ANT-MAN, JURASSIC WORLD, SAN ANDREAS - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - MySummer of 75 versus My Summer of 2015: What a Difference 40 Yearsmakes! Ant-Man also opening night gala at 2015 FANTASIA INTERNATIONALFILM FESTIVAL in Montreal

What a difference 40 years makes! My Summer of Love in 1975 was replete, as per usual, with going to the movies every single day. My three favourite films that summer also happened to be big box-office hits. JAWS, of course, made history with its humungously wide release (the largest of its kind back in those days) and lineups round the block for every show, for every day. The picture itself was a roller coaster ride (and then some), but it also had a plot, characters, great performances and a morbid sense of humour. LOVE AND DEATH filled smaller specialty houses that summer in all major cities. Woody Allen's hilarious take on Ingmar Bergman and Russian Literature had me rolling in the aisles. Then, of course, the horrifying eye-opener MANDINGO by Richard Fleischer, the movie set against the backdrop of a pre-Civil-War slave-breeding plantation and so brutal and ahead of its time that even now it makes the dull Oscar bait 12 Years a Slave look like a Sunday Picnic. Not only was Mandingo huge (lineups round the block), but it was aimed squarely at - GOD FORBID - adults.

In fact, all three pictures had far wider appeal than any blockbusters released this summer, the sad summer of 2015. Taking inflation into account, 1975's summer pictures had far more bums in seats in far fewer cinemas for longer periods of time than anything supposedly breaking box-office records this summer. Watching my three favourite blockbusters this year (Ant-Man, Jurassic World, San Andreas), all pleasantly entertaining, all very competent, but generally safe for anyone's consumption has proven to be especially disappointing. (I don't really include Mad Max: Fury Road in this list as it's a real movie and far more in keeping with pictures released during my 75 Summer o' Love.) These three films with their superhero, dino and earthquake shenanigans, are ultimately missing the kind of personal voices of filmmakers like Spielberg, Allen and Fleischer. The "Safety" factor with these films (and most movies out of the studios today) is borderline sickening. I can assure you, "Safety" was never an issue in the 70s. The more dangerous the pictures, the better - even those in the mainstream.

Ant-Man (2015)
Dir. Peyton Reed
Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lily, Michael Peña

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is yet another Marvel Comics Superhero extravaganza, not as awful as the others and relatively inoffensive. In this one, ne'er do well Daddy (Paul Rudd) gets out of the hoosegow and hooks up with old buddy (Michael Peña, as the de rigueur Spanish-American sidekick comedy relief) and agrees to pull a cat burglar job to get enough dough to win his daughter back from his ex-wife. Another ne'er do well Dad (Michael Douglas), an old scientist who abandoned his daughter when his wife died and allowed his assistant to take over his corporation is worried sick that his secret experiments will be discovered and used for nefarious purposes. The two Daddies team up to fight the power and a new superhero is born.

The movie is amiable enough, not without some laughs, a nice light leading man turn by Rudd and Michael Douglas is allowed a few sprightly moments. The direction of the action scenes is better than most of these things, but not once is there a moment where we feel the slightest hint of danger in the proceedings and the picture's denouement is as predictable as ingesting a Big Mac. There's certainly nothing genuinely dark, nasty or cynical in the film which, of course, is always the problem with these things and it's certainly lacking the magnificently manic Looney Tunes hi-jinx Sam Raimi brought to the Spider-Man franchise before the recent and utterly negligible reboots (and it is most certainly bereft of Zack Snyder's breathless visual aplomb and his hilarious destruction of humanity via collateral damage in Man of Steel).

Finally, like all recent superhero pictures, the predictability factor reaches a point where the whole movie starts to become dull and exhausting (though less so than the awful Avengers/Captain America/non-Raimi Spiderman efforts). If anything, Ant-Man comes a bit closer to the first Iron Man and the first hour of Thor, but is lacking those film's occasionally cynical sense of humour.

Safety and competence are the order of the day. Ho-hum.

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

Jurassic World (2015)
Dir. Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic franchise is interesting on a number of fronts. The first film in the series featured astonishing special effects - so real and tangible that today's reliance upon digital magic seems fake and ugly. Oddly, Spielberg eschewed the grim, grotesque, ultra-violent nastiness of Michael Crichton's novel and he delivered a movie that safely played to anyone and everyone. It was no Jaws. Kids were not eaten, the dinosaurs weren't especially cruel in their torture/decimation of their victims and there was nary a real character amongst the entire all-star cast. How one missed the likes of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. The Lost World took a lot of heat from critics and audiences for its derivative nature, but frankly, it was an improvement over the dullish Jurassic Park, featuring plenty of feeding frenzies which were closer to the nastiness inherent in the Crichton books and though lacking the genuine edge of Jaws, was still plenty vicious.

There's no viciousness in Jurassic World, save for the fun supporting performance of Vincent D'Onofrio as the park's crazed militaristic director of security. Here director Colin Trevorrow jockeys the camera with relative efficiency as this reboot of the franchise has the park up and running successfully. We get a pleasing leading man by way of the raptor expert and dinosaur trainer (Guardian of the Galaxy's Chris Pratt) and though there are plenty of children to die miserable deaths in the jaws of the romping Dinos, no such kiddie buffets occur.

All we get is the plodding predictability of the new hybrid of dinosaur escaping and Chris Pratt rescuing two fucking kids who deserve to die.

Seriously, who wants to see a movie with Dinosaurs where no children get torn to shreds (a la Jaws or even Joe Dante's hilarious Jaws rip-off Piranha)? If there are going to be bloodthirsty dinosaurs we want to see as many innocent children (and adults) being eaten and crushed as possible.

No such luck, though. We're living in kinder, gentler times where the new generations of movie viewers are the progeny of wimps.

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

San Andreas (2015)
Dir. Brad Peyton
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Giamatti

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When the San Andreas fault genuinely wreaks some real havoc, the level of death and destruction is going to be so massive and vicious that I was hoping to see some delightful over-the-top (and, of course, hilarious) carnage in this contemporary disaster film. Given that the picture is directed by the crazed Edward-Gorey-Tim-Burton-influenced Canadian Brad Peyton, I had every reason to suspect the kind of nasty, funny dollops of humour he infused Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island with.

No such luck here. Peyton handles all the derring-do of helicopter rescue man Dwayne Johnson with expert efficiency and effortlessly juggles the melodramatic sub-plot of our hero re-connecting with estranged wife Carla Gugino and rescuing his daughter Alexandra Daddario from certain doom. Yes, we get to see mega-destruction of property, but frankly, the movie is lacking the kind of super-delightful up-close-and-personal deaths of live humans which, of course, one demands from a disaster movie.

A year earlier than my aforementioned Summer of Movie Love, the huge 1974 summer blockbuster was Mark Robson's magnificent Earthquake which not only had lots of gruesome deaths and on-screen body counts, but also featured a 59-year-old Lorne Greene playing 52-year-old Ava Gardner's father and Charlton Heston playing her 50-year-old husband. This insane casting allowed us plenty of time to do the math twixt the carnage and realize that Lorne Greene was about 7-years-old when his wife gave birth to Ava Gardner.

Herein is my disappointment. Peyton's first two Hollywood efforts were chock-full of personal touches and his unique voice that he established in his legendary short film Evelyn The Cutest Evil Dead Girl and What It's Like Being Alone, his madcap Canadian comedy series (all rendered in stop-motion animation) and set in an orphanage full of FREAKS!!! Yes, FREAKS!!!

