CORNER GAS THE MOVIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Canuck TV show on big screen, eh

Here be a real knee-slapper from CORNER GAS THE MOVIE
Nyuck. Nyuck. Nyuck. Are you be laughing yet?
It be real funny, eh? It be Canadian, eh.
Come on! Laugh, goddamn ye! LAUGH!
Ah, fuck you, gimme a beer, eh.

Corner Gas The Movie (2014)
Dir. David Storey
Scr. Brent Butt,
Andrew Carr, Andrew Wreggitt
Starring: Brent Butt, Gabrielle Miller, Fred Ewanuick, Eric Peterson, Janet Wright, Tara Spencer-Nairn, Lorne Cardinal, Nancy Robertson, Don Lake, Reagan Pasternak, Karen Holness, Cavan Cunningham, Graham Greene

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Canadian TV series Corner Gas was an undeniable smash. For six seasons, its ratings kicked everything off the charts, including big American programs. Its worldwide sales have also been through the roof. The show could probably have gone on for a few more seasons, but its creator Brent Butt bravely decided to pull the plug on a high note. The final episode drew a staggering three-million-plus Canadian viewers.


The ubiquitous billboards, ads, the content of said promotional materials and the general water cooler babble about the show amongst the Great Unwashed was enough to convey to even a gibbering gibbon that the show was a sitcom about inbreds living in some godforsaken small town in the middle of the Canadian Prairies. Happily, that's all I really knew about the show since I don't watch much television save for TV Ontario, a few select British and American items I'd catch up with on DVD, Judge Judy, Divorce Court and the Maury Povich Show. (I used to also watch the former CBC before it was ruined by an oinker with - ahem - "vision".)

Bottom line: I had not laid a single eyeball upon even one frame of the hit series when I finally watched the recent feature-length big-screen version entitled Corner Gas The Movie. I'm glad, though, because I really only care to assess feature films on their merits (or lack thereof) as feature films. Given the pedigree of the series, plus the fact that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool prairie lad who despises Toronto with a passion and has rued every day I've had to live in the godforsaken Town o' Hogs for 20 of my 50 or so years on this Earth, I was open-mindedly thrilled to see this movie.

Besides, seeing feature length versions of shows one loves, especially those made years or even decades after the original idiot box versions, carries way too much baggage for me and more often than not, I'm supremely disappointed. However, in recent years, I had the good fortune to see some family-oriented movies based on hit television shows aimed at pre-teen and tweener girls and enjoyed them so much, I ended up watching the programs on DVD quite happily with my daughter.

I was primed to love this movie, or at least, like it.

It didn't happen. I felt I was watching television of the worst order - a half-hour episode dragged out for over 90 minutes. Even worse, I did not laugh once. Not even a smile managed to crack my steely visage. At times, the movie was so painfully unfunny, I tried to imagine it within the context of being a Carl Dreyer masterpiece, but written and directed by Jethro Beaudine. THAT made me laugh, but alas, the fantasy did not transfer to the misery of having to watch Corner Gas The Movie.

75% of this movie's $8.5 million
budget came from public funds.
Money well spent! Good Job!

The tired narrative trudges along interminably and involves the denizens of Dog River, a town on the verge of utter bankruptcy. Water and power are in scarce supply and business is so bad that Brent (Brent Butt), the proprietor of the gas station, attempts to inject some life into the town by purchasing the local bar. Lacey (Gabrielle Miller) runs the town diner and has her own ideas on how to turn things around. She enters Dog River into a national contest to find the most quaint city in Canada. The prize is $75K, which, could go a long way to cover the town's debts and then some.

The problem, though, is that Dog River needs a whack of elbow grease to get it closer to "quaint". Lacey enlists Brent's Mom, the crusty Emma (Janet Wright) and a handful of others who appear to comprise the entire population of the town. Local layabout Hank Yarbo (Fred Ewanuick) is full of ideas. They're all stupid, but it doesn't stop him from trying. His stupidest idea is attempting to open a coffee-donut chain franchise which, if it worked, would put Lacey out of business.

The town's sole law enforcement is comprised of the pregnant Karen (Tara Spencer-Nairn) and the dopey, friendly big-galoot Davis (Lorne Cardinal). The town's shifty, boneheaded Mayor Fitzy (Cavan Cunnigham), has not only drained the town dry by investing the coffers in, uh, Detroit, but also dupes David into taking an early retirement to save the town some dough. No matter. Davis decides he's going to become a private investigator (not unlike Jethro Beaudine deciding to be a brain surgeon in The Beverly Hillbillies) whilst Karen goes on a mad spree to issue municipal citations to get her "quotas" up in case she needs to get a new law enforcement gig somewhere else.

Nutty Wanda (Nancy Robertson) appears to have the most moxie and entrepreneurial spirit of the lot when she opens up a booze can and casino in Davis's man-cave. It becomes so popular, it's driving Brent's bar into the poorhouse. The biggest threats of all come from the nearby town of prairie fundamentalists who wish to annex Dog River and a coffee and donut chain that wants to buy up all of Dog River's property cheap and turn the whole shooting match into a massive industrial warehouse. Adding insult to injury, a massive lawsuit rears its ugly head and Brent is about to lose everything.

While all this is going down, Brent's father Oscar (Eric Peterson), a dad-nabbit old curmudgeon is so obsessed with survivalism, he trades in his car for a horse and proves, as both a man and human being (and frankly, as a survivalist) to be about as useless as tits on a bull.

By the way, have I yet mentioned that the evil chain trying to swallow Dog River whole is called "Coff-Nuts"?

