It's TEA TIME with THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES, The Film Corner's All New Columnist: Draw up thine comfy chairs for some High Tea at Oxford University, as Rhodes Scholar, young Master Thomas Zachary Toles gives BREAKING BAD a jolly good thrashing.

If you require a better view of Thomas and his illustrious credentials, please click on the friendly masthead just above.

Walter White Privilege: Facile Empathy in Breaking Bad

By Film Corner Tea Time Columnist THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES

Given that Better Call Saul, the spin-off of Vince Gilligan’s universally acclaimed Breaking Bad has placed its first record-breaking season six-feet-under (in slavering anticipation of the second season, ordered by AMC before Season One even aired), it’s high time for a critical reexamination of the series that started it all, a show that pretends to test the limits of our empathy while rewarding its viewers for lazily aligning with a singular, dominant perspective.

Let us examine what is broken and bad with Breaking Bad.

"Let's just blow EVERYBODY the fuck away!"

Walter White (Bryan Cranston), an overqualified chemistry teacher with an ego, is driven to meth dealing and murder by the onset of lung cancer. He hopes to earn enough to cover his exorbitant treatment costs and posthumously bequeath a large sum for his family. The apparent premise of the show is: to what extent can this ordinary man justify his increasingly immoral behaviour with ostensibly compassionate motives? How long will the viewer’s allegiance to Walt last before siding with him becomes impossible?

Breaking Bad’s great fault, however, is that it creates a warped world in which there is effectively no human alternative to Walt. He is the cleverest, coolest, most compelling person in the show, unquestionably a better meth cook than any Hispanic cartel member who preceded him. The genius middle-class white man with crazed ambition (the American dream!) is glorified in his corruption while the devastating effects of meth addiction on impoverished communities are only shown once or twice in the entire series. Walter White is “Whiteman,” America’s presiding figure--a superhero of narcissistic greed.

The emotional consequences of Walt’s actions on his family and other major characters are deceptively insubstantial. The wronged family includes his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), a character so unsympathetic to most fans that desperately cheating on her lying drug-dealer husband was widely deemed unforgivable. Then there are his children: Walt Jr. (RJ MItte), whose primary arc consists of driving lessons and breakfast consumption, and Holly (Elanor Anne Wenrich), a baby forgotten as frequently by the show’s writers as Maggie is by Homer Simpson.

Skyler is a controversial case because, as Erin Gloria Ryan (writer and managing editor of JEZEBEL) argued, fan hatred for her was due to misogyny, despite the show’s loud assertions of her blamelessness. I counter that her blamelessness reflects Gilligan’s inability to imagine a rich inner life for the character. Skyler’s existence separate from Walt’s endeavours, and her pain, become increasingly vague as the show takes Walt’s continuing survival as its central concern. Walt also causes anguish for Jesse (Aaron Paul), his partner-in-crime, but Walt’s final sacrifice for Jesse allows the older man’s manipulations to be overshadowed by the real villains of the show.

Breaking Bad ends by establishing a ludicrous dichotomy between Walt (a human with flaws--like us) and the fantasy of truly evil people (neo-Nazis) who, unlike Walt, don’t have their reasons. Walt confesses his selfishness (self-awareness achieved!) and redeems himself by vanquishing actual, uncomplicated evil and rescuing Jesse.

Walter White and Edward Hyde: Happy Bedfellows!

For the show’s legions of viewers, Walt has been a surrogate Mr. Hyde, allowing us to tacitly revel in his immorality from the safety of our couches. Breaking Bad relies on the seductive illusion that our dark sides can be outsourced to Walt, vicariously embraced, and then neutralized with Walt’s death and his accompanying self-awareness (that we are invited to share).

Gilligan expresses his desire to redeem Walt and provide a satisfying, palatable ending in his comments on a possible alternate ending in which Walt shoots up a jail to free Jesse:

“[W]e kept asking ourselves, ‘Well, how bad is Walt going to be at the end here? Is he going to kill a bunch of upstanding, law-abiding jail guards? What the hell kind of ending is that?’”

Gilligan wants closure and gratification for his audience; he does not want to leave them frustrated or confused. Walt’s redemption purges the viewer’s guilt for fetishizing him, tying up the show’s loose ends on a chilling note of admiration.

Fiction has the power to vividly portray disorder and ambiguity, in ways that may help us reach a wider, more empathetic outlook. Yet Breaking Bad rewards its viewers for lionizing its slick, troubled protagonist, not challenging us to peer at the peripheral figures beyond him.

Countless Americans are indifferent to the commonplace killings of unarmed people of colour by police officers—proclaiming that Mike Brown, Miriam Carey, Eric Garner, and many others just shouldn’t have broken the law. Undoubtedly, many of these same Americans readily accepted Walt’s violent criminality.

Breaking Bad dangerously inhibits empathy for real-life abuses of power because it predominantly asks its viewers to identify with the one character with both authority and explicit motives. Walt is a complex figure surrounded by stereotypes like Tuco’s homicidal cousins, whose non-existent personalities are only justified by their brutish foreignness.

Breaking Bad encourages empathy for yet another white authority figure (who kills, like Darren Wilson or George Zimmerman, when he “fears for his life”), while disregarding the humanity of those less powerful than he.

A narrow vision, indeed.

Breaking Bad is available in Canada by clicking HEREand in the United States of America by clicking HEREand in the Jolly Old United Kingdom by clicking HERE The first 10 episodes of Season One of Better Call Saul premiered on AMC on February 8, 2015.

All photo collages by GJK

THE PUNK SYNDROME - Review By Greg Klymkiw - SEE IT OR DIE, YOU MOTHER FUCKERS!

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema, The Film Corner continues its thrill-packed countdown to said event with a review of The Punk Syndrom.

Since its debut at Hot Docs 2012, a hoped-for Blu-Ray or even DVD release of The Punk Syndrome did not come to pass. The picture is currently available for rent or download at iTunes via Kinosmith which is better than not seeing it at all, but this is a movie that DEMANDS either theatrical screenings and/or home viewing via the highest resolution possible (which, ultimately, is Blu-Ray).

Given that the film's subjects, "Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day" (PKN) have been selected to represent Finland in this year's Eurovision Song Contest, I'm hoping for an enterprising home video release at some point which not only features the best picture and sound, but a whole whack of extras. All the oddsmakers are putting their weight behind these guys as they've made history with having the first punk song ever invited into this prestigious competition.

