of Bali, packs more than a few emotional wallops from within its delicate frames.

Skip (Mike Lewis) a young man of mixed race travels from Canada to the holiday Mecca of Indonesia. This island paradise seems far removed from the horrors of the anti-Communist death squads displayed in Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing. Located twixt Java and Lombok, home to Indonesia's largest population of Hindus, the film very quickly establishes an evocation of cultural peace, contentment and natural beauty.

We see the world through rose-petaled shades. Remove the shades and the rose petals remain. It's gorgeous, dazzlingly seductive and romantic (a definite contrast to Oppenheimer's overwhelming depiction of cruelty in Indonesia's primarily Military-ruled Muslim State of North Sumatra).

For a day, Skip hires Made (Slamet Rahardjo), a cheerful local who runs "Made in Bali", a tourist guide service amusingly punning upon his name. He takes the strangely dour twenty-something to some of the most eye-popping locales imaginable. Skip seems oddly unmoved by what he sees and is distracted to a fault. Something is clearly not right in the Province of Bali.

There are secrets.

It's the secrets which provide the film's narrative with its power. Pohorly yields a pair of exquisite performances from both actors and handles the reveals, not as shockers, but the sort of gentle revelations that life offers to all of us. In this case, what it offers up is infused with a sense of loss, regret and dashed hopes. It also offers dreams, and sometimes, they even come true.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Made in Bali is part of the "Niagara Rises" short film program at the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For tickets, showtimes, dates and venues, visit the NIFF website by clicking HERE.

Full Disclosure on Stranger. Though I have nothing to do with the production of this film in any, way, shape or form, I receive a Thank You credit during the closing titles, presumably acknowledging my positive review of the director's feature film from last year.

BLOOD CAR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Bloody Original Regional Indie on Kino-Lorber DVD

Blood, Babes and Fast Cars in the great state o' Georgia

Blood Car
Dir. Alex Orr
Scr. Orr & Adam Pinney & Hugh Braselton
Starring: Mike Brune, Anna Chlumsky, Katie Rowlett

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Preface: Blood Car and the
importance of independent, regional cinema

In a recent review I mentioned how I almost missed seeing a great movie (Liza The Fox-Fairy). If it hadn't been gently recommended to me by its publicist for the Niagara Integrated Film Festival (GAT PR's Ingrid Hamilton), I'd still be ignorant of its charms. A similarly fortuitous intervention occurred with this movie. In an email copied to the KL publicity director to ensure a specific review title was added to my list, Bret Wood, filmmaker and home entertainment production executive at Kino-Lorber wrote:

"If you haven't already requested it, you should get a copy of Blood Car. I think it would appeal to your warped sensibility."

Two simple sentences which spoke loudly to this fella.

That said, I've had recommendations before which, on occasion, have not always yielded happy results. However, I'm starting to detect a certain tone in such urgings from certain parties which places their suggestions on another rung altogether.

After five minutes of watching this movie and occasionally throughout, a thought occasionally did glide upon my cerebellum:

How in the name of Jesus H. Christ did I missed this film's 2007 release? I eventually discovered it played during my favourite film festival in Canada, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, the one year, 2007, in which I was sadly unable to attend.

Blood Car more than appealed to my own perversities, but was, in fact, a genuinely terrific regional indie genre film which additionally warmed the sentimental cockles of my heart as it reminded me of the kind of stuff I loved promoting and making in my youth when I lived far away from the Canadian "centres of [film industry] excellence" like Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver and wherein I produced, sold and marketed similar movies whilst programming a repertory cinema in the middle of Nowheresville - Winnipeg.

For me, what typifies regional indie filmmaking are the exclusive perspectives brought to the work which are rooted, not only in the specific time and place in which the films are set, but are infused with their unique qualities by virtue of telling the kind of stories which mainstream industrial factory towns like Hollywood, could never hope to achieve. For example, George Romero or John Waters created early, low-budget cinema that was inextricably linked to places like Pittsburgh (Night of the Living Dead) and Baltimore (Pink Flamingoes) respectively, just as the work I produced, amongst which included the early shorts by John Paizs and the first three feature films by Guy Maddin, etc. brought genuine indigenous qualities to them which also helped to translate into a kind of originality that lived outside their hermetically sealed worlds whilst capturing elements of said worlds which were intrinsic to their ultimate artistic success.

An engine which rivals gas-guzzlers and even the Electric Car

The Movie Itself

Blood Car exists along blood lines of the very special pedigree which initially spawned Seymour Krelborn, the main character played by Jonathan Haze in Roger Corman and Charles B. Griffith's immortal 1960 Little Shop of Horrors. Shot on the fly over two days with virtually no money, it told the story of a nebbish plant shop employee who nurtures Audrey, a very special flower which can only feed upon human blood. At first, pin pricks drained from Seymour's fingers into the plant's maw prove acceptable, but as the film progresses, Audrey requires the bodies of those Seymour must murder.

Here, we have Archie Andrews (Mike Brune), a nebbish vegan kindergarten teacher in the severely underpopulated region surrounding Atlanta, Georgia. His world is just slightly in the future, one in which gas prices have soared to over $30 per gallon. Archie invents a new motor he hopes to fuel with the disgusting lime green wheat germ drink he purchases from the sweet, innocent babe Lorraine (Anna Chlumsky) who runs the local outdoor health food stand. Alas, his invention keeps sputtering out until he discovers, quite by accident, that a geyser of his blood infuses it with the force it needs.