So here he's doing a disaster movie and I was definitely expecting carnage and insanity to rival that of Earthquake since Peyton is a clear lover of all the right retro stuff. But no, nothing of the sort. Just "The Rock" stalwartly rescuing his goddamn daughter.

Where, pray tell, was the equivalent to the delectably offensive running gag of an alcoholic played by Walter Matthau, giddily surviving the disaster whilst belting back booze as everything crumbled around him? Why, do we see "The Rock" using his steely resolve and expert training to rescue people? Couldn't Peyton have found it in his heart to include a moment a la Earthquake where Lorne Greene ties a hysterical woman to a chair, then lowers her to safety with - I kid you not - PANTYHOSE!!!??? And horror of all horrors - was it not possible to create a role for the legendary George Kennedy (who not only starred in Earthquake, but has the distinction of having starred in all four Airport movies)? Hell, even though Kennedy's 90-years-old and might not have been up to a major role in San Andreas, surely there was an obvious choice here. Given the ridiculously huge amount of CGI in San Andreas, was it not possible to render s digital version of George Kennedy to be "The Rock's" cigar-chomping sidekick?

Ah, the disappointment. The shame. Peyton was the one director with the genuine potential to drag us through the 70s muck of blockbusters from 40-years-ago and instead we get a safe, efficient disaster movie instead.

Whatever is this world coming to?

THE FILM CORNER RATING **½ Two-and-a-half Stars

Full disclosure: Brad Peyton was a student of mine at the Canadian Film Centre. Not long after he was snatched up by Hollywood in 2009, Peyton revealed the following in the National Post:

"[Peyton] credits director in residence John Paizs and producer in residence Greg Klymkiw with being particularly helpful. "I went in with a very distinct idea of what I wanted to do," he says, "and they were supportive of my creative risks. I was handed the strange stuff because I was considered the weirdo in residence."

He laughs, "I was doing Coen brothers homages to Gone With the Wind on a $500 budget in a small room . . . they embraced what I wanted to do and supported me wholly as a creative person." Peyton further paid homage to his old mentor by creating a character for his TV series called "Greg Klymkiw" (an actual stop-motion doll resembling me in every detail, although representing my circus freak days when I was 300 lbs. heavier than I currently am) who shows up as an expert on all things cinema-related to render advice during a filmmaking competition within the orphanage of freaks.

Ah, surely you understand my pain.

Especially the George Kennedy thing.

All three films are in mega-wide-release worldwide. Ant-Man enjoys its premiere as an Opening Night Gala at the 2015 FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in Montreal. For Times, Tix and Dates Visit the festival website HERE.

LIZA THE FOX-FAIRY (Liza a Rókatündér) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - NIFF 2015 MUST-SEE Wacko Winner from Hungary gets Canadian Premiere during the legendary Bill Marshall's 2nd Annual Niagara Integrated Film Festival in Southern Ontario Wine Country

Liza The Fox-Fairy aka Liza a Rókatündér (2015)
Dir. Károly Ujj Mészáros
Starring: Mónika Balsai, Szabolcs Fazekas, David Sakurai

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Watching Liza The Fox-Fairy, I felt like I had died and sailed up to Heaven. It's also proof-positive how great publicists genuinely understand the writers they work with. I didn't even bother including this title on my list of films I'd requested to screen in advance of the 2015 Niagara Integrated Film Festival and the gentle words of the veteran flack handling NIFF's press relations, "I think you might want to see this one, too," led me to this terrific motion picture (at first, wearily, in spite of not ever really being led astray by said flack's almost placid urging), which not only appealed to my taste, but did so with the kind of artistry and imagination I continually long for in the movies.

This magnificently mordant fantasy is also a deeply black comedy, an utterly insane musical and perhaps one of the most unexpectedly sweet and melancholy love stories I've seen in quite some time. That it also blends an old-style Eastern European sense of realism, an occasional use of a fluorescent-dappled post-modernist visual palette and that this Budapest-back-dropped ode to ghostly apparitions, murder and Japanese culture oddly joins a splendid cinematic coterie that includes Canada's brilliant Winnipeg-infused, Hungarian-heritaged John (Crime Wave) Paizs and the Colorado=spawned Zellner (Kumiko The Treasure Hunter) Brothers (with dashes of Otto Preminger's Laura), all yielding globs of rich icing on this delicious cake of celluloid dreaming.

Liza (Mónika Balsai) has toiled for twelve long years as a personal slave/caretaker to a morbidly obese old lady in Hungary who once lived with her deceased husband, a consular official, in Japan. She not only teaches Liza Japanese in their endless days, weeks, months and aeons together, but insists her jane-of-all-trades endlessly spin tunes by the old gal's favourite Nippon pop star Tomy Tani (David Sakurai). Frumpy Liza, having never known true love, magically becomes the recipient of numerous visitations by the ghost of Tomy who croons and converses endlessly with her. Some might call him an imaginary friend, but he is, ultimately, an all-too-real a presence in Liza's life.

On Liza's 30th birthday, everything changes. Whilst enjoying a celebratory greasy burger and fries at the grim Hungarian fast food eatery, MEKK BURGER, the old lady dies and in her will, leaves the loyal, dowdy au pair her apartment and a small amount of money. Liza immediately becomes a beacon for male suitors. Alas, one-by-one, the men begin to die "accidentally" in Liza's presence. Though each death is clearly accidental, the Budapest Homicide Department smells something fishy and assigns Detective Zoltán Zászlós (Szabolcs Fazekas) to stakeout her comings and goings.

Zoltán slowly falls for Liza in a big way, even though men are dropping like flies around her. Melancholy Liza, who transforms herself into a Cosmopolitan Magazine babe, feels like she's become the reincarnated Japanese "Fox-Lady" whom, a legend has it, could never know true love as all men who courted her died horrible deaths. As Liza's apartment becomes insanely plastered with crime scene tape body outlines, the jealous ghost of Tomy appears to be the real culprit.

He loves Liza and wants her all to himself.

For eternity.

What's a girl to do?

To find out, head down to St. Catharines and surrounding environs to see Liza The Fox-Fairy at the Niagara Integrated Film Festival. Who knows when you'll have a chance to see this thoroughly delightful picture on a big screen with an audience.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Liza The Fox-Fairy enjoys its Canadian Premiere at NIFF 2015. For info, dates and tickets, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Now's My Time to Weigh-in on This

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Dir. George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron,
Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's no need at this point to make much of the perfectly-wrought slender plot of George Miller's spectacular ode to the glories of cinema via its wham-bam ultra-violence, save for the fact that Tom Hardy's Max Rockatansky, the immortal road warrior of the three movies starring Mel Gibson, hooks up with the hot, head-shaved, one-armed Imperator Furiosa (the hot, head-shaved, not-really-one-armed Charlize Theron) to make her way back to the paradise of her childhood homeland whilst rescuing a clutch of gorgeous babes held as breeders by the post-apocalyptic mutants who've carved out a massive kingdom of slavery and brutal repression.

