HORIZON - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Revelatory Gudni Doc *****TIFF 2015 TOP PICK*****

Horizon (2015)
Dir. Bergur Bernburg, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson
Starring: Georg Gudni, Viggo Mortensen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

With his painterly eye for humanity and landscape, it seems fitting that Iceland's very own John Ford, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson (Children of Nature, Cold Fever, Devil's Island) has co-directed Horizon, a revelatory documentary portrait of the late, great painter Georg Gudni. Like Ford's beloved Monument Valley, Iceland's landscape has provided a stunning backdrop for Fridriksson's extraordinary canon and I can think of no better filmmaker to bring cinematic mastery to the subject of his old friend Georg Gudni.

Working with what feels like a lifetime's worth of footage of Gudni at work and in interviews, all shot by co-director Bergur Bernburg in collaboration with journalist Bill Rathje, Fridriksson has fashioned an indelible portrait of an artist who singlehandedly brought respectability back to landscape painting - a form often derided by Western art critics and practitioners in recent decades.

Gudni, however, saw something else in the landscapes around him - he was, after all, living in the land of the Askja calderas amidst the mighty, roiling volcanoes of the Dyngjufjöll mountains - an environment so topographically barren (though heartbreakingly beautiful) that it served as a training ground for the Apollo astronauts prior to their moon missions. Iceland is, in spite of its mountainous terrain, a land where the horizon seems infinite and Gudni's eye viewed layers upon layers of ever-so subtle shifts in both land and air.

If Heaven was on Earth, Gudni's remarkable paintings captured it again and again.

The superb footage of Gudni is expertly woven with interviews from a variety of artists, critics and academic historians, but perhaps most fascinating are the sequences with actor Viggo Mortensen, a dear friend, patron and publisher of Gudni's work. All these other voices lend support to Gudni's own words and actions, but Mortensen's observations might be the most moving and passionate of them all.

The other valuable element of Horizon is the jaw-droppingly stunning cinematography which matches the locations and even perspectives of Gudni's art. With the eye of a painter, Fridriksson and his collaborators take us into territory where the landscapes, the horizon, the remarkable light of Iceland weaves its magic before of our very eyes and melds into Gudni's paintings with the flow, force and fiery beauty of lava itself.

Yes, John Ford had Monument Valley, but Gudni and Fridriksson have Iceland - the backdrop of dreamers, poets and visual artists of all stripes - and thankfully, we have this film to make us all familiar with the work of one of the great artists of all time, to capture his genius and beauty forever.

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

Horizon receives its World Premiere in the TIFF Docs program at TIFF 2015. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

CEMETERY OF SLENDOUR - Review By Greg Klymkiw *****TIFF 2015 TOP PICK*****

Cemetery of Splendour (2015)
Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Starring: Jenjira Pongpas Widner, Banlop Lomnoi, Jarinpattra Rueangram,
Sujittraporn Wongsrikeaw, Bhattaratorn Senkgraigul, Richard Abramson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A seemingly incurable sleeping sickness overtakes several Thai soldiers. Unresponsive to the usual treatments, they're dumped in a makeshift hospital in the northeastern provinces to receive what care can be dispensed. Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas Widner), a crippled volunteer nursing assistant, spends endless hours and days tending to the needs of Itt (Banlop Lomnoi); giving massages, repositioning his body, applying wet cloths and even talking to him as if he was completely alert.

And then, he wakes up.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendour is compulsively fascinating, dazzlingly beautiful and deeply moving. Much of the film pulsates in a neo-realist tradition; the cast and locations always feel like the real thing. Equally astonishing are the spiritual moments, rooted in a reality that's never beyond the natural order of the film's mise-en-scene, and the natural order of the world as it should be. Weerasethakul's film is an ode to life, love, death and understanding in a world where change, more often than not, has a devastating impact upon the inner peace, spirituality and environment of a place, people and ghosts. Yes, ghosts!

Writer-director Weerasethakul dapples the film with odd bits of his trademark humour and delightful perversities (a la previous works like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) which meld with the film's more cerebral and elegiac qualities. At times, it's a visual feast (especially the haunting coloured light treatments used upon the sleeping soldiers at night).

Most notable is the character of Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), a psychic who can read the thoughts and dreams of the men. She's the lynch-pin of the film's formal trinity of central characters and is indeed responsible for taking us into the deep, often impenetrable places of the heart, making them literal and as such, all the more real. It's a magic we believe in wholeheartedly.

Cemetery of Splendour resonates the way great art should. It is an exquisitely wrought tapestry that allows us to step inside it and then, soar. This, of course, is what also makes for great cinema!

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

Cemetery of Splendour is in the TIFF Masters program at TIFF 2015. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

OUR LITTLE SISTER + MUSTANG - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - Mongrel Media's Must-See Sister Act - The Film Corner's Handy-Dandy *****TIFF 2015 TOP PICKS***** continue.

MONGREL MEDIA'S MUST-SEE SISTER ACT AT TIFF 2015

Our Little Sister (above)
Mustang (below)

Our Little Sister (2015)
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
Starring: Haruka Ayase, Masami Nagasawa, Kaho, Suzu Hirose

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When three sisters attend the funeral of their long-estranged father, they meet his daughter from a second marriage, the little sister they never met. They welcome her with open arms and she decides to live with them. For the first time in her life, she feels what it means to have family you can love and count on.

As far as I'm concerned, director Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Nobody Knows, Still Walking, Like Father Like Son) has no equals in contemporary Japanese Cinema. He seems to be the one true and genuine successor to the legacy of Yasujiro (Tokyo Story) Ozu, the master of the groundbreaking tatami shots, long takes, figures moving in and out of frame, a stately pace allowing for deep contemplation of the dramas unfolding, a deep sense of humanity, a love for the properties of melodrama and an unflagging commitment to examining the intricacies of family. To a certain extent, the aforementioned Ozu grocery list of unbeatable properties seems not dissimilar to the work of Kore-eda.

Kore-eda, however, differs on two fronts. He downplays sentiment almost to the extent of eschewing it completely, but then, when you least expect it, he's not afraid of using melodrama sparingly as a legitimate storytelling tool (usually with a wallop to the solar plexus). Secondly, though Kore-eda is also primarily interested in the dynamics of family, he adds his own special thematic element, dealing heartbreakingly with the theme and dramatic action of abandonment.

Our Little Sister has got "abandonment" almost literally spilling out of its ears and he allows us to be privy to three, then four sisters filling various voids in their hearts with the love they have for each other. At times it feels like nothing much is really happening, but "it" most certainly is - in tiny, delicate and subtle ways. Kore-eda allows us time to luxuriate in each sister's unique qualities and how they play off each other.