Are we laughing yet?

The pain involved in suffering through this convoluted maw of rancid folksiness and whimsy is enough to inspire suicide or, at least, a trip to Holland for a bit of the old euthanasia. The acting is either prime-time-competent or full of egregious mugging and there isn't one single funny, original line of dialogue, pratfall or story beat anywhere to be found in the whole dreary enterprise. About all I can say in favour of the movie, and I suppose this is something, is that I did not need prior exposure to the series to figure out who was who and what was what. This was all plainly obvious.

Frankly, though, if the TV series is anything like this movie, I'm not making any time to watch it on DVD and ultimately, I can only conclude how truly bereft of taste and/or brain our kinder, gentler, simpler Canadians are blessed with to have turned it into such a huge hit. It kind of makes sense, though. Corner Gas was probably a big hit amongst all those who elected our current Chancellor/Prime Minister. It's the only explanation.

As for Corner Gas The Movie, it's not a movie. It certainly doesn't have the scope of a movie and feels little more than going to the movies to watch television. Yup, the movie stinks, alright, but I will say it sure does have some pretty prairie sunsets.

Oh, and speaking of purty prairie sunsets, the thick-heads running the government of Saskatchewan (where much of this movie was shot) flushed a terrific tax credit down the toilet, effectively destroyed the local film industry, tossed out all the economic spin-off benefits of film production in the province and forced locals to move away (kind of like what was in the works for the Dog River denizens). I suppose one could consider the Saskatchewan Legislature to be little more than, uh, Coff-Nuts.

In spite of this lack of vision, the province of Saskatchewan opened their purse strings to the tune of $2 Million smackeroonies to help finance this muddy slough of a movie. As reported by CBC News in Saskatchewan, the inbreds running the province cobbled together a funding agreement that "includes a clause that the producers are expected to include 'positive visual aspects' that promote the province as a tourism destination in the story line of the movie. The agreement suggests 'sunrises/sunsets, unique vistas or locations'". Saskatchewan? A Tourism Destination? For what? To see the RCMP horse brigade parade in Regina?

What a bunch of yokels.

They've gotten exactly what they deserve.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: THE TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL & DINING LOUNGE For a full explanation of this rating click HERE.

If you're interested in reading about HOW to make a genuinely successful big-screen version of a small-screen success, you can read my review from yesterday by clicking HERE.

Corner Gas The Movie is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from VSC. The transfer highlights the gorgeous picture postcard cinematography of Saskatchewan very nicely and it includes a bevy of extra features like gag reels (about as funny as the movie), a clutch of EPK-like making-of items and a thoroughly useless commentary track which is filled wall-to-wall with folksy shout-outs. Nothing I say here will stop the multitude of inbreds in this country from parting with their dollars to buy it, so they might as well order it right from here so they can support the ongoing maintenance of the website which, like the Prime Minister they voted for, has little but disdain for them.

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

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

Le ART film du Miley
Hannah Montana - Le Film

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

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


Alas, whenever I walked alone into a theatre showing the likes of The Lizzie McGuire Movie or the Lindsay Lohan remake of Freaky Friday, the looks of disdain I'd receive from the mothers in the audience gave me a taste of what it must feel like to be of any non-caucasian racial persuasion walking into a Ku Klux Klan rally (only not quite as dangerous in spite of similar glares of hatred). This happens less now that I am usually accompanied by my own daughter to such extravaganzas, but I did initially find myself alone during an opening weekend theatrical screening of Hannah Montana: The Movie and once again I received the wary glares of Moms which said, loud and clear: “CHILD MOLESTER!”

It was, of course worth it, because I enjoyed myself very much. Having subsequently had the pleasure of watching every extant episode of the Disney series Hannah Montana on DVD (with my daughter, of course), followed by a few too many screenings of Hannah Montana: The Movie on Blu-Ray (with my daughter, of course), I recall that halcyon first theatrical screening of the big screen rendering of Miley Cyrus's Hannah Montana picture wherein she became my favourite contemporary child star.

The title character – much like Superman – bore two identities. By day, she was normal kid Miley Stewart, but by night she became pop music sensation Hannah Montana. Somehow, by merely donning a different-coloured wig, nobody – including characters who should know better - could seem to cotton on to the truth. Well, it worked for Clark Kent with a suit, tie and ultra-nerdy spectacles, so why not Miley/Hannah?

In the big screen version of Hannah’s adventures, her widowed Dad and manager Robby Ray Stewart (Miley’s real-life Dad, country singing sensation Billy Ray “Achy Breaky Heart” Cyrus) is concerned that his daughter needs a break from her hectic life as a pop sensation. Miley's wildly erratic behaviour (a far cry from Cyrus's real-life shenanigans these days) includes a public catfight with Tyra Banks over a pair of shoes in a swanky shop and an unexpected rift with her best friend Lily (Emily Osment).

Wise Dad brings his daughter back to their idyllic family farm in the sleepy White Trash hamlet of Crowley Corners, Tennessee. It is here where Miley finds herself re-connecting with childhood sweetheart Jackson Stewart (hunky, drool-inspiring Jason Earles), a whole passel of (no-doubt inbred) family and the simple joys of country life. Threatening her happiness is the muckraking celebrity journalist Oswald Granger (Peter Gunn) who is on to the Miley/Hannah ruse and is about to expose her to the world. As well, Crowley Corners is facing destruction at the hands of evil developers and only Miley/Hannah can save it.

Does everything work out happily? Well, it’s probably not a spoiler to say that it does.