The film itself is not only superbly crafted, but PKN are hardcore punks who embrace the anger-charged musical form to create the most phenomenal insight into what it means to be mentally disabled and forced to live in a world of fluorescent lighting, rigid control, shitty food and seemingly random rules as prescribed within the cold, institutional world of their homes for life.

The Punk Syndrome (2012)
dir. Jukka Kärkkäinen & J-P Passi
Starring: Pertti Kurikka, Kari Aalto, Sami Helle, Toni Välitalo
("Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day" AKA "PKN")

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day" is, without question, one of the greatest punk bands of all time. They are the unforgettable subjects of The Punk Syndrome, a breathtaking feature documentary that declares: "I demand your immediate attention or you die, motherfucker!" I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I had never heard of the band before. Now, I'll never forget them! Neither will you. This quartet of hard-core, kick-ass, take-no-fucking-prisoners sons of bitches pull no musical punches. They slam you in the face with repeated roundhouses - turning your flesh into pulpy, coarsely-ground hamburger meat. In true punk spirit, they crap on hypocrisy, celebrate a shackle-free life and dare your pulse not to pound with maniacal abandon.

The band is, of course, from Finland. This is the great land of the brown bear, the Capercaillie grouse and the nearly-extinct, but damned-if-they'll-go-down-without-a-fight Saimaa Ringed Seal - a country with one of the largest land masses and smallest populations in Europe that spawned the great glam group Hanoi Rocks, the brilliant hockey player Veli-Pekka Ketola and one of the world's greatest filmmakers, Aki Kaurismäki.

And now, Finland can boast of generating one the world's great punk bands, "Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day". With Pertti Kurikka's grinding lead guitar, Kari Aalto's powerhouse vocals, Sami Helle's muscular bass and Toni Välitalo on drums (a veritable punk rock Gene Krupa), this tight unit commands audiences with a power that borders on mesmerism.

Their songs - many of them ripped straight from Kurikka's diaries - take aim at government corruption, mindless bureaucracy and pedicures. Yes, pedicures!

Early in the film, Pertti Kurikka explains:

Writing a diary is important to me. I can release my anger. It is especially helpful to have a bad day. I’ll write in my diary that Pertti is a shithead, that Pertti is an asshole and that Pertti is a faggot and a shit-goddamn-asshole. Pertti will be stabbed. Pertti will be punched in the face. Pertti will be strangled to death.

Not every song the band sings spews venom, though. Giving a concert in a public square, the jaws of old ladies hit the ground, while young party animals hoist their fists in the air as the band extols the considerable virtues of mundane, but pleasant activities with the following lyrics:

It was a Sunday
I went to church
I had coffee
I took a dump

Three kick-ass chords and four glorious lines and we're hooked.

The movie follows the band from practising to recording, from jamming to performing, relationships with family, friends, fans and women. There are the usual creative differences between the band - some serious, and others, a bit more tongue in cheek. At one point, Kari complains to Kurikka, "When you write riffs for songs, don’t write such difficult ones. Write easy ones."

One of the most powerful sequences in the film, one that enshrines the picture as one of the truly great rock documentaries, is when the band plays a gig at a club in Tampere. The performance is mind-blowing and the audience is electric.

The band sings:

Decision-Makers lock people up
In closed rooms
But we don’t wanna be in those rooms
Nobody looks after us
Nobody comes to visit us
What’s going to happen
To us orphans in those rooms?
Decision-makers cheat
Cheaters make decisions
They don’t give a shit
About us disabled
Decision-makers cheat
Cheaters make decisions
They don’t give a shit
About us disabled

In the dressing room after a truly intense performance, the band is triumphant. A beaming Kurikka declares, "This is as good as it gets".

And WHAMMO!

A breathtaking cut to a shot worthy of Ulrich Seidl - one that captures a terrible beauty of the character-bereft building the band lives in, a blue sky and a magic hour sun.

And yes, this is a band that writes and performs songs from the pits of their respective guts, from experience - their unique experience in the world as mentally disabled men.

Brave, passionate and talented men.

And yes, mentally disabled.

And they are so cool.

How cool?

They recorded their first single on vinyl.

And now, they are competing in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest.

That's how cool!

Just like this movie!

"The Punk Syndrome" is available via Kinosmith on iTunes

HIP HOP, EH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Baby Cuz Make Feature Doc on Canuck HipHop

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema, The Film Corner continues its thrill-packed countdown to said event with a review of Hip Hop, Eh, my baby cousin Joe Klymkiw's feature documentary, that, to my knowledge, never played at Hot Docs, but most definitely should have played there since every screening would have been sold right the fuck out and every theatre would have been permeated with clouds of glorious ganja.

Hip Hop, Eh (2012)
Dir. Joe Klymkiw
Starring: Maestro Fresh Wes, Tom Green, Buck 65, Kardinal Offishall, Dj Kemo, Dream Warriors, Michie Mee, Cadence Weapon, Classified, Swollen Members

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Once upon a time, a nice Ukrainian boy,
Directed a doc, about his greatest joy.
You'd think this little Hunky from Winter-peg,
Would invite Heavy Metal to swell his mighty third leg.

The thing to remember as you, lock up your daughters,
Izz'zat da 'Peg's got asbestos in its muddy, muddy waters.
Little Joe quenched his thirst from those gnarly rusty pipes,
And before he damn well knew it,
He formed super-different likes.

So off to Vancouver did our little Joe go,
Cuz he needed to groove, without all the fucking snow.
His love for Hip Hop, led to lots of cool shit
And he started spinning tunes, with some mighty true grit.

For many long years, he was on the radio,
Playing Hip Hop a-plenty in that lonely studio.
And when he met dat Nardwuar, the human serviette,
He made kick-ass music vids, smooth as anisette.

Joe did wonder, long and hard, 'bout the true identity
Of dat Maple-syrup-hip-hop and its supreme-o destiny.
So he saddled up his camera, to travel far and wide,
Shooting dope Hip Hop artists, who'd not motherfucking hide.

K'naan wiped his ass, with dat bullshit waving flag.
Even Drake took a powder, what a motherfucking drag.
It mattered not to Joe, Canuck Hip Hop's loyal Ukie Son,
So good riddance to bad rubbish, cuz he interviewed a ton.