The most interesting aspect of the tale is that our hero is initially captured by the mutants, forced to become a perpetual blood donor and then secured to the front of warrior Nux's (Nicholas Hoult) car as a "blood bag" (to explode in a shower of crimson if and when the roadster slams into something). For at least 30 of the film's 120 minutes, its hero is forced to wear a mask and trussed into complete immobility. He does, however, have a perfect view of the mad chase and carnage that ensues, happily giving us, the loyal audience, more than a few delectable points of view.

Then for another 30 of the film's 120 minutes, Max plays second fiddle to Furiosa until the final 60 of 120 minutes whereupon he's finally able to fully engage in the heroics Mel Gibson was allowed to indulge in during Mad Max and The Road Warrior.

The first hour of the film contains some of the most stunning, nail-biting chase sequences ever committed to the edification of action fans since the very dawn of cinema as well as imagery in the mutant kingdom which is so eye-poppingly grotesque that it rivals that of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which director George Miller is clearly indebted to. At 72-years-old, director George Miller manages to easily take several huge dumps of superiority upon every other younger director in recent years who've purported to direct action blockbusters. This includes, but is not limited to the execrable Sam Mendes, J.J. Abrams, Bryan Singer, Joss Whedon and Christopher "One Idea" Nolan.

Miller's mise-en-scene is thankfully sans herky-jerky camera moves, ludicrously endless closeups, picture cutting that's almost solely dependent upon sound cues rather than visual dramatic action, an over-reliance upon digital effects and tin-eyed spatiality. His eye for action and his sense of rhythm is impeccable, his eye for the grotesque (the mutant villains, the earth-mother breast-milk slaves, the mohawk hairdos, body piercings, tattoos and the grandly retro mechanisms in the fortress) has seldom been paralleled, his commitment to driving everything dramatically because he's wisely utilized a simple narrative coat hanger to add all the necessary layers; all this and more points to his innate genius as a REAL filmmaker as opposed to most of the poseurs making blockbusters in contemporary Hollywood.

Though a part of me would have preferred if Miller had continued using the great Mel Gibson in the role of Max and added the layer of age to the character's bitterness, guilt and weariness, I'm happy enough with his selection of the strange stalwart intensity of Tom Hardy and the fine actor's chemistry (thankfully non-romantic or even vaguely sexual) with Charlize Theron's tough-as-nails-exterior masking her long-ago lost innocence of childhood.

And yes, though another part of me wished Miller had tried to bring his film's running time down to the 90-95-minutes of Mad Max and The Road Warrior, I was never bored during the 120 minutes of Fury Road, only occasionally fatigued by its relentlessness.

I love the first two Mad Max films so much that I'm grateful to Miller for not abandoning the spirit of them and using his previous work as a natural springboard into both the familiar and the fresh.

That the villain Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) is equally foul to such previous villains as The Toe Cutter and Humungous makes me very happy. Even happier to me is that Hugh Keays-Byrne played Toe Cutter AND Immortan Joe.

That the movie, by including a kick-ass female lead who is not just a woman pretending to be a macho Rambolina figure, but a woman driven to fight for the rights of fellow women and lay claim to a part of her that she lost, is what allows Miller to take his place as a genuine artist who heartily grasps the comfort of the familiar whilst building upon that and allowing it to blossom into a wholly new hybrid of insanely magnificent splendour.

That Miller has attempted a different approach to colour with Fury Road is also pleasing. I'll admit to always loving the occasional dapples of almost fluorescent colours amidst the sandy, dusty Australian outback, but I also love the high contrasts Miller employs here with varying shades to lighten or darken the proceedings when necessary.

That the movie uses real souped-up cars, trucks and motorcycles which are really driven by real stunt drivers and really smashed-up-real-good is the biggest bonus of all. (Porcupine-like killer cars, a big-wheeled monstrosity outfitted with banks of speakers and a heavy metal guitarist whose guitar shoots out flames and the terrifying gas tanker commandeered by Furiosa and Max are but a few of the vehicular delights on display.)

Finally, though, I do wish the film had had far more dystopian 70s-style melancholy infused into its a-bit-too-hopeful ending, especially since there's a sense of Max's final look to Furiosa, and to us, resembling the final looks of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) in John Ford's The Searchers.

But, really now, who am I trying to kid?

I fucking loved this movie.

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

Mad Max: Fury Road is in wide-mega-release all over the world via Warner Bros. It is presented in 3-D. I refuse to see it in that format as it annoys me. I've only watched it in normal 2-D and was quite satisfied with that, though I'll admit the 3-D might be less egregious to me than it normally is, given Miller's superb direction.

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM: ***** Review By Greg Klymkiw - Take a bath with Guy Maddin at the Sundance Film Festival '15 or @ the Forum during Berlin International Film Festival '15

Marv (Louis Negin) teaches you how to take a bath in THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

LOUIS NEGIN is MARV

The Forbidden Room (2015)
Dir. Guy Maddin
Co-Dir. Evan Johnson
Scr. Maddin, Johnson, Robert Kotyk
Addl. Writ. John Ashbery, Kim Morgan
Edit. John Gurdebeke
Prod.Design Galen Johnson
Cinematog. Stephanie Anne Weber Biron and Ben Kasulke
Prod. Co. PHI Films, The National Film Board of Canada, Buffalo Gal
Starring: Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Céline Bonnier, Karine Vanasse, Caroline Dhavernas, Paul Ahmarani, Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Maria de Medeiros, Charlotte Rampling, Géraldine Chaplin, Marie Brassard, Sophie Desmarais, Ariane Labed, Amira Casar, Luce Vigo, Gregory Hlady, Romano Orzari, Lewis Furey, Angela La Muse Senyshyn, Kimmi Melnychuk, Kim Morgan, Darcy Fehr, Jean-François Stévenin, Judith Baribeau, Graham Ashmore

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to take a bath with Guy Maddin in his closet of tantalizing shame, his forbidden room. God knows I have partaken on occasions too multitudinous to enumerate. So please, allow me to assure you, bathing with Maddin is a most gratifying and sensual treat for the mind, body and most of all, your very soul.

So then, my dear ones, do yourself a favour and hop into the stew with the Crown Prince of Prairie Post-Modernist Cinema and revel in the myriad of pleasures that motion pictures can offer: the fleshly, the ectoplasmic, the magically incorporeal, the visually and aurally celestial and, most assuredly, the cerebral complexities of all human existence in this world and the next, as filtered through the mind (within an enormous head of magma) of the great Icelandic Satyr who worships - nay, attends to all the needs of that Bacchus who rules over us all, the most holy and resplendent gift that IS the great silver-embossed photoplay, the magic bestowed upon our world by the immortal Brothers Lumière.

The Forbidden Room is 130 glorious minutes you'll want to experience over and over and over again. If, God Forbid, you find you're unable to experience it more than once, or worse, if you're compelled to not see it at all, you either don't care about cinema and/or have no taste and/or hold the unenviable dishonour of exhibiting little more than bone matter twixt thine wax-filled ears and behind eyes of cement.

I, for one, must confess to having seen the film five times now. My fifth helping occurred precisely at the scheduled time of the first public screening in Park City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival, which I was sadly unable to attend.