At first, our geeky hero attempts an extremely grotesque and painful blood transfusion, then outfits his long-dormant car with the new invention which rests conveniently in the rear trunk. It works!!! He drives over to the Veggie Stand to impress Lorraine, though he dupes her into believing that it's her special wheat germ beverage that fuels the car, not blood.

Just across from the Vegan Stand is a Meat Stand presided over by the hot trollop Denise (Kate Rowlett). Where but in a zero-budget independent indigenously-produced film would you find a Vegan food stand and a rival Meat stand, both in the middle of an empty field through which only a handful of people pass through?

Denise's deep-seeded fetish for cars soon manifests itself in the vigorous provision of endless sexual gratification for our hero. Her first ride in the car inspires the dark, Goth-like babe to deliver an enthusiastic knob-polishing upon Archie as he puts the pedal to the metal. Archie soon realizes that the mad sex will only continue if he can keep his vehicle fuelled up. Happily, his infirm elderly neighbour Mrs. Butterfield keels over from a heart attack and he tosses her corpse into the trunk where the blades shred her body to a bloody pulp which feeds the engine with all the nutrition it needs.

Unfortunately, the old broad's scarlet viscous hamburger meat (as it were) lasts only so long and like Seymour Krelborn in Little Shop of Horrors, Archie begins to murder his fuel providers. Add to this mix the romantic back and forth between the good girl and the bad girl, hilarious montages of both murder and sex (at one point culminating in a golden shower) plus mysterious Men in Black-style government agents, following and observing Archie's every move - all of which yields an endlessly hilarious and caustic satire of America, delectably, perfectly and appropriately rooted in the Georgia Hinterlands.

The movie is often rough around the edges, as per its budgetary constraints, but for the most part, it more than makes up for such occasional deficiencies, many of which are cleverly spun by its director into virtues and the added bonus of delightfully over-the-top gore effects, often unique camera compositions, a breakneck pace not unlike a Hawks' screwball comedy, a magnificently short running time (keeping you wanting more in all the right ways), a constantly hilarious and engaging screenplay rife with absurdity and mordantly snappy dialogue and, of course, there are the babes. Not only do we have two leading-lady babes, but the film is full of Georgia Peaches so quim-moist over Archie's wheels, that they're constantly baring their breasts in his general direction to entice him.

Blood Car careens wildly from sharp satire to down and dirty raunch. Roger Corman would certainly be proud and so too should the entire team who generated this no-budget treat.

As for the rest of us, it's a wild ride well worth taking.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Blood Car is available on DVD via Kino-Lorber Films. Its only extras include two brilliant, savage and funny short films from the same creative team and confirm this feature is no fluke. Orr and associates are on to something very special indeed.

VENDETTA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Prison Pic Directors/Cast Rise Above Ho-Hum Script

Vendetta (2015)
Dir. Jen and Sylvia Soska
Scr. Justin Shady
Starring: Dean Cain, Paul "The Big Show" Wight, Michael Eklund, Kyra Zagorsky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's one thing screenwriter Justin Shady gets right in the WWE Studios production of the prison thriller Vendetta - he wastes no time in getting to the goods hardened genre geeks and prison picture aficionados appreciate.

When cop Mason Danvers (Dean Cain, star of TV's Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) and his partner (Ben Hollingsworth) miraculously bust the seemingly un-bustable psycho serial criminal Victor Abbott (WWE's Paul “The Big Show” Wight), they don't count on chief witnesses "disappearing" and their infamous collar going free. What Danvers especially doesn't expect is Victor exacting revenge upon him by savagely beating his pregnant wife (Kyra Zagorsky) to death - with his bare hands. Victor almost seems happy to take the rap for this and go to prison. Danvers, hell-bent upon revenge (of course), murders Big Vic's brother and two other scumbag associates in cold blood. Like his bulky nemesis Victor, Danvers is happy to take the murder rap and go to prison so he can have a shot at killing the killer of his wife and unborn child.

All our hero has left is hatred. He has nothing to lose.

So, this takes all of 20 minutes. No time-wasting on trials or procedurals, but time enough for the dazzling director duo Jen and Sylvia Soska to deliver just enough footage twixt Danvers and his preggers wifey so we can see how much they love each other and how hard they've worked at having their first child and then, the sickening assault upon her, climaxing with Victor repeatedly bashing in the woman's belly, killing both her and the fetus and finally, Danvers delightfully dispatching the three aforementioned pieces of crap with plenty of gushing blood and brain-splattering.

And now, we get to prison. Yeeeeeee Haaaaaaaa!

In fairness to scenarist Shady, he hauls out all the prison picture tropes - the corrupt warden (Michael Eklund), the shifting allegiances on the yard, the requisite scenes against the backdrops of cafeteria, laundry room, solitary confinement, shower room and an eventual full-blown riot. This all continues to move the action briskly enough so the Soskas can continue to bowl us over with their considerable directorial prowess. Things also move narratively at a breakneck clip so we don't have a lot of time to mull over the stadium-sized holes in the plot (such as it is).

Niggling plot-holes aside (as they can ultimately be forgiven) where Shady's script lets discriminating genre fans and, frankly, the Soskas down, is the lack of any genuine thematic, political subtext. Given that the current American prison system is one of the most horrific abusers of basic human rights in the free world, especially since it's been hideously privatized so that prison administrators want their institutions to be ludicrously full and to not let anyone go free (all for profit, of course), one feels a huge missed opportunity here for the Soskas to inject their trademark social commentary and sensitivity to such areas as thematic and/or political resonance. Jesus, even See No Evil 2, their first WWE gun-for-hire gig was rife with strong elements of female empowerment and had a feminist subtext running through it that its screenplay offered plenty of room for.