He slowly builds to a handful of scenes during the final stretch of the picture that inspire overwhelming emotions in the hearts of its audiences. I bawled like a baby and still can't shake or forget its uplifts which are never machine-tooled, but burst forth naturally from within his film's very big heart.

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

Our Little Sister plays in the TIFF Masters program during TIFF 2015. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

Mustang (2014)
Dir. Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Starring: Gunes Sensoy, Dogba Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu,
Elit Iscan, Ilayda Akdogan, Ayberk Pekcan, Nihal Koldas

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The events depicted in Mustang are so horrific and harrowing, it's sometimes more unbearable to experience an equal number of story beats infused with fun, love, kindness, pleasurable abandon and humour since they're such powerful juxtapositions to the tragedy of the situation presented.

In a small Turkish coastal town on the Black Sea, a repressed, deeply traditional busybody neighbour spies five orphan sisters having fun on the last day of school. The innocent actions are deemed obscene. Their grandmother and stern uncle hit the roof and what should have been a glorious summer vacation turns into a living nightmare. They're immediately locked in the house, stripped of all items which could be considered immoral, informed that their education has come to an end and thrown into a rigorous indoctrination to be loyal, subservient wives. Parades of potential suitors are brought in to inspect their "wares" and the goal is to have all the girls, ranging from 12 to 16, married off by the end of summer.

The youngest sister proves to be the craftiest and most rebellious. She masterminds a brief escape for the girls to watch a soccer match, but the happiness is short lived when they're eventually caught in the act by their guardians. At this point, all bets are off. The home is then transformed into a literal prison replete with iron bars on all the windows, extra locks, barbed wire atop the walls surrounding the house and an intensified chaperoned courting/match-making process. In addition to the threat of physical and even sexual abuse, the girls are treated like so much chattel instead of individuals with minds of their own.

The first two-thirds of Mustang is so superbly directed and acted, it's a shame the screenplay takes a fairly conventional turn in its final act. What transpires comes close to negating the power of the rest of the film. Though some will find the denouement inspiring in all the right ways, it ultimately contradicts the reality of the girls' lives and offers up hope where none, in reality, would ever exist.

During one of the final set-pieces, first-time feature filmmaker Ergüven directs the proceedings with the urgent, nerve-jangling skill of a master. The suspense is virtually unbearable, but it's almost rendered moot when the yellow-brick-road to happiness rears its ugly head. Of course we want the girls to escape, but deep down we know a happy end to their short lives of freedom must surely be an impossibility. When these tables turn, it's not so much a cause for celebration, but a lament for honesty.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Mustang is a TIFF 2015 Special Presentation. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

THE WAITING ROOM - Review by Greg Klymkiw - Yugo Noir: *****TIFF 2015 TOP PICK*****

The Waiting Room (2015)
Dir. Igor Drljača
Starring: Jasmin Geljo, Zeljko Kecojevic

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Even when a war is 20-years-ago and thousands of miles away, it sears its ugly imprint upon your soul forever. It's even worse if you've been forced to abandon all you know and love for a new country with few prospects for immigrants and refugees.

Jasmin (Jasmin Geljo, a tough, pug-faced Buster Keaton) knows this all too well. The popular actor and playwright fled the violent dismantlement of the former Yugoslavia and settled in Toronto. Estranged from his first wife, he still finds time to visit her in the terminal cancer ward, alternating the death-watch with his youthful adult daughter. Married to a much younger woman, with whom he's sired two children, Jasmin grows increasingly distant from her.

Eking out a living as a construction labourer whilst endlessly auditioning for stereotypical television roles requiring Eastern European gangster "types", he dreams of recapturing former glories (of the thespian kind) by returning to Sarajevo to mount the hilariously bawdy theatrical comedy he's been performing for Toronto's Yugoslavian community.

War, however, forces dreams to either die hard or at best, reside in a kind of purgatory. His attempts to move forward seem to create an ever-increasing stasis. Taking part in the filmed portion of a political avant-garde art installation about the turbulent events two decades earlier is what finally ignites memories of the war he's tried so hard to closet. One repression usually leads to another and Jasmin's purgatory intensifies.

Writer-director Igor Drljača has taken several astonishing leaps forward from his dazzling 2012 debut feature Krivina.

This sophomore effort is even more richly layered, but on this occasion, he's splashed the movie with healthy sprinklings of (mostly sardonic) humour amidst the angst. What consumes us, though, is Drljača's rich mise-en-scène - gorgeously composed still-life shots, the drab, grey Toronto juxtaposed with a fake backdrop of the gorgeous Yugoslavian countryside. The pace is miraculously measured and calculated; so much so that the picture's guaranteed to mesmerize.

Like his first feature, Drljača has crafted a devastating film about war with nary a single shot fired from a gun, nor a single bomb exploded. The echoes, explosions and shots heard round the world are burrowed in the film's devastating silence and the pain etched into the faces of those suffering strangers in a strange land are like silent screams ever-reminding us of the true casualties of war - those who live a living death.

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

The Waiting Room plays at TIFF 2015 in the Contemporary World Cinema program. For dates, times and tix, visit the festival's website HERE.

HURT - Review capsule by Greg Klymkiw - Fonyo Noir *****TIFF 2015 TOP PICK*****

HURT (2015)
Dir. Alan Zweig

Starring: Steve Fonyo, Gabor Maté

Review Capsule By Greg Klymkiw

During the 80s, 18-year-old Steve Fonyo ran 8000 km across Canada with a prosthetic leg. Raising $14 million for cancer research, he received the Order of Canada. After suffering three decades from abject poverty and various addictions within the dark underbelly of the criminal class, this Canadian Hero was transformed into a pariah by pencil-pushers in the nation’s capitol and turfed from the country’s highest recognition.

HURT has its masterpiece status guaranteed.

Charting one year in Fonyo’s life, Alan Zweig pulls off a miracle. This stunning documentary is as narratively searing and artistically compelling as the grim and gritty 70s cinematic forays into crime, punishment and atonement, not unlike Scorsese’s Raging Bull and Yates’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

The very process of filmmaking and Zweig’s intervention as both artist and humanitarian offers the promise of healing and redemption. The picture cold-cocks you as frequently as it wrenches tears.

A FILM CORNER TIFF 2015 MUST-SEE!