Why wouldn’t it?

This amiable, pleasant and wholesome family entertainment with its picture postcard photography was subject to derision from pretentious critics, but the fact remains that the movie itself proved to be extremely engaging. Not only was it everything one would want to occupy the attention spans of kids, but it also fulfilled the very necessary function of promoting family values of the highest order. Miley’s Dad, for example, is a single parent, but not because of divorce, but because her Mom died. This is so much more palatable than parents who are too selfish and immature to put their kids first.

Miley Cyrus herself is terrific. In addition to being a talented comic actress, she’s got a great voice and truly shines during her musical numbers. She also proves that she’s got the right stuff to be a romantic lead. Daddy Billy Ray is an actor of – to put it mildly – limited range, but he’s perfectly pleasant in a down-home-corn-pone way.

The movie also features a musical number that rivals (I kid you not!) Luis Bunuel in the surrealism sweepstakes – a barn dance replete with step dancing AND (I kid you not!!) hip-hop moves and set to the song (I kid you not!!!) “Hoedown Throwdown”.

To this day, I am unable to shake myself of the lyrics:

Pop it, lock it, Polka dot it,
Countrify, then,
Hip-hop it!

I believe the aforementioned poetry will be etched on my mind until my last breath.

What makes the big-screen version a winner, is that it cleverly delivers a stand-alone movie that requires no prior exposure to the series. HOWEVER, once watching the series (yes, I must admit this to myself sometimes, if not the rest of the world), it's obvious how the same-said theatrical version provides oodles of connections for all those familiar with the TV show. More importantly, the film's makers realized that one needed to adhere to the heart and soul of the series, but ALSO up the ante with a whole new location, some new characters and also infuse the whole affair with the sort of big-screen scope that makes you feel like you're watching a bonafide theatrical motion picture as opposed to an overlong episode of the TV show.

Walt Disney’s Blu-Ray release of the feature film is a dream-come-true. It includes a gorgeous Blu-Ray transfer that captures the Tennessee locations and Miley’s exquisite, milky skin with equal perfection. There are deleted scenes and bloopers hosted by the amiable director Peter Chelsom (who, without talking down, manages a very kid-friendly approach to the material), several music videos, the usual making-of shtick and an equally kid-friendly commentary track from the aforementioned director. The cherry on this sundae of extra features is a how-to video on the utterly insane Hoedown Throwdown dance. My child loves it (and no doubt yours will too). What awaits are hours, days, weeks, months and – God forbid! – years of pleasure dancing along to this feature. In addition to the Blu-Ray disc, the deluxe edition also includes a DVD disc for portable players so your kid doesn’t scratch the Blu-Ray all to hell and – God Bless! – a disc that creates a high-resolution digital copy for iTunes, iPods and/or iPhones. It’s a great package!

If you’re not eight years old or a Mom or a middle aged man who loves Miley Cyrus, the likelihood of you enjoying this movie is considerably lower than that of a Muslim extremist wholeheartedly accepting Zionism. So do please enjoy.

Or not!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Hannah Montana – The Movie is available on Blu-Ray from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

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THE NIGHT PORTER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Classic NAZI S&M on Criterion BD&DVD

The Criterion Collection's
BluRay Special Edition
is quite the treat!!!

The Night Porter (1974)
Dir. Liliana Cavani
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Liliana Cavani's 1974 depiction of the post-war resumption of a violent sadomasochistic relationship between a former S.S. officer (the prim, grim, perversely dashing Dirk Bogarde) and a concentration camp survivor (an icily sensual, waif-like Charlotte Rampling, alternating twixt childlike pleading and a grinning, thin-lipped malevolence), is one of a mere handful of pictures to inspire genuine revulsion amongst critics and audiences (both upon its initial release and even to this day).

Dirk eyes Charlotte's open sore.
The fun is only beginning.

On the surface, this is certainly not hard to understand since an easy reading and response to the disturbing and sickening subject matter is the sort which prompts immediate, knee-jerk cries (from the mostly clueless) of wholesale condemnation, if not outright dismissal. Understanding that so many scribes and viewers automatically filed the film into a folder marked Nazi Sex Pornography is one thing, accepting it is quite another.

DIRK BOGARDE as MAX
TORMENTER? LOVER? Maybe both.

The genuine horrors of war and totalitarianism are hard enough to fathom, but I suspect an even greater understanding of mankind's propensity for evil and cruelty can only really be examined and assessed properly within the context of art that eschews any sense of propriety which far too many cud-chewers expect, even when the subject is horrific as it is here. If anything, the bravery of filmmaker Liliana Cavani and stars Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling must be regarded, not with disdain and derision, but with meritorious acclaim and the most fervent and passionate defence if one is to truly regard art as both a reflection of mankind, but also a microscope under which all aspects of humanity are placed upon a slide for our eyes to consider close up and in gut-wrenching detail.

Concentration Camp Dentistry

Cavani has made a film that refuses to flinch from the horror of Nazi Germany and how its influence was so deep-seeded that the after-effects seem identical, if not more insidious than what unravelled in the first place. This is a film that's impossible to accept in one sitting. There's nothing that's easily digestible and quite possibly, never will be.

The culpability of MADNESS

Then again, the vile reality of Nazism and other forms of national policies built on the foundations of hatred and repression are themselves not the sort of thing anyone wants to assimilate in order to understand the deep degrees of horror in which, humanity as a whole has been cattle-branded with a kind of culpability in the madness, so that our own shame is the tool by which to erase the potential of it ever happening again.