This script is sadly missing such key elements. Genre fans are not idiots - a bit of flesh on the bones of exploitation is always a welcome treat. I feel badly dumping on the screenwriter here, though, since it's quite possible that the Lions Gate and WWE head honchos were the primary culprits in their own demands for a cookie-cutter approach to the writing. That seems a likely scenario to this fella.

It's too bad. Not only is the direction far better than the film (as written) deserves, but I was especially delighted with the performance of leading man Dean Cain (he's definitely got a nice, steely Eastwood-Bronson quality about him). The delectably smarmy Michael Eklund is never less than entertaining. He comes close to the grotesqueries of John Vernon in Chained Heat.

Why is it that Canucks like Eklund and Vernon make such good wardens in the movies? Probably because of Canada's history of politely corrupt bureaucracies. (Who will ever forget Canuck Hume Cronyn as the detestably sadistic head of prison security in 1947's Brute Force?) This all said, the screenplay doesn't quite allow Eklund to be anything more than a sleaze and he doesn't quite reach Vernon's level of genuine malevolence. (As for Cronyn, we won't even bother going there.)

The real revelation for me was Paul "The Big Show" Wight. Look, he's never going to be doing Shakespeare at Stratford (nor, I suspect, even Shakespeare in the Park in Elbow, Saskatchewan), BUT, as a villain, the man can act. He's a major creep in this picture and even brings a bit of sardonic humour to his line readings. One line the script gives him which he spits out with glee is when he brags about killing Danvers's pregnant wife and chortles that he at least got a "two for one" deal when he decimated her and the unborn child.

I'm happy to credit Shady with this line, but I must also admit, this is the kind of villainy I expect from the Soskas (a la the scum bucket surgery professor in American Mary). Here, though, it's not really allowed by the overall scenario to tie into any larger thematic scope. As for "The Big Show", I, for one, will be looking forward to a lot more of him on the silver screen. Hell, he even has it in him to be a heroic action figure in an Expendables-style picture.

Now, however, we get to the meat of the matter - the action and violence. The Soskas do not disappoint in this regard. Their direction goes far beyond just covering the thwacks, whacks, kicks, testicle-twisting and gore in a perfunctory manner, nor do they resort to the usual wham-bam with no sense of spatiality. I was delighted that they placed a fair degree of faith in actors who could clearly fight, some superb stunt choreography/coordination and a few occasional frissons like the makeshift "brass" knuckles Danvers creates and uses with sweet abandon. (Again, I'm happy to credit this delightful invention to screenwriter Shady.)

As a side note, it is incumbent of me to point out that the one prison movie cliche sadly missing from Vendetta are a few instances of forcible sodomy and blow jobs. Most disappointing. What gives? Even a dull, inexplicably beloved piece of crap like The Shawshank Redemption had a decent anal rape scene.

But, I digress.

Happily, the Soskas avoid the horrendous herky-jerky style of movement, dreadful compositions and endless closeups we're forced to endure by overrated hacks like Sam Mendes, J.J. Abrams and Christopher Nolan, but that they also keep the cuts spare (compared to most pictures these days). My only quibble, and this might partially relate to exigencies of the modest budget and (no-doubt) speedy shooting schedule, is that the action choreography is so good that I longed for wider shots and for many of the cuts to not be employed, thus allowing the action in many of those same shots to play out longer.

The Soskas demonstrate that they naturally understand that both the shots and cuts of action set pieces are dramatic beats and as such, many of them play out more than satisfactorily. That said, the next film they do that has this much action, if not more, one hopes that their producers will budget extra time for these sequences to allow for more shot variation and to allow choreography to play out in longer shots so that the only cuts which occur are those meant to drive the dramatic action forward.

Even though the budgets are ridiculously higher, a good rule of thumb for genuine filmmakers like the Soskas ("genuine" as in their prowess as film artists being hard-wired into their DNA), is to study the work of filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah and John Woo. Both of them utilize a lot of cuts (the final shootout in The Wild Bunch or Chow Yun Fat's first mass slaughter in the bar in The Killer are two of many examples), but what those directors do is to treat the action scenes like dance numbers in a musical (Woo) or a ballet (Peckinpah). Scorsese is a master of this too - the boxing matches in Raging Bull are rooted stylistically in the Powell-Pressburger ballet sequences in 1948's masterpiece of British Cinema, The Red Shoes.

Virtually every shot amongst the aforementioned masters is composed with the crosshairs aimed (a la George Miller in the Mad Max films) in the centre of the main dramatic action. This allows for more sumptuous compositions, but also allows for quicker cuts (if and when necessary) that treat everything as dramatic beats and hence, always maintaining spatiality (unless the director wants to intentionally mess with us, but that only works when said approaches are buried judiciously amidst more classical compositions).

This all said, the Soskas' instincts are right. There's just a few two many medium two shots that don't hold long enough before the cuts and a definite dearth of wider shots.

Finally, one very odd issue is the casting - not for the leads, but with the background extras as inmates. This corresponds to my earlier complaints about too many tropes and not much in the way of thematic layering. Given that the vast majority of American prison populations are African-or-Hispanic-American (a genuine tragedy and failing of America, a nation infused with deep-seeded racism and discrimination), this prison population (supposedly outside of Chicago in the state of Illinois, albeit with the hole that is Coquitlam, British Columbia standing in) seemed awfully "white".