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

HURT receives its World Premiere in Platform, TIFF's all-new and highly exclusive new programme comprised of up to 12 films of high artistic merit that demonstrate a strong directorial vision by significant international filmmakers. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF 2015 website HERE.

BROOKLYN - Review By Greg Klymkiw *****TIFF 2015 MUST-NOT-SEE*****

As you can see, impish colleen immigrants
do not require hands to provide good service
in the better department stores of Brooklyn.

Brooklyn (2015)
Dir. John Crowley
Scr. Nick Hornby
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen,
Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters, Jessie Paré

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Save for the pleasing cast of babes (Saoirse Ronan, Jessie Paré) and hunks (Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson) providing ample scenery (in addition to the general period production design) and a couple of old Brit stalwarts (Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters) ham-boning to the hilt, about the best I can say about Brooklyn is that my Mother (God rest her soul) would have enjoyed it thoroughly. She was, however, uh, like, old.

The aforementioned are what the film has going for it. I was less inclined to favour the alternately sad and jaunty Irish folk music elements of the syrupy score, the dull, style-bereft miniseries camera-jockey direction and a screenplay playing out like a muted soap opera with about as much conflict as having to choose twixt Aunt Jemima pancakes and Rice Crispies at breakfast time.

Gorgeous Saoirse Ronan, with the help of her big sister and Jim Broadbent's Father Flanagan-like priest, leaves behind the lack of opportunities in Ireland and hits the big boat for the wide-open shores of America. The good Father sets her up in a lovely boarding house for young ladies run by an endlessly quipping Julie Walters, then he gets her a good job in a nice department store where she's mentored by the STUNNINGLY gorgeous Jessica Paré and, Faith and Begorrah, our jovial, benevolent man of the cloth pays for her tuition at business college.

Sounds like being a gorgeous Irish immigrant of the female persuasion is a good deal. Oh sure, you have to go to endless dances to land a prospective husband and quite often, you get homesick for Ireland, but truth be told, it's a cakewalk. Hell, Saoirse even falls in love with a mouth-wateringly handsome Italian stud-muffin (Emory Cohen) in Brooklyn and upon visiting her old Irish home, she meets a yummy prim and proper rich boy (Domhnall Gleeson).

And here you have it, ladies and gents, the only conflict in the whole movie.

Must be nice.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2-Stars

Brooklyn is a TIFF 2015 Special Presentation. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Environmental Activism THRILLS!

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

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Preamble: A few things about Robert (Bob) Hunter that contribute, for me personally, to his legendary perch in Canadian history.

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

Robert (Bob) Hunter was many things. Mostly, I just always thought he was cool. And well, you'd kind of have to be that to have accomplished so much in so short a time (he died of cancer at age 63).

As a dyed-in-the-wool Winnipegger, I especially thought it was cool, given Robert Hunter's deep concern for Canada's Aboriginal people, that he was born in the City of St. Boniface which eventually amalgamated with all the wonky neighbourhood city-states along the Red, Assiniboine and Seine Rivers of Manitoba to become - you guessed it, Winnipeg.

All this rich land, which not only became the city we all know and hate/love (plus all points north-south-east-and-west) historically belonged to the Metis Nation, but was torn from their possession by the Canadian Government's land transfer scrip system which was virtually useless except to rich white guys who knew how to push it through the complicated bureaucracy to actually cash it in. The vast majority of uprooted Metis were starving, so they sold their scrip to the rich white guys, for pennies on the dollar.

Even more interesting to me was that Hunter's birthplace in St. Boniface ended up being the one community which contributed the most to Manitoba becoming (even now) Canada's largest French-speaking region outside of Quebec. Why? Many of the displaced Metis were also targets for violence because of the 1870 Louis Riel wars against the corrupt rich white guys of Winnipeg and the eastern power-brokers who held a vicelike grip upon the government of Canada. This resulted in a huge number of Metis forcing their Native heritage underground and bringing their French heritage to the fore and living in - you guessed it, St. Boniface.

His tenure as a columnist at the Winnipeg Tribune and Vancouver Sun was before my time. I didn't even become aware of him as a journalist until I moved to Toronto in the early 90s and began watching CITY-TV (when it actually had a real personality thanks to its eventually-departed head Moses Znaimer). Here, I began to enjoy the amazingly cool, almost Hunter S. Thompson-like "environmental reporter and commentator. I was soon compelled to begin reading his books wherein I discovered that he was Bob Hunter, the heart, soul and public face of the environmental group Greenpeace.

This, for me, was virtually cooler-than-cool and when he passed away in 2005, I was genuinely saddened that we'd lost him. Thankfully, this film now exists. It's not a biographical documentary of Robert (Bob) Hunter, but in many ways, it might as well be.



And now, the Film Review proper:

There were many things about Hunter I didn't know after all these years and I'm grateful to director Jerry Rothwell for his almost-epic-like motion picture documentary How To Change The World which presents a side of this great Canadian that was not only fresh to my already-admiring eyes, but kind of jettisons Hunter into some supreme inter-stellar glowing orb of coolness.

Rothwell poured over hundreds of 16mm rolls of film that had been canned and unopened since the 1970s. Seeing, pretty much before his very eyes, the visual history of the Greenpeace organization, Rothwell consulted with Hunter's colleagues, foes, conducting fresh interviews with all of them, blending the result of Herculean research and expertly selected and edited footage from the Greenpeace Archives. (The fact that Hunter was so brilliantly media-savvy pretty much accounts for this wealth of material even existing.)

What we get is the story of a respected counter-culture columnist who aligns himself with a motley assortment of friends and colleagues (most of them of the 60s/70s "hippie" persuasion) to head out on a boat in an attempt to stop nuclear testing on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean and then, with the same bunch, to go tearing after Russian sailors butchering whales up and down the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The campaigns continued and somewhere along the way, the movement of Greenpeace was formed.

With both the existing archival footage and the new interviews, Rothwell has painted an indelible portrait - not only of the key events in the movement, but the individuals themselves - as disparate a cast of characters you could ever imagine. What makes them cool is how different they are as people, but as such, they each bring individual qualities to the movement that had a symbiotic relationship - for a time. As is the won't of anything or anyone growing beyond initial beginnings, egos as well as legitimate desires/directions begin to rear their ugly heads and minor cracks in the "vessel" become tectonic plates, yielding high-Richter-scale fractures.