Clearly not a garden variety
hotel night-desk clerk

And yet, even as I write this, the madness of totalitarianism continues in various forms and to varying degrees the world over. As such, Cavani's film holds a place of even greater importance now and for the future than even its makers hoped for upon its first release. The Night Porter, as revolting as it is, must be seen and must be regarded seriously.

The events of the film are simple enough to summarize. It's 1957. Max (Bogarde) works as a night porter in a swanky Vienna hotel. Quiet, efficient and officious, he tends to the needs of the guests with an almost slavish fastidiousness. No request is too tall an order. He even matter-of-factly pimps out a stud bellboy to service a decadent, mildly repulsive old countess who requires a hunky bedfellow to keep her warm on cold, lonely nights.

Max is a former S.S. officer whose duty included the medical "welfare" of prisoners in a concentration camp. He belongs to a secret society of prominent Nazi war criminals who are devoted to eliminating any potential witnesses that could bring them down for their heinous activities. Most of the men seek the sort of exoneration that will restore them to elite positions in German society. Max has goals that are far less lofty. He wishes to toil in obscurity as the hotel's night porter, earning a modest living whilst at the same time, commanding a respect, albeit meagre, within the confines of his tiny little world.

Charlotte Rampling as Lucia

One fateful night, he comes face-to-face with Lucia (Rampling), the wife of a famous American symphony conductor staying in the posh hotel. Through a series of flashbacks we learn that Max took a special liking to Lucia when, as the daughter of a prominent socialist, she was incarcerated in the concentration camp he was stationed in. To survive, Lucia succumbed to Max's sexual desires of the sadomasochistic variety, but as the years crept on, their relationship developed into a perverse co-dependence which, under the circumstances seemed to go bove and beyond a mere one-sided and exploitative relationship, but one of mutual desires.

CONCENTRATION CAMP
CABARET COSTUME

Now, years later, Max and Lucia pick up their torrid passions where they left off and soon, they're embroiled in a heated relationship. Unfortunately, Max's Nazi colleagues don't take too well to this. The secret society demands that all witnesses be "taken care of". With the murderous Nazis keeping close watch on his every move, Max locks Lucia alone with him in his tiny flat and their relationship of sadomasochism reaches even more intense heights. As it does, the reality of leaving the apartment could mean death for both of them. The couple are now on a strangely even keel as they're both prisoners. Once the rationed food in the apartment is gone, the couple starve to a point of emaciation and soon realize what must be done. Max dons his S.S. uniform and Lucia, the sexy shimmering garb she was adorned with in the concentration camp. Together, they leave the apartment to face whatever fate holds in store for them.

With this relatively simple narrative, Cavani carves out deeply complex thematic, dramatic and emotional levels which are, to be sure, provocative, but transcend that of being strictly prurient. Rituals of the most pure, yet clearly demented kind represent the sick entitlement of the Nazis, but also their desires to infuse life in the camp with fragments of cultural expression which provide some semblance of familiarity to life before the madness of WWII. We not only follow the juxtaposed then and now relationship of sadomasochism between Max and Lucia, but Cavani emphasizes ritual even in the day-to-day existence of the S.S. with flashbacks to cabaret-styled entertainment (featuring Lucia as a topless chanteuse adorned in trousers, suspenders and S.S. hat) and even the performance of a ballet featuring a near-naked male dancer displaying his prowess as an artist whilst also offering up the spectacle of his gorgeously-sculpted body for the edification of the Nazi officers.

Yes, even the S.S. appreciated lithe male dancers.

The dancer even appears at Max's hotel to perform in the privacy of an empty hotel room for Max. The dancer must continue offering up his body on display long after the war has ended, just as Lucia must fill the gaps created in her "normal" life by reigniting sadomasochism with the man who was once her captor. With Lucia in particular, her need to continue with the exploitation of her body and soul after the war, is as much an extension of the prisoner mentality pounded into her by her former incarceration, as it is a type of empowerment by turning her former captor into a slave, or prisoner who can only be truly fulfilled by Lucia's command over him on a sexual level.

The repugnance of this is surely what caused critics and audiences to emit bilious condemnation of The Night Porter, but in fact is the very thing that rubs their noses in the notion of complicity in such evils. The exploitative elements of the Nazi aesthetic being tied into sexual gratification works on two levels - that of the participation in said activities by characters in the film and the movie's contemporary audience who are forced to participate in sexual dominance and subjugation, albeit that which is clearly reversed, at least initially, in Lucia's favour.

That captor and prisoner, both become prisoners of latent desires brought to the fore by the evils of war and its lingering influence in peacetime. This is surely hard to accept, but accept we must if we're to become open to the true and genuine horrors of war.

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

The Night Porter is currently available in a brand new 2K transfer on both Blu-Ray and DVD formats in a sumptuous new home entertainment offering from the Criterion Collection. Included on the disc are several important extra features: an all-new interview with director Cavani which offers a wealth of illumination upon the production and thematic concerns of the film, a gorgeous booklet that includes an essay by scholar Gaetana Marrone plus a 1975 interview with Cavani. The real gem of the package is the inclusion of Women of the Resistance a fifty-minute 1965 documentary by Cavani which focuses upon female partisans who survived the German invasion of Italy.

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY The Night Porter - HERE!

In Canada - BUY The Night Porter HERE, eh!

