DESPICABLE ME - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Oh Christ! There's a prequel? Really? Ugh!

Look, if it's okay with you, since all these movies are the same, I won't bother reviewing MINIONS, just as I didn't bother reviewing DESPICABLE ME 2. The first film, DESPICABLE ME, is the only one I've seen, so let's talk about why it's mind-numbingly mediocre. It'll be for the same reasons the new pictures are also mind-numbingly mediocre. I don't even need to see them to know that. Because, I, uh, like, uh, saw the first one, eh. It's all anyone really needs in these dark days of dead-head movies for dead-head audiences.

Despicable Me (2010)
dir. Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Starring: Steve Carrell, Jason Segal, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There was a sequel two summers ago, a prequel this summer and yet another sequel two summers from now, but you know what? I'm good. The first film in this franchise (a word I hate) was more than enough for this fella. They can doll these things up all they like, but most contemporary animated films are pretty much interchangeable and in spite of inexplicably over-the-top critical orgasms and astounding boxoffice, most of them, like 2010's Despicable Me fall squarely into the been-there-done-that category.

I can understand why most critics raved about the movie. Most of them aren't what I'd bother to call critics anyway; they're hacks (at worst) and/or glorified studio flacks (at best). What I don't get is the ridiculous number of family audiences filling the theatres for mediocre crap like this. Are these families so desperate for entertainment they can see as families, that they'll succumb to any moderately clever ad campaign to fork over their dough for a familiar, over-hyped picture?

Or are they merely that dull, unimaginative and stupid? I'll keep the correct answer to myself. You can do your own math. (As for the aforementioned shills, it's beyond simple math, it's just one big fat zero to the power of infinity.)

As for the very first Despicable Me, it was really little more than a pallid reversal on Brad Bird's (terrific) The Incredibles. Here, the focus is upon a network of super-villains as opposed to the latter's world of superheroes. One of the big differences between the two, though, is that The Incredibles was made by a director who not only has a great sense of humour and storytelling chops, but a real appreciation for epic sweep and a true geek's affinity for the kind of derring-do that his fellow "losers" in the audience are also imbued with. Bird's film displayed originality, genuine wit and thoroughly pulse-pounding action - action that's rooted in the dramatic beats, but also expertly designed in terms of overall geography and pace.

Despicable Me, on the other hand, is full of stale gags and a ho-hum plot. Most of all, the action sequences are frenetic, chaotic and have absolutely no sense of geography and/or dramatic resonance.

The same can be said for Despicable Me 2 and Minions, neither of which I've seen, because I don't have to. I've seen this one, eh.

The plot of Despicable Me, such as it is, deals with Gru (Steve Carrell), the world's Super-Villain #2 and his desire to unseat the young Super-Villain #1, an upstart by the name of Vector (Jason Segal). With the help of three cute-as-a-button orphans, Gru undertakes to become the most evil, heinous villain in the world. This dastardly curmudgeon is, however, transformed into a much kinder individual thanks to the charms of the orphans and his growing (ugh!) love for them.

And then there are the minions. The less said about them, the better.

So! Sound vaguely familiar? I thought as much. It's a variation on virtually every contemporary animated movie, including Despicable Me 2 and Minions, neither of which I've seen, and have no intention of ever seeing. Nor will I bother seeing Despicable Me 3 in 2017. I don't have to. I've already seen them - way back in 2010. It's called Despicable Me.

With that first film, I found the whole affair so familiar that I genuinely can't remember much more about it than the dull plot recounted above. None of the jokes resonated with me at all; they were strictly dullsville. The opening sight gag involving the theft of the pyramids in Egypt seemed decent enough, but big deal. It was screened in its entirety for months as a trailer, just as every joke in any of the "franchise" have been.

Even though Despicable Me and its ilk are family pictures, would it have been so hard to shoehorn some delightfully, nastily, almost malevolent dark humour instead of the safe corn-pone TV-style knee-slappers? It is, after all, a cartoon and that's the sort of humour both adults and kids love (a la the Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner cartoons from Warners). In the film's favour, we weren't inundated with endlessly annoying contemporary pop-culture references that are supposed to be funny and which, of course, are going to date all the pathetic animated films that do. (Shrek, anyone? I thought not.)

The look of Despicable Me is not without a few shreds of merit, but many of the gadgets and characters - while serviceable for the film's running time - don't last in the memory banks. The vocal performances - while competent - are bereft of the sort of Cliff Edwards brilliance from classic Disney that knocks you on your butt and stays with you forever.

The frenetic pace of Despicable Me and its ilk actually have the effect of bogging the pictures down. The Incredibles, on the other hand, was about thirty minutes longer than this 2010 "original", yet zipped by so effortlessly, that one didn't want it to end. Despicable Me, on the other hand, inspired little more than endless glances at my iPhone.