In addition to the dazzling filmmaking, I was swept away onto the high seas and weed-clouded back rooms of Greenpeace thanks to the perfectly selected and abundant readings of Bob Hunter's exceptional reads. Embodying Hunter is the magnificent character actor Barry Pepper who delivers us the man's words with the kind of emotion which goes so far beyond "narration". Pepper captures the soul of Hunter impeccably. It's a brilliant performance. (If anyone does a biopic of Hunter, Pepper is the MAN!!!

The first two-thirds of the movie is compulsive viewing. The first third, focusing upon seafaring derring-do is nail-bitingly thrilling. With Bob Hunter at the helm of some totally crazy-ass dangerous antics - like some mad, dope-smoking, Sterling-Hayden lookalike - Rothwell creates a veritable action picture on the high seas with an obsessive Captain Ahab targeting not whales, but the hunters of whales. (So much of the film is charged with a great selection of period hit songs and a gorgeous original score by Lesley Barber also.)

Who'd have thought environmental activism could be as thrilling as Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin "Master and Commander" adventures? The middle section begins focusing on the leaks in the organizational battleship that became Greenpeace. Mixing in more derring-do with internal conflicts is easily as thrilling as the intrigue-elements of O'Brian's high-seas swashbucklers.

The final third of the film tends to fall by the wayside a touch. It's not Rothwell's doing, as that of - gasp - real life. There's a great deal of sadness and acrimony in this section of the film and part of me wishes that life didn't throw the kind of curve-balls that surprise your favourite batter at the plate into striking out. This is ultimately a minor quibble though, in light of the sheer force, power and entertainment value of the picture. What epics don't suffer from a sag or three? At least this one eventually builds to a note of well deserved and earned high notes and the movie finally packs a major one-two emotional punch. When this happens, tears might well be flowing amongst many and the lapses of real life will be fleeting, especially when you exit the cinema feeling, "Goddamn! That was one HELL of a good show!"

The Film Corner Rating: **** Four Stars

How To Change The World is a Kinosmith Release that place across Canada at the following venues:

August 7
Toronto - Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
Montreal – Cinema du Parc
Vancouver – Vancity

August 14
Waterloo – Princess

August 21
Cobourg – The Loft

August 28
Ottawa – The Bytowne

October 1
Regina – RPL Film Theatre

October 16
Barrie Film Festival

With more cities to follow.

SOUTHPAW - Review By Meraj Dhir - The Film Corner's Ghee Time Scribe Craps on Fuqua

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's GHEE-TIME again as Klymkiw is too shagged to write and the Film Corner's trusty Ghee-Time Columnist, Harvard PhD candidate Meraj Dhir steps in to take a solid crap upon Antoine Fuqua's by-the-numbers boring melodrama SOUTHPAW.

Click image just above to get
more info on MERAJ DHIR

Southpaw (2015)
Dir. Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker,
Rachel McAdams, Victor Ortiz
Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson

Guest Review
By Meraj Dhir
The Film Corner's
Ghee Time Columnist

If you've seen the trailer for Southpaw, there's no reason to see the intolerably dull film. The trailer deftly encapsulates what otherwise takes 124 lugubrious minutes to slog through. However, if you're amenable to gazing at Jake Gyllenhaal's chiseled torso, Curtis "Fifty Cent" Jackson's ivory white veneers and Forest Whitaker spewing out a veritable geyser of scene-chomping dialogue, all amidst plenty of predictable boxing melodrama with dashes of crime sprinkled on, then please help yourself.

Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer, Training Day) is one of the most reliably boring paint-by-numbers directors working in major motion pictures today, but he cant be solely blamed for this dross since the screenplay, penned by Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy) resembles a computer-engineered piece of software (the softer elements of said ware residing mostly between Sutter's ears) to generate a generic fight picture.

Bursting with the force of a hamster in a microwave oven, all the necessary by-rote fucking-up, redemption and rehabilitation plot points, shoehorned into all the "proper" places, results in a movie we've seen many times before. Though it will please anyone who buys into the generic rules belched out by screenwriting gurus like Robert McKee, the rest of us (unless we're as brain dead as this movie's filmmakers) can snore through every second of this film.

Here's a handy checklist of the events of the film.

I bet you haven't seen any of this before:

Fighter loses everything because he is a fuck-up.

The losses include the death of his wife to the bullet of a thug and custody of his daughter (because on both counts he's a fuck-up of the highest order and brings tragedy upon himself).

He requires one last fight to make his comeback.

In order to achieve this, our hero must accept humility and control his anger in and out of the ring. Cue rousing training montage a la any Rocky film (take your pick - all or one).

Crawl to a dull climactic fighting match with plenty of in and out of the ring editing and bargain basement Raging Bull camera pyrotechnics a la Raging Bull. This might be enough to keep one's attention, but bothering to do so instead of nodding off will merely hammer home the fact that the movie has been solely crafted to offer Jake Gyllenhaal a decent Oscar Nomination and/or free training to get into the best physical condition of his life.

There are movies, like Gavin O'Connor's Warrior and David O. Russell's The Fighter, which push the genre forward, but Southpaw does little more than vaguely hold one's attention until one realizes it's doing little more than fulfilling the aforementioned checklist.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Southpaw is a Weinstein Company release through eOne.

IRRATIONAL MAN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Woody Allen pulls one out of the drawer.

Irrational Man (2015)
Dir. Woody Allen
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey, Jamie Blackley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Once again Woody Allen dusts off a script from his drawer of un-produced projects (at least this is how it seems of late) and, surprise-surprise, delivers another old-man-boinking-younger-babe trifle. I have no problem with this.

Bring it on, Wood-Man, bring it on.

Irrational Man creepily and amusingly lurks about territory Allen's already explored in Crimes and Misdemeanours and Match Point, nowhere in the realm of the former, but certainly a lot more enjoyable than the latter. He slices and dices more than a few bits o' Hitchcock to bolster his derivative stew, most notably Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt, both homages adding bulk to the Konigsberg cauldron. Even more happily, he plunges his characters amidst the backdrop of academia which allows for a fair share of heady verbal volleys.

Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) joins the Philosophy Department of a dozy Rhode Island university just in time for summer session. Grumpy, morose and sucking back booze from a flask, Abe carries a dubious reputation on his shoulders, but this isn't enough to stop babe-o-licious student Jill (Emma Stone) from falling head over heels in love with him. Abe abandons his comely, horny married lover (Parker Posey) for some fresh-tastic quim d' Emma Stone who, in turn, abandons her fiancé Roy (Jamie Blackley) to partake of some schwance de Joaquin.

