THERE IS A HOUSE HERE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Zweig @TIFF2017, another masterpiece

"You look different."
"So do you."
"No, you look beautiful right now. Really."

There is a House Here (2017)
Dir. Alan Zweig
Starring: Tatanniq (Lucie) Idlout

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Great. Another fucking masterpiece of filmmaking. When will Canadian filmmaker Alan (When Jews Were Funny, Hurt) Zweig do wrong? When will the runner stumble? Or will he continue to feed the soul of the world with one great picture after another? Well, if his new feature There is a House Here is any indication, the dude just keeps grinding them out and there's no stopping him.

The picture wears its heart, theme and narrative on its sleeve, right from the get-go. We follow a burly dude in a grey toque, red parka and baggy jeans from behind as he descends from an airplane onto the frozen tarmac of an airport in Iqualit, Nunavut. Inside, a young, raven-haired babe in a white animal-fur coat waits patiently with a smile of expectation upon her face. Soon the pair are striding towards an awaiting vehicle and a title card announces that it's "winter". Yeah, I buy that. It's winter alright. The breath forming in clouds announces this in spades, but that's okay, it's the seasons that count. They change and shift and just like in life, they prove to be major cornerstones.

Once in the car, the beautiful woman gently chides the burly figure in the backseat over his choice of parka colour. "You look like such a fuckin' tourist," she declares.

Oh, and it's dark outside. It's only 3:00 PM and we learn that it's going to get darker. Well, it's not just the light in the sky that's going to get darker. But no matter, it's an Alan Zweig picture and darkness is a prerequisite to find the light.

The hidden figure remarks how odd it is that after five years of being pals long distance via phone and email, he and the woman aren't having a decent face-to-face reunion and are already driving from the airport to a nearby destination to begin shooting the picture proper. They're going to meet the woman's uncle in his home. Many years ago he "found Jesus" and became the first Inuk Bishop in the Anglican Church - ever.

As they enter the old Bishop's home, the woman asks the hidden figure to explain what the film is about to her uncle. "Really?" he asks, almost incredulous. "I just got here. I don't even know what the film's going to be about yet."

It's this delectable, if not indelicate truth that proves to be the thing that drives the picture - a filmmaker who has no idea what his film is going to be. What we learn on the journey about the film's subjects is that first and foremost, this is a film about seeking answers, about learning something its filmmaker wants to know, and in so doing, casting the glow of illumination upon us all - forcing us to confront how little we know about anything and how life (and filmmaking/art), should indeed always be about exploration.

And yes, no matter what the movie's about, great pictures ultimately reflect the filmmaker.

The hidden figure isn't hidden for long. Sitting in the home of the Old Uncle, director Alan Zweig doffs his ugly red tourist parka and adorned in a gray plaid hoser sweater, he attempts to explain what his movie is about. The gorgeous, impossibly-stylishly dressed woman, the retired Bishop's niece who insists Alan explain, is none other than Zweig's friend Tatanniq Idlout (Inuk rock star Lucie Idlout).

"After all the shit you told me over the years, I had to come see for myself," Zweig blurts out in his gravel-tinged Eeyore-like voice. He looks to the Old Uncle. "So one time I was talking to your niece on the phone and she said, 'It's the Third World up here, motherfucker.' And I thought, why is it the third world in my country, why is part of my country the third world?"

If anything, Zweig knows all too well what his movie is going to be about, even if he didn't know it at the time, or at least couldn't articulate it. For someone who went into this film purportedly not knowing what it was about, the footage has been expertly assembled into a stirring, moving and provocative story.

That all said, it does indeed turn out that Tatanniq's Uncle is not comfortable about being interviewed by Zweig, and so, they leave.

"He didn't like me," says Zweig. "I think he's anti-Semitic."

Tatanniq fires back: "You fucking jerk."

Their quips are tinged with mordant wit. If this wasn't a Canadian documentary, you'd think you were watching a Howard Hawks romantic comedy with a jowly schlubby Cary Grant and a wiseacre Rosalind Russell in Nunavut garb. Yeah, and if on the surface the movie is about a filmmaker's exploration of a world he wants to know more about, it is, if anything - deep down - the story of a friendship; one that deepens and grows as he makes his film.

Zweig's the searcher. Tatanniq's the guide. Hell, if it was a western, one might even mistake their partnership in the colonial trappings of a genre that so often found itself mired in cultural stereotypes. We're not talking The Lone Ranger and Tonto here, but the thought can't help cross our minds. (Zweig is no Armie Hammer and, thank God, Idlout is no Johnny Depp.)

After Zweig's turfed from the Old Uncle's house, the bantering pair are driving to another interview prospect. "So these next people that are gonna fucking kick me out," he inquires, "What's their names?"

As Zweig blows into the house, the new subject asks: "Why are you here? What do you want to learn?"

"How can we make things better for you up here?" says Zweig.

"Do you believe in Satan? Do you believe in God? If you don't, then there's no way you can save us or help us," is the response.

Zweig admits he believes in neither.

He's kicked out.

But it doesn't stay this way. As Zweig spends more time in this world, as he discovers his film, the doors, a seeming eternity above the tree-line, keep opening. He slowly finds his sea legs. Not that the doors wouldn't open. As one of the subjects states: "You never refuse anyone entry into your house in the Arctic. They could be frozen. Even if they have a knife in their hand, you let them in."

Having Zweig in the film is a welcome treat. In his first few documentary features (Vinyl, I, Curmudgeon, Lovable) he always put himself front and centre, but as his evolution as a filmmaker continued, we'd see less and less of him on-camera, though his distinctive voice and line of questioning was always present. In There is a House Here, Zweig allows - nay, demands - that the lens be on him as well as his subjects.

The camera also trains itself poetically, often with the underlay of a gorgeous, soulful heartbreaking score, focusing upon astonishing vistas and life as it unfolds in the cities of the Arctic. Kids play hockey in the streets, ATVs, snowmobiles and half-tons blast along the snow-packed roads, even Bingo is played (albeit via radio broadcast into peoples' homes).

And most of all, there's Alan and Tatanniq, this "odd couple" wending their way through a world Zweig wants to learn about and one in which Idlout, through the process of the film, might also be seeing in a whole new light. Though he's come to know his friend via years of correspondence, he trains his camera upon her to speak about herself, if only "for the record" and to place her participation within the film in "context".

After flying to Iglulik, he asks her point blank why she's given up on being a rock star. Ah, directly indelicate as always. It's what friends are for, right? Tatanniq let's him know that she hasn't really given it up even though she's moved back up north. After recording several albums, writing a whole whack of singles and composing film soundtracks, she found herself drawn away from what she calls "a rock 'n' roll lifestyle" that she led living in Toronto. She declares: "It was not fulfilling to me. I had an active social life and a beautiful apartment I loved very much, but there was something missing." She also admits she just didn't like "the touring life of a rockstar".

Once back up north, darkness reared its head. At least that's how Zweig perceives it, as do we. He makes the observation that her return was to a world of violence. She wryly yanks his chain: "I can show you some violence if you like."

She does reveal, however, the very real violence that she faced. "I don't have any kids living in my house and I don't have a man living in my house, so people just come because it's an easy place for them to do their misbehavings and I let them in."

Still, she boils it down to two words: "Shit happens." Indeed it does. She elaborates: "Even the worst experiences up here seem matter of fact. I got raped, I got beat up, the RCMP abused me… I'm certainly not saying it's no big deal, but it happens and people up here are more honest about what they're willing to talk about."