I did, however, attempt to replicate the joy of said event, in an outdoor soft tub, located at the northernmost tip of the penetratingly puissant peninsula dividing the moist Great Lake of Huron and its clitoral Georgian Bay, surrounded by the glories of the natural world, the horses, ponies, donkeys, dogs, squirrels, beavers, hibernating bears, coyotes, wolves and chickens, puffing fine tobacco purchased from my Aboriginal Brothers on their cheap-smoke-shoppe and hunting lands down the road, with jets of hot water massaging my rolls of flesh and every so often, just now and then, mind you, the hand not gripping a stick of sacred, smouldering, oh-so natural leaves of First-Nations bliss, would plunge greedily into the bubbly water, seeking netherworlds of sheer exultation to grip, to manipulate, to squeeze and tug with abandon until finally, emitting an ejection, an eruption (if you will) of jubilant gratification, a cascade, a geyser, a blast of liquid force in honour of the grandiose cinematic pulchritude before me.

By a waterfall, bath-time with Guy Maddin is calling yoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

As a matter of fact - pure and simple - I do not even wish to imagine how many more times I shall partake of this scintillatingly sudsy broth that celebrates the incalculable joys of life, shame, regret, sorrow, love, death and cinema, all those things which render our otherwise pathetic existence with meaning. Even one helping of The Forbidden Room can drain a feller (or lassie) more powerfully than several months of Sundays infused with gymnastics of resplendent amore. Yes, a drain in more ways than one:

Lo! This motion picture is most assuredly one drain we all must want to be slurped down, down, down into. Please, dear ones.

Let me try to explain why.

MAESTRO UDO KIER:
DEEPLY OBSESSIVE
WORSHIPPER
of DELICIOUS
DERRIERES

The Forbidden Room opens with an astounding credit sequence which stutters and sputters by like fragments of decaying film on nitrate stock (not unlike that of Peter Delpeut's 1991 found-footage documentary Lyrical Nitrate, unleashed upon North American audiences by Zeitgeist Films, who also gave us Maddin's Archangel and Careful as well as the similarly stylish work of the Brothers Quay). The imaginative way of placing gorgeous period title cards announcing key creative elements is an equally brilliant way to dispense with the ludicrous number of producers and the decidedly non-period acknowledgments to gouvernement du Canada et gouvernement du Manitoba agencies like Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film and Sound, etc. (At least the National Film Board of Canada makes sense given the significance of Holy Father John Grierson's efforts during that historical period detailed in Pierre Berton's book "Hollywood's Canada".)

Once these are all dispensed with, the film opens proper with the John 6:12 passage:

When they were filled,
he said unto his disciples,
Gather up the fragments that remain,
that nothing be lost.

It's a powerful passage, to be sure, but its resonance, its weighty thematic substance and, in fact, the very Raison d'être for The Forbidden Room is clutched almost parsimoniously by John's recapitulation of Our Lord's words.

Though the film is comprised of several different stories, they represent fragments of cinema from days long-gone-by which, through the ravages of time and the lack of care ascribed to film preservation during the first half-decade-plus of its history saw so many pieces of time go missing without a trace, or indeed, pieces of time that never even existed, but should have. Maddin, not unlike Georges Melies is a magician of sorts. His film conjures up fragments of films lost, stolen or suppressed, brilliantly re-imagined (or rather, just plain imagined) by Maddin and his co-director Evan Johnson and the pair's co-writer Robert Kotyk. They have been gathered up, these fragments, these very ghosts of cinema, "so that nothing shall be lost".

The Forbidden Room is a structural marvel. Kudos to Maddin and team for creating it so solidly from what must have been reams of magnificent footage written, prepped, shot and cut during the over-four-years it took to make this grand epic that honours both cinema and the lives of ghosts. In fact, the movie astonishingly adheres to (an albeit slightly skewed) three-act structure in terms of story and tone. The first third establishes its series of problems and obstacles right off the bat. The middle act slides into a journey in which said obstacles must be encountered and hurtled over or deviated into delicious nap times of dreams and reveries which provide even more obstacles to be hurtled over or deviated into, well, nap time for sure, but in this middle section one will find some of the most heart-achingly beautiful and tear-squirtingly moving emotions and images. And then, there is the third act - more on this later, but suffice to say it's an insanely eye-popping affair.

Tonally, then, the first third is jaunty, fun and occasionally sinister.The middle act is supremely elegiac with dapples of madness, humour and absurdity.

The third act is a hurricane.

Many tales are interwoven throughout and our first story (the writing of which is additionally supplied by John Ashbery) is a garishly coloured industrial documentary featuring a flamboyantly bath-robed Marv (Louis Negin), our host on the journey to the joys inherent in taking a proper bath. Marv recounts the history of bathing, then narrates all the proper steps needed to take a bath. Twixt Marv's peacockish descriptions and asides, we're delighted with images of pretty young ladies (Angela La Muse Senyshyn, Kimmi Melnychuk) bathing each other, then followed by the buff fortitude of a male bather (Graham Ashmore) carefully applying Marv's instructions as he settles into a nice, steamy, frothy tub. The man is especially eager to get to Marv's most important instructions of all:

"Work down to the genitals. Work carefully in ever-widening circles."

The sensual digital manipulations within the steamily sopping froth give way to another tale, another film infused with the serous lifeblood (and yes, danger) of water itself. A submarine carrying dangerous explosives and rapidly depleting oxygen is stuck between a rock and a hard place as the pressures of the sea above will be enough to send the vessel into a massive eruption of its deadly cargo and though the necessary slow journey it undertakes to avoid disaster is the very thing that will guarantee another disaster, the lack of oxygen which could kill every man on board. Luckily, there is some solace taken in the constant serving up of flapjacks, which in spite of their culinary monotony, are found to be full of porous insides which offer added oxygen to extend the men's precious lives.

Roy Dupuis is a dreamy, hunky, handsome woodsman
searching, ever-searching for his lady fair.

When a dreamy, rugged and brave Woodsman (Roy Dupuis) appears in the sub, the narrative becomes even more tied into other films and as the movie progresses, its literary properties seem rooted in a kind of Romantic period use of concentric rings (albeit skewed in ways they never should be).

One story after another, either recounted by characters in one film and represented by another or told as stories within stories or, my favourite, as dreams within dreams, flash by us ever-so compellingly, taking us deeper into a liquid-like miasma, a ripe flatulence of wonder, a churning, roiling sea of volcanic lava - DEEPER, EVER-DEEPER INTO THE VERY CORE OF EXISTENCE AND CINEMA!!!!!

We follow Roy Dupuis's Woodsman into a cave of scarlet-furred-lupine-worshipping barbarians who have kidnapped his lady love. We see his infiltration into this den of murderers, kidnappers and thieves as he successfully proves his worth during several challenges including:

- finger snapping;
- stone weighing;
- offal piling and, my personal favourite;

- BLADDER SLAPPING!!!!!

GERALDINE CHAPLIN
THE MASTER PASSION
Le Dominatrix
des adorateurs derriere

When we meet the Woodsman's lady love, the film takes us into her mad dreamworld wherein she acquires amnesia and we're assailed with glorious images of native dancers, sexy crooners, and a delicious pitstop involving a sexy anal dominatrix, The Master Passion (Geraldine Chaplin) and then, an even more delectable pitstop involving a madman (Udo "Who the fuck else?" Kier) obsessed with bottoms who is then worked upon by an equally mad doctor who performs open brain surgery to slice out viscous portions of cerebellum afflicted with buttock obsession and climaxing with the ultimate fist-fucking as the doctor plunges his whole hand into the buttock-like brain of Udo Kier to attack the deep core, or prostate, if you will of the man's anal intrusions upon his very mind, his very soul.