When Abe gets wind of a nefarious plot to destroy an innocent woman's life via legal means, he becomes obsessed with murdering the man responsible. He believes he's planned the perfect crime, but upon carrying it out, he didn't quite reckon on his bouncy undergrad sniffing him out. With Jill going all Teresa Wright on him, Abe comes to the only "logical" conclusion. He's killed once, so why not kill again? He is, after all, a philosopher of the highest order and can pretty much justify any heinous actions he chooses to commit - at least to himself.

Amusingly enough, movie buffs will not only see Stone's character transform into "Charlie" Newton, but Allen gives us a trip to the fairgrounds a la Strangers on a Train and a funny Shadow of a Doubt-like murder-most-foul guessing game. Yeah, this is geek stuff all the way, but I accept it wholeheartedly.

Though the laughs are few and far between, those that come, come heartily and darkly. Allen never takes us as deep as he did in Crimes and Misdemeanours, but one senses that this isn't foremost on his mind, anyway. If anything, he's chosen to root homicide in a playground and as such, he delivers a strange, but sprightly 96 minutes of mildly perverse fun.

Amidst all the roller coaster rides of summer, I'm delighted enough to gobble down some Woody Allen, even if it's a bit more lower drawer than one might have hoped for. His least-inspired makes the best of most look like crap.

The Film Corner Rating: *** 3-Stars

Irrational Man is a Mongrel Media release of a Sony Pictures Classics film.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Not since DePalma…...

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)
Dir. Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner,
Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Simon McBurney, Jens Hultén

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I've got to hand it to producer Tom Cruise with this latest instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise. His savvy overseeing has delivered several key elements which manage to place Ethan Hunt well atop James Bond in the international super-spy sweepstakes.

Most importantly, by handing the directorial reins to Christopher McQuarrie (director of the solidly entertaining Jack Reacher and screenwriter of the superb Valkyrie), Cruise has nailed things down very nicely with this fine decision; Rogue Nation is easily the best-directed MI picture since Brian DePalma's dazzling inaugural entry in the series during the summer of 1996. McQuarrie (save, perhaps for DePalma himself) manages (like those "Ukraine girls" in The Beatles' "Back in the USSR") to knock you out and leave the "West"/rest behind, including John Woo's humourlessly overwrought MI:II, J.J. Abrams' non-directed MI:III and Brad Bird's close, but no cigar Ghost Protocol.

McQuarrie handles virtually every action set piece with the skill and bravura of a master. DePalma is sorely missed in one sequence involving multiple assassination attempts during an opera, not because McQuarrie handles it badly, but because one can only imagine how much better DePalma might have helmed it. Aside from this, though, McQuarrie's mise-en-scene is clean, kinetic and sprinkled with dashes of humour. In fact, Rogue Nation features a two-part car/motorcycle chase which had me twisting about in my seat like one of Lars Von Trier's spastics in The Idiots. I daresay that it might well be a contender for one of the ten best chases ever committed to film.

The plot in these roller coaster extravaganzas usually takes a back-seat to the pyrotechnics, but thankfully this one is simpler and easier to follow than most. Here, Ethan and his team raise the ire of CIA bureaucrat Alec Baldwin and he immediately disbands Ethan's team. Our plucky hero realizes how close he is to nailing a dangerous criminal mastermind, so, with stalwart assistance from regulars Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Jeremy Renner, he goes rogue to take the scum down. That's it. End of story, really, and a fine coat hanger with which to drape one mega-thrilling action scene on top of another.

The added bonus here is one kick-ass babe played by Rebecca Ferguson. Aside from being mouth-wateringly gorgeous, she handles herself nicely in all manner of fisticuffs and, like all women, looks especially sexy brandishing firearms.

All the elements here are familiar, but McQuarrie's helmsmanship is seldom less than dazzling. If the Bond producers don't watch out as they keep hiring ham-fisted, tin-eyed losers like Marc Forster and Sam Mendes to keep ruining and wasting Daniel Craig in the horrendously dull and dour 007 films, MI is poised to be the go-to spy franchise.

NOTE: If you get a chance to see MI:RN in IMAX, please do so. I sat front row centre and enjoyed several instances of delightful upchucking.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-a-half Stars

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is a Paramount Pictures release.

BIKES VS. CARS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Fredrik Gertten Doc Opens July 31

THIS JUST IN:

BIKES vs CARS

opens theatrically in Toronto via Kinosmith

on July 31, 2015 at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema (506 Bloor St. W.)

with other Canadian cities to follow.

Bike Valet will be provided by "CYCLE TORONTO"

for the opening weekend screenings.

Your Valet Stub will get you DISCOUNTS for yummy treats
@ THE BLOOR CINEMA concession stand, but you
MUST RIDE YOUR BIKE TO THE SCREENING!

Director Fredrik Gertten will be in attendance

in Toronto for the first weekend to do Q+A’s

following each and every showing.

AND NOW, HERE'S WHY YOU CAN'T MISS THIS TERRIFIC MOVIE:

Bikes vs Cars (2015)
Dir. Fredrik Gertten
Starring: Rob (Crack Smoking Ex-Mayor of Toronto) Ford, Denzil (Former Rob Ford Apologist and Toronto Deputy Mayor) Minnan-Wong, Aline Cavalcante, Dan Koeppel, Ivan Naurholm, Raquel Rolnik, Nicolas Habib, Don Ward, Don Ward, Joel Ewanick, Joshua Dysart, Christina Deckwirth, Liliana Godoy, Fabio Mendonça

Review By Greg Klymkiw

We are on the brink of worldwide environmental collapse. One of the biggest culprits in this deadly folly is the power held by the transportation and energy interests which have been plunging the Earth ever-deeper into an apocalypse we might never recover from. Filmmaker Fredrik Gerrten tackled the inhumanity of the Dole Corporation and its use of poisonous chemicals in the production of fruit with his powerful films Bananas!* and Big Boys Gone Bananas!*. Now, Gertten is back with Bikes vs Cars, a terrific new picture infused with his unique, super-charged, aesthetically dazzling cinematic style of activist cinema, providing a fascinating Around the World in 80 Days eye-opener into just how people get around in some of the biggest cities on God's Green Earth.

Personally, I'm an inveterate driver of cars. So much so, that when I lived in Winnipeg, I lived across the street from a supermarket and prided myself, not on walking to gather my groceries, but, in fact, driving my car across the street to stock up on my soda pop, potato chips, cookies, frozen pizza, toilet paper and plastic Glad garbage bags. In fact, though my apartment had an in-suite laundry and dryer, I shoved all my dirty clothes into the aforementioned Glad garbage bags and drove, from the extreme sound end of the city to the north end of the city for my Mother to do my laundry for me (until my mid-30s). When she was done her maternal duties, I'd make the long trek - by car, naturally, to pick up my Downy-fresh clothing.