Honesty, of course, runs rampant throughout the film. At times it feels like a litany of stories involving alcohol abuse and horrendous reminiscences of residential schools in which the Government of Canada uprooted thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal children from their homes to strip them of their culture and assimilate them into "White" society. And, of course, most of these schools were presided over by sadistic perverts of the cloth. Nuns and priests alike took delight in wielding their power over these children, physically, psychologically and sexually abusing them. When children are caught speaking in their own language (and not English), they're shoved into corners and forced to wear dunce caps. These children and their children's children face poverty and neglect of a magnitude that's as appalling as any apartheid in any country at any time.

If there's a "third-world" in Canada, we learn quickly and heartbreakingly that it was created by the colonialist evil, but that its clutches continue even today. The housing crisis in these northern communities is appalling. Often 10 or more people are crammed into tiny houses while huge residences created for Government of Canada employees stand empty. Young people seek out remote garbage dumps to booze it up in peace. Kids are constantly orphaned and/or snatched from their biological parents by overzealous "liberal" social workers - adoption amongst the Northern residents is as common as breathing air.

Yes, many of us know this or have at least heard about it, but Zweig's film is an important window upon this as he, as a filmmaker, is our surrogate explorer. As he discovers things first-hand, so too do we.

And most horrific of all are the seemingly endless tales of suicide - people living for no other reason than to die, and in many cases, to die by their own hand. Tatanniq's grandfather drove his truck off a cliff. He was a good driver. He knew the land. He knew there was a cliff there. This was no "accident", no matter how much the government bean-counters might prefer it to be. And even Idlout experienced something akin to residential schools when she was separated from her mother and shoved into foster homes where she wasn't allowed to speak on the telephone to her mother in their native tongue. It always had to be in English. And most idiotic of all is when she describes how her foster parents would never allow her to place her hands beneath the dinner table for fear that it would look like she was trying to masturbate.

Uh, who the fuck is going to be diddling themselves with a plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding before them? (Well, I suppose I can think of a few reprobates who might harbour this fetish, but none of them are orphan girls in foster care.)

But throughout the darkness, Zweig's film discovers plenty of light. A young boy talks about bagging a polar bear at the age of 13 - a feat not even his grandfather, an expert hunter has ever done. An elder, still an avid hunter, displays the implements of his trade in a living room and demonstrates the art of stalking a seal. And there is, yes, a glorious seal hunt out on the ice of the great North and under the big sky. During this sequence there's a dazzlingly beautiful, almost wildly romantic moment when Tatanniq saunters towards the camera and the off-camera Zweig notes how beautiful she looks. As she gazes across the vista before her, he adds, "Your eyes look clearer." She nods and declares: "My mind feels clearer."

And then there's the culture, the heritage, the tradition. Zweig admits to one of his subjects that "The culture I live in doesn't mean that much to me, but I'm very affected by listening to you talk about your culture."

Finally, through the darkness and light, what remains, so delicately and compellingly is the friendship between the filmmaker and his guide. It takes your breath away. There are moments, especially towards the end, of such tenderness, but there's also a moment where the curmudgeonly Zweig hits one lollapalooza of a wrong button. Idlout's response is perfectly appropriate - both emotionally and yes, culturally. As Zweig's film proves: What good is friendship when those we love and respect can't tell us to fuck right off and we, in turn, accept it. And understand.

Ultimately, it's the alternately dolorous and hopeful humanity of this film that winds us and if anything, There is a House Here is a journey, an exploration of deep understanding. The world will be a better place because of it.

When Tatanniq looks to the ice, snow and sky, she admits: "I wanna go be a part of the beauty."

Who in their right mind wouldn't?

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

There is a House Here plays at TIFF 2017.

SHADOW NETTES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Sick puppy Barker dazzles at TIFF 2017

An angler must know how to capture his quarry.

Phillip Barker is clearly one of Canada’s leading avant-garde film artists. He is also clearly one sick puppy. This, however, is a good thing. His new film Shadow Nettes expertly demonstrates the fine art of angling, but be advised, we’re not talking the quarry sought in the likes of actor/musician/director John Lurie’s immortal 1991 PBS cult series Fishing With John (1991) nor any of the fine array of reality-TV-based output on offer at the World Fishing Network.

Beginning in the late-19th-Century never-never land of a rich mixed forest overlooking a bucolic lake, we are introduced to a lanky, long-tressed, golden-locked young man of the rural persuasion (imagine Max Baer from The Beverly Hillbillies as Jethrine Beaudine sans a floral-patterned dress and adorned, rather, in Jethro’s dude-duds) who observes his father sailing the waters upon a queer conical vessel with a wide, round platform, stilts reaching and converging to a point up top with a platform situated at its most heavenly point, which holds a mysterious box-like filter.

What manner of contraption is this?

Well, of course, it’s a shadow nette. Duh! Grab a brain!

We continue on Barker’s strange journey to witness Dad attempting to train Sonny-Jethro, not unlike the Pat Morita/Ralph Macchio teacher-student gymnastics immortalized in John G. Avildsen’s The Karate Kid. Dad strikes a series of manly poses. Sonny-Jethro awkwardly attempts to mimic them.

At nightfall, however, we get the most delectable demonstration of all. The shadow nette is placed upon the rugged ground of the Canadian Shield and Dad steps inside it. From the thinnest end of the cone, light beams onto the round, white, net-like screen at the bottom end. Dad stands before the screen, casting a shadow upon it.

But what is a shadow when it doesn’t behave?

Shadows are never what they seem to be. The light casts Dad’s shadow, but the shadow has a life of its own. This is no mere replication of his image. Dad demonstrates that he must control light and shadow to create the image he wants to present. This, of course, is not dissimilar to the image most gentlemen wish to present, especially in their pursuit of a mate.

This pursuit, this quarry, is ages old.

As his picture progresses, Barker delivers one visual jaw-dropper after another as he reveals the full force and power of the subject at hand, to capture an image of oneself, the manipulation of said image to capture its quarry and ultimately, to not only capture it, but indeed, create it out of one’s own image.

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

Shadow Nettes enjoys its World Premiere at TIFF 2017.

homer_b - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Scary Creepy Springfield via Winnipeg at TIFF 2017

There is someone in Homer's house in Winnipeg.

homer_b (2017)
Dir. Milos Mitrovic, Conor Sweeney

Review By Greg Klymkiw

At the best of times, three-quarter-inch videotape on U-Matic playback machines seemed degraded, especially when constantly rotating, whirring drumheads would connect with the tape in pause-mode and render all manner of glitches. Even more problematic was an editing process that required constant duping in order to create desired cuts and resulted in further image degeneration.

At the time, watching community cable programs in the 80s, using already-retro equipment (though not that much worse than the "advancements" made in commercial mainstream video broadcasting at the time), felt positively otherworldly. Seeing said tapes some 30+ years later, especially if they'd been duped to straight VHS and simply captured decades later on a digital format without any remastering results in images that have been dredged from the pits of some analogue septic tank Hell.

It's scary stuff. So too is the astonishingly creepy, disturbing and funny film homer_b by contemporary Winnipeg filmmakers Milos Mitrovic and Conor Sweeney (one of the founders of the visionary Astron-6 collective). Gorgeously recreating the aforementioned look of ancient technology, this is one fine addition to the tradition first coined by film critic Geoff Pevere as "prairie post-modernism".