While I'm tempted to continue the litany of laying blame upon the beleaguered screenwriter - characters, even background characters do, after all, need to be written in order to be cast and shot, however, there's a part of me which suspects that such failings fall within the purview of too many suits at Lions Gate and WWE wanting a specific property which ultimately lends itself to the eradication of elements which could allow for a film's pulp sensibilities to rise into a slightly more elevated plane.

God knows, classic American directors like Jules Dassin in Brute Force (maybe the best prison film ever made) or Don Siegel with Riot in Cell Block 11 (maybe the second best prison picture ever made) maintained B-movie squalor that crackled with excitement because the films had inner lives beyond the surface tropes. Is it unfair to compare Vendetta to classics? No. The Soskas are such damn special filmmakers, it would be an insult not to compare them to early works of masters like Dassin and Siegel.

The bottom line I think is that WWE and Lions Gate were the ones with their heads up their asses. Thank Christ the Soskas were at the helm to pull a superbly directed picture out of their respective asses in spite of the vision-bereft parameters of the screenplay and property itself.

Curiously, I watched Vendetta with my 14-year-old daughter who has long been a fan of the Soskas (yeah, I know, I know, but she is my daughter, after all). When the picture ended and cut to their credit, she yelled out, "God! That was such a good movie!" And you know what? In spite of wanting a fucking masterpiece, I felt exactly as she did at the end.

Like Daughter. Like Father.

Or something like that.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

Vendetta is currently available on VOD, DVD and limited theatrical venues.

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE (En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The third in Roy Andersson's "Living" Trilogy is a fond, sad and funny farewell to a world of muted existence, of deadpan whimsy (Swedish-style, of course). @ TIFF BellLightbox & rest of Canada via FilmsWeLike

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2015)
Dir. Roy Andersson
Starring: Nils Westblom, Holger Andersson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

How much you'll enjoy Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence will most likely depend upon how much Roy Andersson you can take, if at all. He is, to be sure, either an acquired taste or one who is immediately embraced by those who experience his unique vision for the first time. Though he made his first feature in 1970 (the acclaimed A Swedish Love Story) and his sophomore effort in 1975 (the unjustly reviled Gillap), most of his contemporary followers discovered him with the first in his astonishing "life" trilogy, Songs from the Second Floor in 2000, then the second, You, the Living, in 2007 and just this past year with the final instalment which won the Grand Prize at the Venice International Film Festival.

If you've never seen his previous work, never fear. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence can easily be enjoyed without having experienced any of his films, including those first two instalments of the trilogy. What you might have to first get over - I know I did - are the touches of whimsy permeating the work. If there's anything I can't stand, it's whimsy. Happily, this is neither French nor Belgian whimsy, so it doesn't immediately land like so many globs of bilious chunks blown into a vomit bucket.

It's Swedish - THANK CHRIST! - which immediately takes it into the territory of deep, almost unrelenting sadness. Not that you won't laugh, though. Andersson is a veritable knee-slap-inducer of the highest order. Some have idiotically linked him to the grotesqueries of mid-to-late Fellini, but for me, he's always been a curious amalgam of Chaplin (albeit on heavy doses of lithium) with splashes of De Sica/Rossellini neo-realism and, best of all, the deep ennui of Ingmar Bergman and the pathologically insane reliance upon tableaux so rooted in most of Carl Dreyer's canon (post-The Passion of Joan of Arc and notably in Ordet and Wrath of God).

Andersson creates images and situations which are often deeply sublime and the laughs he wrenches from you must be paid for in dire, often endless moments where you're shedding tears - often due to the universal truths of humanity which he brilliantly exposes, but just as often because one is simply blown away by his virtuosity as a film artist.

Set in the major sea port city of Göteborg, one would immediately think the place is utterly bereft of the joyous cultural and historical touchstones that make it one of the most vibrant cities, not just in Sweden, but the world. I can't recall a single instance of sun peeking through the heavy clouds, nor any interior that wasn't splashed in fluorescent light and a kind of spartan decor which borders on a complete lack of anything resembling warmth, taste or style. In fact, there are only two instances in the entire film where we see anyone smile. One involves an ever-so brief moment involving children and the other, so heart-rending I refuse to spoil it for you (and, you might even miss it altogether).

Gotta love Roy Andersson! There's nobody out there like him in contemporary cinema, though I'd argue that Austrian Ulrich Seidl or bad boy Lars von Trier are not unlike a Roy Andersson who train their lenses upon the most vile aspects of human ugliness and moral decrepitude.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is as episodic as they come. Andersson presents several mini-playlets (he's happily all-too-in-love with a kind of skewed proscenium quality to his compositions) in which we observe slices of life involving numerous characters who are only connected by virtue of living in the same city. Andersson affixes his camera in one position, usually in a slightly off-kilter angle from some discrete corner viewpoint as he almost sneakily seems to be spying upon the action of the scenes. All 100-minutes of the picture is comprised of - I kid you not! - about 35 single shots and they are beautiful, as much as for the dramatic content as they are for their compositional qualities. Somehow, Andersson manages to make the harshly bland quality of the settings as pulchritudinous as all get out.