That's exactly what he did,
in his noble Hip Hop quest.
He got a mess, of super mensches,
who fuckin' proved to be the best.
And he shot 'em and he cut 'em,
till their mighty souls did bleed,
Now you got this Hip Hop movie,
So let's all watch and smoke some weed.

Kubassa and Oxtail,
kishka flavoured with dat jerk,
Jugs of tasty maple syrup,
and a hoser's best plaid shirt.
We gotsa film that answers questions,
Bout our very own Hip Hop
Lez go tuh Stevie Harper's rec-room,
Where he grow dat mighty crop.
And believe me when I say,
We not be smoking prairie wheat.
We be partyin' with our P.M.
to that Canadian Hip Hop beat.

- Greg Klymkiw,
. The Ballad of Hip Hop Joe
. (with apologies to Hip Hop lyricists the world over)

What IS the identity of Canadian Hip Hop? The fuck if I know. In fact, other than Drake (who mega-kicks) and K'naan (whom I never hope to hear again after that fucking Waving Flag shit), I know diddly about the Dominion of Canada's Hip Hop scene.

After seeing my cousin Joe Klymkiw's movie, Hip Hop, Eh, I now know more than I knew before. And screw it - so Joe's my cousin. The fuck am I supposed to do that half my family is in the entertainment business? If I didn't enjoy the movie, I'd be a man, tell him it sucked shit and then not bother writing about it. So, I'm writing about it. FUCKING SUE ME! Go ahead, motherfucker! I'll whup your ass with a glorious chub of Ukrainian garlic sausage.

The bottom line is - cousin or no cousin - I had a rip-snorting good time watching this mega-ragged indie nose dive into a uniquely Canadian world of contemporary culture I know nada about. The style, kind of like the grassroots Canadian Hip Hop scene, is raw, loose, a bit messy and jumpy, dirty, grainy, blasted-the-fuck-right-out with wall-to-wall music and the most incessantly insane parade of talking heads I've seen in some time.

But fuck me and a month of Sundays, this movie's got one mega cool talking head after another. In fact, I have never seen so many cool people wearing baseball caps assembled in one movie.

Hip Hop, Eh is short, breezy, fun, infused with genuine passion for its subject and as one of my esteemed colleagues noted in his review, the movie does at times feel like an extended music industry panel discussion on the subject.

For me, I didn't mind. I've personally never attended any music industry panels and most certainly none that smacked me in the face with the subject of Canadian identity in our country's Hip Hop scene.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

Like the pic above says, Hip Hop, Eh is available on VOD. For further info on Joe's ultra-cool films, visit HERE.

DESECRATED - Review By Greg Klymkiw - All those who watch this movie desecrate themselves, though not quite as badly as those poor souls who have to act in it.

"Hi. My name is Haylie Duff. I am Hilary Duff's sister. I play Michael Ironside's daughter in this awful movie. Woe is me!"

Desecrated (2012/2015)
Dir. Rob Garcia
Starring: Haylie Duff, Gonzalo Menendez, Michael Ironside

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Haylie Duff's little sister Hilary never had it this bad. Never! Hilary, of course, was the star of the series and movie Lizzie McGuire and even had an exclusive line of tweenie-bopper clothing called "STUFF by Hilary Duff" at the now-defunct Zeller's department store chain. Haylie, however, has starred in a whole whack of dubious movies and toils as a Food Blogger. She might also be vying as the heir apparent to Sarah Jessica Parker's crown of Equine Princess of Hollywood.

In the thoroughly dreadful thriller Desecrated, Haylie Duff desecrates herself as Allie McClean, the upright, two-legged ungulate mammal heroine who drags a bunch of her obnoxious friends to an isolated country estate for a weekend of fun and frolics. Luckily, her Dad (Michael Ironside, looking a wee-bit embarrassed), is not present. Though his beloved wife is recently deceased, he's partying-down on his yacht with a bevy of sexy babes much younger than his daughter. This leaves Haylie and company in the trusty purview of caretaker Ben (Gonzalo Menendez).

Ben is a psychopath.

He decides to slaughter the youthful weekend funsters one by one in order to blackmail Haylie's Daddy into signing over the property to him, which he believes is rightly his. He believes this to be true because he murdered Dad's wife so the old lecher could score a major insurance settlement. Ben has also been joyously murdering anyone who comes onto the property, which Dad also knows about, but has kept his trap shut on since he doesn't want the truth about hiring Ben to kill his wife to ever come out. He promises Daddy Mike Ironside to leave our horsey heroine for last. Ben might be crazy, but he's an honourable veteran of the Afghanistan War and would prefer not to slaughter the whinnying lassie.

82 risible minutes pass before this horrendously written and directed "thriller" comes to an end. Poorly executed chases and killings, unbelievably stupid dialogue, endless wastage of meagre dramatic beats and detestable characters who we all want to die, manage to cram this pathetic excuse for a movie that doesn't even have the virtue of unintentional laughs. About the best that can be said is that somewhere between its 2012 production and its current 2015 straight-to-video release, the film managed to shed 24-minutes of its inexplicably lengthy original running time.

It's a tender mercy, however, since watching all 82-minutes will be time you'll never get back. Hopefully, its sheer incompetence will filter out of your memory banks in time for the last few minutes of your life and not a single image from Desecrated will desecrate all the images flitting before your eyes during the final precious moments you'll experience before death.

If God forbid, this does happen, it'll give new meaning to the phrase, "Death Be Not Proud."

The Film Corner Rating: * One Star

Desecrated is available on DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

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Klymkiw Watches TV (Starz) on Anchor Bay Ent. Canada Blu-Ray: MAGIC CITY - Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Hi there! My name is Olga Kurylenko. I'm Ukrainian.
If you've ever desired to see me in various states of nakedness,
you'll get to see plenty of my supple flesh in Magic City.
And ladies, you'll see why I only eat kapusta  (cabbage),
& avoid Ukraine's national comestible salo (salted pig fat with garlic)."

Lily (Jessica Marais) learns a valuable
lesson from her kind, loving hubby
Ben "The Butcher" Diamond
(Danny Huston) on how
quickly beauty can
become UGLY!!!