Other than being insufferably inoffensive and watchable for its 95-minute running time, those are about the only things in its favour. The same can be said for Despicable Me 2 and Minions, neither of which I've seen, and have no intention of ever seeing, because I've seen Despicable Me. You get the drift.

And now, there's a goddamn prequel!!! After a sequel and before another fucking sequel!

I'm still wondering: Where in the name of Christ were all the movie-going morons (and moron film critics) earlier this summer for Brad Bird's gorgeous Tomorrowland? Waiting to see Minions, no doubt.

Besides, there are always solid movies on the big screen that families would be doing themselves and their kids a favour to see instead of crap like the Despicable Me franchise.

I remember the year I took my (then) 9-year-old daughter to see Despicable Me. Yeah, she watched it, but around the same time that year, she also saw the highly imaginative Vincenzo Natali sci-fi horror picture Splice and made me take her to see it several times on a big screen. It thrilled her, entertained her, stayed with her and most importantly, stimulated the sort of mind-expanding discourse that more kids would benefit from.

So why drag kids to the usual derivative fare? This summer we've seen the aforementioned Tomorrowland tank and even Mad Max: Fury Road might have done better business if parents had some guts and took their precious little buggers to see that one. I don't want to believe that these parents and their progeny are as equally unimaginative as the most unimaginative "family" movies, but as one animated picture after another with a similar pedigree continues to rake in big dollars, I can only assume the worst.

So feel free to use this review of a 5-year-old film to suffice for Minions and pretty much any other stupid contemporary animated film. They're all the same. I suppose if you and your spawn continue to suffer through them, then you are too.

The same, that is.

Despicable Me was released 5 years ago. Its prequel Minions is in wide release. I haven't seen it, nor will I, because I know it will be identical to this one.

BARN WEDDING - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Vacuity takes centre stage in twee trifle.

Barn Wedding (2014)
Dir. Shaun Benson
Starring: Emily Coutts, Kelly McCormack, Brett Donahue, Shaun Benson, Kate Corbett, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Kaleb Alexander, Christopher Hayes, Anthony Ulc

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If the sound accidentally cuts out during a screening of Barn Dance (AKA The Non-Discreet Lack of Charm of the Bourgeousie), the only thing you might hear in the cinema is snoring. This insufferably twee little excursion into the dull, bourgeois lives of twenty-somethings feels like an actors' vanity project and/or showcase piece rather than a real movie. (That said, all the actors acquit themselves well, in spite of the film's overwhelming emptiness and their solid thespian gymnastics might manage to keep a few bums in the seats half-awake.)

The dullsville proceedings involve a group of friends who were once tight, but are now, not-so-tight during the days leading up to a wedding in a barn. Ugh! Yes, a barn wedding! (Personally, I wonder why people don't choose basement banquet halls in motor hotels anymore, but don't mind me, I'm from Winnipeg, eh.) Seriously, though. I hate barn weddings - horrendously fake and phoney wedding locales for urban hipsters with disposable scads of income and/or mommies and daddies with deep pockets. And guess what? The movie promises, in spite of the not-too convincing hurdles that arise, to deliver a barn wedding as a major set piece during the final minutes of this 83-minute movie, which, by the way, feels about 83 minutes too long.

The wedding itself has been rushed in order to take advantage of holding a summer affair in the barn, but is postponed for a relatively dull, real-life reason and, once again, is rushed to do the barn thing in spite of the fact that it will be in the middle of winter. This makes about as much sense as anything in this picture. We are, after all, dealing with sickening bourgeois values. In fact, the entire marriage appears to be an excuse to generate cool snapshots to share on Pinterest and Facebook. Ugh!

The sheer pettiness and inconsequence of these people is even more depressing since it does feel rooted in something fairly realistic in terms of the horrific vacuity which infuses the generation these characters spring from. I tend to avoid people like this in real life since I'm too often compelled to punch them in the face.

What we get for donating 83 minutes of our lives is a clutch of extremely attractive, well-dressed couples (and one single fifth wheel) as the yakety-yak-yakking that spits out of their respective maws about days gone by, the immediate present and especially, the future, drags on interminably from the city to the country settings.

Two of our characters (luckily, both babes) share a secret yearning which could upset the apple cart if it's consummated. We wait, with baited breath for the inevitable to happen and hope we at least get a lollapalooza of a sapphic tumble for the investiture of our precious time on this Earth. Unfortunately the hoped-for coupling is an underwhelming bit of wheel-spinning which matches the rest of the movie's wheel-spinning.

I'm really not sure whom this movie is for, though I suspect there might be more than a few vacuous non-entities out in audience-land who will relate to this clutch of empty vessels. If you happen to be one of them, hey, knock yourself out.