The movie begins with a series of short snappers which are presented with the inter-title "Three Meetings With Death" and they are exactly that. From a man suffering a fatal heart attack in his dining room after unsuccessfully attempting to uncork a bottle of wine while his wife continues to putter about the kitchen, through to an absolutely hilarious sequence involving a dead man on the floor of a cafeteria aboard a ferry as the cashier wonders what to do with the meal and beer the man ordered and paid for, before keeling over, of course. The middle vignette is as heartbreaking as it is funny - a self-contained mini-masterpiece within the larger whole as a woman on her deathbed refuses to part with her handbag full of jewels and money, hoping to take it with her to the afterlife.

Throughout the movie are several other vignettes - one involving a chunky flamenco teacher and her obsession with a lithe, beautiful young man in her class, a befuddled military officer searching for a lecture, an inexperienced barber filling in for his infirm friend (and scaring away customers as he describes that he hasn't cut hair since his military days), several sequences involving different characters engaged in telephone calls in which they all utter similar pleasantries of the “I’m happy to hear you’re doing fine” variety.

There are moments of out and out surrealism. My least favourite involves a bar which keeps receiving visits from King Charles XII and his army and my "favourite", though that's not quite the right word to describe it, is a horrific dream sequence involving stiff-upper-lip British Colonial soldiers forcing a huge lineup of African slaves into a humungous copper drum, locking them in, setting fires underneath and rigidly observing as it revolves like a spit and roasts the people alive.

There is one narrative thread which ties the movie together and involves two sad-sack door-to-door salesmen specializing in wholesale novelty items to mostly uninterested or payment-welching shopkeepers. Both men seem fraught with the mental illness of depression, though it's poor Sam (Nils Westblom) who appears to suffer the most, especially since his partner Jonathan (Holger Andersson) is an inveterate bully who keeps referring to his old pal as a "crybaby" (which, he actually resembles since he's prone to breaking out into painful sobs at the drop of a hat).

Their scenes are the funniest and saddest in Andersson's film (and perhaps up there with some of the funniest and saddest moments in all of film history). When Sam, with dour deadpan, oft-repeats his sales pitch, "We want to help people have fun," it's clearly obvious these men are ill-prepared to sell vampire teeth with extra-long fangs, a laugh-bag (described by Jonathan as guaranteed to "bring out a smile at parties, either at home or in the office") and their "new item" which they place a lot of faith in, a grotesque rubber mask called "Uncle One Tooth" which crybaby Sam is forced to repeatedly demonstrate, an item so horrific it even terrifies a store clerk upon first viewing it.

Of all the characters in this kaleidoscope of humanity, Sam and Jonathan are a perfect pair for us to follow as Andersson takes us on this genuinely exquisite journey. It's a world most of us would never want to live in, but we're grateful for the experience of living it in the film. Indeed, like Bruegel's 1565 oil on wood painting "The Hunters in the Snow", Andersson's chief influence here, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence works on a similar plane as those birds in the 14th Century masterpiece looking down upon the weary, downtrodden men trudging through snow under grey skies. Andersson's a sly one, though. We'd like to think we're the pigeons, but ultimately, we're all the dupes.

Andersson uses his film to hold up a mirror to all of us.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is in theatrical release via FilmWeLike. It plays in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and throughout the rest of Canada soon after.

THE QUIET HOUR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - NIFF 2015 - Low-Key Post-Apocalypse

The Quiet Hour (2014)
Dir. Stéphanie Joalland
Starring: Dakota Blue Richards, Karl Davies, Brigitte Millar, Jack McMullen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

After the Apocalypse, it's going to be very quiet.

At least that's the way it's got to be in Stéphanie Joalland's first feature film The Quiet Hour. The end of the world as we know it in the universe of the film is an alien invasion in which the unseen extraterrestrial critters (save for their hovering spaceship and mini-patrol-jets) are wiping out as many humans as possible and stripping the Earth of its natural resources.

Humanity has about two one-hour periods a day (hence the title) to wander about outdoors without getting zapped. The rest of the time, mankind needs to hunker down, ever-so quietly, lest they give their position away to the merciless space invaders.

Perhaps the most merciless creature on God's soon-to-NOT-be-green Earth is man. Food is scarce, so many marauders have turned to cannibalism. (This flesh munching is all handled a bit too discretely for my bloodthirsty tastes).

Safe havens are also in short supply, so if you've got one, it's eventually going to be under siege.

Placing a whopping emphasis upon character over action and suspense is probably not a bad thing to do, but every so often, it reminds the viewer that we're dealing with what is probably a very minuscule budget - hence: no onscreen aliens, only a handful of visible humans and most of the action confined to an isolated old farm house.

No matter. It's what happens inside the farmhouse that's important and writer-director Joalland acquits herself very well in this respect. Sarah (Dakota Blue Richards) is a hot babe (Thank Christ!), holed up in the stately country house with Tom (Jack McMullen), her blind younger brother. When Jude (Karl Davies), an army-fatigue-adorned young hunk shows up with a bullet wound in his leg, he's allowed, grudgingly, to stay and get patched up. The wounded lad claims to be a young father whose wife and child have been killed by marauders.

The plot thickens when a group of armed inbreds show up and demand Jude be turned over to them.

Hmmm. Why? Is he really who or what he says he is? Is he a killer? A scavenger lying in wait to decimate our plucky bro and sis? The reality, however, is that even if they acquiesce to the demands to give him up, the sibs risk losing an ally against a passel of dangerous scumbags.

Suspense and violence follow.

Very quietly, mind you.