Magic City (2012, 2013) ***
Creator, Head Writer,
Executive Producer: Mitch Glazer
Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Olga Kurylenko, Steven Straight, Jessica Marais, Danny Huston, Matt Ross, Christian Cooke, Dominik García-Lorido, Elena Satine, Yul Vasquez, Kelly Lynch, Alex Rocco, Sherilyn Fenn, James Caan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When Danny Huston utters the word "whore", he sounds and even looks like his grand old man John Huston and gives us one very important reason to watch all 16 hours of Seasons 1 and 2 of Mitch Glazer's TV series Magic City. The young Mr. Huston is magic and not a second of screen time involving this great actor is a wasted moment. The man is electricity incarnate! He sears a hole in the screen as surely as the tip of the Havana cigars he sucks onscreen with sheer phallus-obsessed aplomb and he comes close to stealing every scene he's in because it's utterly impossible to remove one's eyeballs from his snazzy ultra-vulgarity. He's a generous actor, though, and holds back enough to allow his fellow actors the opportunity of going ma-no a ma-no with him. Huston isn't the only reason Magic City is worth watching, but he comes damn close. If anything, it's the fabulous cast and their varied looks and approaches that come very close to overshadowing the flaws of the series which, are not inconsiderable.

Conceived as a continuing series, the show was cancelled before it could go a 3rd season and thankfully creator Mitch Glazer wrapped up the loose ends. As the two seasons play out, Magic City feels more like a mini-series and I believe it would have profited so much more if it had been planned that way in the first place. Alas, a mini-series wouldn't have allowed the same degree of production value. In fact, season two was supposed to be ten episodes instead of eight, but I think the impending cancellation was a blessing in disguise.

You will BELIEVE in GOD
when you get a load of the
FORMIDABLE SCHWANCE
of Danny Huston!

Set against the backdrop of a lavish Miami hotel just after Castro's takeover of Cuba, Magic City charts the rivalry between hotelier Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his silent partner, local Jewish mob boss Ben "The Butcher" Diamond (Danny Huston). Ike sees himself as a visionary businessman, Ben just wants more and will stop at nothing to keep accumulating power and wealth. Losing the hotels in post-revolutionary Cuba has taken a huge bite out of the Mob's cash-flow and they desperately need the State of Florida to make gambling legal in Miami to build a new empire of sin to replace what Castro has destroyed. Ike is no mobster - at least so he tells himself. He does, however, need to consort with the devil to get what he wants and when a local union lobbyist is bumped off, it's Ike who becomes the prime suspect to Dade County's crusading D.A. Jack Klein (Matt Ross). This is a shocker to everyone except those in the know. Ike might well be a family man, but what family is he really beholden to? His family-family or the one he's embroiled with in the various gangster shenanigans he dips his pinky finger into.

You can't go wrong with
JAMES CAAN as a Jewish
Mob Boss fixing a big mess
caused by Ben The Butcher.

Our happy hotel keeper has three kids from his first wife, now deceased. Stevie (Steven Straight) is his eldest son, a longtime bartender in the hotel bar and part time pimp, numbers runner and really moronically, the secret lover of Ben the Butcher's beautiful wife Lily (Jessica Marais). Middle son Danny (Christian Cooke) is in law school and on the verge of taking an internship with the District Attorney's office. (Not a great idea, kid.) Ike's daughter is on the cusp of having her Bat Mitzvah and is closest to Ike's second wife, the former head dancer at the Tropicana in Cuba and gypsy-shiksa-beauty Vera (Olga Kurylenko).

There are numerous other characters and story threads, but herein, for me, lies the problem with the continuing series medium. It's too much, already! I'm happy following the businessman-gangster rivalry, all the immediate family stuff, all the crime stuff involving the central figures, but being forced to follow so many other threads gets in the way of the really juicy stuff. I also enjoyed the Jewish mob backdrop to no end and getting healthy dollops of Yiddish sprinkled throughout was tons of fun. Kudos to Magic City for this. Hell, the show even has a lavish Bat-Mitzvah sequence, a gunfight outside a synagogue PLUS we get to hear Alex Rocco as Ike's Dad, kvetching over how much he hates religion.

Judy Silver (Elena Satine)
Hot Tamale HOOKER
with a Heart of Gold
and a price on her head.

A subplot involving Judi Silver (Elena Satine), a whore with a heart of gold who becomes a target for a hit and another involving Meg Bannock (Kelly Lynch), the rich and powerful Miami socialite and sister of Ike's first wife and of course, the thread involving Sy Berman (James Caan) the really big mob boss from Chicago, are all integral to the central arc of the story. Slowing things down is a thread involving Ike's Cuban-born manager (Yul Vazquez) and his attempts to get his wife out of Cuba and his daughter Mercy (Dominik García-Lorido) and her love affair with Ike's "good" son.

Most of all, though, is that after 16 hours of following this story, one realizes how stock and derivative much of it really is. This wouldn't be so bad if it had the full courage of these trash convictions. An even shorter mini-series format or even a really long feature - possibly even in two parts with one kick-ass director - might have really delivered the shot in the arm Magic City so desperately needs. As is, the series is trying so hard to be capital "P" profound AND jamming in a whole whack of cliffhanger subplots. Having the cake and eating it too severely diminishes the overall satisfaction level.

Whatever format might have been chosen other than this one with less emphasis on "quality" might have yielded something way more rat-a-tat pulpier which, Magic City so desperately ALSO wants to be. In spite of this, there are great things in the series. The art direction and costumes are out of this world, the cool soundtrack of period tunes rocks the lid off the piece and a clever, recurring montage motif at the end of each episode delivers more than its fair share of frissons. The cast, even those struggling through threads less compelling, are all at the top of their game here. I must, though, come back to the estimable Danny Huston. He's so foul, reptilian and crude that he injects just the sort of B-movie vulgarity the entire series needed. And make no mistake, Magic City is loaded with explicit sex, tons of nudity, plenty of salty dialogue and blood splattering violence - all of this is terrific. Unfortunately, when things slow down into either soap opera territory or worse, PROFUNDITY, the narrative takes a nosedive. What this results in is not so much a roller coaster ride, but a drama that suffers from being intermittently and annoyingly bi-polar.

There is clearly much to enjoy here and I suspect the logical home for this series IS on Blu-Ray. It looks and sounds terrific and with 16 one-hour episodes, one can spread the viewing out in one's own preferred time-frame and at the end, still wind up owning a series that has individual episodes and sequences that are so garishly, genuinely and grotesquely delightful that selective repeat viewings will be inevitable.