There's the tale of a kindly bone specialist who operates upon a sexy motorcyclist who has 47 broken bones after a horrific accident in which she swerves to avoid a family of ducks in her path. Of course, the doctor must take special care to lay his hands upon her prodigiously in order to heal her broken breast bones and, in so doing, falls madly in love with her before being seduced and kidnapped by a bevy of sexy skeleton women who are under the control of a skull-headed medical insurance fraudster.

In DreamLand, Crooners Croon of Derriere Worship.

One yarn after another assails us and as they emit their fantastical glories, constantly astounding us as to how they dovetail in and out of each other - a tale of a mill keeper and his gardener, a tale of a train psychiatrist and his screaming patient and seductive ways, a tale of volcano worshippers always on the lookout for living sacrifices, a tale of a forgetful husband (Mathiu Almaric, that great French actor whom one can watch for an eternity) who ends up murdering his loyal manservant (Udo Kier - AGAIN!!!) to cover-up his gift-giving incompetence, a tale of the manservant in death as his moustache hairs dream about taking him for a final visit (or several) to his little boy and blind wife (Maria de Medeiros), a tale of a consular official and his gorgeous fiancé (Sophie Desmarais) and the man's obsession with a cursed bust of Janus which turns him into an evil Mr. Hyde-like defiler-of-women and the tale of . . .

Have I mentioned the vampires yet?

Oops. Sorry. My bad!

They're called ASWANG (pronounced ASS-WANG).

You will not want to take a bath with any of them - except maybe the ultra-sexy Aswangs.

Will the submarine blow up? Will the woodsman be reunited with his lady love? Will she be cured of her amnesia?

Will we be able to count how many times Louis Negin appears, Franklin Pangborn-like, in different roles?

Will we be able to count how many times Udo Kier appears, Eric Blore-like, in different roles?

Will we ever meet the mysteriously missing Captain of the submarine?

Will we meet his MOTHER!!!!!

Will we survive the mad, fever pitch of a climax, that flings us into the most mind-blowing trip of visual splendour since Stanley Kubrick's stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (replete with . . . colliding zeppelins)?

What HAVE I missed?

Have I missed mentioning that the editing of John Gurdebeke and the production design of Galen Johnson are both as inspired and brilliant as Guy Maddin's most-assured hand? Have I missed mentioning that the exquisite lighting and camera work from cinematographers Stephanie Anne Weber Biron and Ben Kasulke provides the eyes to reflect Maddin's soul? Have I missed mentioning how astonishing the work that all of Mr. Maddin's creative collaborators proves to be in this, his greatest achievement?

I hope not.

I, for one, will take yet another bath with Guy Maddin.

We've taken so many together over the past 30+ years.

What's one (or a few) more.

The Film Corner Rating: ***** 5-Stars

The Forbidden Room is playing the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival. Its worldwide sales are being handled by Mongrel Media International.

CLICK HERE

FEEL FREE TO ORDER THE FOLLOWING GUY MADDIN MOVIES (OR ANYTHING FOR THAT MATTER) FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING YOU WANT WILL LET YOU ORDER, AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND JUST BUY THEM FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK

FULL DISCLOSURE

Oh, and for fuck's sake, lest someone point a boneheaded accusatory finger, I present to you the full disclosure that Maddin's late father Chas was business manager of the Winnipeg Maroons, and my own father Julian, who will, by virtue of his stubborn, curmudgeonly qualities, live-forever, played goal for the same team. Both fathers accompanied the team to various European bouts as the Maroons were, indeed, Canada's national hockey team during the early-to-mid-sixties. Maddin and I have been friends for over thirty years, we were flat-mates for many years, we have shared many strange adventures together and I produced his first three feature films (Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful). I am, however, a true fan of his films. Always have been. I'm perfectly able to assess his work critically and the day I ever hate one of his films (which I have, in fact), I'll goddamn well say so (which I have, in fact, and done so with constructive viciousness).

RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Grim Yuletide from Finland

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
dir. Jalmari Helander
Starring: Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila

Review By Greg Klymkiw

While it is an indisputable truth that Jesus is the reason for the season. the eventual commercialization of Christmas inevitably yielded the fantasy figure of Santa Claus, the jolly, porcine dispenser of toys to children. Living with his equally corpulent wife, Mrs. Claus, a passel of dwarves and a herd of reindeer at the North Pole, Santa purportedly toils away in his workshop for the one day of the year when he can distribute the fruits of his labour into the greedy palms of children the world over.

Is it any wonder we forget that Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Our Lord Baby Jesus H. Christ?

In the movies, however, we have had numerous dramatic renderings of the true spirit of Christmas - tales of redemption and forgiveness like the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, Frank Capra's immortal It's a Wonderful Life and Phillip Borsos's One Magic Christmas, but fewer and far between are the Christmas movies that address the malevolence of the season celebrating Christ's Birth. There's the brilliant Joan Collins segment in the Amicus production of Tales From the Crypt, the Silent Night Deadly Night franchise and, perhaps greatest of all, that magnificent Canadian movie Black Christmas from Bob (Porky's) Clark.

And now, add Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale to your perennial Baby-Jesus-Worship viewings! This creepy, terrifying, darkly hilarious and dazzlingly directed bauble of Yuletide perversity takes us on a myth-infused journey to the northern border between Finland and Lapland where a crazed archeologist and an evil corporation have discovered and unearthed the resting place of the REAL Santa Claus.

When Santa is finally freed from the purgatorial tomb, he runs amuck and indulges himself in a crazed killing spree - devouring all the local livestock before feeding upon both adults and children who do not subscribe to the basic tenet of Santa's philosophy of: "You better be Good!" A motley crew of local hunters and farmers, having lost their livelihood, embark upon an obsessive hunt for Santa. They capture him alive and hold him ransom to score a huge settlement from the Rare Exports corporation who, in turn, have nefarious plans of their own for world wide consumer domination. How can you go wrong if you control the REAL Santa?

There's always, however, a spanner in the works, and it soon appears that thousands of Claus-ian clones emerge from the icy pit in Lapland and embark upon a desperate hunt for their leader. These vicious creatures are powerful, ravenous and naked.

Yes, naked!

Thousands of old men with white beards traverse across the tundras of Finland with their saggy buttocks and floppy genitalia exposed to the bitter northern winds. For some, this might even be the ultimate wet dream, but I'll try not to think too hard about who they might be.

All cultures, of course, have their own indigenous versions of everyone's favourite gift-giver and this eventually led to the contemporary rendering of the Santa Claus we're all familiar with. Finland, however, absorbed in considerable wintery darkness for much of the year, insanely overflowing with rampant alcoholism and being the birthplace of the brilliant Kaurismäki filmmaking brothers, is one delightfully twisted country. It's no surprise, then, that the Finns' version of jolly old Saint Nick is utterly malevolent. As presented in this bizarre and supremely entertaining movie, Santa is one demonic mo-fo!!!