As for me, I was even more disappointed that the music during the wedding reception wasn't provided by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and instead of the horrendous trilling of the exit tune that's there now, a nice segue into:

Well now it's time to say goodbye to all these bourgeois kin,
And they would like to thank you folks fer' kindly droppin' in.
Yer' all invited back next week to this locality,
To have a heapin' helpin' of their hospitality…
Bourgeousie that is.
Set a spell, Take your shoes off.
Y'all come back now, y'hear?.

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

Barn Wedding is playing at Toronto's 2015 Canadian Film Fest.

FILTH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Alcoholic-drug addled-brutal-corrupt-cop trifle fails at being filthy enough.

"Och, look at me. Being a Scottish cop, I'm a naughty boy with the lassies."

Filth (2013) *1/2
Dir. Jon S. Baird
Starring: James McAvoy, Eddie Marsan, Jim Broadbent

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy) is an Edinburgh detective bucking for a promotion and he'll do anything to get it, resorting to underhanded manipulation, gossip and outright lying. This won't be much of a stretch for him. He's such a bad boy, you see. Estranged from his lovely wife and little girl, he's an all-out violent thug, corrupt to the max, addicted to booze, drugs and sex, plus he's suitably hard boiled and rumpled to give everyone the feeling he's unorthodox, but effective. Well, he is unorthodox, but his effectiveness is going to be put to the test, but not before the film indulges us in plenty of naughtiness as well as his drug-addled hallucinations.

He's delightfully repugnant and James McAvoy plays him to the hilt, but the movie, being a bit of a lame duck, doesn't have the courage of its wanna-be Bad Lieutenant convictions. I haven't read the 1998 Irvine (Trainspotting) Welsh novel the film is based on, but surely he must have seen Abel Ferrara's 1992 descent into madness - so grotesquely etched by the brilliant Harvey Keitel - and decided he could outdo it on the mean streets of Edinburgh. This is certainly what Filth feels like, but as a movie, it's a mess.

Constantly pulling its punches, Robertson's nastiness is only intermittently funny and the movie is pitched to be over-the-top, but Baird doesn't quite have the style or vulgarity to pull it off successfully. God knows, I love watching scumbags do their thing, but after about half an hour, it started to become tiresome and in its last third it races to connect a whole mess of dots to show us why Robertson deserves redemption.

Oh, poor naughty policeman, he had a rotten childhood and a sonofabitch for a Daddy and he - really, really - no, I mean really wanted to be a good hubby and daddy, but he's had so much suffering that his only choice was to be a pig, but you know, he could change.

Ugh!

I'd have much preferred him to be an out and out slime bucket without the pathetic whining about his past and crying over the blood under the bridge of a marriage he himself flushed down the toilet. The whole film just feels false, especially a series of unfortunate fantasy sequences with Jim Broadbent ham-boning as a psychiatrist in a realm of psychedelia. In fact, most of the fantasy stuff seems half-baked.

In addition to McAvoy, who truly does work overtime here, it would be remiss not to mention Eddie Marsan. He comes close to stealing scenes as Robertson's cuckolded nebbish buddy from the Masons meetings our cop attends. For Marsan to come close to stealing scenes from McAvoy is truly worth a few hat-doffs. And there is, in all fairness to the film, a pretty funny sequence where the two go carousing in Germany.

Ultimately, it's a movie that wants to have its urinal cake and eat it too, though once it bites into the piss pot deodorizer, it coughs it up. Filth is finally the bad cop movie equivalent of a blow job involving the spitting rather than the swallowing of the motherlode. It's simply no dirty fun at all.

Filth is available on Premium iTunes and cable VOD across Canada and opens Theatrically May 30 via VSC at the following venues: Toronto – Carlton Cinema, Vancouver – Rio Theatre, Saskatoon – Roxy Theatre, Victoria – The Vic.

HOUSE OF DUST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Moronic horror movie redeemed by presence of super-hot starlet

I look scary, but this movie is so stupid, I doubt I'll scare you.

Hi there. As stupid as this movie is,
you'll get to see me in a nice variety
of shorts, underwear and tops that'll
accentuate my cleavage and breast size.

House of Dust (2013) *1/2
Dir. A.D. Calvo
Starring: Inbar Lavi

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is, in no way shape or form, a good movie. In fact, it's downright stupid. It actually took four writers to cobble together this derivative screenplay which also has the distinction of featuring some of the worst dialogue in recent memory. One wonders, actually. what could possibly be more stupid? The movie or the fact that it required four wordsmiths? There are so few redeeming qualities on display that I'm not sure why anyone would bother to sit through it, but I suppose one might give the filmmakers some credit for keeping you watching anyway.

On the plus side, there is plenty of killing. This is always a good thing. The first scenes have a few pubic hairs worth of promise as we watch a scene involving the torture of a lunatic in an asylum that eventually descends into a gore-fest involving drills being driven into skulls as well as people being burned alive in a crematorium.