And, oh, the nudity, the glorious nudity. One will see generous helpings of naked flesh from all the leading ladies and gentlemen, but after all is said and done, my biggest thrill came from seeing Danny Huston's trim body and healthy, dangling schwance and getting huge kicks out of Huston leeringly watching his wife fuck his business partner's son via a two-way mirror and jerking off. Of course, because Danny Huston always manages to sound like John Huston during his more vile spouting, I'd occasionally flashback to the old man himself as Noah Cross in Chinatown or the wonderful moment in Winter Kills when Huston appears in a golf cart with two gorgeous women and a blanket covering their legs and torsos and he asks: "You know what these here girls are doing under this blanket? They're playing with my nuts." Danny Huston has several great moments here to rival his old man and that is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Too much of Danny Huston (and we get plenty here) is never, ever too much, already!

Magic City from the Starz Network is available as a two season box set from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada. The transfer is stunning and the only real disappointment is an entire disc used up for what amounts to 15 uninspired minutes of promotional interviews. A few of the episodes would have benefitted greatly from some Mitch Glazer commentary tracks and given that the series had some stellar guest directors like Carl Franklin, Nick Gomez and Clark Johnson, commentaries from those three on their episodes would have rocked big-time. Feel free to order directly from the links below and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

RAQUEL: A MARKED WOMAN & FROM HOLLYWOOD TO NUREMBERG: JOHN FORD, SAMUEL FULLER, GEORGE STEVENS Toronto Jewish Film Festival 2014 (TJFF 2014) - Two Docs, Great Material, Mediocre Execution

Raquel Liberman
Forced Into Sex Slavery

Raquel: A Marked Woman (2013) **1/2
Dir. Gabriela Böhm

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's a great story here. At the turn of the 20th Century, a wave of Jewish immigrants settled in Argentina to begin a new life. Alas, the Old World has a way of following everybody. When Raquel Liberman and her two sons came to join her husband in the South American country, unexpected hard times weakened her husband to a point wherein he fell ill and eventually died of tuberculosis. Duped into accepting a seamstress job, she's coerced into prostitution by the powerful criminal organization Zvi Magdal.

She services so many clients that eventually she can buy her freedom and sets herself up as a successful business woman. The gangsters feel this will send a wrong signal, so they assign one of their own to seduce Raquel then marry her. The wooing is successful and under Argentinian law at the time, all her money and property is transferred to her husband who squanders it and sends her back to work in the brothels. Unwilling to accept that this will be her fate, Raquel does the unthinkable and takes on the mighty Jewish Mafia of Argentina. Her brave efforts smashed the criminal organization and she was single-handedly responsible for saving thousands of women from sexual slavery.

Is this not a great story? Of course it is, and it's a true story as well. Unfortunately, the film leaves a fair bit to be desired. It's a very conventional television-style documentary with a competent assemblage of archival footage and interviews. Dragging things down to even more conventional levels, the filmmaker foists a whack of cheesy dramatic recreations upon us that are also reminiscent of television doc tropes of the most egregious kind.

Perhaps someday, this will be made into a great feature length dramatic film by a director with some style and panache like Steven Spielberg or Darren Aronofsky and then Raquel's haunting, strangely uplifting story will get the royal treatment. In the meantime, we will have to make do with this by-the-numbers work that at least presents the material to make us aware of this tragic tale in the lives of Jewish women in South America and the bravery of one of them to not take it anymore.

Kudos are in order for bringing the tale to light, but that's about all one can recommend here.

Harrowing Footage from WWII

From Hollywood To Nuremberg: John Ford, Samuel Fuller, George Stevens (2012) **1/2
Dir: Christian Delage
Review By Greg Klymkiw

This should have been a great film, but it's far too compact to do little more than skim the surface. The film focuses upon the film unit of the American Armed Forces during World War II and their mission to capture footage of America's war effort. This resulted in several powerful Academy Award winning documentaries and important propaganda films in favour of America's war efforts. We get glimpses into the official work of directors John Ford and George Stevens and the unofficial work of infantryman Samuel Fuller who shot footage with a small movie camera as his unit, The Big Red One (also the title of his 1980 autobiographical war film), made their way from D-Day to the liberation of Nazi concentration camps.

There is an attempt to look at the filmmakers' output before and after the war to display how the carnage they shot changed the way they made movies in later years. This is, sadly, the least successful portion of the movie. A project of this scope and complexity deserved an exhaustive Ken Burns-styled documentary epic crossed with Scorsese's monumental filmmaking documentaries. The approach here, though, is cursory at best and goes so far as to virtually ignore the efforts of Frank Capra during this period when so many filmmakers turned their attention away from what they were doing in order to do this duty for their country.

Still, the film is worth seeing for explaining how and why this motion picture unit existed and most importantly, the haunting footage provided of battle, camp liberation and the aftermath of the war. Until such a time as someone does tackle this important story in a proper manner, this middle of the road effort will have to do.

Raquel: A Marked Woman and From Hollywood To Nuremberg: John Ford, Samuel Fuller, George Stevens are both playing at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival (TJFF 2014). For tickets, visit the festival website HERE.

THE GREAT FLOOD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - B/W footage of 1927 Mississippi River flood antidote to NOAH

The Great Flood (2012) ***1/2
Dir. Bill Morrison, Music: Bill Frisell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In the few years since the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, there is considerable merit to be found in Bill Morrison's poetic examination of the great 1927 flood along the mighty Mississippi River. From top to bottom, the river and its innumerable tributaries surged past breakwaters and covered the land with a force that must have felt like the legendary fairy tale flood Noah erected his Ark for. The Great Flood is no fairy tale, though and nor, thankfully, an overblown, unintentionally funny Biblical epic pretending not to be a Biblical epic. Morrison has painstakingly scoured the archives and retrieved a wealth of eerily beautiful, standard frame black and white footage of the flood and cut together this compelling history of a seldom paralleled destructive force.

The sheer magnitude of the flood is virtually unimaginable, but no more. In fact, the movie skillfully and artistically presents the power of such a disaster in a manner in which it symbolically represents all such disasters. We get a sense of the genuine scope of how overwhelming a force of nature can and will be. Yes, seeing such footage in bits and pieces is not without power, but the manner in which Morrison assembles his material is no mere middle of the road TV doc interspersed with gravely intoned narration and a parade of talking heads.