I have to admit that anytime I see a movie or television program with pro-bicycle losers whining about cars and how evil they are, I want to punch them in the face. That said, Bikes vs Cars is a Fredrik Gertten film and as he's not the typical documentarian, but a REAL FILMMAKER, I did indeed have to gird my loins and grit my teeth and watch it.

And yes, I'm glad I did. It's not only great filmmaking, but it did indeed provide the kind of alternate viewpoint that was far from didactic. Not once did I feel like I was being clobbered on my noggin with a bag of fucking granola wielded by some granny-glasses-adorned, pony-tailed, bearded, sandal-wearing hippie who dared refer to me as "Man."

You see, I have not been on a bicycle for 40 years. I have to admit, though, that I loved this film so much that the next time director Gertten visits Toronto I might try to interview him as we take a bicycle ride through the streets of the city once ruled by the crack-smoking Mayor Rob Ford who fought mightily during his term of office in what he perceived to be a "War Against Cars". (Maybe we will even take a bicycle ride together to Rob Ford's house in Etobicoke and, of course, the infamous crack house where he sucked back the elixir that led to his troubles.)

Oh, uh, Rob Ford is in the movie, but frankly, Gertten introduces us to a lot more interesting people than that. (Though in fairness, Ford delivers plenty of outrageous redneck comedy relief.)

Focusing primarily on the cities of Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, Toronto and Copenhagen we meet a variety of cyclists, car drivers and everyone in between. We learn about various individuals and their love of cycling as a viable mode of transport, but we also experience, first-hand, exactly how their very lives are at stake on their bikes.

Gertten captures some unbelievably terrifying footage as insane car and truck drivers madly careen through the streets, narrowly missing cyclists, cutting them off, forcing them into near-deadly situations. These sequences are so harrowing, I must admit to even biting my nails to the quick for the filmmakers being out there on the mean streets to capture this footage.

Contrasting this, though, are clearly sequences where Gertten manages to capture the sheer joy and beauty of what these cyclists experience as well. Night rides on empty streets, group rides where the sheer amount of riders create safety in numbers, children utilizing cycling as part of their curricula and, strangely enough, we even experience the adrenalin rush of cyclists blasting through the most congested streets.

Of course, no documentary is without the facts and figures and Gertten does not shy away from presenting these, but never are they strictly informational, but are woven expertly into the fabric of his narrative.

He also provides so many moments that are heartbreaking - memorials and memorial services to fallen cyclists, ghost bikes of deceased riders, affixed to posts with clutches of flowers clinging to them, urban headstones and monuments to the dead.

One of the coolest sequences is when Gertten follows a cyclist through a neighbourhood in Los Angeles and we discover the ghost-town-like remains of a massive bike transport system which once allowed 25% of the city's population bike to and from their places of employment.

Contrasting all the urban nightmares where cars outnumber bikes, Gertten follows the daily adventures of a cab driver in Copenhagen. I have to admit, even as an inveterate automobile advocate, that it was pretty funny watching this poor schlub try to make his way through the sea of cyclists and admit. more than once, that he's a man with several tons of metal in his grasp, yet he is ultimately bereft of any real power on the streets.

As this is a Fredrik Gertten film, I'd be mightily disappointed if he didn't expose us to the sad and terrible truth of the matter behind the transport industry. I suppose I could have guessed this if I bothered to think about it at all, but Gertten provides us with the historical and contemporary secrets behind the corporate lobby of car manufacturers and the oil companies. Their money and power are responsible for blatantly squelching every form of alternative transport to the point where people believe that cars are the only way.

Bikes vs Cars is yet another terrific celluloid feather in Gertten cap of cinema. I especially love how the film is structured, paced and cut. He leads you in ever-so slowly and subtly and it doesn't take long before you're hooked on the narrative threads of his subjects and the overriding subject of them all - the conflict between bikes and cars. The movie stealthily and brilliantly draws you in, but as the film progresses, his canny approach is to catch you so off guard that before you know it your sucked into a compelling tale.

The movie, and by extension, Gertten's entire mise-en-scene and editorial structure, sneak up on you. Once he and the film have you in their clutches, there's very little to do but wend your way freely through the picture, perched very comfortably on what feels like a bicycle built for two.

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

Bikes vs Cars opens July 31, 2015 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto via Kinosmith.

My interview with Fredrik Gertten and review of BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!* HERE

My article on the crowd funding for BIKES vs CARS HERE

THE DEMOLISHER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Strange Canuck Vigilante Thriller unveiled at 2015 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in Montreal

The Demolisher (2015)
Dir. Gabriel Carrer
Starring: Ry Barrett, Tianna Nori, Jessica Vano

Review By Greg Klymkiw

After policewoman Samantha (Tianna Nori) suffers a near-fatal attack (after attempting to rescue a baby in the midst of a devil worship ceremony, no less), she's crippled for life and forced to haul about in a wheelchair. Her angry hubby Bruce (Ry Barrett), a cable repair technician goes completely bunyip. (Where have we heard about el-sicko cable guys before?) Night after night, he dons mega-protective armour, a creepy helmet with a stylish visor and armed with a nice selection of weaponry, he stalks the late-night streets looking for scumbags - any scumbags - that he can take down and send straight to Hell.

Seems reasonable enough, yes?

Eventually, however, it becomes obvious that Bruce is no longer bunyip for mere revenge, he's just plain bunyip and desires to kill, period. After getting a taste of murder pure and simple (an enjoyable murder as it's perfectly justified), he targets Marie (Jessica Vano), an innocent young jogger who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thus begins a terrifying night for her as she's stalked by a madman bent upon snuffing her lights out.

Okay, so The Demolisher is clearly one of the strangest, most perverse vigilante movies I've seen in quite some time, possibly ever to be honest. Audiences looking for carnage will get more than their fair share, but I suspect that the only killing they'll enjoy in any sort of traditional Death Wish or Walking Tall manner is the one horrific murder of someone who is not a criminal (though like I said earlier, the fuckwad clearly deserves it).

Audiences will also be surprised and possibly delighted with the clear thought that's gone into the screenplay in terms of examining a diseased mind under pressure. There are clearly and deliberately paced moments within the oddball domestic set-up which proceed with very little dialogue and mostly some extremely effective looks and silences. This is probably a good thing since some of the dialogue proves a bit clunky in these moments, the lion's share of clunkiness wafting out of poor Samantha's mouth and occasionally affecting Tianna Nori's otherwise good work.