Feeling and looking like the work of a Matt Groening doppelgänger, or more likely, a Winnipeg community cable Matt Groening wannabe, we're greeted with a series of simple, decrepit opening images: a flash of pre-roll video noise, a screen of piss-pale yellow and a quick, crude fade-up of an ugly title treatment over a faded green star, bold-capped typeface in purple and dark yellow with a shimmering slightly askew shadow drop and then, an inelegant cut to black video noise, followed by an even-more graceless cut to a ruffled, white-tea-dyed curtain and a lone standup microphone in the foreground. Organ music on the soundtrack that makes David Lynch's use of Fats Waller sounding positively chipper, accompanies the chilling fade-up on a live action figure approaching the mic wearing a horrifying Krusty the Clown mask.

Things are not right in Springfield, or rather, uh, Winnipeg. If independent cinema from that midwestern Canadian city is to be believed (and why not?), the likes of Guy Maddin, John Paizs, et al, painted a myriad of cinematic treasures that would lead one to believe that nothing, absolutely nothing, was ever right in Winnipeg. (God knows David Lynch himself was happy to utilize his unacknowledged John [Springtime in Greenland] Paizs influences in his depiction of Lumberton in Blue Velvet.)

As the masked Krusty approaches, his voice queerly distorted in the Lynchian Twin Peaks backward-enunciation-played-forward reverberations, relates a childhood memory that most of us would rather forget, the tale of a boy, a pig and vomit. A masked intruder into this scene, making the testicle-cheeked Lady-in-the-Radiator from Eraserhead seem perfectly normal, manages to perk up the creepy quotient, as if it wasn't high already.

We're then treated to a disturbing "commercial" break segment involving masked Homer and Bart Simpsons in a grubby basement. When the "message" is over, we return to Krusty.

He has a warning.

It is one we must all heed.

Someone is in the house.

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

homer_b enjoys its World Premiere at TIFF 2017.

THE TESLA WORLD LIGHT (Tesla : lumière mondiale) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2017

"I've fallen in love with a pigeon... a beautiful bird."
- Nikola Tesla to John Pierpont Morgan Sr.

The Tesla World Light aka Tesla : lumière mondiale (2017)
Dir. Matthew Rankin
Starring: Robert Vilar

Review By Greg Klymkiw

O! A dream! A dream to unite the world across the Heavens, to transmit energy, to communicate across the vast Atlantic: absolved of cables, wires, mere radio technology, with the freedom of a bird in flight - THIS is a dream worth having. Alas, to be a visionary is to burn with the light of the world and to often have the dream fall on deaf ears, empty minds and souls bereft of the percipience only true genius can spawn. But, O! The vision! When it burns, it burns bright and in The Tesla World Light, a glorious new masterpiece from Winnipeg-born-and-raised Montreal filmmaker Matthew Rankin, vision burns brightly indeed!

And so it will be, and indeed so it is, that Rankin plunges us into the magnificent synaesthesia of Serbian-American engineer-inventor Nikola Tesla (Robert Vilar), his huge head, brimming with ideas, glowing with a magnificent oil-slicked straight edge razor double pompadour, two winged Matterhorns of pitch black hair, divided with a part that cuts deep into the scalp, into the very bone marrow housing the roiling cerebellum of the world's greatest pioneer of electricity. Rankin shares with us the Eureka of Tesla as he pens yet another entreaty to his erstwhile benefactor John Pierpont Morgan Sr. This will be his final appeal to the filthy-rich old man. It is 1905, in New York, in yet another squalid hotel room Tesla is forced, penniless, to reside in.

Tesla writes that his "pillow has been bathed in tears" for over a year with the sorrow and frustration he feels, that Morgan has not provided the funds he needs to finish "The World System" - his penultimate invention which, could advance world communication by a century. Webs of light explode around him as he lies on his bed, occasionally looking out the window to the sky, knowing that only filthy lucre is what keeps world unity at bay.

Then, it appears! Like an avian symbol of peace and flight!

The light of the world is the heart of the world.

"I've fallen in love with a pigeon... a beautiful bird," writes Tesla, enveloped in the fever of invention and receiving visits from the hand-animated, then stop-motion animated feathered creature. He details his dreams, they explode before us and for eight astounding minutes of dazzling cinematic brilliance we share Rankin's fantasia of the bushy-moustachioed Tesla.

A magical spiral coil spits out blasts of energy as Tesla's hand grips the switch, pulls it with purpose, the beauteous bird of hope perched upon his shoulder and then, the "infinite power for all nations" erupts from the engorged phallic joy that is Tesla's Wardenclyffe plant on Long Island, splattering upon the greedy faces of mankind.

O! This is cinema! In all its radiant poetic beauty, the true promise of the medium is borne upon our souls through our eyes. As he did with his previous film, Mynarski Death Plummet, Rankin's The Tesla World Light takes its rightful place alongside such classic Canadian short films as John Martins-Manteiga's The Mario Lanza Story, John Paizs's Springtime in Greenland, Guy Maddin's The Dead Father and The Heart of the World, Phillip Barker's Malody and Deco Dawson's Ne Crâne pas sois modeste / Keep a Modest Head. Rankin (son of the late, great Canadian writer/historian/curator Laird Rankin) unites the clocks, the toasters, the world and through his visionary imaginings of Nikola Tesla, he unites all of us in the dark room, lit only by the pieces of time we call cinema.

Curiously, the movie is about a great visionary needing a benefactor. Rankin himself is a visionary of the highest order. Happily, he did find a benefactor for his vision, the National Film Board of Canada. Oh Canada! We stand on guard for thee!!!

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

The Tesla World Light is a National Film Board of Canada production. After its triumphant World Premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, it enjoys a Canadian premiere at TIFF 2017.

THREADS, CHARLES - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - NFB at TIFF 2017 soars with joy and sadness

Life leads us from the frogs.

Charles (2017)
Dir. Dominic Etienne Simard

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In a mostly monochrome world, doughy lad Charles tends to his gargantuan lolly-gagging mother in a squalid flat. There are simple joys, of course, his beloved frogs, school and dips in the nearby lake. Dollops of colour, albeit pale and/or muted keep threatening to bring joy and solace, but they are fleeting.

Colour eventually explodes in the form of rising blue waters threatening to drown him. Will he be rescued? And whom or what will rescue him? Will it indeed be life itself? And oh, when it rains, what will rain down? Frogs? Kitty cats? Doggies? Big pudgy baby bears?

And will he find happiness?

Or is it, ultimately, imagination that will provide the ultimate freedom?

In Dominic Etienne Simard's Charles (a National Film Board of Canada co-production with France), it is the waters of time and the long, slow march to adulthood and freedom that await. The journey will, like so much of our lives, prove to be bittersweet. The film's gorgeous expressive visuals fill in all the blanks and finally, we're left with a work that soars with a great, though sometimes terrible beauty.

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

Charles plays at TIFF 2017.

The ties that bind hang by a thread.

Threads (2017)
Dir. Torill Kove

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To hang by a thread usually suggests imminent danger, something unstable and/or doomed to failure. In Oscar-Winner Torill Kove's lovely and simple animated short (a National Film Board of Canada co-production with Norway), it's the ties that bind which hang by a thread; a slender thread indeed.