The movie - first and foremost - is an artistic rendering of this historical event using existing footage in a most unique fashion. The narrative arc, from beginning to end is very clear. We get a taste of the flood's scope and eventually, the film narrows in on life before the disaster, preparations for the flood, the devastation once it hits full force, the vast migration of a huge population - mostly of African Americans from the delta to points far north. However, there is no narration, no interviews, no spoken word of any kind - just the superbly wrought storytelling of silent footage, all scored by famed jazz guitarist and composer Bill Frisell.

There is, beyond the story of the flood itself, a subtextual tale of how the culture and music of the south was forced to physically migrate north and create movements and styles that were rooted in one place, but influenced and modified by others. Both the surface narrative and its subtext walk hand in hand beautifully and deliver yet another compelling argument as to how cinema itself is an art form like no other and is, indeed a great gift that both reflects upon our world and can, in fact, change it too.

My only annoying speed bump throughout the picture was Frisell's music. It's simply a matter of taste here. His clearly gifted ability to musically accompany the narrative is without question, but I personally did not always respond to his jazzy riffs and occasional dissonant tones and tempos. Given the subtext, I was often forced to recall feature docs like Philippe Mora's groundbreaking 1975 archival footage feature about the Great Depression, Brother Can You Spare a Dime?, which wrought its poetic tale using music from the period.

This is not to say I'd hoped Morrison would ape Mora's approach, but it would be remiss of me not to mention that at several points during The Great Flood that I'd be hearing early Mississippi Delta Blues and Chicago jazz styling from the 30s wafting in and out of my imagination, mingling, but mostly in collision with Frisell's music. I will say, though, that it was this very collision of an imaginary score drifting across my cerebellum and actual score emanating from the film's soundtrack that, in combination with the haunting images, did have me soaring in ways I'd wished could have happened throughout the picture (rather than the fits and starts I personally experienced).

This, of course, might be an unfair response, but it's one I genuinely felt while watching the film. However, in retrospect it is the very thing that makes me admire it. Go figure. Chances are good, this is what Morrison wanted exactly. If so, he delivered big time. If not, it's still a pretty cool movie and that's what ultimately really counts.

The Great Flood is currently playing theatrically at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto.

THE PUNK SYNDROME - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Finally Opens Toronto: SEE IT THEATRICALLY OR DIE, MO-FO!!!

Two fresh viewings of this phenomenal rock-doc have prompted me to reassess my star rating and boost it from **** to *****. The film is not only superbly crafted, but its subjects are hardcore punks who embrace the anger-charged musical form to create the most phenomenal insight into what it means to be mentally disabled and forced to live in a world of fluorescent lighting, rigid control, shitty food and seemingly random rules as prescribed within the cold, institutional world of their homes for life. This opens theatrically in Toronto at the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas via Kinosmith and it MUST be seen theatrically. Hopefully more cities will follow before it's released (hopefully) to Blu-Ray.

The Punk Syndrome (2012) *****
dir. Jukka Kärkkäinen & J-P Passi
Starring: Pertti Kurikka, Kari Aalto, Sami Helle, Toni Välitalo

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day" is, without question, one of the greatest punk bands of all time. They are the unforgettable subjects of The Punk Syndrome, a breathtaking feature documentary that declares: "I demand your immediate attention or you die, motherfucker!" I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I had never heard of the band before. Now, I'll never forget them! Neither will you. This quartet of hard-core, kick-ass, take-no-fucking-prisoners sons of bitches pull no musical punches. They slam you in the face with repeated roundhouses - turning your flesh into pulpy, coarsely-ground hamburger meat. In true punk spirit, they crap on hypocrisy, celebrate a shackle-free life and dare your pulse not to pound with maniacal abandon.

The band is, of course, from Finland. This is the great land of the brown bear, the Capercaillie grouse and the nearly-extinct, but damned-if-they'll-go-down-without-a-fight Saimaa Ringed Seal - a country with one of the largest land masses and smallest populations in Europe that spawned the great glam group Hanoi Rocks, the brilliant hockey player Veli-Pekka Ketola and one of the world's greatest filmmakers, Aki Kaurismäki.

And now, Finland can boast of generating one the world's great punk bands, "Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day". With Pertti Kurikka's grinding lead guitar, Kari Aalto's powerhouse vocals, Sami Helle's muscular bass and Toni Välitalo on drums (a veritable punk rock Gene Krupa), this tight unit commands audiences with a power that borders on mesmerism.

Their songs - many of them ripped straight from Kurikka's diaries - take aim at government corruption, mindless bureaucracy and pedicures. Yes, pedicures!

Early in the film, Pertti Kurikka explains:

Writing a diary is important to me. I can release my anger. It is especially helpful to have a bad day. I’ll write in my diary that Pertti is a shithead, that Pertti is an asshole and that Pertti is a faggot and a shit-goddamn-asshole. Pertti will be stabbed. Pertti will be punched in the face. Pertti will be strangled to death.

Not every song the band sings spews venom, though. Giving a concert in a public square, the jaws of old ladies hit the ground, while young party animals hoist their fists in the air as the band extols the considerable virtues of mundane, but pleasant activities with the following lyrics:

It was a Sunday
I went to church
I had coffee
I took a dump

Three kick-ass chords and four glorious lines and we're hooked.

The movie follows the band from practising to recording, from jamming to performing, relationships with family, friends, fans and women. There are the usual creative differences between the band - some serious, and others, a bit more tongue in cheek. At one point, Kari complains to Kurikka, "When you write riffs for songs, don’t write such difficult ones. Write easy ones."

One of the most powerful sequences in the film, one that enshrines the picture as one of the truly great rock documentaries, is when the band plays a gig at a club in Tampere. The performance is mind-blowing and the audience is electric. The band sings:
Decision-Makers lock people up
In closed rooms
But we don’t wanna be in those rooms
Nobody looks after us
Nobody comes to visit us
What’s going to happen
To us orphans in those rooms?
Decision-makers cheat
Cheaters make decisions
They don’t give a shit
About us disabled
Decision-makers cheat
Cheaters make decisions
They don’t give a shit
About us disabled
In the dressing room after a truly intense performance, the band is triumphant. A beaming Kurikka declares, "This is as good as it gets".

And WHAMMO!

A breathtaking cut to a shot worthy of Ulrich Seidl - one that captures a terrible beauty of the character-bereft building the band lives in, a blue sky and a magic hour sun.

And yes, this is a band that writes and performs songs from the pits of their respective guts, from experience - their unique experience in the world as mentally disabled men.

Brave, passionate and talented men.

And yes, mentally disabled.

And they are so cool.