In UK BUY The Night Porter HERE

THE FILM CORNER presents Greg Klymkiw's 10 Best Films of 2014, for thine edification - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

THE FILM CORNER presents
Greg Klymkiw's 10 Best Films of 2014 (in alphabetical order)
Each film is accompanied by an italicized excerpt from the original review. Feel free to click on the title to read the full review

COLD IN JULY Dir. Jim Mickle
Dane (Michael C. Hall) hasn't even had time to get out of his station wagon when he arrives at the cemetery. Then again, nobody would ever know he's been the lone witness to the tail-end of the burial. No one, that is, save for Russell (Sam Shepard), the lanky, grizzled and grimacing old man with a grey buzz-cut atop his dome and a pair of shades he's removed to reveal his piercing eyes. The old man, seemingly appearing from nowhere, towers above Dane, dwarfed only by the big, old Texas sky. He leans into the open window, burning holes into the killer of his only son. "Come to watch the shit go into the hole, huh?" quips Russell with a half smile. "Mighty Christian of you."

FOXCATCHER Dir. Bennett Miller
Brilliantly and with great subtlety, the film’s sense of optics and propaganda amongst the nobility feels infused to a point where non-Americans and certainly discriminating American audiences will sense that Foxcatcher is itself propaganda, though it is, in fact, a scathing condemnation of it. As the tale progresses and John du Pont’s inbred eccentricities give way to his becoming slowly and dangerously unhinged, so too does the film shift gears into critical territory. The perception of the American Dream sours and leads to a sad, shocking and downright tragic film about delusions of grandeur transforming into psychopathic proportions – not unlike America itself.

IN HER PLACE Dir. Albert Shin
A daughter, whose child can never be hers. A mother, whose daughter is everything.
A woman who has come between them. A baby that binds all three for eternity.
Director Albert Shin's stunning sophomore feature-length outing is evocatively photographed, wrenchingly and beautifully scored and peopled with a cast as perfect as any director (or audience) would want. Paced and directed with a sensitivity reminiscent of Robert Bresson, you'll experience as haunting and touching a movie as any of the very best that have been wrought. This is great filmmaking, pure and simple.

KUMIKO THE TREASURE HUNTER Dir. David Zellner
Fargo, the movie by the Coen Brothers, is not just an instrument which inspires Kumiko's desires, it's like a part of Kumiko's character and soul and represents an ethos of both America and madness. Kumiko is no mere stranger in a strange land, but a stranger in her own land who becomes a stranger in a strange land - a woman without a country save for that which exists in her mind. There isn't a false note to be found in this gorgeously acted, directed and photographed movie. It is not without humour, but none of it is at Kumiko's expense and when the film slowly slides into full blown tragedy, the Zellners (director David and writer Nathan) surround Kumiko in the ever-accumulating high winds and snow under the big skies of Minnesota. We get, as she does, a bittersweet taste of happiness - a dream of triumph, a dream of reunion, a dream of peace, at last.

LIFE IN A FISHBOWL Dir. Baldvin Zophoníasson
A whore, a writer and a banker all search for redemption. They live out their lives separately after the horrendous Icelandic financial crisis and eventually intersect. The film features a sequence of debauchery on a Florida yacht which clearly rivals the antics of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill in Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. Director Zophoníasson contrasts Scorsese by capturing the exploitation with a documentarian's eye. Brilliantly though, the screenplay allows for a series of subtle directorial movements into territory that borders on another sort of dazzling style - one that is eventually tender and romantic, but eventually dovetails into something else altogether. There's a denouement to this sequence which occurs a few scenes later that is as maddening as it is heartbreaking.

MR. TURNER Dir. Mike Leigh
In a sense, JMW Turner captured the qualities of light and motion on canvas in ways I always felt are what led to those same properties finding their way to be emblazoned forever upon celluloid to capture the heart, soul and visual radiance of illumination, of nature, of life itself. Not unlike insects drawn to amber to be sealed and preserved for all time, Turner's brilliance was creating work that could live forever and inform all visual arts. In his own way, he might well have had the soul of a filmmaker if technology had somehow moved its way up to meet him halfway. Thankfully, we have Turner's legacy of genius, and now we have Mike Leigh's glorious film.

NYMPHOMANIAC VOL I and VOL II Dir. Lars von Trier
As Rammstein slashes our oh-so delicate tympanic membranes to shreds, we're introduced to Charlotte Gainsbourgh lying bruised and bleeding on wet pavement. We accept that she's positioned like Christ on the Cross. It is, after all, a film by Lars von Trier. The imposing, hulking Stellan Skarsgård, with a full grocery sack no less, discovers the pulverized waif on the filthy, clammy cement. She doesn't want an ambulance or the police, so the gentleman suggests, rather sociably, that she at least come back to his place for a cup of tea. I kid you not. Tea.

THE SOUND AND THE FURY Dir. James Franco
Franco plucks what he loves from William Faulkner's rich, stream-of-consciousness prose and splatters it Jackson Pollock-like on the screen. Before you know it, he's sharing delectable inbred territory with Anthony Mann's God's Little Acre and Elia Kazan's Baby Doll. It's pure, delicious Southern Gothic at its most compelling and utterly insane. Some might believe Faulkner would be spinning in his grave over this, but I'd like to believe he might have had himself as rip-roaring a good time as I did.

THE TRIBE Dir. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
Set in a special boarding school in Ukraine, writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy paints an evocative portrait of students living within a tribal societal structure where adult supervision is minimal at best and even culpable in the desecration of youth. Living in an insular world, carved out by years of developing survival skills in this institutional environment, the kids have a long-established criminal gang culture and they engage in all manner of nefarious activities including, but not limited to thieving, black marketeering and pimping. The violence is often brutal and the film never shies away from explicit sexual frankness. Even more harrowing is when we follow the literal results of this constant sexual activity and witness a protracted, pain-wracked abortion on a filthy kitchen table.