This delicate and moving work details the life of a young woman who grabs a thread dangling from the heavens and allows it to hoist her upwards on a journey we come to recognize as life.

When she finds another thread, it's attached to an infant. She and the little girl are inseparable. Though the child grows incrementally into adulthood, they're bound together by that mysterious thread. Even when the thread leads the child to peers on a playground and, for a time, completely out of the mother's purview, the thread remains.

But the day comes, one we all dread I think, when when her daughter must sever the tie that binds to jump up to the heavens, to clutch her own thread.

As a single Dad to a teenage daughter the film inspired so many personal memories of past and present. It provided both solace and melancholy as I, like the mother in the film, face the imminent severing of my own thread to my own child. Yes, we dread the severance, but we also accept it. Life must go on and for those we love the dearest, our children, it must move forward.

There might not be anything new revealed in the sentiments and story revealed in the film, but its visual metaphor is one I welcomed, understood and responded to on a deep emotional level.

I suspect I'll not be alone in this.

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

Threads plays at TIFF 2017.

REBECCA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hitchcock/Selznick Classic on the Criterion Collection

Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson
in creepy crawly Hitchcock/Selznick romance.

Rebecca (1940)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Prd. David O. Selznick
Nvl. Daphne du Maurier
Scr. Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson,
George Sanders, Gladys Cooper, Nigel Bruce

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"She was incapable of love or tenderness or decency." - Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca

Rebecca is a creepy-crawly romance. Make no mistake, though - it is indeed a romance, but damn (!), the picture makes your flesh squirm and the cherry on the sundae is that it's often so suspenseful that you occasionally feel like being one big screaming-sissy-pants-baby.

There aren't many American feature films as great as this one - it's in a class all its own. The finished product is the result of easily the most combustible producer-director partnerships in movie history. Auteur American producer David O. Selznick (Gone With The Wind) teamed up with auteur British director Alfred Hitchcock to adapt the wildly best-selling gothic romance novel by Daphne du Maurier and in so doing, yielded a film that was as modern and sophisticated for its period that has also stood the test of time - so well, that it's still more dazzlingly original than most films made these days, or for that matter - ever!

Hitchcock, however, seemed to downplay the worth of Rebecca, going so far as to say that "it's not really a Hitchcock film", but rather David O. Selznick's picture. Hitch couldn't have been more wrong, though. The movie is pure Hitchcock. He just didn't realize it.

The story that unfurls is one of obsession and on the surface, pure gothic romance. When the ultra-rich widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier) meets a plain, nameless (yes, nameless!) travelling companion (Joan Fontaine) at a Mediterranean seaside resort, he falls madly in love with her and whisks the young woman off to be his wife and preside over his mansion Manderley. Of course, the rambling old estate is haunted - mostly by the lingering memories (and perhaps even the ghost) of de Winter's dead first wife Rebecca.

Once ensconced in the stately manse, Max is often busy with business matters and it's up to his fresh new wife to take up her duties as "lady of the house". This is easier said than done. The house is still adorned with all the touches bestowed upon it by the late Rebecca (who died tragically in a boating accident on the raging seas that the mansion overlooks). Even her bedroom, with all its clothing and accoutrements has been preserved as she left it the night she died.

The creepy old housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (the chillingly dour Judith Anderson) does everything she can to remind the young woman what a pale shade she is to the deceased former lady of the house. The new bride assumes Max wants her to replace Rebecca, but in actuality, the title character, as we are reminded constantly, can never really be replaced. If the young bride is to keep both her sanity and her new husband, she needs to create herself in her own image, not that of a dead woman.

As the film progresses, more and more hints are dropped that things, as they so often are in life, are never what they seem. Madness, infidelity and, perhaps, murder most foul lurk in ever dark corner and the picture stealthily makes its way to a climax that is as nail-bitingly suspenseful as it is wildly and gloriously romantic.

This was indeed a great producer-director collaboration. Many of Selznick's instincts about the material were right and he insisted upon fidelity to the original writing of Daphne Du Maurier - something Hitchcock had a clear distaste for, but ultimately acquiesced to. Good thing. What this resulted in was not only a great picture, but whether Hitchcock could ever admit it or not, Rebecca proved to be an important transition picture in his development as a filmmaker and led the way to his rich period during the 50s and eventually gave way to the other great and perfect tale of obsession, Vertigo. I'd go so far as to suggest that without Selznick, Vertigo might have never eventually happened, or at least not as successfully.

Selznick was a filmmaker. A real filmmaker. So too was Hitchcock. The combination was explosive, but yielded a work of lasting value.

Rebecca is available on a new Criterion Collection Blu-Ray/DVD and easily one of the greatest home entertainment triumphs in years. This stunning new 4K digital restoration of the Hitchcock/Selznick classic features an audio commentary from 1990 featuring film scholar Leonard J. Leff, an isolated music and effects track, a new conversation between film critic and author Molly Haskell and scholar Patricia White, a new interview with film historian Craig Barron on Rebecca’s visual effects, Daphne du Maurier: In the Footsteps of “Rebecca,” an extraordinary 2016 French television documentary, a making-of documentary from 2007, footage of screen, hair, makeup, and costume tests for actors Joan Fontaine, Anne Baxter, Vivien Leigh, Margaret Sullavan and Loretta Young, a casting gallery with notes by director Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick, Hitchcock interviewed by Tom Snyder on a 1973 episode of NBC’s Tomorrow, a Tomorrow interview with Fontaine from 1980, audio interviews from 1986 with actor Judith Anderson and Fontaine, three radio versions of Rebecca, from 1938, 1941, and 1950, including Orson Welles’s adaptation of the novel for the Mercury Theatre, the theatrical rerelease trailer, an essay by critic and Selznick biographer David Thomson and selected Selznick production correspondence, including with Hitchcock and on the box, a gorgeous cover painting by Robert Hunt.

SID AND NANCY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Classic Punk Biopic on Criterion Collection

Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as punk lovers
Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in Cox classic.

Sid and Nancy (1986)
Dir. Alex Cox
Scr. Cox and Abbe Wool
Starring: Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, Drew Schofield, David Hayman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It seems inevitable that the wildly, strangely romantic tragic biopic Sid and Nancy would be Alex Cox's sophomore feature after his astonishing 1984 debut with the punk masterpiece Repo Man. 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 now feels like the ultimate 80s American film. Cox's picture, with its aimless punk played by Emilio Estevez finding his niche as a repo man with the sage Harry Dean Stanton, virtually spat 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 often-wretched decade of cinema.

The hallucinogenic properties Cox brought to bear upon his first feature continued unabated with this grim, grimy love story twixt the legendary Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman), bassist of The Sex Pistols and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb). Though the screenplay by Cox and co-writer Abbe Wool hits many tried and true biopic beats, the film ultimately excels during its many flights of fancy and the clearly oddball properties of a loving, domestic partnership against the backdrop of addiction, substance abuse and the sheer anarchy of the late 70s period of punk rock.

The film begins with the early rise to success of the band managed by Malcolm McLaren (David Hayman) and doesn't waste time getting Sid together with Nancy. They're young, they're in love and they're hooked on heroin. They're also inseparable - so much so that their couple-status begins to upset the applecart of the band. Once The Sex Pistols are on tour in America, things go from bad to worse. The group breaks up. Sid and Nancy continue as a couple whilst Sid attempts to launch a solo career.