How cool?

They record their first single on vinyl.

That's how cool!

Just like this movie!

"The Punk Syndrome" opens theatrically December 13, 2013 via Kinosmith at the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas. If there is any justice in the world, it will play theatrically in many more Canadian cities before it is released to Blu-Ray. It's a movie that demands an audience!

AFTERSHOCK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Blood-soaked Eli Roth-produced disaster thriller hits Blu-Ray via VVS

An American vacationing in Chile (Eli "The Bear Jew" Roth from Inglourious Basterds) and his two local pals hook up with some babes for a taste of the exotic sights and sounds of various tourist traps as well as the delights of inebriation, dancing and meeting a clutch of hot chicks. Danger rears its ugly head when our 30-something revellers become trapped in an underground nightclub during a massive earthquake. With several deadly aftershocks and constant tsunami warnings, they escape onto the surface, but with the potential for further natural disaster, they look for higher ground. Their goal, of course, involves making it through the perils of societal collapse, crazed looters and escaped convicts looking for babes to rape. With globs of proverbial shit hitting the fan, mankind proves to be the most deadly adversary of all.

A BABE IN PERIL!!!

Aftershock (2012) **1/2
Dir. Nicolás López
Starring: Eli Roth, Andrea Osvart, Ariel Levy, Nicolas Martinez, Lorenza Izzo, Natasha Yarovenko

Review By Greg Klymkiw

From their 70s heyday and up to the contemporary Roland Emmerich laugh-fests, disaster movies have been a staple of big screen entertainment at various points throughout film history. They are most definitely not without their pleasures. Lots of stars, big money and state of the art special effects pull out all the stops to allow us the visceral edification of safely, passively and vicariously participating in the mega-destruction of our fellow man. I have no real problem with this. Who, after all, doesn't enjoy watching people suffer and/or die?

THE SAME BABE IN PERIL!!!
I CAN LIVE WITH THAT.

Well, inexplicable as this might be to some, a good many don't. However, within the categorical context of the bonafide disaster genre (including the likes of Airport, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno), as opposed to genuinely harrowing dramas detailing the effects and/or after-effects of natural and/or man-made disasters such as A Night To Remember or Fearless - many, under the right circumstances do indeed drool over the prospect of watching (mostly) innocent people bite the bullet. God knows, even James Cameron's Titanic (wishing to be in the latter and loftier aforementioned category as opposed to the former) has us all rooting for the iceberg - impatiently waiting for mass death and, in particular, the death of Leo DiCaprio - his demise meaning we can listen to Celine Dion sing "My Heart Will Go On".

A BABE IN PERIL - Is she, perchance, the SAME
BABE IN PERIL? It sure seems that way!

The textbook approach to natural disaster in the former catefory forces us to get to know a whack of dull, stereotypical characters all played by stars and almost always unrelated to each other save for the fact that many of them will die. Aftershock, however, happily focuses on a small group of protagonists who we stick with like flies to shit. This is a blessing, but also a curse since all of the characters, save for one, are pretty dull, stupid and/or reprehensible. Like the cliches of the aforementioned, here we wait with baited breath to see how each one of these losers will die. Eli Roth, the director of such torture porn hits as Hostel, is not only the male lead, but the producer and co-screenwriter os the film. It's a pretty good idea for a disaster thriller. There's something creepily plausible about a stranger in a strange land facing a major natural disaster that then becomes even more terrifying when a nearby prison is shaken to its foundations by an earthquake and releases huge swaths of bloodthirsty hardened criminals amidst the societal breakdown already occurring.

Babe in Peril
Helps 2 Dumb Guys

Unfortunately, Roth does himself a disservice by penning a character with few reasons for us to care and his performance in infused with a smugness that keeps us even more distant from him. Though the movie clumsily attempts to infuse his character with humanity by continually bringing up his little girl, it just renders him even more a knob since we're wondering why he's needed to come so far to score some poon-tang after his wife's left him. His Chilean buddies are also no prizes and the female characters are little more than bubbleheads on the prowl for drinks, drugs and dick. Luckily, the script gives us a very tough and appealing character in the form of a single Mom who has all the instincts of a den mother and lots of smarts. That the actress who plays her is the supremely talented Andrea Osvart, a mega-babe the camera loves to death, is the film's primary cherry atop the ice cream sundae.

Of course, there's something vaguely offensive about this babe with maternal instincts and no real need to get dinked like the other damsels in distress that places her in the stereotypical position of all those 70s slasher movies where the "virgin" survives being carved up by the psychopath killers. Here, since she requires no schwance up her quim and no dope down her gullet is a sure sign she doesn't need to be raped and will be spared this indignity. In spite of this, she IS a damn fine heroine and Osvart more than once makes us wonder why she's not a bigger star than she is.

Director Nicolás López is to be commended, however, for keeping the latter half of the film moving in a classical tradition and his handling of the action and suspense here is first rate and Antonio Quercia's cinematography is lively, colourful and sans the horrendous herky-jerky so many action movies are afflicted with. It's too bad the screenplay by Guillermo Amoedo, López and Roth is so aimless and moronic during the film's first half and can't seem to get out of the these-sinners-will-get-there's mentality. It almost ruins everything else it does right which include taut action direction, a great female lead and some really spectacular visual and makeup effects that almost never make use of CGI.

"Aftershock" is available on Blu-Ray from VVS Films. It's a great transfer and it does have a few extras - though frankly the two making-of pieces feel like glorified EPKs and the commentary track with Roth and López is meandering and rather inconsequential.

FOUND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2013- A boy should LOVE his brother.

Marty (Gavin Brown) is 10-years-old and like most exceptional little boys, he has no real friends and gets mercilessly teased and picked on (even by the pudgy geek who deigns to spend time with him). Naturally, Marty seeks solace in horror movies, drawing comics and looking up to his big brother Steve (Ethan Philbeck). Lately his older sibling has been cold, distant and given to hiding things in a bowling ball bag that are anything but bowling balls. The lad hopes against hope that Steve isn't doing something he shouldn't. He wishes, ever-so desperately, that maybe, just maybe, life will get back to normal instead of starting to resemble all those VHS horror films he rents for movie marathons. Such is life, in the quiet, leafy suburbs of Bloomington, Indiana and it's about to get a whole lot stranger than it already is.

BLOOD is thicker than water!