The accent is on the relationships between these people in a world on the brink of disaster and much of the film involves three-hander interplay between them. Joalland's script is nicely written with an accent on character development and realistic dialogue. The performances are solid and as a director, her mise-en-scene deftly juggles the demands of making this claustrophobic setting work dramatically and cinematically.

I appreciated the muted quality of the film, but after awhile, I did expect a good, old fashioned Straw Dogs-like orgy of violence. There is violence, but it continues to play out in the muted realism of the rest of the movie. This, of course, is the noble way to play things out, but I do fear that many (including myself) will be a tad letdown by the lack of a truly, madly, deeply inspired donnybrook with geysers of blood-letting.

We deserve it. We've paid attention, justifiably so, to the good writing and fine acting and stately pace. Lacking a climactic dust-up seems a bit of a cop-out, taking things far too preciously for comfort. Still, it's an intelligent, considered work and one can't complain too much about that.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

The Quiet Hour enjoys its Canadian Premiere at the Niagara Integrated Film Festival (NIFF 2015). For tix, times and venues, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

LIZA THE FOX-FAIRY (Liza a Rókatündér) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - NIFF 2015 MUST-SEE Wacko Winner from Hungary gets Canadian Premiere during the legendary Bill Marshall's 2nd Annual Niagara Integrated Film Festival in Southern Ontario Wine Country

Liza The Fox-Fairy aka Liza a Rókatündér (2015)
Dir. Károly Ujj Mészáros
Starring: Mónika Balsai, Szabolcs Fazekas, David Sakurai

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Watching Liza The Fox-Fairy, I felt like I had died and sailed up to Heaven. It's also proof-positive how great publicists genuinely understand the writers they work with. I didn't even bother including this title on my list of films I'd requested to screen in advance of the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival and the gentle words of the veteran flack handling NIFF's press relations, "I think you might want to see this one, too," led me to this terrific motion picture (at first, wearily, in spite of not ever really being led astray by said flack's almost placid urging), which not only appealed to my taste, but did so with the kind of artistry and imagination I continually long for in the movies.

This magnificently mordant fantasy is also a deeply black comedy, an utterly insane musical and perhaps one of the most unexpectedly sweet and melancholy love stories I've seen in quite some time. That it also blends an old-style Eastern European sense of realism, an occasional use of a fluorescent-dappled post-modernist visual palette and that this Budapest-back-dropped ode to ghostly apparitions, murder and Japanese culture oddly joins a splendid cinematic coterie that includes Canada's brilliant Winnipeg-infused, Hungarian-heritaged John (Crime Wave) Paizs and the Colorado=spawned Zellner (Kumiko The Treasure Hunter) Brothers (with dashes of Otto Preminger's Laura), all yielding globs of rich icing on this delicious cake of celluloid dreaming.

Liza (Mónika Balsai) has toiled for twelve long years as a personal slave/caretaker to a morbidly obese old lady in Hungary who once lived with her deceased husband, a consular official, in Japan. She not only teaches Liza Japanese in their endless days, weeks, months and aeons together, but insists her jane-of-all-trades endlessly spin tunes by the old gal's favourite Nippon pop star Tomy Tani (David Sakurai). Frumpy Liza, having never known true love, magically becomes the recipient of numerous visitations by the ghost of Tomy who croons and converses endlessly with her. Some might call him an imaginary friend, but he is, ultimately, an all-too-real a presence in Liza's life.

On Liza's 30th birthday, everything changes. Whilst enjoying a celebratory greasy burger and fries at the grim Hungarian fast food eatery, MEKK BURGER, the old lady dies and in her will, leaves the loyal, dowdy au pair her apartment and a small amount of money. Liza immediately becomes a beacon for male suitors. Alas, one-by-one, the men begin to die "accidentally" in Liza's presence. Though each death is clearly accidental, the Budapest Homicide Department smells something fishy and assigns Detective Zoltán Zászlós (Szabolcs Fazekas) to stakeout her comings and goings.

Zoltán slowly falls for Liza in a big way, even though men are dropping like flies around her. Melancholy Liza, who transforms herself into a Cosmopolitan Magazine babe, feels like she's become the reincarnated Japanese "Fox-Lady" whom, a legend has it, could never know true love as all men who courted her died horrible deaths. As Liza's apartment becomes insanely plastered with crime scene tape body outlines, the jealous ghost of Tomy appears to be the real culprit.

He loves Liza and wants her all to himself.

For eternity.

What's a girl to do?

To find out, head down to St. Catharines and surrounding environs to see Liza The Fox-Fairy at the Niagara Integrated Film Festival. Who knows when you'll have a chance to see this thoroughly delightful picture on a big screen with an audience.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Liza The Fox-Fairy enjoys its Canadian Premiere at NIFF 2015. For info, dates and tickets, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

ARROW FILMS is becoming the GOLD STANDARD for the home entertainment packaging of Genre Pictures: THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE by Walerian Borowczyk - Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)
Dir. Walerian Borowczyk
Starring: Udo Kier, Gérard Zalcberg,
Marina Pierro, Patrick Magee, Howard Vernon, Clément Harari

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This might not be the ultimate film adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's literary masterpiece "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (that, for me, belongs to 1968's astounding Dan Curtis and Charles Jarrott shot-on-2-inch-video production for ABC-TV, starring Jack Palance in the dual role), but Walerian Borowczyk's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne deserves an oblation of the most emphatically laudatory kind for easily being the strangest, creepiest and most visually diverse version.