And then, tragedy strikes in the squalidly legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Love hurts and it most definitely doesn't last forever and death - violent death at that, has a bad habit of ending the joy and most of all, the pain.

As with Repo Man, Cox has a definitely unique eye on America and in Sid and Nancy, he delivers a skewed world through the eyes of these loving drug addicts (thanks to the astonishing work of cinematographer Roger Deakins and especially, Gary Oldman's star-making performance).

One of the most poignantly addled moments in the film comes when Nancy declares: "I hate my fuckin' life." Loving Sid responds: "This is just a rough patch. Things'll be much better when we get to America, I promise." Nancy looks blankly at him and matter-of-factly responds: "We're in America. We've been here a week."

Oh yeah.

Love hurts, alright. Especially when you don't know where you are. Or who you are.

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

Sid and Nancy is available as DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION on the Criterion Collection in a new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray, an alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray, Two audio commentaries: one from 1994 featuring cowriter Abbe Wool, actors Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, cultural historian Greil Marcus, filmmakers Julien Temple and Lech Kowalski, and musician Eliot Kidd; the other from 2001 featuring cowriter-director Alex Cox and actor Andrew Schofield England’s Glory, a 1987 documentary on the making of Sid & Nancy, Infamous 1976 Bill Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols on British television, Rare telephone interview from 1978 with Sid Vicious, Interviews with Vicious and Nancy Spungen from the 1980 documentary D.O.A.: A Right of Passage, Archival interviews and footage, plus an essay by author Jon Savage and a 1986 piece compiled by Cox about Vicious, Spungen, and the making of the film.

PULSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Profound Kurosawa J-Horror Classic gets Arrow Blu-Ray

Now I'm alone
with my last friend in the world
and I have found happiness.

Pulse/Kairo (2001)
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Kumiko Aso, Haruhiko Kato, Koyuki, Kurume Arisaka, Koji Yakusho

Review By Greg Klymkiw

About 15 years ago I saw Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse. It's stayed with me these many long years. I just finished watching the Arrow Films Blu-ray. I hadn't seen the movie since it scared the living shit out of me first-run on the big screen in 2002 and this recent viewing was like seeing it for the first time. Upon its conclusion and for some time afterwards I continued to shudder and weep. Not only because of the content of the movie, its profundity and deeply moving qualities, but because I felt so grateful that cinema exists to have afforded a genuine artist like Kurosawa the opportunity to unleash it upon us. And of course, when I see a picture this great, it reminds me, yet again, that I love cinema so very, very much. No matter how bad movies are these days, work like this exists and can continue to be made in spite of everything going against the medium now.

Pulse (aka Kairo) is a ghost story, but unlike any ever made. It deals with the notion that there's no more room in that place whereever the spirits of the dead go and now they are crossing over into our world, our living world. As people slowly begin to realize what's happening, it causes mass despair because what the ghosts communicate to the living is that death is eternal loneliness. People in the billions begin to commit suicide.

We follow two people who eventually find each other and realize that the only way they can survive is to be with each other, to never be alone. Of course, it takes some time and plenty of creepy and often downright shocking scares for this to happen.

Michi (Kumiko Aso) works in a plant shop. One of her co-workers has been missing for days. She goes to investigate and what she witnesses is ghastly. Her other co-workers become afflicted with a depressive malaise and she's eventually left to fend for herself.

Kawashima (Haruhiko Katô) is a university student who signs up for the internet (when the film was made, remember these were still relatively early days for the world wide web) and he discovers something online that's both ghoulish and more than a little disturbing. He befriends Harue (Koyuki), a computer science student, to help him get to the bottom of this ominous mystery. What they slowly begin to discover is truly shuddersome.

Yes, Michi and Kawashima's stories converge and as Tokyo's population dwindles to virtually nothing, they find each other. As Tokyo burns, covered with a thick, soupy haze (at one point, a flaming jet crashes into the middle of the city) they flee, pledging to go as far as they can go.

Throughout the film, Kurosawa assails us with moaning, wailing, desperate apparitions. A strange website called "The Forbidden Room" offers curious advice involving red duct tape (never has red duct tape been as hair-raisingly nightmarish as it is here). Recently departed humans turn into grim ectoplasmic black shadows on walls, floors and sidewalks (creepily conjuring images of similar shadows after the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings). At times we hear these shadows crying out, "Help me." All of this is delivered with a slow, macabre pace. dread ever-mounting.

At one point, it's explained:

"Ghosts won't kill people, because that would just make more ghosts. Instead they will try to make people immortal by quietly trapping them in their own loneliness."

This provides little solace to both the viewer and the characters.

Pulse has a truly unique look via cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi (gorgeously captured on the Arrow Films' Blu-Ray). Film grain is readily apparent and dances upon the screen ever-so delectably. The colour palette is made up of greys, pale browns and sickeningly bleached greens. Shadows and darkness run rampant - at times it seems like we can see virtually nothing, but shots will hold long enough to reveal tiny dollops of light and detail.

Kurosawa presents a world of loneliness, disconnection and deep, numbing and increasing pain. To say the film is prescient, would be an understatement. And yes, Pulse moves us to tears. When a character eventually declares:

"Now I'm alone with my last friend in the world and I have found happiness;"

We simply don't believe it. We can't.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *****

Pulse/Kairo is available on a tremendous Special Edition from Arrow Films (this company is truly the Criterion Collection of genre cinema). It includes a High Definition digital transfer on Blu-ray (1080p) and a Standard Definition DVD, the Original 5.1 audio (DTS-HD on the Blu-ray), New optional English subtitle translation, New interview with writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, New interview with cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi, "The Horror of Isolation": a new video appreciation featuring Adam Wingard & Simon Barrett (Blair Witch, You’re Next), an Archival ‘Making of’ documentary, four archival behind-the-scenes featurettes, Premiere footage from the Cannes Film Festival, Cast and crew introductions from opening day screenings in Tokyo, Trailers and TV Spots.

ATOMIC BLONDE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Special screening at Fantasia 2017 of this lifeless, empty, boring espionage action thriller, not so special.

Charlize kicks ass, but the movie does not.

Atomic Blonde (2017)
Dir. David Leitch
Scr. Kurt Johnstad
Nvl. Antony Johnston, Sam Hart
Starring: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy,
John Goodman, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella, Toby Jones

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When a movie featuring Charlize Theron kicking ass and engaging in explicit lesbian action (with nudity, no less) during the waning days of the Cold War in Berlin turns out to be a big fat boring mess, the disappointment is enough to hurt. Adding insult to my injury is that I had the distinctly extraordinary experiences of being in East Berlin before the wall came down (in 1988) and actually being in Berlin when the damn wall did finally come down (in 1989). My sufferance through the overall period/atmosphere inadequacies of Atomic Blonde (no matter how many "period" tunes have been annoyingly stuffed onto the film's soundtrack) is all the greater.

Though screenwriter Kurt Johnston (adapting the Antony Jonston/Sam Hart graphic novel) loads up on the tropes of espionage thrillers, he does so with the kind of ham-fisted inadequacy that makes the whole affair unnecessarily obtuse and worse, so that we finally don't care about any of the characters and/or proceedings. I was forced to almost constantly check the time, agog at how slow and dull it all was.