So far, so, uh . . . well, I won't say good, but certainly watchable. Alas, it's revealed that the sequence is taking place in the past and we skip ahead a few decades into the future, long after the asylum has been shut down and left to rot on the campus of a university.

Here's where some of the dreadfully perfunctory dialogue rears its ugly head and most sane viewers might abandon the ship as we are forced to listen to the nonsensical babble of some twenty somethings who sound a wee bit too stupid to get into a workshop at The Learning Annex, never mind a university.

But then, in no time at all, we're introduced to our leading lady played by Inbar Lavi who, it turns out, is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but seems (in spite of the idiotic lines she's forced to spout) a pretty decent actress. Oh, fuck it. You keep watching. It doesn't take too long before we're introduced to more babes and some hunks (for the ladies and/or gents of the light-in-the-loafer persuasion) and we get a few cheap thrills when two couples (including the ravishing Miss Lavi) sneak into the asylum which, though it's been closed since the 50s, looks pretty well maintained and accoutred with contemporary fixtures.

The movie actually gets even more moronic. The asylum is haunted by a ghost, but there are also a bunch of canisters containing the ashes of long-incinerated inmates. When one of the cans breaks open, some of our characters inhale the ashes and soon become possessed. From here on in we're forced to watch several scary (the word is relative) sequences involving more killings and plenty of things going bump in the night.

Luckily, the movie finds as many opportunities for the ravishing Miss Lavi to wear sexy shorts and even sexier underwear. This is finally the thing that keeps us riveted to the screen. We do have to suffer through a whole mess of scary scenes that aren't really scary and lots more of the aforementioned dumb dialogue, but those looking to suffer through this lame horror movie will be able to glue one's eyes to this scrumptious bit of crumpet known as Inbar Lavi.

If this sounds like your cup of blood, you could do a lot worse than give it a spin.

House of Dust is available on DVD via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada Ltd (along with their other latest horror release Mr. Jones. Feel free to buy them directly from the Amazon links below, and in so doing, you'll be contributing to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

EXPEDITION TO THE END OF THE WORLD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Seeing Something Cool With Knobs

Global warming has opened up fjords in Greenland that no human has set foot upon in thousands of years. A group of scientists and artists are the first to traverse this unexplored territory.

Expedition to the End of the World (2013) *1/2 Dir. Daniel Dencik

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Tkke Opmalt Fjords in the northernmost regions of that odd behemoth of nothingness known as Greenland have finally become accessible to human exploration thanks to global warming and the alarming rate of melting that's caused ice, much of it millions of years old, to give way to boat travel. Daniel Dencik had the great idea to accompany a crew of scientists and artists on the maiden research voyage to this vast, untouched land and the pleasure of being able to see it through the lens of a camera that was, via the eyes of the filmmakers. Viewing it for the first time had the potential to be as thrilling as anything one was likely to see on a big screen.

Especially stirring is when the crew make discoveries like new lifeforms and evidence of human existence from thousands of years ago. While it's rare to have such opportunities to experience such miraculous finds, it's impossible to shake the disappointing of feeling that you're on a ship of fools.

As long as the film sticks to just the facts, M'am, it's A-OK, especially when the camera is pointed at the topographical wonders that are truly miraculous. Nine times out of ten, though, we can't escape members of the research crew opening their mouths and spewing projectiles of often boneheaded existentialist nonsense in that serious, humourless way one comes to expect from Euro-types with too much babble-speak cascading about their collective cerebella.

It soon becomes clear that director Dencik, is less interested in the very thing that could have allowed the movie to soar, but is instead content to concern himself with the whack-job thoughts of a whole passel of knobs. This amounts to a frustrating viewing experience. You just want these people to get out of the way and shut their traps so as to blissfully experience the joy of land that human eyes have not seen closeup for a few millennia.

My desire to just punch all of these pseudo-philosophers in the face mounted with every second of the film's running time which, is far from overlong but feels like it anyway. Dencik ultimately proves to be no Werner Herzog. When we travelled to the Antarctic with the curmudgeonly German auteur in Encounters at the End of the World, we were spoiled by having a real filmmaker with a sense of adventure as our guide and a truly mixed bag of individuals who seldom took double-jointed nose-dives into their own rectal cavities only to then jettison up through the viscera to shoot out from within their esophagus to inflict their half-bsked wisdom in our collective faces.

The movie has no tension whatsoever and its pathetic attempts at creating it (save for a real ice flow water level situation) amount to a silly manufactured fear of polar bears and the presence of a big oil exploratory boat. Neither of these bear (as it were) any fruit, as it turns out our hosts on this journey are all insufferably pretentious nimrods. I can think of no worse perspective for a director to take on what should have been an incredible, mind-bending and possibly even moving sojourn.

"Expedition to the End of the World" opens today at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto via Kinosmith.