WHIPLASH Dir. Damien Chazelle
"If you deliberately sabotage my band, I will fuck you like a pig," barks star J.K. Simmons as a jazz instructor at a tony private music conservatory in glorious NYC. This guy makes Gny. Sgt. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket look like Ward Cleaver. He believes his students are the best of the best, but frankly, for him, that's not good enough. He demands they push themselves harder than a prize studhorse slamming a mare in heat. He demands true force. He demands self-inflicted pain as well as the infliction of pain. He demands greatness.

2014 was a terrific year for movies and because of that, the following titles, in alphabetical order, are films which could easily be on a 10-Best list, but because there have to be ten, the rest of the best end up here as runners-up. Feel free to mush the following 20 titles with the aforementioned 10 titles and you'll have yourself a handy-dandy "Film Corner Top 30 of 2014 as selected by Greg Klymkiw" or, if you will, a simple "The Film Corner's Best Movies of 2014 as selected by Greg Klymkiw". So, here ya' go, the runners-up to the best of the year of Our Lord 2014:

AMERICAN SNIPER
BERKSHIRE COUNTY
THE BETTER ANGELS
THE CAPTIVE
DEALER
EJECTA
FRANK
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
INHERENT VICE
HELLMOUTH
HYENA
IN THE CROSSWIND
LATE PHASES
LEVIATHAN
MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT
MAPS TO THE STARS
THE NOTEBOOK
OCULUS
PASOLINI
ROAD TO PALOMA
SEE NO EVIL 2
WYRMWOOD

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THE FILM CORNER presents THE 10 WORST MOVIES of 2014 as selected by Greg Klymkiw.

The Film Corner's
10 WORST MOVIES OF 2014
as selected by
Greg Klymkiw

2014 had its fair share of dreadful movies. A whopping four titles received my lowest rating: THE TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE. Below you'll get a link to my original review (by clicking on the title of the movie) and a brief italicized quotation from said review.

In alphabetical order, The 10 Worst Movies of 2014:

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2
Andrew Garfield is a woeful Peter Parker. Upchuck at this, web-slingers: An annoying hedgehog tuft of hair upon his oversized gourd-like cranium, a thin, misshapen long face that's seemingly being winched from his jaw to ground level, weasel-like eyes, crooked smirk and shrivelled proboscis with its perpetually upturned tip and an irremovable sneer. I won't even get started on his spindly Ichabod-Crane-like body. Oh, and it's 142 minutes long.

THE BABADOOK
The whole affair is utterly humourless and annoyingly adorned with the kind of preciousness that gets festival programmers, film critics and pseuds of all persuasions, hot and bothered that they're seeing something resembling an art film dabbling in off-the-well-worn-genre-pathworks.

THE CONNECTION
It's been over forty years since The French Connection and a new motion picture has come along to prove that there were indeed law enforcement officials on the French side who did a little something to break the case. Alas, the movie is French and might as well be about eating cheese and drinking wine. At 135 plodding minutes, this is one of the most dull crime pictures made in, well, let's say over forty years.

CORNER GAS THE MOVIE
This is not a movie. It certainly doesn't have the scope of a movie and feels little more than going to the movies to watch television. Yup, the movie stinks, alright, but I will say it sure does have some pretty prairie sunsets.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
What's next? "Afternoon of the Planet of the Apes"? "Tea-Time of the Planet of the Apes"? "Night of the Living Dead Planet of the Apes"? About the best that can be said in favour of this dour, serious and irredeemably humourless cash-grab reboot is that it's not as dreadful as its predecessor. Of course, it doesn't hold a candle to the Original Five from the 60s and 70s.

ENDLESS LOVE
The 1981 Endless Love, a sludge-heap of Everest-sized proportions, must now surely be considered one of the greatest movies ever made compared to this 2014 bowl of Charles Manson's anal drippings. If Zeffirelli created a cinematic equivalent to an aborted foetus served up on a dollar-store paper plate, then it's clear the idiot-sans-savante who purportedly directed this version, must surely have outdistanced the cinematic abortionist styling of Zeffirelli and bloody well ripped a foetus from a womb with a rusty coat hanger, then stomped upon the gelatinous blob with the abandon of a lead performer in a crack-fuelled performance of "Lord of the Dance", then took a huge, rancid crap upon it and finally, with a hearty "Voila!", called it a movie.

THE INTERVIEW
This non-entity "comedy" just isn't very funny and spins its wheels most of the time in a sort of schizophrenic manner, never reaching the level of bonafide satire, nor lowering itself to the depths of just plain outrageous humour. Some might suggest I doth pretest too much - that The Interviewis just meant to be a silly, good-natured comedy. Stupid, however, is not silly and assassination is not good-natured. Worst of all, the movie isn't even supremely godawful, it's just crashingly mediocre.

OCTOBER GALE
If you fit the demographic of this loathsome, incompetent Harlequin Romance-like "thriller", knock yourself out. Steno-girls, retail clerks, middle-aged empty-nest housewives and 70-year-old ladies deserve movies too.

UNDER THE SKIN
This revoltingly cerebral science fiction oddity stars the intolerably ubiquitous Scarlett Johansson as an alien Woman Who Fell To Earth or rather, in this case, Scotland. Her mission is to seduce a variety of Glaswegian men, take them back to her squalid digs and tempt them with her puffy white flesh. As Scarlett doffs pieces of clothing, the seemingly endless parade of gents who follow her, their eyes transfixed by Little Miss Bum-Chunks, gradually find themselves sinking feet-first into a murky, purulent, gelatinous goo that swallows them up.