Director David Leitch (co-director of the much-better-written John Wick) at least knows how to stage all the action sequences (especially one delicious set piece that feels like it's all one long take) so that we're not annoyed by the usual herky-jerky on display in virtually every other contemporary action movie, but sadly, his efforts are all for nought since none of these ultra-violent extravaganzas have anything more going for them than the craft itself. We have no emotional stakes in anything or anyone and as such, we're bored to distraction when the film's onscreen participants are being shot and/or pulverized.

For those who care, the picture details the attempts of super-blonde British super-spy Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) to extract an East German political prisoner (Eddie Marsan). A dirty double-dealer (the dullishly smarmy James McAvoy) gums up the works whilst a lesbian wannabe spy (Sofia Boutella) beds down our heroine and places herself at great risk. All of this nonsense is relayed in flashback as Lorraine is interrogated by her boss (Toby Jones) and a C.I.A. bureaucrat (John Goodman). None of this carries any weight or interest and is certainly bereft of the grand atmosphere inherent in works such as the classic John le Carré film adaptations like Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the better James Bond efforts with Sean Connery.

Atomic Blonde is Dullsville - from beginning to end. And oh, does it end. It has one of those interminably predictable endings upon endings upon endings. Not caring about plot and character is one thing, but being boring is the picture's greatest sin.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Atomic Blonde, a Focus Features release had a Special Screening at Fantasia 2017.

POOR AGNES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Fantasia 2017 presents gender-reversed serial killer

Serial killer in the birthplace of Paul Shaffer.

Poor Agnes (2017)
Dir. Navin Ramaswaran
Scr. James Gordon Ross
Starring: Lora Burke, Robert Notman, Will Conlon

Review By Greg Klymkiw

These days, when the first image in a movie is an aerial shot of a lone house in the deep woods, the heart usually sinks because it signals the inevitability that we're probably going to be spending most of the remaining running time at that location in a picture of the no-to-low-budget variety. This doesn't have to be a bad thing if the content is worthy, but Poor Agnes gets off to a very wrong start with the opening voiceover accompanying this familiar image as the title character intones:

"Men murder whores. Women murder their babies. What does that make me?"

Uh, I don't know. A whore, perchance? Maybe. But, you see, Agnes (Lora Burke) is clearly alive and continues to utter some pseudo-poetic nonsense from her bed with a heavy tone of portent. She's not dead and as such, not a whore murdered by a man.

We follow her into the basement as she opens a freezer full of meat to select a little something for dinner. She considers the array of comestibles, selects decidedly, but before slamming the lid shut, our ruminating lassie glances over to the back corner of the freezer and regards the frozen head of a grown man, his face locked into a ghoulish death grimace.

Phew!

She is not a woman who's murdered her baby nor a whore murdered by a man. Agnes is, however, a killer. If she isn't, how did that frozen head get there? In any event, we are grateful, since she gets an answer to her vaguely rhetorical, if not downright existential question.

And so it is that Agnes has lived for over a decade in this beautiful old country house in Thunder Bay, Ontario (birthplace of longtime David Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer) with no visible means of support. At one point she reveals that her now-dead parents left her quite a sizeable estate, but she proves, time and time again, to be such an inveterate liar that it's impossible to believe this or anything else she says. Given that the script is littered with bonbons that strain credulity, it feels like something shoehorned in to explain her lack of anything resembling a livelihood (save for killing a parade of men and occasionally pawning their belongings).

When a private detective (Robert Notman) shows up to question her about an old boyfriend who's been missing for ten years, sparks fly twixt the two. We get plenty of provocative quipping a la Billy (Double Indemnity) Wilder (though in reality, the repartee comes closer to approximating the already-derivative banter Lawrence Kasdan belched out in Body Heat). Well, before you can spit out the title of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, the couple are grappling amorously with each on the kitchen counters and floors. No coitus interruptus, either. Our dick-for-hire finishes bareback inside of her and in no time, she trains a double-barrelled shotgun in his direction, plunges a hypodermic needle into his arm, renders him unconscious, chains him up, tortures him and slowly employs Stockholm Syndrome techniques to turn him into her acquiescent boy-toy.

Agnes is a firm believer in the spice of life that is variety and soon kidnaps another hapless fella. Now she's got our submissive detective to become a willing participant in torturing her new victim and, it seems, possibly killing him.

If it wasn't for the brave star-making performance of leading lady Lora Burke (she fires out her lines with the straight-faced panache of Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell and even Jean Arthur - pretty amazing that she's playing a serial killer), it would be near impossible to swallow any of the film's proceedings. Though screenwriter James Gordon Ross has clearly done his homework on the machinations of Stockholm Syndrome, it's simply not enough to buy all the opportunities the kidnapped dick has to escape and/or fight back. His character is weirdly underwritten. Though at one point, when a grocery cashier notices his wrist bruises and happily chirps, "You're a sub!", these "qualities" in his character are merely trotted out as a script convenience rather than being skilfully woven into the narrative.

One of the stupidest (and jaw-drippongly WTF) moments actually occurs when another private detective shows up at Le Maison de Agnes to ask questions about the missing dick. He reveals that the character has a reputation for "hanging around in low social circles" (more convenient character shoehorning) and even more ridiculous is when he says to Agnes, "Don't take it personally, but, are you a prostitute?" I'm sorry. What experienced detective, or anyone for that matter, would ask a question like this? It's an idiotically offensive question and in fairness to the script, Agnes reacts appropriately to it, BUT what is this line of dialogue doing there in the first place? Yes, it might be intentional on the part of the filmmakers to add a dollop of the kind of patriarchy women must put up with, but the delivery of the line is so absurdly chipper and oh-so polite that it's not only unintentionally funny, but brings into question the intentions of the film, submerged or otherwise.

Poor Agnes often feels vaguely misogynistic. While I'm grateful to the filmmakers that they provide no real reason/explanation for Agnes's psychopathic tendencies, what feels horrendously machine-tooled is the idea of taking a typical serial killer story (which always involves men kidnapping, torturing and killing women) and reversing the gender roles, for no other reason than this - they can! They seem to think (at worst) it's "cool" and at best (if we can call it that), that they're making some sort of point about sociopathic tendencies in women (and by extension, how they are treated and/or ignored in the movies). Either way, this is not good enough. The whole thing feels rotten to the core. It's too bad. The director clearly has some talent for more-than-adequately capturing the visceral elements of suspense and the leading lady serves up one of the best performances I've seen in a long time, but neither of these things are enough to wash out the foul taste the picture leaves in one's mouth.

The movie just doesn't add up. It's impossible to buy that Agnes has been doing this for years and has never been caught, especially considering some of the mistakes she makes during the final third of the film which seem to conveniently ignore how meticulous her murderous machinations have been. I usually try to avoid writing about independent films that are this mediocre, but the combination of the moral repugnancy of the whole movie with its considerable flaws, forces me to do so. Too many "critics" and even those who should know better, might potentially fall for the picture's trick-pony styling and sometimes it's important to not just point fingers at the myriad of studio pictures sharing these woeful attributes.

I was also tempted not to mention the boneheaded scene wherein Agnes wanders through the empty hallways of a school, the walls adorned with children's artwork and comes upon a sign that reads: "Torture Survivor Meetup". (Yup, she attends to get torture ideas.) I cannot help myself. This bears mentioning. Sorry, most self-help group meetings avoid such signage, but even if they didn't, the timing of the cut to the shot of the sign inspires unintentional howls of laughter. And, MEETUP? What is this? A kaffeeklatsch for victims of torture?