Directed with panache by the young Finnish director Jalmari Helander (and based on his truly insane short films), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is one unique treat. It's a Christmas movie with scares, carnage and loads of laughs. Helander renders spectacular images in scene after scene and his filmmaking vocabulary is sophisticated as all get-out. In fact, some of his shots out-Spielberg Spielberg, and unlike the woeful, tin-eyed J.J. Abrams (he of the loathsome Super-8, the Star Trek reboots, the worst Mission Impossible of all time and now, God forbid, Star Wars), I'd put money on Helander eventually becoming the true heir apparent to the Steven Spielberg torch. Helander's imaginative mise-en-scène is especially brilliant as he stretches a modest budget (using stunning Norwegian locations) and renders a movie with all the glorious production value of a bonafide studio blockbuster. The difference here, is that it's not stupid, but blessed with intelligence and imagination.

While the movie is not suitable for most young children (except mine), it actually makes for superb family viewing if the kiddies are not whining sissy-pants. Anyone expecting a traditional splatter-fest will also be disappointed, but I suspect even they will find merit in the movie. Most of all, Moms, Dads and their brave progeny can all delight in this dazzling Christmas thriller filled with plenty of jolts, laughs, adventure and yes, even a sentimental streak that rivals that of the master of all things darkly wholesome, Steven Spielberg.

You have hereby been warned:

You better watch out,
you better not cry,
you better not pout,
I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town,
with razor-sharp big gnarly teeth,
a taste for human flesh,
he knows if you've been bad or good,
and he likes to eat kids fresh.
Hey!

Or in the words of Tiny Tim: "God Bless us, everyone."

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

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is currently available in a superb Bluray and DVD from the Oscilloscope Pictures (and distributed in Canada via the visionary company VSC). I normally have little use for extra features, but this release is one of the few exceptions. It includes Helander's brilliant shorts and some truly informative and entertaining making-of docs. This is truly worth owning and cherishing - again and again!

MONSTERZ - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ringu director Hideo Nakata explores mind control @FantAsia2014

Mind Control is not without merit when you're a monster.

Monsterz (2014)
Dir. Hideo Nakata
Starring: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Takayuki Yamada, Satomi Ishihara, Tomorowo Taguchi, Motoki Ochiai

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A young boy discovers he can telepathically control the minds of others. This comes in mighty handy when he manages to force his abusive father to snap his own neck. When the child reaches adulthood, he has the power to control anyone's mind and can even force large swaths of people in his purview to enter a state of suspended animation. This comes in especially handy when he wants to rob banks - mostly for fun. When he meets another young man with similar powers, all hell breaks loose.

Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Dark Water) is one of Japan's finest directors of horror and here he chooses to remake Haunters, a 2010 Korean film and even manages to trump the original. That the original is not especially good, is wherein the fault lies.

Nakata certainly creates a few creepy and fun set pieces and cannot be denied his natural virtuosity. That said, the film feels like a J-Horror version of such teen-oriented American franchise items like the Twilight and Hunger Games series. When the young man is wreaking havoc, all's well, but as it becomes more mano a mano rivalry gymnastics, not even Nakata's great style can breathe much life into this hoary horror of ponderous been-there-done-that.

THE FILM CORNER Rating **½

Monsterz had its Canadian Premiere at FantAsia2014 in Montreal.

REAL (aka "Riaru") - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Kiyoshi Kurosawa visits a subconscious ghosts @FantAsia2014

A fleeting childhood memory permeates a subconscious world
of love, loss and ghost-like shadows of a life once lived.

Real (aka "Riaru") (2013)
dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Takeru Sato, Haruka Ayase, Joe Odagiri, Miki Natakani

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure, Charisma) is nothing if not ambitious. His latest film Real is set in a future not too removed from our own in which it's possible to scan the subconscious of those we love who are deep in a coma.

Here, a young couple face their greatest challenge when a wife attempts suicide and her husband is wired to her mind as she lays dead to the living world. Here they are able to communicate in a strange living purgatory of ghosts, shadows and zombie-like replicas of life itself. The couple faces the challenge of solving a mystery which might be able to revive the wife, or at least provide some spiritual solace to her tragic decision. It involves a drawing of a plesiosaur which she gifted to her husband in their childhood and that he's misplaced.

To say more is to upset the delicate intricacies of this haunting and deeply moving tale of love and loss. Kurosawa's deliberate pacing is, as always, infectious and though he's lest interested in evoking terror, he does manage to give us the creeps.

Though the film overstays its welcome whilst watching it, you can't get the damn thing out of your head afterwards. As always, it's the mark of a genuine artist.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

Real enjoyed its Quebec Premiere at the FantAsia 2014 Film Festival.

DOCTOR PROCTOR'S FART POWDER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Fabulous Family Fart Fun @FantasiaFest2014

These happy kids investigate a hole in the wall blown open by a FART.

DOCTOR PROCTOR - Inventor

Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder
aka "Doktor Proktors prompepulver" (2014) ***½
Dir. Arild Fröhlich
Script: Johan Bogaeus, Based on Jo Nesbø's Book
Starring: Kristoffer Joner, Atle Antonsen, Emily Glaister, Eilif Hellum, Arve Guddingsmo Bjørn, Even Guddingsmo Bjørn

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who in their right mind doesn't appreciate a good, rip-snorting fart? I know I do and I'm sure you do too, so pull my finger and I'll emit the following review.

If you're sick of the same old crap Hollywood keeps foisting upon your kids, reject the empty-headed faecal matter and embrace farts instead. The Land of Fjords has delivered one of the best family films in years, the cool and funny adaptation of Jo Nesbø's terrific book Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder.

Set in a seeming never-never land of an Oslo that must surely exist, two inventors, the kind, benevolent, scatterbrained and poor Doctor Proctor (Kristoffer Joner) and the evil, greedy and disgustingly corpulent Mister Thane (Atle Antonsen), live within a stone's throw of each pother in the same neighbourhood of manicured lawns and fluorescent-colored interiors ripped from the world of a Pee Wee Herman-like playhouse.

Two lonely, parentally-neglected kids, sweet, blonde Lisa (Emily Glaister) and the goofy, grinning carrot-top pompadoured Nilly (Eilif Hellu) discover that Doctor Proctor just created a fart powder that emits gaseous excretions that are both odourless and so powerful they can blow holes through brick walls and most importantly, so propulsive they can allow those who use them properly to fly.

Rival inventor Thane, steels the formula and claims it as his own. It's up to the wily kids to save the day, but they face formidable odds when they tussle with Thane's repulsively brutish twin sons (Arve Guddingsmo Bjørn, Even Guddingsmo Bjørn).

Alas, this is Doctor Proctor's only chance to finally hit it big and allow him to claim his rightful place amongst the world's greatest inventors. Most importantly, Doctor Proctor will never be able to claim betrothal to his one and true love unless he can amass a big enough fortune to satisfy the father of the woman he adores. Fart Glory is just around the corner - especially since NASA has shown keen interest in the Fart Powder for their Space Program.

Will justice be done?

Will our heroes save the day?

Will farts bring lovers together?

For a movie about flatulence, this is one sweet and lovely little film. It's original, funny and decidedly explosive. Pitting underdogs against the Status Quo is tried and true stuff, but add farts to the mix and you've got full-on, full-bodied happy-faced shenanigans to melt the hearts of even the most stone cold grumpy-pants.

I don't know about you, but I'll take farty-pants over grumpy-pants anytime.

Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder had its international premiere at the 2014 FantAsia Film Festival in Montreal.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Chuck Heston, why hast Thou forsaken me? Why must I put up with this abysmal contemporary reboot?