On the surface, it's a relatively straight-forward rendering of the alchemy-obsessed Dr. Jekyll and his discovery of a secret potion which allows the normally mild mannered scientist to conjure up his most base instincts and turn into a foul murderous psychopath. Where the adaptation parts company with most is on several levels.

First of all, Borowczyk has quite brilliantly chosen to split the acting duties of Jekyll and Hyde twixt two actors, Udo Kier and Gérard Zalcberg respectively. Kier adds a sexy, almost reptilian quality to the good doctor and quite capably evokes the more subtle qualities of Jekyll's obsessive "addiction" to both the potion and the brutal qualities of his alter-ego Mr. Hyde. Zalcberg resembles Kier in face and stature (albeit with a grotesquely deformed visage), but he takes the horrific Hyde to demented levels of psychopathy and sexual deviance not quite exploited as overtly as they are here.

Secondly, more emphasis is placed upon the love story between Jekyll and his fiancé. As such, the entire action of the film takes place over the course of one long, horrifying evening devoted to celebrating the couple's engagement. Delving into Mario Bava stalker territory of such works as Bay of Blood and providing a far more compelling precursor to the slasher movie craze of the period than those of the Friday the 13th ilk, Borowcxyk does not shy away from explicit perverse sexual activity and this, coupled with some truly sickening violence and humiliation, is what serves up a genuinely original take on the twisted tale.

Borowczyk's gorgeously skewed compositions, lighting and camera moves are a big treat in this respect as are his attention to numerous fetishistic lingerings over a variety of inanimate objects (and not to neglect his evocative mirror imagery), the movie is a dazzler to the eye. Enjoying Hyde decimate the assembled celebrants one by one is truly joyous. Coupled with a first rate cast (Patrick Magee as a prudish aristocrat forced to watch his comely daughter succumb to Hyde's huge and prodigious sword of manhood is especially engaging)

Throughout the film, one is both shocked and tantalized with how far Hyde goes during his evening of slaughter and general debauchery. Ultimately, it's a parade of delicious serial killings, but crafted with a great deal of artistry and vision. Throughout most of the movie, you'll be agog at its subversive nature. Your jaw will drop as regularly as Mr. Hyde's deadly, loutish knuckle dragging.

It's cause for celebration!

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
***** 5 Stars for both the film and Arrow's Special Edition

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne is available in a sumptuous special edition on Arrow Video with the following special features: A new 2K restoration, scanned from the original camera negative and supervised by cinematographer Noël Véry, a High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD of the movie released on both formats for the first time anywhere in the world, English and French soundtracks, Optional English and English SDH subtitles, Introduction by critic Michael Brooke, Audio commentary featuring archival interviews with Walerian Borowczyk, Udo Kier, Marina Pierro and producer Robert Kuperberg, and new interviews with cinematographer Noël Véry, editor Khadicha Bariha, assistant Michael Levy and filmmaker Noël Simsolo, all moderated by Daniel Bird, Interview with Marina Pierro, Himorogi (2012), a short film by Marina and Alessio Pierro, made in homage to Borowczyk, Interview with artist and filmmaker Alessio Pierro, Video essay by Adrian Martin and Cristina Alvarez Lopez, Eyes That Listen, a featurette on Borowczyk’s collaborations with electro-acoustic composer Bernard Parmegiani, Jouet Jouyeux (1979), a short film by Borowczyk based on Charles-Émile Reynaud’s praxinoscope, Interview with Sarah Mallinson, former assistant to Borowczyk and fellow animator Peter Foldes, Returning to Méliès: Borowczyk and Early Cinema, a featurette by Daniel Bird, Theatrical trailer with optional commentary by editor Khadicha Bariha, Reversible sleeve with artwork based on Borowczyk’s own poster design, Illustrated booklet with new writing on the film by Daniel Bird and archive pieces by Walerian Borowczyk and Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues.

There's not a single item on this Special Edition that a Borowczyk fan, nor for that matter, any serious horror aficionado will not want to pore over. My personal favourites included Michael Brooke's wonderful video in which he tells the familiar tale of all grind house denizens - discovering the work of a great director in a delectable dive devoted to flat-rental specials on triple and quadruple bills, offering hours of entertainment for one low admission, as well as providing a safe haven for the homeless, the indigent and those seeking a nice spot to get a blow job from a hooker. Brooke's superbly spun tale of first viewing Borowczyk's Dr. Jekyll film in just such an establishment is replete with a detailed analysis of the filmmaker's style and career and the history of this astoundingly vile and quite brilliant film. Actress Marina Pierro's interview is full of illuminating observations on Borowczyk's working methods as well as her own erudite assessment of his work. I also loved the extra involving composer Bernard Parmegiani which provides great insight into the world of 70s/80s Euro-Trash electronic/acoustic scoring. Again, these are just personal favourites and, ultimately, I found the entire package eminently fascinating and beautifully produced. It was this package in particular that led me to decide that Arrow was indeed providing a Criterion Collection-styled Gold Standard to the packaging of genre films.

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Now on Criterion Blu-Ray and 34 Years after its first theatrical release, Louis Malle's film masterpiece of the great script by Wallace Shawn and André Gregory continues to pack one major wallop after another!