There's also one ludicrous scene where crippled Samantha manages to crawl into the bathtub with her brooding hubby. In theory, I'm all there. In practise, not so much. If you're going to have a babe join her hubby in the tubby, why the fuck would she be wearing her goddamn nightie? I can understand not getting a nice glimpse of dick, though I'd have been most appreciative of the view myself, but seriously, to not have the hot cripple doff her garments for a loll-about in the tub is tantamount to B-Movie heresy. (And frankly, seeing anyone in a bathtub with clothes on is just plain dumb.)

My fetishes aside, Ry Barrett is effectively stalwart and brooding throughout and what can be said about Jessica Vano other than her fine performance? Well, uh, she's, like, a babe, and we get to see her running around in fear for half the movie. Vano's hot running around rivals that of Penelope Ann Miller tear-assing about in The Relic. That takes some doing. Seriously, hot chicks running around in terror is a blessing, not a curse. Ain't nothing sexier than that. But enough of my fetishes.

I loved the look of this movie. It's just plain ugly for much of its running time, but intentionally so. The lighting and compositions expertly capture both the seediness of its locations as well as the cold, impersonal, almost dank qualities of the interiors. The score by Glen Nicholls is especially dynamite, evoking an eerie blend of 80s funk-drone and just plain effective thriller cues.

And there is a definite 80s feel to the picture (for some, this is better, for others, it'll be worse), but I found the entire tone of the movie fascinating. Once again we have a Canadian genre film with its own distinct indigenous style. Yes, it's clearly inspired by an American tradition of such pictures, but its narrative, look and pace are Canadian in all the best ways - proving again that having a diametrically opposed north of the 49th parallel aesthetic allows for a wholly unique take on genre cinema.

Director Gabriel Carrer might have pulled off the near impossible here by creating a film that shares aesthetic DNA twixt the sad ennui of Atom Egoyan's best work and famed 80s schlockmeister James (The Exterminator) Glickenhaus. It's a film that revels in its exploitative roots whilst examining them also, but without being moralistic. Only in Canada, you say? That's a good thing!

That said, if a movie is going to have some devil worship involving a baby as a sacrifice, could it not at least have the good taste to show the little nipper being hacked open? But, enough of my fetishes.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

The Demolisher enjoys its World Premiere at the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal. For dates, times and tix, visit the festival website HERE. The Demolisher is represented world wide by the visionary Canadian genre specialists Raven Banner.

WE ARE STILL HERE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Creepily Effective Old-Fashioned Haunted House Thriller at the 2015 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in Montreal

We Are Still Here (2015)
Dir. Ted Geoghegan
Starring: Barbara Crampton,
Andrew Sensenig, Larry Fessenden, Lisa Marie, Monte Markham

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's always room for a solid "things that go bump in the night" haunted house picture, so long as the proceedings are handled with proficiency and a minimum degree of stupidity. Ted Geoghan's first feature film We Are Still Here succeeds on both counts.

Yes, we've been down this road before. The Sacchettis are an attractive, well-to-do couple still grieving from the accidental death of their only son. They've chosen flight from familiar surroundings to heal and move into a gorgeous, old house in the wide open spaces of Inbred-ville, New England. Situated on a gorgeous estate, isolated, but not too far away from a nearby village (full of inbreds), the couple appear to have nailed the real estate find of the century.

Uh-oh.

We all know that when an old, long-unoccupied house in the middle of nowhere goes for a steal, there's bound to be some ectoplasmic shenanigans going on. Luckily, we are not the Sacchettis. We are the audience. We know better, which is always a good deal for us, yes?

Anne (played by the always-delectable Barbara Crampton of Re-Animator fame) feels her son's spirit is still with them and that he's followed them to their new digs. Paul (Andrew Sensenig), being the lowly male of the equation is far more practical about such matters, but he sensitively humours her and agrees to a visit from their longtime spiritualist friends. May (played by the gorgeous Lisa Marie of Vampira fame in Ed Wood and unceremoniously booted by director Tim Burton in favour of the ratty-mopped Helena Bonham Carter) is psychic. Her hubby Jacob (the always wonderful character actor and Habit director Larry Fessenden, looking more like Jack Nicholson in The Shining with every picture) is a dope-smoking old hippie with new-agey powers in crystals and seances.

It's always convenient when bereaved couples know spiritualist couples. It makes horror movies so much more lively, yes?

Of course, what would a New England community of inbreds be without a couple of real whoppers of inbreds? Creepy old neighbour Dave McCabe (Monte Markham) and his nutty wife Maddie (Susan Gibney) pop by for a friendly visit wherein we get all the dope on the Sacchettis' new home.

It's an old funeral parlour, situated on unhallowed ground and formerly run by a family who pilfered bodies and sold them to a nearby medical college. Or so we're told.

Yes, it's always convenient when bereaved couples move into old funeral parlours on unhallowed ground formerly run by inbreds who sold bodies to be sliced and diced by med students. It's even more convenient that the inbreds might actually have been innocent of this crime and murdered by the inbred townspeople.

Are you with me? Good. This is what our impish filmmaker has laid out for the mega-scares to follow. Though screenwriter Geoghegan doesn't really go beyond the stock tropes of most ghostly melodramas, Geoghegan the director does go through some mighty impressive gymnastics of helmsmanship to knock us on our collective butts all the way through this effective chiller.

Babe-O-Licious Barbara Crampton as HOT now
as she was in 1985's RE-ANIMATOR. Hubba-Hubba!

The real star of the film is Canadian cinematographer Karim Hussain who superbly handles Geoghegan's morbidly creepy mise-en-scene with considerable aplomb. The camera feels like a character unto itself - its gorgeous compositions and lighting make us feel like something genuinely unholy is actively observing the proceedings whilst occasionally making us feel like we're seeing stuff that may or may not be there. Hussain moves the camera so deftly and subtly that we're often chilled to the bone - not just by the gorgeously captured winter climes surrounding the house, but by the manner in which it glides and/or settles upon the dank details of the house and especially, the basement. The chilling musical score and alternately shivery, heart-attack-inducing sound design are also brilliantly rendered, giving us ample creeps and shocks.

Especially in the basement.

Oh yes! 'Tis always convenient for a haunted house to have a clammy basement with a boiler on the fritz causing temperatures to rise and a strange wall that supposedly has nothing behind it.