2014: Boy-crush hug twixt
Jason Clarke & Andy Serkis
1968: Hot open-mouth kiss twixt
Kim Hunter & Chuck Heston

2014: When men are wimps
1968: When men are men among men
2014: When women are bedraggled hags
1968: When women are Linda Harrison as "NOVA"

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) *
Dir. Matt Reeves
Starring: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke,
Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I pity all of you. Some came of age to (Ugh!) Star Wars, others came of age to (Ugh!) John Hughes or (Ugh!) The Goonies, yet others came of age to (Ugh!) Toy Story or (Ugh!) Jurassic Park, and even worse, many came of age to (Ugh!) Harry Potter, and then, perhaps worst off of all are those who will come of age to (Ugh!) stupid, noisy superhero comic book movies and those who will be completely bereft of originality will come of age to (Ugh!) reboots like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and its (Ugh!) dull, mediocre sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. What's next? Afternoon of the Planet of the Apes? Tea-Time of the Planet of the Apes? Night of the Living Dead Planet of the Apes? Seriously, all of you not only have my pity, but my condolences for childhoods that could really be little more than living the death of a thousand cuts to thine brain and soul. About the best that can be said in favour of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is that it's not as dreadful as Rise of the Planet of the Apes. This is predominantly due to the fact that it has a real director, Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) at the helm. Alas, he struggles valiantly, but unsuccessfully with an utterly boring screenplay and no real reason (artistically) for the picture to exist.

In fact, the entire reboot exists only to fill the 20th Century Fox coffers with dough from a lot of desperate and stupid movie-goers. The Original Five (kind of like the N.H.L.'s Original Six) is a perfectly fine series of films and frankly, Franklin J. Schaffner's original 1968 Planet of the Apes is not only a bonafide masterpiece, but it's so terrific that it holds up beautifully to this day on levels of both storytelling and craft that dazzles. As everyone knows, the first picture took us on a thrilling journey to a topsy-turvy planet by way of time travel and subsequent films offered a series of entertaining, often exciting and boldly satirical adventure films which perversely added up to one massive time warp - one which led to a never-ending cycle of the same mistakes wrought by humanity and an ever-present and always inevitable reality that nuclear annihilation is, was and always would be the end result.

The sheer genius of this within the context of popular entertainment is one thing, but that each film was infused with buoyant snap, crackle and pop by way of thrilling classical adventure always tempered with great humour - some black, some satirical and often, just plain hilarity emanating naturally out of the drama - is what made the original film and its sequels immortal.

The reboot is dull on several fronts, but the most egregious flaw in its storytelling is to begin, literally, with the beginning. The second big problem is just how dour, serious and irredeemably humourless the whole thing is. There's one laugh in all of Dawn that's surprisingly clever - so much so I won't ruin it for you save to note that it's rooted in the kind of satire so prevalent in Schaffner's 1968 original and that wended its way through the sequels - and involves an ape equivalent to the antics of a Steppin' Fetchit or Mantan Moreland to curry favour with the "dominant" race in films of yore.

Dawn begins ten years after Rise. The virus which sprouted in the last movie has decimated almost the entire human race. In the city of San Francisco, those humans who were resistant to the terminal illness, live in isolation and fear that their meagre power supply will soon run out. The apes, on the other hand, are living idyllically in the forests of northern Cali and getting stronger and smarter. Caesar (Andy Serkis) is still their leader, but his authority is being challenged by Koba (Toby Kebbell), a violent warmongering ape. The human beings are led by Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), a stirring orator of the fascist variety who grudgingly allows Malcolm (Jason Clarke) a few days to try and peacefully negotiate with the apes for access to the nearby power dam in order to get San Fran up and running again.

Malcolm drags Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee), his sensitive (Ugh!), artistically-inclined son and Ellie (Keri Russell), his (Ugh!) supportive, loving and oddly haggard nurse girlfriend along with a few other fellas to do their power dam magic. Everything twixt human and ape in the jungle seems reasonably "Kumbaya, My Lord" until bad apes pull bad shit and bad humans pull bad shit and hell breaks loose.

Eventually, order is restored, but a storm's a brewin' with imminent all-out war for the next sequel.

Dullsville!

Both the performances and characters of the humans are strangely lacklustre and the apes (save for Caesar and Koba) are indistinguishable from one another - a far cry from the indelibly-etched characters on both sides of the equation in the 1968 classic and its sequels. While there is an inevitability of doom and despair in the 60s/70s Apes pictures, nothing is ever oppressively dreary and predictable the way it is here.

Reeves handles some of the action sequences with the sort of aplomb one would want, but because we have no real investment in any of the characters, his efforts are all for naught.

There's a lot of noise and thunder here, but finally, this is a film which is perfectly emblematic of the sheer unimaginative roller coaster amusement park rides that major studio films are transforming into. The 3-D, as per usual, adds nothing to the proceedings save for inducing headaches and muting the colour and sharp contrast of the visuals.

Again, all I can do is offer my pity to audiences so starved for a good picture that they're willing to suffer through this unoriginal mess that been crapped upon them by a studio system that's increasingly losing its way into a miasma that I suspect cinema might have a hard time recovering from.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is in humungously wide release via 20th Century Foz and predictably drawing in audiences throughout the world.

For more elaboration on the Original Five and my vitriol about Rise of the Planet of the Apes, feel free to read my review of that film HERE.

GOOD PLACE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Funny, moving short by one of Canada's most talented female directors, plays the Toronto Inside Out LGBT Film Festival program "Lesbian Shorts:Bound (By Love)"

When we look to the sky we look for answers.
Dyan Bell and Seamus Morrison in Gina Bucci's GOOD PLACE

Baby Brother, Big Sister
SIBLING SHENANIGANS
in the SUBURBS

Good Place (2014) Dir. Gina Bucci ****
Starring: Dyan Bell, Seamus Morrison, Alisen Down
Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are people in our lives who are linked to us so inextricably that even though we haven't seen them for awhile, their appearance is enough to bring us back to what made them special in the first place. No matter how unexpected their materialization in our world might be, the feelings they engender always seem just like yesterday. Such is the case with Connie (Dyan Bell) in Gina Bucci's gem of a short film Good Place. Things are rocky and uncertain in her relationship with Beth (Alisen Down), exemplified quite clearly one morning when some pre-nine-to-five nookie takes a back seat to affairs of the career rather than affairs of the heart. Connie is left alone with an empty house when Beth decides to sneak off to work. Rather than facing the day, Connie crawls under the blankets, but her comfy ostrich head in the sand is short-lived when the door bell rings and an unexpected visitor enters back into her life.

Reunited with her little brother Joey (Seamus Morrison), Connie dives into a whole lotta fun. The twenty-something siblings regress ever-so delightfully into childhood and soon, whatever weight is on Connie's shoulders is lifted by her baby brother's good humour, cheer and love. Though everything feels like it's back to normal, a cloud seems to hang over the events of the day, a nagging sense that the freewheeling warmth rooted in a lifetime of a big sister's love for her baby brother, can't possibly last forever.

After a day of childlike sibling shenanigans, brother and sister soon find themselves under a night sky. The limitless possibilities inherent in a universe dwarfs them and yet envelopes them in the warmth of belonging to something much larger. Life and love puts both of them in a good place and as long as faith and love remain strong, the possibilities seem limitless.