No surprise. There's far too much in this movie that feels unintentional and its intentions feel wrongheaded.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **

Poor Agnes enjoyed its World Premiere at Fantasia 2017.

COLD HELL (aka Die Hölle) - Fantasia 2017 Review of Stefan Ruzowitzky Thriller by Greg Klymkiw at "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema"

A WITNESS. AN EXTREME MUSLIM SERIAL KILLER.

Read Greg Klymkiw's **** 4-Star Fantasia 2017 review of Stefan Ruzowitzky's terrifying thriller Cold Hell (aka Die Hölle) at "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" HERE.

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS - Greg Klymkiw reviews Besson madness at Fantasia 2017 for "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema"

Dopey, dumb and delightfully loopy in all the right ways, Luc Besson’s VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF PLANETS (a special screening at Fantasia 2017) is eye-candy of the highest order.

Read the Greg Klymkiw review at "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" HERE.

ANOTHER WOLFCOP - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Glorious Hoser-Horror-Comedy at Fantasia

All-Canadian Lycanthropic Crime Fighter

Another WolfCop (2017)
Dir. Lowell Dean
Starring: Leo Fafard, Amy Matysio, Jonathan Cherry, Yannick Bisson, Devery Jacobs

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Beer guzzling small-town cop Lou Garou (Leo Fafard) is back in action in this sequel to the promising, but flawed WolfCop. Imagine, if you will, a horror-comedy franchise involving a crime-fighting werewolf? Great idea! Happily, this is a sequel that outdoes its predecessor a thousand-fold and rights many of the original's wrongs - and then some. Another WolfCop (not sure I'm crazy about this dullsville title) opens with an amazing action set piece - beautifully realized on every level - in which Lou is chasing down a truckload of heavily armed bank robber types (played by members of the Astron-6 filmmaking collective). Tires screeching, guns a-blazing and eventually, some delectable gore inflicted upon the bad guys by our lycanthropic hero, set the stage for one of the most giddily infectious combinations of gloriously crude Canadian Hoser Humour and plenty of horror movie tropes (and homages-galore, of course).

This new film offers up a delightful antagonist in the form of Swallows (Yannick Bisson), an industrialist planning to open a brewery and launch a new hockey team in the economically challenged town of Woodhaven, Saskatchewan. On the surface, this all seems mighty positive, but his real plans are (of course) nefarious. It's up to WolfCop, the babe-o-licious Chief Tina (Amy Matysio) and conspiracy-theory buddy Willie (Jonathan Cherry) to save the day.

The ribald rural humour is of the highest order - it's laugh-out-loud funny and certainly gives the classic SCTV Bob and Doug McKenzie a decent run for their money. It also has the funniest alien anal intrusion line I've ever heard: "They fuckin' violated me!" The magnificent delivery of it is thanks to the comic genius of actor Jonathan Cherry.

His is not the only first-rate piece of acting on display. Yannick Bisson, who stars in the utterly intolerable TV series "Murdoch's Mysteries", gives his staid, pole-up-the-butt Canuck detective persona a wonderful makeover as one of the scuzziest (and funniest) villains I've seen in some time. It's also great seeing Matysio back in action also - with a job promotion no less. Her straight-up line readings with no-tongue-in-cheek offer comedy (and heroism) in spades. Devery Jacobs offers babe-cop support with her lovely turn as Daisy. Chicks with guns are super-sexy. Then again, so are mixed martial artist lingerie fighting champs, and there's a wonderfully smarmy (albeit boner-inducing) turn from Kris "The Raven" Blackwell as Bisson's evil moll. (We even get a dollop of catfight action twixt Blackwell and Matysio, but it's sadly truncated by a "rescue".)

There are a few spanners in the casting works. Sara Miller plays Willie's sister, a female werewolf for Lou Garou to boink, but the role seems underwritten and Miller's performance seems wooden, as opposed to merely "straight-up". The role could have used a strange combination of warmth and danger, but as served up, she seems little more than eye candy. Not that I have a problem with eye-candy, mind you - it's just that all the female roles in the movie offer so much more. There's a slightly annoying monster android character called Frank played by Alden Adair and even more annoying is a cameo from filmmaker Kevin Smith as a sleazy town official.

What's wonderful is that the movie, unlike the first instalment, is clearly and resolutely set in Canada. No ugly American flags flying here - just plenty of Maple Leafs on display. Dean's direction of the action scenes is first-rate: lots of solid variation in shot composition, all of it delivering dramatic resonance and not just for simple visceral wham-bam, and most importantly, his sense of spatial geography is spot-on (in marked contrast to the all-over-the-place "qualities" during the big climactic moments in the original film). And of course, there's the brilliant work from F/X genius Emersen Ziffle - the film is replete with magnificent makeup and prosthetics and eschewing the cold, lifeless qualities inherent in digital effects.

And what Canuck movie would be complete without heavy metal, plenty of beer-guzzling and violent hockey goonery? There's plenty of all the aforementioned on display here, but given that it's a horror movie (albeit with a funny bone), the picture brings new meaning to the expression "blood on the ice"!

More Wolfcops are promised from creator Lowell Dean, whose continued above-the-line writing-directing talent will be imperative if the quality-level is to continue onwards and upwards. (One also hopes this gets a better marketing push and theatrical release than the perfunctory lame-ass treatment the first picture got via Cineplex Entertainment. The picture needs a kick-ass trailer on as many screens as possible, well in advance of the film's opening - which will hopefully be on at least 100+ screens and even better, just before Christmas - Yes! The movie has a Christmas setting!)

Another WolfCop is such a marked improvement and fulfills the initial promise of both the franchise and the filmmaker. This film superbly builds on the "universe" he laid out and takes it up several notches. With Dean's continued creative involvement, it's going to be onwards and upwards. And speaking of onwards and upwards, yes, we get a Mt. Everest-calibre shot of wolf dick. Welcome to Canada!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

Another WolfCop enjoys its Canadian Premiere at Fantasia 2017

KILLING GROUND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Psycho Aussie Inbreds at Fantasia 2017

As you can see, it's best to avoid Australia.

Killing Ground (2017)
Dir. Damien Power
Starring: Harriet Dyer, Ian Meadows, Aaron Pedersen, Aaron Glenane,
Maya Stange, Julian Garner, Tiarnie Coupland, Liam Parkes, Riley Parkes

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's not an especially good idea to go camping in Australia. The Down Under hinterlands are full of slavering White Trash inbreds hell-bent upon raping wives, girlfriends and daughters in front of their menfolk and eventually, slaughtering the whole lot of them. It can't be any other way - at least not in the movies.

Killing Ground follows a young doctor (Ian Meadows) and his girlfriend (Harriet Dyer) on a long drive into the Oz wilderness for a happy, carefree vacation. They're madly in love, of course, and the pristine beauty of the natural world around them inspires a marriage proposal under the big, clear skies.

Things couldn't be better. Unfortunately, the lovebirds haven't seen enough cautionary Australian exploitation films in the grand tradition of Road Games, Wolf Creek, Primal, et al. Lurking just round the corner are a pair of avid wild pig hunters (Aaron Pedersen, Aaron Glenane) who have a little more on their relatively feeble minds than bagging some snuffling porcine delights. These fellas need to do a little porcine snuffling themselves.