Found (2012) ***
Dir. Scott Schirmer
Starring: Gavin Brown, Ethan Philbeck, Phyllis Munro
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Sometimes you see a movie, and no matter how much you enjoy it, no matter how good it is, no matter how much promise the filmmaker displays, you feel an overwhelming urge to draw a scalding hot bath and scrub yourself raw. Found is just such a film. By the end of it, I felt sullied. However, this was no garden variety horror experience, because for its first half, it felt like we were going to be in the somewhat surprising territory of - I don't know, say Rushmore, but with a serial killer instead of Bill Murray and thankfully no dweeb loser wearing a red beret.

Or maybe, for instance, it was going to have dapples of Stand By Me, but without Ben E. King crooning over picture postcard shots of those oh-so-sensitive lads of yore or, for that matter, To Kill a Mockingbird, sans, of course, Gregory Peck and a literary source as beloved as Harper Lee's great book. However, this film was shaping up to be a coming of age tale - albeit with a somewhat darker edge than the first two aforementioned titles and without the pedigree of the last title.

No matter where it was going to go, I never expected it would veer into territory that reminded me of the first time I ever saw the likes of Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or, for that matter, Alan Ormsby's scum-bucket-o-rama Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile.

This is not to say Found is even as good as those seminal works of horror either, but GODDAMN! there is a point in this movie where you're looking for a scrub brush in a way those same titles also inspired. This is no mean feat. Screenwriter-Director Scott Schirmer's film adaptation of Todd Rigney's novel, dives into a septic tank of a truly rank odour and retching-inspired viscous fluid that is as evocative of societal blight as it is stomach-churningly grotesque.

Found is a good movie and its total price tag was the princely sum of $8000. The almost non-existent budget is, however, (more often than not) betrayed by clearly unavoidable exigencies of production. Miraculously, this does not at all detract from its power.

Much of the acting is, save for Gavin Brown and Ethan Philbeck, strictly amateur hour. Some of the blocking is painfully sloppy. Occasional attempts to buttress the movie with elements that try, but miserably fail to feel like a bigger picture, all point - quite obviously - to a meagre production kitty. In spite of this, you can't take your eyes off the proceedings - Schirmer manages to pull off a picture that's genuinely compelling. He also accomplishes what ALL no-budget filmmakers need to do in order to stand out from the crowd of morons who think that, they too, have an inalienable right to make movies. He takes us to places that nobody in their right mind would want to ever visit.

Where the movie takes a turn for the truly demented is when our hero watches a horror movie on VHS that his older brother has stolen from the local video store. It is, appropriately, entitled Headless. Schirmer recreates some of the more sickening scenes from this video nasty and we're treated (so to speak) with a film within the film that gives us a pretty good idea of what Marty's older brother is up to.

And then, just transplant Mt. Vesuvius to Bloomington, Indiana and watch the fucker erupt. The last third of Schirmer's picture is jaw-droppingly relentless in its utter horror. Surprisingly, much of the really disgusting violence - some of it sexual - occurs offscreen and because of this, it's even more horrendous. The movie swirls like some mad twister, careening malevolently towards one of the most shocking, mind-searing shots I could never have imagined. Again - WOW! If you're going to make a movie for no money, you deliver something we are never, ever going to forget. To coin the title of Guy Maddin's shockingly insane and funny masterpiece, you give your audience a Brand Upon The Brain.

Schirmer clearly has a voice and his film suggests the potential he's yet to tap to its fullest power.

When he does, I can assure you, it's going to be a gusher.

"Found" was an official selection at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2013.

THE DARK MATTER OF LOVE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013 - Sub-Par Adoption Doc is Strictly Dr. Phil

The Dark Matter of Love (2012) *
Dir. Sarah McCarthy

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I will admit upfront I had a slightly personal bias here that kept me from responding to this tale of love and bonding between three Russian orphans (among the last to be allowed adoptive parents from outside Russia) and their new Apple Pie American family. Having spent a considerable amount of time in Ukraine’s orphanages, I remember meeting a variety of potential parents from all over the world and while this might betray my own prejudices with respect to America, I’ll always remember feeling an overwhelming sense of pity for the Ukrainian children destined for America rather than France, Italy, UK, Switzerland, Germany and, of course, Canada.

For me, it all boiled down to values - the seemingly gluttonous consumerist “free-market” American variety, as opposed to a highly cultured, literate and far more liberal approach to the world. Again, this was merely a personal observation during a pre-9/11 time frame, but as I watched The Dark Matter of Love within it’s contemporary post-9/11 context, it was a weirdly prophetic viewing experience.

Seeing these Russian kids flung into an America that had spun the world into a major financial crisis and various wars since those more “innocent” times, an America that seemingly learned nothing from the chaos created by its political and corporate leaders and worst of all, that sense of gaudy consumerism I recognized so many years ago coming to life on-screen before my very eyes - all conspired to make me wonder what that movie would have been like to see instead of this one - which, sadly, is not very good.

It is ultimately supposed to be a story about three kids who have lived in the hell of Russia’s orphanages (perhaps even more grotesque than the Ukrainian institutions) and who need love, even want love, but have never experienced love. How do you give love to a child that doesn’t know what love is?

Well, it’s not rocket science - with great difficulty and patience.

The American family in question are clearly fine and generous people with plenty of love to give. One can even understand when we see their frustration at not getting love back, or the jealousy experienced by their biological daughter over all the attention given over to the Russian kids and the overall turmoil the building of this new family unit results in. This is potentially harrowing stuff, but is frankly undermined by the application of certain psychological principles that are rooted in the film’s title - that love is a matter of science and in extreme situations such as this, one must turn to medical professionals.

From a strictly moral standpoint, I had problems swallowing this - for my liking it’s all too typically Dr. Phil (the famous reality TV talk-show shrink who presents a hugely rated barrage of suffering Americans and offers all manner of platitudinous pop-psychology to ease the pain). Worse yet, the film emphasizes the gobbledegook of a duo of scientists and trains its camera on them as they watch footage of the family trying to cope - spewing their babble as if they were bloody sports commentators and that the emotional gymnastics of the family was a particularly strenuous football match.

The film never really allows us an opportunity to experience what could have been a very moving document - children who have never known love and their relationship with a family that knows love all too well and wants to give it. There is, or was, a great movie in here and it could have been one of several movies far more engaging and vital than this one proved to be.

"Dark Matter of Love" is in the TIFF DOCS series at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. Visit the TIFF website HERE.