VERONICA MARS
The movie plods mercilessly through one of the most uninteresting murder mysteries ever committed to film and we're forced to tolerate a hit parade of mostly no-name actors who look like they're delivering lines by rote in an overlong failed television pilot. As for direction - what direction? The coverage is so pathetically generated I'd hazard a guess that the director is none other than Mr. Magoo.

So there you have, the Top Ten WORST Movies of 2014. There were plenty of dreadful movies this year, but suffice it to say that the following titles are bad enough to be listed as runners-up. Feel free to mush together the aforementioned with the below-mentioned and you'll have yourself a lovely list of the 27 Worst Films of 2014. In alphabetical order, the also-ran losers are:

ANNIE
BIRDMAN
CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER
THE DROWNSMAN
GODZILLA
GONE GIRL
THE HUNGER GAMES MOCKINGJAY PART I
INTO THE WOODS
THE JUDGE
NOAH
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY THE MARKED ONES
PREDESTINATION
QUEEN OF BLOOD
SON OF GOD
STILL ALICE
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
WOLVES

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MR. TURNER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Opens TIFF BellLightbox via MongrelMedia

TIMOTHY SPALL:
JMW TURNER

Mr. Turner
Dir. Mike Leigh
Starring: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Lesley Manville

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It seems fitting that the first film biography of the great Romantic landscape painter JMW Turner, oft-referred to as "the painter of light", is the product of one of the world's greatest living directors, Mike Leigh (Life is Sweet, Naked, Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy). The exquisite properties of light in cinema, the glorious dance of film through a projector, the astonishing grace, promise and amalgamation of so many mediums into one, all driven by exposing and rendering the luminosity which, Turner proclaimed on his deathbed as God itself, is what yields this astonishing, moving celebration of a supremely important visual artist.


In a sense, Turner captured the qualities of light and motion on canvas in ways I always felt are what led to those same properties finding their way to be emblazoned forever upon celluloid to capture the heart, soul and visual radiance of illumination, of nature, of life itself. Not unlike insects drawn to amber to be sealed and preserved for all time, Turner's brilliance was creating work that could live forever and inform all visual arts. In his own way, he might well have had the soul of a filmmaker if technology had somehow moved its way up to meet him halfway. Thankfully, we have Turner's legacy of genius, and now we have Mike Leigh's glorious film.




Mr. Turner is perfection incarnate. It is so magnificent that one cannot imagine a greater testament to an artist and his art. Leigh captures a man, an aesthetic movement, a time of ideas and exploration and ultimately, he creates the means by which we can transport ourselves to an era where the sky was the limit with a simple, but deeply felt brush stroke.

Beginning with Turner (Timothy Spall) in middle age and continuing to his death, Mike Leigh pulls off the near-impossible in capturing what being a great artist is. Making use of a myriad of sumptuously-composed tableaux through the lens of cinematographer Dick Pope, Leigh gives us a glimpse into the process that defines artistry, but also allows us a fly on the wall perspective of what indeed might have made this great man thrive. Most wondrously, Leigh achieves this by cinematically recreating and/or imagining both Turner's work and what precisely the great artist could well have seen with his own eyes to inspire his breathtaking visions on canvas.

We delight in numerous scenes of Turner creating, socializing amongst the rich and famous, sparring with other artists and various intelligentsia of England's literary, critical, academic and artistic elite and most of all, Leigh provides us with a deeply felt and meticulously researched film that allows us to experience, at least from Leigh's considered eye, what made Turner tick as a human being. On one hand, he valued a Bohemian lifestyle, while on the other, was able to traverse with considerable freedom due to his wealth and fame. And much as we might crave a wholly sentimental portrait, Leigh fleshes Turner out, warts and all.

Turner eschews his duties as a father to the daughters born from an affair earlier in life and furthermore treats his long-toiling maid servant as a sexual receptacle for his gropings and loin-thrusts, in spite of the mounting ravages of psoriasis which wrack her body. Conversely, hs eals shown to be a man infused with great romance and tenderness, especially in his relations with a widow who at first provides him with seaside lodgings and eventually, a bed to share. Even more passionately, Turner is revealed to bear congenial familiarity and the deepest love for his father, a former barber and now his personal assistant and manager. Turner's connection to his father seems to know no earthly bounds and we both feel and believe it with the same conviction that leads our jaws to drop when he displays utter disregard and contempt for the mother of his illegitimate daughters.

This whole tale unravels in an unconventional manner which makes us think we're on board a solid narrative engine, thrusting ever forward, but in reality, we're cascading on a near-poetic series of vignettes, an episodic odyssey of an artist during one of his richest periods. It is Turner's discoveries as an artist that really carry us along, but the creative vessel, in spite of the occasional pock marks of selfishness and self-graitification in Turner, is also replete with humanity and we experience the man's ever-increasing love for life just as he's also at a point where he begins to sense his own mortality.

The pace of Leigh's film is leisurely, but never less than fascinating. He creates a world of so far away, so long ago, yet there is no fairy tale quality at play here, but rather an acute sense of time and place, so much so that we feel like the proceedings are rooted in a strict adherence to reality and historical accuracy. This, of course, is not to suggest there is no magic since Leigh conjures scene after scene which dazzles us with the sheer magic inherent in the way in which people must have lived. The dialogue and conversations, the drawing room and parlour discussions, the gorgeous, heart-achingly beautiful slowness of life, all unfold in a manner to allow both audience and characters to take in every moment and breath along the way. It is a pace perfectly in keeping with a world we'll never experience, but that we can participate in as viewers and get an overall sense of the pieces of Turner's time which Leigh captures so indelibly for our benefit.