Like the best short films, Good Place offers us a simple situation, a slice of a life that acts macrocosmically for the characters involved and, in a sense, provides thoughts and feelings familiar to us while also letting us make them our own and take from them what we will and must. Bell and Morrison deliver memorable and naturalistic performances - fresh, attractive and altogether winning. Bucci's direction is assured and the film is deftly cut by Tiffany Beaudin. Visually arresting without overt flash, Director of Photography Sue Johnson tricks us into thinking she's shot the picture with yeoman rigour, but that's the clever deception. It doesn't bring unwarranted attention to itself and we're almost never aware of just how indelible the images are, serving the natural rhythm of the dramatic action. And then, we're treated to a load of chocolate fudge syrup on the ice cream and Good Place delivers a few final shots that sweep us off our feet until one simple, slow upward tilt completely takes our breath away.

It's a sweet, lovely, mystical and even phantasmagorical little picture that continues to solidify Bucci as a genuine force to be reckoned worth in Canadian Cinema. Ever since seeing one of her first short films, the original and profoundly moving A Quiet Little Riot, I've been looking forward to each new work by Bucci with baited breath.

Someone please give this lady some money to make a feature. It'll pay off in spades.

Good Place is part of a program of short films at the Toronto Inside Out LGBT Film Festival. The series is entitled LESBIAN SHORTS: BOUND (BY LOVE) and in addition to Good Place, it features Dream Date, Dyke Central: Taboo, Neighbours, Anti-Aging Ema and Curtains. For more information, visit the festival website HERE.

Here are some fine LGBT films. Feel free to order them from the handy links below and in so doing, you'll be supporting the ongoing maintenance of the Film Corner.




Full Disclosure:
I've followed Bucci's career avidly for many years.
I'm credited on this film as a Story Consultant.
It's what I do, though.

GODZILLA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Dull, humourless remake lacks powerful political context of GOJIRA

GODZILLA QUIZ: WHAT'S SCARIER?
(I) Ken Watanabe (left) at the L.A. premiere of GODZILLA
(II) Ken Watanabe (bottom right) not changing his expression in GODZILLA
(III) Mickey Rooney (top right in duplicate) in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

Godzilla (2014) TURD FOUND BEHIND HARRY'S CHARBROIL AND DINING LOUNGE
Dir. Gareth Edwards, Script: Max Borenstein and 4 (!!!) other writers, Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who in their right mind would entrust a multi-million-dollar remake of Godzilla to a director whose only claim to fame was a precious, twee and boring no-budget indie movie called Monsters that was self-consciously arty and only really appealed to pretentious boneheads who went on at length about the film's "smart" reliance upon character in stead of carnage? Well, who do you think? A major studio (Warner Brothers) and a production company financed solely on Wall Street by rich assholes wanting a piece of the glamour-pie motion pictures can deliver (Legendary Pictures). That's who.

The results are predictable. Eschewing all manner of genuine political context and zapping out every ounce of what made the Toho Studio production of Ishirō Honda's stunning 1954 Gojira so powerful (the monster was a metaphoric representation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), Godzilla (2014) manages to make even the woeful American re-cut of Honda's original, Godzilla - King of the Monsters (featuring a bunch of useless footage of Raymond Burr as an American journalist) look like a masterpiece. Edwards is a bookish talent at best and his rendering of the tale is mostly muted with plodding, humourless moments of deep concern, punctuated by very loud moments of battle and carnage shot in a manner Edwards assumed was oh-so arty (the camera is never where it could be illogically which is a nice idea in theory, but as Edwards incompetently handles it, dramatically impractical).

There's an accent on character here, but it's strictly by-the-numbers. That's not all the fault of the director since the screenplay was cobbled together by 5 writers (some credited, others not) and we're forced to follow a tale that lumbers across two time periods and all over God's Green Earth (well, mostly America) with a clutch of cliched and throughly uninteresting cardboard cutouts.

During the pre-credit sequence it's revealed that during an atomic bomb test during the 50s in the ocean near Japan that some sort of creature appeared, but disappeared just as quickly as it was spotted. About 40-or-so years pass and two scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) discover a super-duper humungous skeleton and a couple of egg-like pods in a Filipino strip mine. One of the eggs appears to have hatched. This inspires Ken Watanabe to display the only expression he can seem to muster for the entire picture, concern.

Meanwhile in Japan, married American nuke specialists played by Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche work in a Japanese nuclear power plant and discover some mega-weird seismic shit going on beneath the water's surface. The plant soon explodes and sadly, the only actor worth watching in the entire movie, Binoche 'natch, dies.

This brings us to present day. Cranston's son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is now an explosive expert for the Navy in San Francisco where he lives with his nurse wifey (Elizabeth Olsen) and their fucking obnoxious kid. Taylor-Johnson's been away on a long tour of duty, but he's forced to leave his family when he finds out his Dad's been arrested in Japan for trespassing on the site of the nuclear accident which has been under quarantine all these decades.

Once reunited in the Land of Nippon, father and son sneak into the quarantine zone because his Dad has a bunch of data he wants to retrieve. Upon doing so, some armed soldiers find them. This time, though, no arrests are made. They're taken to a secret facility deep below the ground where we find, yee-haa, Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins examining some kind of creatures in a chrysalis form. The bugger mutates, wreaks havoc and escapes, not before killing Daddy Cranston.

David Strathairn soon enters the picture as a high-ranking military official and we find out that the military knows of Godzilla existence and has been tracking it for years. The creature that recently hatched is on its way to a nuclear waste disposal site because, it seems, the creature feeds on radiation. And guess what? That pesky pod that hatched a few years ago is also on its way to the same destination. One's a male, the other's a female and if, after a radiation buffet they decide to fuck, there's going to be the possibility of more creatures like them.

For some reason, Watanabe has been studying these creatures for nearly two decades and is revered by the military for his expertise. However, all he seems to do is register concern and appears to really not know much of anything about the creatures save for one salient detail which, ultimately, is a guess.

"Godzilla seek to maintain balance," notes Watanabe with, you guessed it, concern.

What-the-fuck-ever. We're almost an hour into this lugubrious mess and have another hour to go. In spite of some monster action, there's also endlessly dull sections and we have to keep following Taylor-Johnson as he bops from Hawaii, to Nevada and then San Francisco. At least, in fairness to Watanabe, he is able to muster one expression. The woeful Taylor-Johnson is only able to convey complete blankness. He's a dreadful actor with all the screen presence of a cipher. Elizabeth Olsen is not much better. Not only is she a complete blank slate, but her character is so stupid that she stays in the hospital to tend to all the casualties from an attack by the monsters and puts her annoying kid on a school bus that just happens to get trapped on the Golden Gate bridge in a traffic jam - just as Godzilla is heading towards it. The military has set off nukes to kill the monsters, but somehow, Watanabe convinces Strathairn to let Godzilla fight it out with the two flying creatures ready to get down and dirty to procreate. This means Taylor-Johnson must risk life and limb to defuse the nukes.

He survives. So does his wife. So does his obnoxious brat. Godzilla kills the bad monsters, but sadly dies when crushed by a skyscraper. Or does he? Nope. He's alive. Godzilla is here for AMERICA. He wanders back into the ocean where he'll remain until the sequel.

If you see this movie, your pocket will have been picked and will be picked again and again via the inevitable sequels.

For my money, I'm just going to watch the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Gojira again.

Godzilla is playing all over the world via Warner Brothers.