My Dinner With André (1981)
Dir. Louis Malle
Scr. Wallace Shawn, André Gregory
Starring: André Gregory, Wallace Shawn

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I've always loved this movie. When I first saw it theatrically in 1981, I was a mere twenty-two years of age, but had already seen thousands of movies. I quickly realized, however, that I'd never seen anything like this one. On every level, the writing, acting and direction is of the highest calibre, but most of all the thing I've carried with me ever since, is the feeling that I was literally under a hypnotic spell. I was all there, all the time, my eyes glued to the screen and completely unable to concentrate upon anything else.

Here's the rub, though. My Dinner With Andre is literally what the title says it is. The playwright Wally (Wallace Shawn) informs us he has not seen his old friend and theatre colleague Andre (Andre Gregory) for years and accepts an invitation to dinner in a high-toned Manhattan restaurant.

They meet, greet, eat, talk, then say goodbye. On the surface, that's it.

Of course there's so much more.

Wally gets a complete, detailed rundown on everything Andre's been up to which feels like a thoroughly engaging verbal travelogue, though often, the chat dovetails into the kind of highly literate philosophizing that one might expect from these two brilliant men. Wally is primarily the listener, but when he interjects, his responses, more often than not, are the kind of concise intelligent responses someone like Andre needs, as, of course. does Wally.

As do we all.

Andre's storytelling is riveting - neither Wally nor the audience is any less than transfixed and there are plenty of laughs mixed with the stories and ruminations. Some of them are downright revelatory in terms of the world we (and they) live in and indeed provide numerous touchstones that we've either experienced ourselves, or in some cases, hope to eventuality discover on our own travels.

What's astonishing now, years after growing with the film for some thirty-plus years, especially on subsequent viewings, is to discover just how relevant the discussions are to the early eighties, but most importantly how they build and grow over the years.

What's revealed to us is prescient in ways few films ever are. Given the madness the world has lived in since 9/11 with war, financial collapse and corruption at the highest levels of both government and business, one of Andre's speeches is unbelievably chilling in a contemporary context when he offers:

"We're all bored now. But has it ever occurred to you Wally that the process that creates this boredom that we see in the world now may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing, created by a world totalitarian government based on money, and that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks and it's not just a question of individual survival Wally, but that somebody who's bored is asleep, and somebody who's asleep will not say no?"

"A world totalitarian government based on money", indeed. In 1982 this was already a concern, but in 2015 this basic fact/fear has never been more prevalent.

At one point, Andre explains how much he wants to leave New York. The city feels like a prison in that comfort is mere acquiescence to forces much greater than humanity. He explains this notion by accusing all New Yorkers, and by extension, anyone living in an urban environment as existing in "a state of schizophrenia. They're both guards and prisoners and as a result they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they've made, or to even see it as a prison.

Again, we're faced with a chilling notion that acts like some mirror Andre holds up to all our faces. Wally argues, perhaps even on our behalf:

"I would never give up my electric blanket, Andre. . .I'm not looking for ways to get rid of a few things that provide relief and comfort. I mean, on the contrary, I'm looking for more comfort because the world is very abrasive. I mean, I'm trying to protect myself because, really, there's these abrasive beatings to be avoided everywhere you look!"

Wally expresses our point of view and we accept it gladly, but Andre further explains that "comfort can be dangerous" because it can "lull you into a dangerous tranquility".

And damn if he isn't right.

Andre has been to several corners of the earth to find a spiritual transcendence and he indeed discovers it in a series of theatre experiments in deep, dark forests which break all boundaries and carry the participants to a place that was like "a human Kaleidoscope". Even as he says this, we see this kaleidoscope - not literally, of course, but because director Louis (Atlantic City, Lacombe Lucien, Au revoir les enfants) Malle's precise and consistent mise-en-scene takes us there by keeping clear focus upon the faces of his subjects and creates a rhythm which allows us to be lulled into an acquiescence to the stories, philosophy and conversations.

Of course, the screenplay by Shawn and Gregory is rife with some of the best writing you'll ever experience in a film. Towards the picture's conclusion we're awash in a state of melancholy as we've been forced to think about our own lives and piteous place in a world and universe we have so little control over.

Then it's Wally, during the film's conclusion as he continues to be our surrogate.

He expresses the greatest truth of all:

"I treated myself to a taxi. I rode home through the city streets. There wasn't a street, there wasn't a building, that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There, I was buying a suit with my father. There, I was having an ice cream soda after school. And when I finally came in, Debbie was home from work, and I told her everything about my dinner with Andre."

It is in the crystalline remembrance of our lives and the ability to share those experiences which is finally the genuinely and deeply moving core of My Dinner With Andre, a film that is not only original and powerful, but one we must hold dear to.

And you know, the picture will live forever. No matter what happens in our lives and the world at large, the alternately terrible and beauteous truths is what rests finally at the root of humanity.

Our humanity.

We have art to thank for this and surely we must thank Louis Malle, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory for giving us this dazzling lesson in how, ideally, we should all strive to hold dear our sense of place and worth.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** Five Stars

My Dinner With Andre is available on a great Criterion Blu-Ray, one its own or in a fabulous box which includes A Master Builder and Vanya on 42nd Street. The gorgeously produced Blu-Ray for this film comes with a lovely High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, an interview from 2009 with actor-writers André Gregory and Wallace Shawn, conducted by their friend, filmmaker Noah Baumbach (so good one wishes it was several hours long), “My Dinner with Louis,” a 1982 episode of the BBC program Arena in which Shawn interviews director Louis Malle (so amazing that one wonders why such incisive TV programming is not produced today), an essay by critic Amy Taubin and the prefaces written by Gregory and Shawn for the 1981 publication of the film’s screenplay.

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