There isn't a single false note in any of the exquisite performances. Even background extras live and breathe with the stuff of both humanity and fully-fleshed character. Though the pleasures from all principal and supporting players are almost incalculable, the film finally belongs to the astonishing Timothy Spall as Turner. Delightfully gruff, curmudgeonly, jowly and turtle-paced in everything, lest he spies a natural beauty of the world which ramps up his facial and physical gestures well beyond his normal demeanour, are just a few of the extraordinary feats of acting Spall offers. But Leigh has made a film of the deepest humanity and so too does Spall render his performance. There are moments in Spall's performance which will never, ever leave you. One of the greatest of these sequences is a look of despair Spall creates for Turner as his father dies before him. It's a look that blends sobs and laughs, tears and a crazed toothy smile and a sense that we are witnessing a man who becomes all too aware of life's dichotomous properties.

And yet, there is always the light, the glorious light. How appropriate then that Leigh begins and ends his film with the Sun in all its splendour. How, in a film that's all about light, could it ever be anything else?

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars
Mr. Turner opened theatrically on Christmas Day at TIFF Bell Lightbox via Mongrel Media and will be released to the rest of Canada over the coming weeks.

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THE INTERVIEW - Review By Greg Klymkiw - KimJong-un AssassinationComedy not funny

The cast of
THE INTERVIEW
has way more fun
than its audience will.

The Interview (2014)
Dir. Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Scr. Dan Sterling
Starring: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Randall Park, Lizzy Caplan, Diana Bang, Eminem, Rob Lowe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

On paper, this must have sounded pretty good. The producer (Seth Rogen) and host (James Franco) of a highly rated sleaze-o-rama TV interview show specialize in outrageous shock-value exposes of American pop culture celebrities: for example, Eminem announces his homosexuality on the show, whilst Rob Lowe removes a toupee and there's talk of interviewing Matthew McConaughey about his sexual relations with a goat. When the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, a huge fan of the show agrees to an interview, our bro-mantic couple are not only going to be shipped all expenses paid to North Korea, but are approached and trained by the CIA to assassinate him.


Hilarity, supposedly, ensues.

Unfortunately, The Interview just isn't very funny and spins its wheels most of the time in a sort of schizophrenic manner - never reaching the level of bonafide satire, nor lowering itself to the depths of just plain outrageous humour. Franco and Rogen are, as per usual, engaging enough and manage to squeeze out a few mild chuckles along the way, but because their performances are both pitched so high in the tongue-in-cheek department, it manages to mute whatever laugh potential existed in the material if it had been played with much straighter faces.




The picture's attempts at a kind of good-natured balancing act between blinkered American racism and ethnocentrism never works since the film is so far removed from being genuine satire that such extremities which, might have been delightfully, darkly and viciously funny in that context, just fall flat. As it stands, jokes about how cute dogs can only live freely in America instead of being eaten by ravenous, starving North Koreans or how stupid the North Korean security forces are that they never implant surveillance equipment in the rooms occupied by the leading men (as they openly discuss their assassination plans) and Kim Jong-un's secret obsession with Katy Perry music (and the list, goes on and on and on) all feel like discarded SNL gags.

In terms of the picture's potential to poke fun at America's constant attempts to overthrow dictators - not because it's the right thing to do, but because they can gain economic and political footholds the world over - is all dashed when the seemingly friendly Kim Jong-un is eventually revealed to be the psychotic despot everyone has assumed he was to begin with. American might is right and assassination IS the ONLY answer. It's here where the movie is a not-so-shameless propping up of American Imperialism at its worst.

Some might suggest I doth pretest too much - that The Interview is just meant to be a silly, good-natured comedy. Stupid, however, is not silly and assassination is not good-natured. Worst of all, the movie isn't even supremely godawful, it's just crashingly mediocre. Did I smile and chuckle? Very occasionally. Did the movie ever bore me? Well, uh yeah, actually it did. Did, God Forbid, the movie offend me? Well, sort of - only insofar as its subject matter could well have been exploited for its satirical potential and instead, took incendiary material and reduced it to the level of a sub-par buddy comedy a la Bing and Bob On the Road (but lacking even the "sophistication" of those creaky endeavours).

The Eminem and Rob Lowe cameo interviews are not without some meagre merit and Randall Park genuinely delivers a standout performance as the dictator - delivering most of his stuff with a straight face and only eventually going into over-the-top territory where the script, such as it is, demands the actor to go. Sadly, the scene with the greatest potential to be inspired lunacy involves finger-biting, but it never goes as far as it should. It injects something potentially outrageous, but holds back where it counts the most. All one need do is recall the Monty Python sketch entitled "Salad Days By Sam Peckinpah" to acknowledge the missed potential here.

Overall, The Interview proves to be one rancid, overcooked bowl of kimchi.

The funniest moment for me was when Kim Jong-un reveals a tank bestowed upon North Korea by Stalin. James Franco corrects the dictator by saying, "In my country, we pronounce his name as "Stallone."

This, garnering the biggest laugh from me, simply hammered home that the movie is unequivocally lame at best.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *½ One-and-a-half-stars

The Interview is in limited theatrical release and playing day-and-date on VOD via Sony Pictures.

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