Then, there are the ghastly apparitions and, the blood.

They are plenty ghastly.

And yes, there is plenty of blood. (And thanks to a lovely Straw Dogs-inspired climax, the picture racks up a very impressive body count.)

All that said, if you're looking for a bit more meat on the bones of the bereaved couple horror scenario, you're not going to find it here. There's potential to have steered the film into the complex, layered territory of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, but Geoghegan seems content to keep us in the shock-o-rama territory of his more clear influence, the grand Italian shock-meister Lucio (The Beyond, The House by the Cemetery) Fulci.

I accept this.

The movie forced me to soil myself on numerous occasions. Luckily, I've learned long ago to always wear adult diapers for my sojourns into the cinematic territory of haunted house thrillers. Thankfully, this one is up there with those pictures keen on skilfully delivering all the visceral thrills and chills which, ultimately, are the hallmark for all fine horror pictures.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

We Are Still Here from Dark Sky and Raven Banner enjoyed its Canadian Premiere at the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal. For further info, visit the fest's website HERE.

BITE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Zesty Cinematic Steam Table Buffet o' Babes & Viscous Discharge Premieres @ the 2015 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in Montreal.

Bite (2014)
Dir. Chad Archibald
Scr. Jayme Laforest
Starring: Elma Begovic,
Annette Wozniak, Denise Yuen, Jordan Gray, Lawrene Denkers

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Director Chad Archibald finally delivers the picture I suspected he had in him to serve up. After his competently-directed The Drownsman, which mostly suffered from a dreadful script and ludicrous premise, he moved on to co-direct the brilliant science fiction thriller Ejecta. Now he's back behind the camera all on his lonesome, with a terrific cast, stunning special effects and most importantly, a cool premise from his original story which has made for a solid screenplay written by Jayme Laforest.

It's safe to say that Bite claims its rightful (and deserved) position amongst the thrilling explosion of original Canadian horror films taking the world by storm. This enchantingly vile, sick and grotesque B-movie melange, resides in a magical place twixt the hot-babe-going-bunyip antics of Roman Polanski's Repulsion and David Cronenberg's body-decimation gymnastics from The Fly.

Almost needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, Bite is gloriously replete with truck-loads of pus, vomit, gooey sores, icky vaginal discharge and plenty o' viscous ooze (much of it resembling caviar and glass eyes swimming oh-so succulently in deliquescent pools of upchuck) - all of which has been designed to tantalize genre geeks the world over.

Oh, and of course, the movie has plenty of babes in it. Alas, they're never nekkid, but at least we see 'em in bikinis and underwear. (These are tender mercies, but we'll take what we can get.) Nudity or no nudity, this is one solid horror picture.

It's ultimately rooted in good writing which Bite is nicely blessed with. Good movies will almost always have a nice simple narrative to allow for all manner of layering and shading to adorn it and I'm delighted to report that much of what leaps from the page allows Archibald as a director to gussy things up as much as he likes with all manner of perverse touches.

The film opens by telling its twisted tale via home movie footage. This briefly gave me a sinking feeling, but as the subjects were babes who also delivered good performances and uttered some decent dialogue in a relatively realistic setting, I perked myself up and decided to settle in despite my feelings of, "Oh Christ, not another found footage horror film." Cleverly, this stuff doesn't last too long and is, in fact, a stylish manner in which to begin the story which eventually slams into full-on classical visual storytelling mode. (The footage is used later to only move the story forward in realistic contexts to which I was also grateful for.)

Casey (Elma Begovic, a striking exotic beauty with talent to burn) is about to get married. She and her girlfriends Jill (Denise Wozniak) and Kirsten (Denise Yuen) head to a vacation resort paradise carved out of the jungles of an otherwise foul Central American Third World Hell-Hole. It is here where two nasty things happen to our heroine.

Firstly, she gets herself juiced-up and Rohip-nolled by a handsome scumbag who takes her out onto the beach, delivers a solid ploughing to her limp body, steals all her stuff (including her engagement ring) and leaves our lithe lassie lying alone on the sand, dazed and confused.

Secondly, she and her lady friends veer off the beaten track for some fun and frolic. Uh, gals, this is a loathsome Third World jungle; shouldn't you hang back at the resort? Well, if they did, there might not be a movie (or any horror movie for that matter). When our comely damsels take a dip in a jungle watering hole, our already-beleagured heroine gets a painful bite by some unseen bug (or pond creature) in the murky slough they go splashing about in.

Upon returning to Canada, Casey begins to suffer some mighty perplexing and disturbing symptoms. In addition to developing a very heightened sense of hearing, a nasty rash and almost perpetual nausea, the bite on her thigh starts to fester into weird mini-cauliflowered-skin-tag-like globules full of pus.

Adding insult to injury, she discovers she's pregnant.

At this point, the likelihood of her spawning something truly horrific is pretty much going to be a given and slowly, but surely (and disgustingly) she begins to . . . shall we say, transform.

As a creepily painful biological decimation roils within her, she ironically begins to see clearly how so many things in her life are not as peachy-keen as they once seemed. Her friends appear well-meaning to a fault, almost callous. One of them even has designs upon her fiancé.

(Now, if you want, I can get a tad egg-headed here and say there's plenty of noggin-stimulating thematic stuff to chew on - you know, a woman experiences painful physical transformation to yield terrible truths about herself and the world around her, but I'll leave this to all the Women's Studies PhD candidates in the audience to flesh out.)

Speaking of terrible truths, Jared (Jordan Grey), Casey's hubby-to-be, is a self-absorbed knob and Mama's Boy who complains that his night of nookie is coming to an abrupt end after they've attempted to boink and he grabs a fistful of pus from the festering bite on her thigh and she runs to the can in order to woof her guts out.

As for Jared's Mama (Lawrene Denkers in an especially creepy performance), this is one foul, nasty, over-protective harridan. Not only does she question Casey's suitability as a wife to her precious sonny-boy, but does so with all manner of grotesquely over-the-top viciousness that gives Piper Laurie in Carrie a nice run for her money.

Folks, this movie's not about to get pleasant - ever!

Will things take a turn for the worst?

Will murder be on the menu?

Uh, ya think?

And whatever you do, try not eat anything before seeing this movie. Oh, and as a courtesy to the cinema management, consider bringing a receptacle along in case you need to join Casey's vomit party and eject your own manner of bilious globs of puke.

Because you know, it's that kind of movie.

Bon appétit!!!

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

Bite enjoys its World Premiere at the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal. For tix, times and venues, visit the Fest's website HERE.