When our couple happen upon a lovely spot, they notice a tent nearby. Nobody appears to be inhabiting it, even though there appear to have been signs of recent life. Oh well, those folks must be enjoying a nature trail. Well, they tried to enjoy a nature trail. Writer-Director Damien Power's screenplay affords us a glimpse into what happened to a hapless hubby and wife (Maya Stange, Julian Garner), their pretty teenage daughter (Tiarnie Coupland) and infant son (played by identical twins Liam and Riley Parkes).

And what happened ain't pretty.

The film affords us a glimpse into the family's encounter with the aforementioned psychos and whilst we enjoy the couple's idyll, we know it won't last long.

Killing Ground is a creepy, terrifying tale of survival that takes us into Deliverance territory. Making his feature film debut, Power parcels out the suspense with the skill and aplomb of a master and though his screenplay offers little beyond its derivative mechanics, he peppers it with more than enough twists and turns of the fresh variety whilst adding a structure that skilfully plays with timelines to keep us riveted.

And once again, we get another good reason to avoid vacationing in Australia.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ****

Killing Ground enjoys its Canadian Premiere at Fantasia 2017

MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Chilling Indie Thriller at Fantasia 2017

What we don't see is what's really terrifying.

Most Beautiful Island (2017)
Dir. Ana Asensio
Starring: Ana Asenio, Natasha Romanova, Larry Fessenden

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Illegal alien.

In America this is the disparaging term they like affixing to someone looking for a better life. Yes, they are foreigners. Yes, they have entered the country illegally. In the vast majority of cases, these are people seeking the American Dream - honest, hardworking folk escaping poverty and/or political persecution/upheaval. They look to America as their saviour. America doesn't want them.

The real question though, is this: should these people want America?

Luciana (Ana Asensio) is one such illegal alien. She lives on that Most Beautiful Island, Manhattan. She's there to escape a turbulent, tragic, mysterious past. Life might have been hard before, but it's harder now. She goes from one menial, low-paying job (all under the table) to the next. But then, salvation comes. Her fellow illegal, a Russian "model" (Natasha Romanova), tells her about a job that will pay $2000 for one night and comes with the bonus of more if "she does good".

Luciana will be a party hostess. Apparently, there are no sexual favours involved. She's given specific instructions. Attire is a black cocktail dress. She must bring nothing with her, save for a mysterious black purse with a lock on it (that she's provided in the basement of a Chinatown restaurant). Oh, and she absolutely must have no identification on her.

A good offer? Well, in America, all such offers are too good to be true.

What follows is one of the most terrifying extended sequences committed to film in some time. (And yes, on film - Asenio's picture is gorgeously shot on Super 16mm.) Luciana finds herself in a dank basement warehouse presided over by a mean-looking doorman (Larry Fessenden). The room is populated by several gorgeous young women, all attired in black cocktail dresses, standing in a circle under murky, soft lights. A door opens. A group of affluent, well-dressed reprobates of both sexes enter. They inspect the black-frocked illegal aliens and whisper amongst each other. Once they leave, the women continue standing. Eventually, one of them is summoned. She's led into the other room.

Something is going to happen and it takes a good long time.

Most Beautiful Island is a terrific debut feature. Writer-director-star Asensio captures the lonely, desperate lives of illegal aliens with an indelible sense of observation that borders on Neo-realism. The final half of the picture, once Luciana enters the secret, horrifying dangerous world where illegal aliens are used as pawns for the rich in a deadly game, is unbearably suspenseful. Asensio paces these sequences with a creepy-crawly slow burn and it's impossible to sit still. Squirming is the order of the day for anyone watching this section of the film.

One element that's with me still is being in that room with those women while, one by one, they are summoned. What goes on behind the closed doors is not known to us, nor to the women. All we know is that it's not going to be good, whatever it is. That said, I have to admit I experienced minor disappointment once we were allowed to enter the room of reckoning. What occurs certainly works on a purely visceral level - this cannot be denied. However, even though what's revealed is rooted in something that is based in reality, it felt like a comedown to actually see what it is.

You see, what's scary is what we don't see. Lord knows there is a grand tradition of this that goes back to the groundbreaking work of Val Lewton and a little part of me wishes it stayed that way. Alas, audiences these days are inquiring minds that need to know. What they get is genuinely horrific, But damn, I keep imagining a movie where the horror of what we didn't see was maintained.

But that's okay. Most Beautiful Island is plenty scary.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ****

Most Beautiful Island enjoys its Canadian Premiere at Fantasia 2017.

LOWLIFE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A Luchador Thug in Tarantinoville at Fantasia 2017

El Monstruo worships a grand Luchador at a Holy Shrine!

Lowlife (2017)
Dir. Ryan Prows
Scr. Prows, Tim Cairo, Jake Gibson, Shaye Ogbonna, Maxwell Michael Towson
Starring: Ricardo Adam Zarate, Nicki Micheaux, Santana Dempsey,
Mark Bunrham, Jon Oswald, Shaye Ogbonna

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Luchadores, those glorious masked wrestlers of Mexico (popularized in the 20th century by the likes of El Santo and The Blue Demon) are emblematic of all that is good and evil - heroes and villains to the common man, performing great feats of gymnastic warfare in the ring and dazzlingly costumed in ancient Aztec tradition. Most notable is that the greatest artists amongst the lucha libre will, more often than not, never remove their masks. Once a luchador dons his public visage, he has a sacred duty to keep it affixed to his face forever.

In Lowlife, the dazzling feature debut of director Ryan Prowse, El Monstruo (Ricardo Adam Zarate) has a considerable legacy to uphold. His father was not only Mexico's greatest wrestler, but revered as a legendary freedom fighter. Too bad then that El Monstruo has been relegated to working as a waiter and low-level thug at a Taco Restaurant in Los Angeles, a business front for Teddy 'Bear' Haynes (Mark Bunrham), a scumbag gringo hoodlum who kidnaps illegal aliens for the purposes of illegal organ harvesting, baby-selling and prostitution.

El Monstruo has another problem. His pregnant wife Kaylee (Santana Dempsey) is a heroin addict and Teddy has designs on selling her baby once she gives birth. Kaylee's mother Crystal (Nicki Micheaux), who now runs a sleazy motel, was also once similarly afflicted and sold her child to feed her habit. Crystal pines for the daughter she never knew and watches Kaylee from afar. When Teddy hires two thugs (Jon Oswald, Shaye Ogbonna) to kidnap the luchador's drug-addled wife, they take her to Crystal's motel, a known drop-off and pick-up point for his nefarious activities.

Hell, vengeance and sacrifice are just round the corner. A climactic blood bath awaits.

Though Prows has borrowed a story-telling structure quite liberally from Quentin Tarantino and occasionally infuses the tale with dialogue of a similar nutty hardboiled kind, the film never feels derivative. The picture is brimming with touches that tantalize and delight; a grand monologue on the tradition of the Luchas libres that reveals a sweet, innocent recipient of the words and eventually yields a horrific act of violence, is a crime picture set-piece of the highest order. Prows is clearly in Tarantino's debt, but he wisely places most of the emphasis upon mad, operatic melodrama. The movie is as moving as it is grittily shocking and deeply, darkly funny.

Humanity ultimately rules the day in this sleazy world and though a luchador can only remove his mask in death, the legacy will continue if he makes his sacrifice in the name of all that is good and true. Such is the driving force of Lowlife and we are blessed with a film that allows us to soar.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ****

LOWLIFE enjoys its World Premiere at Fantasia 2017.